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!

All the Way FROM the Backstop

Over the weekend I got a nice Cub-filled bubble envelope from Marcus of All the Way to the Backstop fame. Last week, he busted open a box of 1993 Fleer Ultra Series II and in the package was a nice collection of Cubs from the set. I had quite a few of these already from my childhood collecting days but lots of them had gold foil pieces missing or edge chipping. Since these were box/pack fresh, ALL of them were upgrades. Nice!

Tommy Shields is a nice I haven't thought about in a long time! And since Marcus was nice enough to throw in the checklist that not only had Rey Sanchez on it, but also the Cubs set checklist, I know I'm only Mike Harkey away from completing this checklist. Bonus!

It also looks like he busted open some 1994 Score Rookie Traded because he sent a 5-pack of cards from that set too. A pair of Rookies and a pair of Tradeds.

And not one Anthony Young, but also a Gold Rush parallel. I remember these from 1995 Score but I don't know if I knew about these from 1994. Now, I have go do some research!

There was another card in the package but it'll get it's own post at some point. 

Thanks Marcus!

PWE from All the Way to the Backstop

About a week ago when I cracked my one and only Heritage pack, I mentioned that I pulled 3 Padres that were heading out to Marcus over at All the Way to the Backstop. Well, he beat me to the punch. Just a few days later, I opened my mailbox and found a PWE bomb.

After only pulling Darwin Barney in my packs these are Heritage cards 2, 3 & 4 for me this year. I'm not sure where Topps got there photos for these as I couldn't seem to find them as easily as I did the Barney or the flagship cards. Oh well. Anybody recognize the stadium behind Scott Baker?

Marcus managed to fit a couple other cards in the package too. 

I had the base card version of this OPC Aramis Ramirez card but not this black parallel so that was a great addition. If you had asked me if I had the Mark Garce card I would have said yes, but a quick peak into my Cubs binders showed no such thing. It looks really familiar though. I'm going to have to spend some time on my master checklist.

While I have various Cubs playing cards, I did not have this George Bell. It is from an MLB All-Stars set in the early 1990's. I love odd balls like these. The last card, which you probably can't tell from the scan is a Bowman Chrome card from last year of Jorge Soler. I had the base but not the chrome. 

Great envelope, Marcus! Thanks so much!

Long Overdue Trade Post...

With all the excitement of the Archives case and Topps Series 2 box breaks, I've been neglectful in thanking some fellow bloggers for their end of a couple trades. As some of you may know, I collected only Topps cards for a while. That left some pretty significant holes in my Cubs collection so now that they're pretty much the only game in town, I've decided to try to complete all of the Cubs team sets from the other brands as well. That seemed like a pretty large undertaking so I put out that I was looking for some lots to help get me started.

Several bloggers came through as we worked out deals for specific cards and then they generously included a couple to a couple of team bags worth of Cubs cards. Unfortunately, I went into autopilot mode while watching TV the other night and accidentally sorted a couple of piles before I realized they were trade piles. So I'm not exactly sure who sent what! I went back through some of the emails and can figure out the main cards from each package but the stacks of older Cubs cards weren't as identifiable. I'll do my best to recreate some of the packages.

First up is Bob, AKA ducky1978 over on sportscollectors.net. I don't think he has a blog but Bob is the only one to have participated in all 3 of my group breaks. Thanks, Bob! This last time he mentioned that he had a Derek Lee A&G bat card he'd be willing to trade. A trade was born and he also included a couple of Gypsy Queens from my Want List and some Cubs cards. I'll be sending him out a bunch of Tigers inserts with his latest batch of team cards from the break. Thanks again Bob!

Dustin from over at Coot Veal and the Vealtones contacted me about a couple of cards I had listed on my Trade List page and we hammered out a deal. I picked up a Sosa relic numbered 1/250. Not sure why that's so cool but I love #1 cards! Also got a Dempster jersey card along with a handful of other Cubs cards.

Last but not least, we have Marcus from over at All the Way to the Backstop. I've actually received two packages from him and we're currently working out a third deal involving my Padres extras from Topps Series 2. He has helped fill a couple set needs with Bowman and Archives and topped the packages off with some older Cubs cards. Unfortunately, I didn't scan any of my Bowman or Archives cards and his Cubs extras we part of the mix up so I don't have any photos to share from this trade unless they were some of the miscellaneous Cubs featured below. Either way, this trade is very much appreciated! I highly recommend trading with Marcus. (And pssst: it's a good way to get rid of all those pesky Padres cards!) Just kidding!

I feel terrible about sorting all the Cubs cards before I had a chance to give credit so I wanted to post a bunch of hopefully a little something from everybody ends up featured. These weren't necessarily part of the main trades but great addtions to the collection nonetheless. Thanks everybody!

Whoops... I got more Bowman

Because of the way I am organizing my collection, I have been working on a couple of new tabs simultaneously, but unfortunately neither are ready to debut today. I should probably focus on one at a time to get them done but with collector's ADD...oh look some Bowman blasters!

I said I wasn't going to buy any more Bowan other than Cubs cards but these were a prize...sort of. I won a $50 big box store gift card through a raffle so of course my first instinct was, of course, baseball cards! I was a little indecisive at first because my last two blasters provided an autograph hit so I was due for a bad one. But I pulled the trigger on 2 Bowman blasters before my wife could convince me to get something for the house. Nothing spectacular but pretty good, especially for free. Everything below is up for grabs, although one of the Rymer Liriano's will be going into the Padres package I have set aside for Marcus over at All the Way to the Backstop.

Carlos Perez Auto (sticker, Braves) Josh Hamilton (Silver Ice?, Rangers) Albert Pujols (Bowman's Best, Angels)

2x Rhymer Liriano (Bowman's Best, Padres) Carlos Martinez (Purple Chrome, #115/199, Cardinals)

International Parallels Ervin Santana (Angels) & Jesus Montero (RC, Mariners)

With 3 blasters now open, I will probably bite the bullet and chase the base set but not the chrome except for Cubs. I'll update my want lists tomorrow and move these guys and any other extras over to my trade page by Thursday.

Today's ATCRCS card of the day over on Facebook:

Vance Law