The Ivy Collection - 1989 Upper Deck #94 Tim Leary

It’s been a few weeks since I last brought up an ivy card. I have a few in the bank now, so I’m going to go ahead and launch a new series I’ll call, simply enough, The Ivy Collection. I probably have hundreds, if not thousands of Cubs cards that feature ivy in the background, but this separate collection will focus more on visiting teams. You can find a link to the cards I already have in my collection in the right hand side bar under the Niches heading. If you come across any I don’t have, I’d love to add them to my collection.

Because of its price point, I didn’t buy a lot of 1989 Upper Deck as a kid. This Tim Leary card from that set must have come from a repack over the last year or so.

My first stop with this card is over at Baseball-Reference.com. This being a 1989 card, I’m working under the assumption that the photo used on the card came from 1988 so I pulled up Tim Leary’s game log for that season. After sorting by opponent, I found three games that Leary pitched against the Cubs in 1988.

Fortunately for me, Leary only pitched once at Wrigley that year. Unfortunately for the Cubs, Leary got the win after pitching seven scoreless innings. There’s no way for me to know which one of the 94 pitches Leary threw that day this photo shows but I didn't want that to be the end of the story.

Most of you know that the Dodgers ended up winning the World Series in 1988. But aside from Dodgers fans, I think most people associate Orel Hershiser, Kirk Gibson and maybe Fernando Valenzuela with that team. I do anyway. But Leary ended up with 17 Wins that season. And the NL Silver Slugger for Pitchers after batting .269 with three doubles and 9 RBIs.

And to put this 1-0 win over the Cubs in perspective, look at the Cubs lineup that day.

In 1988, the Cubs sent six players to the All-Star game, including five that played in this game (Greg Maddux was the 6^th). Ten of the eleven Cubs that played that day were an All-Star at some point in their careers and went to a collective 37 All-Star games.

Dunston – 2x All-Star (including that year)

Palmeiro – 4x All-Star (including that year)

Dawson – 8x All-Star (including that year)

Sandberg – 10x All-Star (including that year)

Grace – 3x All-Star

Law – 1x All-Star (including that year)

Davis – 2x All-Star

Martinez – not an All-Star but had a 16 year MLB career

Sutcliffe – 3x All-Star

Sundberg – 3x All-Star

Mumphrey – 1x All-Star

The managerial matchup of Don Zimmer and Tommy Lasorda combined for 367* years of MLB experience.

Cubs starting pitcher Rick Sutcliffe went the distance himself and only gave up the only run of the game early in the second inning.

Like most pitchers’ duels that don't involve a no-hitter or playoffs, this was probably a snoozefest at the time. Hopefully I added a little fun perspective to an otherwise junk wax card.

*estimated