Sharing the Spotlight - Tony and Albert

Today's card arrived via Brian from the UK baseball card collectors Facebook group. It was part of a bigger trade that is a longer story, which I might tell another time. 

Card Number 501: Topps, 1995; #389

For a couple of sets in the mid-90s, Topps paired up players from the All Star Game on cards. Tony shares this one with Albert Belle from the Cleveland Indians.

The photo makes me chuckle because it looks like Tony and Albert have had a spat. Tony has his arms crossed and looks like he's giving Albert the cold shoulder, while Albert defiantly sits there ignoring him in turn. 

On the back there's a seasonal breakdown for both players. You will notice that both their totals before and after the All Star Break are radically different. That's because the season ended in August when the players went on strike.

Albert was a consistent selection for All-Star teams for five years in a row (1993-97) during his eleven-year Major League career. He was a noted power hitter and is the only player to score 50 doubles and 50 home runs in the same season. He averaged 120 RBI a season and was the first player to sign a $10,000,000 contract. And, of course, he got to share a baseball card with Tony Gwynn!

Thank you for the card, Brian!

Total: 501 cards

One Card Only - On the Anniversary of Hit Number One

It's the 19th July. 38 years ago, in 1982, a young baseball player, newly called up from the franchise farm system in Hawaii, started his first game for the San Diego Padres facing Philadelphia Phillies in the evening at Jack Murphy Stadium. In his first at bat he recorded his first major league hit, off pitcher Sid Monge. In 4 at bats in total during the game he recorded 2 hits, scored a run and batted one in.

Although the Padres lost the game 6-7, Tony Gwynn had arrived on the scene.

I really wanted to mark the occasion with a special card about hitting, but then this popped out as I was scanning a pile of cards made by Pacific.

Card Number 194: Pacific, 2000; #363

"Number one."

In contrast to the superb photo on the front, the cardback is a little dull (and the dullness is not offset by the wonky scan!)

While today I'm commemorating Tony's first hit, this is one of many cards from 2000 that commemorates his 3000th hit, which came almost 3,000 miles away from San Diego, in Montreal. But more of that in a few weeks time!

Total: 194/394

Saturday round up: Cardbacks and coincidences

This may become a habit. Last Saturday I blogged about how I had discovered more about a card I has already blogged about. This week I'm going to do the same and also talk about a second serendipitous tangential addition to the 'collection'.

One of my first posts was about Tony's 1980s Topps cards. I mentioned how in 1988 there was an acknowledgement of scout Cliff Ditto on the back of Tony's card.

This week I've finished reading He Left His Heart in San Diego, an anthology of memories of Tony Gwynn compiled by prolific author Rich Wolfe. On page 142, one-time Padres manager Jack McKeon is quoted thus:

"About the middle of November... Sy Berger from Topps Baseball Cards called me. He said, "Jack, I've got a problem... I've got four or five scouts claiming Tony Gwynn." I laughed and said "Let me go through the scouting files and see which guy should be credited." I went through the scouting files and there was one report on Tony Gwynn. That was from Cliff Ditto out of the Los Angeles area. That was the only scouting report we had. So I told Sy, "Make them all feel good. Give them all a certificate or whatever they need." They all claimed Tony Gwynn but we had only one report."

There are some learning points from this.
1) Always submit your reports!
2) Other people will try and claim your successes. Which is why point 1 is important.
3) For all that I bust on Topps for their bizarre choices of cardback factoids, they actually did some diligent digging to make sure they were right.
4) Cliff Ditto has risen even higher in my estimation because it seems he was the only scout who actually spotted Tony.

And on to the Saturday Serendipity. A couple of weeks back Jack contacted me via one of the Facebook groups for UK baseball card collectors to show me a couple of Tony Gwynn cards he had, including this one.

Card Number 60: Topps Mini, 1986; #65 (League Leaders)

As you can guess, I didn't have this card but I do now thanks to Jack. The back is unremarkable but is a nice shade of pink.

Anyway, that's not the serendipity. Jack said he was happy to sell this and the other card of Tony's or he would trade. He collects Derek Jeter. So I took a photo of four Jeter cards I had accumulated and asked if there were any he wanted. Turns out he wanted all four, so I asked if he had any other Padres cards and I'd just pick two extra and we would swap four cards for four cards.

Jack showed me his binder pages of Padres and one card leapt out at me. It was a Topps 1984 card. Somehow I have accumulated plenty of Padres 1983 cards and 1985 cards, but I had exactly zero 1984 cards in my binder. So I said I'd take that one and another card as well (which may make an appearance on this blog in a future post.

Anyway, the 1984 card was #224, pitcher Sid Monge. This almost a quintessential example of what a real baseball card looks like.

The back is centred poorly. This makes it almost a quintessential example of what the back of a real Topps baseball card from the 80s looks like. (As an aside, I love that Friar logo.)

A few hours after we agreed the trade I got another message from Jack. "I take it you knew this," he said with a screengrab of Sid Monge's Wikipedia entry with the following line highlighted:

"Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn of the San Diego Padres got his first hit off Monge on July 19, 1982 while he was pitching for the Philadelphia Phillies."

My first reaction was "WHAT!?!?" I wish now I'd played it cool and said, "Yes, of course I knew that. Why else would I have selected that card?" But, really there's no point lying to a fellow collector (who I discovered lives not very far away from where I grew up), especially when a fellow collector is not only helping you out with cards for your collection, but is also going off and doing your research for you! That's going above and beyond, isn't it.

So, there you go. My first 1984 Padre, traded as an add on in a deal, turns out to have an important connection with Tony Gwynn. Being totally truthful I doubt I would have done any research on him at all, just happily filed him away in my Padres binder full of Topps cards. So a massive thanks to Jack for giving me a reason to include Sid's card on this blog.

Total: 60/394