Earlier this week I was idly sorting through a box of oversized “I don’t know how to properly store this” stuff, and I ran across my Topps Magazine cards, still in sheet form but long since divorced from the magazines they came in.
I think I subscribed to the first 4 issues of Topps Magazine, but decided that it wasn’t exciting enough for me to re-up… Despite the inclusion of special cards which manage the difficult feat of being uglier than the 1990 Topps design.
While I was looking at this particular set of cards, I couldn’t help but notice that the Jim Palmer photo looked familiar…
…and that’s when I realized it might be from the same photo shoot as this past Sunday’s Hostess Card Of The Week:
Although the Topps Magazine card is a bit washed out, both photos were taken in Yankee Stadium on a partly sunny day, both have the Brut cologne ad on the left, and in both photos Jim Palmer’s hair has an unintended flip on his right.
I don’t have a real point to this, other than “Heyyyyyyyy, lookathis!” Having two similar Jim Palmer photos in the same week was nothing I’d planned, I’m nowhere near that organized… it’s just a serendipitous occurrence (and 25 cents goes in the “Big Word” jar).
Getting back to the 1990 Topps Magazine cards, these are pretty much what you’d expect from 1990 baseball cards. On the first half of the sheet, we’ve got four ubiquitous-for-1990 faces in Bo (Overhyped 2-sport player) Jackson, Nolan Ryan (who had just reached 5000 K’s), Will “The Thrill” Clark and Robin Yount, the AL MVP of the previous season.
The second half of the sheet features the two 1990 Hall Of Fame inductees in Joe Morgan and Jim Palmer, as well as two players who’d been drafted in 1989 and made their Major League debuts that September. Ben McDonald was the first overall draft pick, and went on to have a decent career with the Orioles and Brewers.
John Olerud played for 17 years for a number of teams and had a couple of exceptional seasons where he batted .363 and .354. He’s also notable in that he’s one of those players who went straight to the Major Leagues without making any minor league stops. In fact, he didn’t play in the minors until he did a brief stint with AAA Pawtucket at the end of his career, in what seems to have been an audition for the Red Sox.
Olerud’s card is interesting in that it lists him as both a first baseman and a pitcher, even though I can’t find any evidence of him having pitched in the pros… although he did pitch in college
The Shlabotnik Report 