The one club man in two hitting clubs

Back to the joblot that arrived from eBay and a rare 'theme post'. Usually I group cards by make or year, but sometimes there are slightly less obvious connections as with these two cards today. As I extracted them from the envelope I realised there was a fun similarity.

Card Number 589: Leaf 300 Club, 1995; #13

The 300 Club was an insert series in honour of the active players in 1995 with a career batting average over .300. 

In 1995 Tony was second on the list with .333, behind Wade Boggs who had .335. However, Tony would go on to finish his career with a batting average of .338, elevating him into the top 20 all time career batting averages. He is the only player in the top 20 born after the Second World War. Wade Boggs meanwhile saw his batting averages tail off in his final seasons in the game, and he finished with a career average of .328 - which is still very, very good, of course.

The rest of the list includes some famous names - Kirby Puckett, Mike Piazza, Paul Molitor, Ken Griffey Jr, and at the bottom, Tony's one-time room-mate at Walla-Walla, John Kruk.

These kind of cards are a great snapshot of who was dominating around that time. There were some very good batsmen competing with Tony for titles in the mid-90s. 

Leaf put Tony in the 300 Club. A few years later Fleer went a digit better.

Card Number 590: Fleer Ultra 3000 Club, 2000; #unnumbered

The joy of collecting cards from the 90s and the turn-of-the-Millennium includes trying to find the things on Trading Card Database. Fleer did their best to hide this one, but I found it in the end. There were '3000 Club' cards inserted in all the Fleer ranges in 2000. There were 2 or 3 cards each in Fleer Focus, Fleer Mystique, Fleer Showcase, Fleer Tradition, and Tony's cards were hidden in packs of Fleer Ultra. 

The card is also a snazzy die-cut!

The middles of the zeroes aren't punched out. Unlike some other card companies (*cough* Topps *cough*), Fleer have got the date of Tony's 3000th hit right.

There's also a nice little write-up that avoids any weird superlatives and is probably one of the best summaries of Tony's playing style - not flashy, just consistently productive. I'd say the same for this card design, with it's big numerals and rounded edges.

This was around the time when Fleer added the year below their logo, which is very handy and earns this card a bonus point. Not that it needs too many bonus points as it's pretty special already.

Total: 590 cards