Backside Appreciation Part 3

It's been a long time since I did one of these so I'll link the first two parts so you can get some background information.

Part 1   Part 2

In a nutshell, I take a quick look at the less commonly seen part of a baseball card, the backside. It could be something informative that caught my eye in a blurb. It could be funny. It could just be a really nice layout.

Today's candidate falls into the funny category. Or at least I thought so.

1999 Topps #23 Mickey Morandini

I'll shamefully admit when I first saw the card, my thoughts involved revving a motorcycle and some horrible boxing before I came to the realization that Mickey Morandini was probably about to give an un-pictured teammate a double fist bump.

A lot of baseball fans will probably associate Morandini with the Phillies teams of the early 1990's with Lenny Dykstra, John Kruk, Darren Daulton, Mitch Williams, etc. This was a mullet sporting, tobacco chewing, scrappy ballclub. But until Darwin Barney came along, Morandini was probably the only post-Ryne Sandberg second base for the Cubs I could more than just tolerate. That gritty style of baseball carried over to his time with the Cubs as you can see a dirty uniform in the photo above and down below on the front on the card.

And if you look at the statistics on the back, you can see his offense even improved after joining the Cubs. The 1998 Cubs were pretty solid so he did get a little help with careers highs in those Runs and RBI totals, but then again, so were the early 90's Phillies teams he was a part of.

It might be a fuzzy memory, but Morandini just seems like one of those guys that always had pretty cool looking cards. Whether he was turning double plays on defense or sliding in a cloud of dust like the card above. And even the time he snapped into a Slim Jim. Oh yeeeeaaahhhhh!