Dave Winfield - Travelling Man (Part 3)

       Having renewed his value on the free agent market, after the 1991 season, Winfield headed north, and took his talents to Canada where he played a big role in a hugely talented 1992 Toronto Blue Jays team. As mentioned in an earlier post, it was with the Blue Jays that Dave finally picked up his World Series ring. However, despite having a great season with the Jays, Winfield became just another of those high profile hired guns, spending just the one season, winning the gold, and moving on to greener ($$$) pastures.

     With a new team, came another appearance in the year's update sets.  Donruss took a different approach than all the other companies, and rather than issue their update cards as a standalone boxed set, or as another series, they instead included them in specially marked 1992 factory sets.  But they didn't include the whole update set in the box, they just included four cards from the 22-card set in each box.  To help confuse matters for collectors, Donruss issued at least three different factory sets in 1992.  There was the blue box that included a few 1992 Studio preview cards.  There was a red box, sponsored by Coca-Cola (I think it included the 1992 Donruss Coca-Cola set), and there was another red box with a special sticker on the shrink wrap indicating the presense of the 1992 Donruss Update cards.

     So here you are, at the end of the 1992 season, you've already busted countless packs of 1992 Donruss.  Stacks of the blue & white cards scattered around or in sorting boxes.  And since your favorite player was traded, you know there's at least one more card to get.  But to do so, if you can't find anyone selling the singles (good luck!) you basically have to go buy "packs" of 792 (+4) cards in hopes of catching the ONE card you are looking for.   It is no wonder that the 1992 Donruss Update cards are some of the most difficult to find for collectors.

     Due to the nature of how this set was distributed, price guides hugely undervalue these cards.  It took me 3 sets to find this one.  The first set I picked up was in a blue box, because I didn't know any better.  After that wasted $10, I did a little more research to figure out what I should have been looking for.  My second set, another $12, in the proper red box, unforunately did not contain a Winfield.  I did get the McGwire, however.

     I quickly put those four cards on Sporlots, and between them, made back $10 of the $12 I had spent on the set.  That still left me with another complete 1992 Donruss set.  Sure they're much better quality than all previous years, but still, Leaf let the presses run, so there is no shortage of these and I already had several hundred cards from opening packs years ago.  In the last three years, I've managed to sell a whopping FOUR cards from this set on Sportlots.

     Thankfully, set #3 landed me the card you see above.  And another 792 useless 1992 Donruss cards.  So all told, the card above probably cost me something like $25.  And to this day, I have still never seen another.  I'm sure there are still thousands of them buried in unsold, unopened and unwanted 1992 Donruss factory sets.  A bit of maybe useful information, the UPC code on the red box sets is 0 10700 82149 2.  The much more common blue sets are 0 10700 82150 8.

     Fleer, thankfully, took the more sensible approach to issuing their update set, and as they had been doing since 1984, as a boxed set.  Much easier to find, much cheaper to pick up.

     Score and Topps did the same, which resulted in my finding the rest of Dave's traded/update cards for around $1 altogether.  Not a bad deal.  I didn't include Upper Deck's 1992 offering because they issued their cards slightly later than Donruss and Score and managed to sneak him into their Series 2 that year in his new duds.

Since the Jays had only signed him for a year, it was only a matter of time before Winfield made yet another appearance in another year of late season update sets.

1983 Fleer & Topps Dave Henderson...what no Donruss?

Not Hendu's 1983 Donruss card

     In 1982, Dave Henderson spent his first full season on a Major League roster, platooning in the outfield for the Seattle Mariners.  Yet despite playing in 104 games in 1982 (but a reasonably productive 104 games, hitting 14 home runs), he was somehow snubbed for a spot in the 1983 Donruss checklist.  Rick Sweet got a card and he only played in 88 games in 1982.  As did Gary Gray who played in 80 games.  Even Jim Essian, who only played in 48 games, got a card!  Al Chambers, who was a rookie in 1983, playing all of 1982 in AAA Salt Lake, actually got a card while the checklist architects at Donruss missed out on the greatness that was Dave Henderson's moustache.  

