Bernardo Brito, minor league power house

     If there were such a thing recognized in the hobby as a "minor league rookie card", Bernardo Brito's would be in a 1981 TCMA card.  In a bizarre stroke of luck (for me, anyway), he had not one, but TWO 1981 TCMA cards, one with the Batavia Trojans, the short season A level affiliate of the Cleveland Indians, the other with the Waterloo Indians, the regular single A affiliate of Cleveland.  What's even more odd about that is while he did play with Batavia in 1981-1984, he didn't actually play a game with Waterloo until 1983!  So two years BEFORE he played with the team, he had a card with them.  I'll have to do some digging and see if anyone else had multiple TCMA cards in the same year with different teams.

  

     In any case, Bernardo didn't do much to impress that first year in Batavia, giving almost no indication of what was to come (unless it was in batting practice), hitting an anemic .207 in just 12 games that year.  I'll have to dig further into those stats as according to TheBaseballCube, he was't even drafted.  I'll have to see how this bemused-looking 17 year old ended up in the New York-Penn League in 1981, straight out of Santo Domingo.

     I picked these cards up in a lot of nearly 1000 minor league cards I bought on eBay a couple of years ago.  Managed to snag the whole lot for under $30!  I'll probably never see that happen again.