1991 Fleer Andre Dawson

The other day I hinted at another card thrown into the package by Marcus from over at All the Way to the Backstop. Or maybe I should say from Marcus over at Yellow Cardboard? He runs two blogs, the first revolving mostly around the Padres while the second one, as you may have guessed, the 1991 Fleer set.

At first glance, the card is nothing really to get excited about. I've seen this card a hundred times as 1991 was right in my heyday of card collecting as a kid. You can barely see Andre Dawson's face, although I'd recognized the batting stance even if I'd never seen the card and his face was fully obscured.

Unlike the cards of today, where Topps culls their photos from the Getty Images files, I have no idea where this photo originated. But I thought I saw enough clues within that I could use to try to figure it out.

Starting with Dawson's uniform, this design was exclusive to the 1990 season. In 1989, the Cubs were still using the pullover, V-neck blue jerseys on the road and in 1991, the font changed to a taller version. See below.




Imge courtesy of Sportslogos.net

 

You'll also note that you can see the patch on Dawson's right arm. In 1990, the Cubs hosted the All-Star game at Wrigley Field.



Image courtesy of Patchcollection.com



So, Cubs road game in 1990. That narrows it down from 162 to 81. Dawson probably played in most of them so I'm going to have to look for other clues. I don't know stadiums very well so the outfield wall wasn't any help to me. But the glimpse of the catcher led me to believe that he was from the Padres. My limited Padres knowledge from the early 1990's put Benito Santiago behind the plate. But with the little bit of the last name that we can see, I'm able to rule him out. So I headed over to Baseball-Reference.com to see the Padres roster from that year and they list three catchers that season, Santiago, Tom Lampkin and Ronn Reynolds. I was thinking the last two letters on the back of the jersey was an "OS" but between LampkIN and ReynolDS, "DS" it is.

Now, Ronn Reynolds only played 8 games that season for the Padres. Hopefully, only one against the Cubs!

No such luck. Not only did Reynolds appear in two games against the Cubs, both games were two of his three complete games on the season. Dawson played in both of the games Reynolds played in, so unfortunately that is as far as I can narrow it down.

Dawson had 4 plate appearances on June 29, going 0-2 with two walks. He was credited with an RBI in one of his at-bats when he reached on an error with the bases loaded. The Cubs would go on to win 3-2.

On July 1, Dawson went 2-3 with two more walks in an 11-10 win. So either day at the plate was pretty good for the Hawk.

Thanks, Marcus, for throwing in this extra card. It gave me a chance to take a deeper look. And it may be the only appearance for Reynolds on a card as a member of the Padres so you might have to pick up another for yourself if you don't already have one!