     There must have been one heck of a backlash from collectors for Donruss to so drastically cut production for the 1984 set.  I'm sure it had absolutely nothing to do with Donruss almost completely repeating their set design from 1982, or having printed far more cards than anyone was going to buy.  Yes, it had to have been fan reaction to the exclusion of Hendu.  So Dave Henderson's 1983 Donruss card is officially Missing In Action.

     Fleer, while not exactly taking the world by storm with their set design, saw fit to recognize Dave with a card.  And the inclusion of Hendu actually seems to have improved the photographic quality of the entire set, as gone were the blurry photos that plagued the 1982 set, to be replaced by the razor-sharp (by 1983 standards) photography of 1983 that gave us major league players in all their stubblacious glory.

     While not exactly blazing any trails, they were the first set of the 1980s to revive the player mugshots on the backs of their cards, something not seen since Topps last employed the feature in their 1971 set.

     Topps, having already made Dave the centerpiece to the Seattle Mariners Future Stars card in the 1982 set, not only made the obvious decision to include him in the 1983 set, they even included him in a photo using their newly discovered Sunlight Photographic Technology^TM, that allowed them to present players in something other than a cloudy, hazy, murky posed photo from spring training. (Just a slight digression here, but why, when 90% of photos from the 70s & 80s that were obviously taken before the season, in spring training camps in Florida....The Sunshine State, were they always apparently taken on overcast days or at dusk?  Players spent upwards of 8 hours in the sunshine!  Were the photographers all vampires?)

     Much like Fleer, Topps also resurrected the close-up portrait shot of every player, including it on the front of the card. In many cases this resulted in very redundant double close-up cards (see #46, Richard Dotson), but it resulted in one of the more popular sets of the 1980s.  Despite landing solidly in the checklists for Fleer and Topps, Dave didn't make it into either company's 1983 sticker sets, so these are the only two documented cards he had that year.

     Dave had a decent 1983 season, usually hitting in the #3 or #5 spot in the heart of the batting order.  He led Seattle in hits with 130 (hitting .269 on the season).  Much like this season, there were rarely any Mariners on base to be driven in, so his 24 doubles, 5 triples and 17 home runs only amounted to 55 runs batted in (good for 2nd on the team).  Dave held his own on a last place team lacking any real stars.

Why Were They Diamond Kings?

Heartbreaking Cards of Staggering Genius: Show and Tell #54: They Were Diamond Kings?: "I received a bunch of Diamond Kings toward my project to collect all the DKs from 1982-1992 from Mike D. When I looked at some of the cards..."

Taking a cue from Matt, I thought it might be interesting to see how long it took Donruss to run through the "usual suspects" for each team when they were choosing Diamond Kings each year, and how many years it took them to repeat those star players when they ran out of ways to rationalize someone like Glenn Hubbard or John Cangelosi as a Diamond King. You know what I mean, every team in the 80s-90s had one or two players (rarely three) that you could point to as the franchise. But since the Diamond Kings weren't fan voted, you couldn't just have the same 26 guys in there every year like you could the All Star Game.

Take the Padres for instance. Now, the obvious player, of course, is Tony Gwynn. But since I'll just run thru all of San Diego's Diamond Kings from 1982-2001 and see what we get since they didn't tend to repeat guys in consecutive years.

