He's making a list, he's checking it twice

We are a week away from Christmas, and this song lyric has been in my head. So it seems an apt title for a blog post about Tony's appearances on checklists.

Some player collectors don't count checklists. That's their prerogative. I think they're missing out.

Card Number 894: Upper Deck, 1995; #Checklist 2 

This card takes me to 500 cards over my original target of 394 cards!

These shiny checklists were basically insert cards.

On the front there's a reference to Tony's famous batting average in 1994.

I enjoy reading the list of names on these checklists. Among all the really famous names are players who have been long-forgotten, like Chuck Carr and Pat Rapp. 

Card Number 895: DonRuss, 1994; #440

DonRuss used this checklist to commemorate Tony's reaching the 2000 hit milestone.

Some of the random forgotten players on here include Phil Leftwich and the frankly amazingly named Hipolito Pichardo!

Hipolito pitched 350 games in a ten year major league career for the Royals, Red Sox and Astros. He also had 103 baseball cards in his career, according to TCDB. Phil Leftwich had 39 cards, which is actually more than the number of games he pitched in the major leagues (34 games in 3 years for the Angels).

Card Number 896: DonRuss, 1993; #660

This is really a 'cameo card'. It's not about Tony per se - DonRuss put a photo of  different teams on their checklists. But Tony is in the photo walking behind Gary Sheffield. There seems to be a giant patting Gary on the head as well. That guy must be about 6 foot six.

The winners in the peculiar names category this time around are on the front - Chuck Crim and Scott Scudder both sound like low rent villains from a comic book. They're joined on the back by William Pennyfeather! But the name that really stood out on the back was Tony's brother, Chris Gwynn, who was #657 in the set.

I could count this in the number of Tony's cards where Chris gets a mention somewhere. Chris had 118 cards of his own, and may well have been mentioned on a similar number of Tony's cards. (That's another project when I run out of cards to blog!)

Total: 896 cards

Cereal freebies: Part 1

These"oddball" cards by Post arrived in the post from Gawain last week. 

Post is a massive cereal company - currently the third largest in the world. C.W. Post who founded the company spent time at the sanatorium run by John Harvey Kellogg and was inspired to develop his own breakfast cereal. The first cereal sold by Post was Grape Nuts, one of the few America brands readily available in the UK. I always think it's the most misleading brekfast cereal, as it contains neither grapes nor nuts, and is more like eating shards of concrete rather than food. Still, to each their own. 

For several years in the early 90s, the Post company included baseball cards as giveaways in their cereal. (They'd actually first done this in the early 1960s as well.) I've previously blogged cards of Tony that Post produced in 1990(#413) and in 1991(#46).

Card Number 688: Post Cereal, 1992; #26

These cards were licensed by the Major League Baseball Player's Association (MLBPA) rather than Major League Baseball, so the logos and team names have been rather skillfully erased from the photos of Tony. These cards were printed by Michael Schechter Associates (MSA) who arranged print runs of promotional baseball cards for a lot of companies back in the 1980s and 90s.

The back is a fairly solid design, with a photo of Tony and a decent stats box.

Major League Baseball was less protective of franchise names in the early 90s so even though the Padres name and logo have been removed from the photos, the word 'Padres' appears on the front and back of the card. 

Card Number 689: Post Cereal, 1993; #8

Wonky scan! Sorry.

A bunt photo! 

Tony was quite happy to bunt when necessary. He devotes a section in his book Tony Gwynn's Total Baseball Player to "The Art of Bunting". Tony felt it gave opponents something else to worry about, causing the infield to shift and opening up holes a batter could punch a ball through. Tony went on to list the five type of bunt - can you name all five? Answers at the bottom of the post!

This is a nice looking card, with a black border similar to the Pinnacle cards issued in the same year. The back has dispensed with the big stats box and has added a little write-up, which mentions his option to play in the NBA with the Clippers.

Somehow in this joblot of oddball cards I managed a complete run of the three Post Cereal cards that I didn't have already.

Card Number 690: Post Cereals, 1994; #13

Another slightly wonky scan. My bad!

This design looks like the love-child of a DonRuss card and a Fleer Ultra card. It is very green. The designer has also gone for a fancier logo for the set - this is part of the "Post 94 Collection".

The back really emphasises the write up at the expense of the stats. There's some slightly confusing syntax in the first sentence, though. The Padres were playing the Rockies when Tony recorded his 2000th career hit, but it wasn't his 2000th career hit against the Rockies. (Who were in their debut season in the Major Leagues!)

For two years in a row the cardback write-up predicted Tony's eventual election to the Hall of Fame. 

Come back tomorrow for Cereal freebies: Part 2!

Total:690 cards

Answer: According to Tony, the five types of bunt were: The Sacrifice; The Drag; The Push; The Slug; and The Swinging Bunt. - Tony Gwynn's Total Baseball Player pp 49-53.