1981 Dave Winfield (only in my imagination)
1982 Ozzie Smith (Top Padre gets the nod as he's walking out the door)
1983 Terry Kennedy (had a good 1982 season and Garvey had only just had a DK in 1982 for Los Angeles)
1984 Dave Dravecky (#3 starter but the best year on a lackluster staff, and Gwynn hadn't played a full season yet)
1985 Tony Gwynn (no surprise there)
1986 Goose Gossage (had a surprisingly good year, and they couldn't pick Tony again already)
1987 Kevin McReynolds (had a year good enough they didn't have to resort to Gwynn again, yet)
1988 Benito Santiago (1987 ROY!)
1989 Tony Gwynn (used up all their excuses and had to go with the team star)
1990 Ed Whitson (crap, we just used Tony, didn't we?)
1991 Roberto Alomar (despite having a below average year, but this actually could have gone to Joe Carter, Bip Roberts or even Ed Whitson again, who had a decent 1990)
1992 Fred McGriff
1993 Gary Sheffield
1994 Tony Gwynn (I guess they ran out of 1 year free agent signings, so it's back to Tony)
1995 Tony Gwynn (Well, he DID just hit .394 in an injury shortened season in '94, and it wasn't as if their pitching staff was setting the world on fire)
1996 Tony Gwynn (seriously? It could have been Ken Caminiti with a .302, 26HR, 94RBI season. This was just lazy)
1997 The set was cut to only 10 cards, and the Padres were out, despite Caminiti's 'roid fueled 40HR, 130RBI, .326BA season, he is snubbed for a second straight year.
1998 Tony Gwynn (seems any interest in spreading the love around is gone...Tony gets his 6th DK nod despite Trevor Hoffman's 37 saves, but in fairness, Tony hit .372 with 220 hits and 119 RBI)
1999-2000 I was out of the hobby at the time, but had no idea there were no Donruss sets in 1999 & 2000!
2001 Seems Donruss was making up for lost time and issued a couple of 1999-2000 retro sets, but the Padres didn't rate in either. However, Mr. Gwynn does make one more appearance in the 2001 set when the choice easily should have been Phil Nevin.

Overall, not the results I was expecting, and I'd forgotten how San Diego was picking up hired guns to fill the #4 hole every year for awhile there. Surprisied to see Joe Carter didn't pickup a Padre DK.

Mr. May No More!

1993 Blue Jays Donruss World Series Highlights #WS7

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp In the 1980-81 off season, George Steinbrenner signed up, to play left field for the New York Yankees, the biggest free agent on the market to the biggest deal in history. At the time, it was reported as $10M for 10 years (though it would become apparent later, that The Boss apparently didn't actually read the complex, clause-laden contract and would end up being more like $23M). Incidentally $10M is about the same price Steinbrenner bought the entire (last place) New York Yankees franchise for in 1973. A whopping ONE million dollars a year secured one of the best (and certainly biggest...I mean look at how he towers everyone else in the photo!) all-around players in baseball, one David Mark Winfield.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Naturally, for $1M+ a year, Steinbrenner expected immediate results. However, in the weird, strike-interrupted 1981 season, Winfield would not live up to those expectations. Big Dave got off to a pretty good start, but after nearly a two month mid-season hiatus, he never got his rhythm back when the season resumed. Winfield did bat .350 in the '81 division series, but then went a combined 3 for 35 in the ALCS & World Series, with no home runs. And unfortunately, that lack of performance, and the failure of the Yankees to return to the post-season over the next 4 years, resulted in Steinbrenner, after the team narrowly missed making the post-season in 1985, labeling Winfield as "Mr. May" since it seemed his best hitting came early in the season when it mattered the least, unlike "Mr. October" Reggie Jackson, who is best known for his World Series heroics.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp In the next 5 years, the Yankees still wouldn't make the post-season, and Winfield would be traded to the Angels, and then move on to the Blue Jays. It was with the Blue Jays, in 1992, that Winfield would shed that unfortunate moniker with a game-winning double in Game 6 of the 1992 World Series.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Been looking for this card for a very long time and this past week someone posted each card from the set on eBay. Score!

The Yankees Next Big Thing!

     In 1988, the baseball card industry, led by the nose by its publications, was neck deep in the hysteria of rookie card collecting and speculation. Look at the future Hall of Famers gracing this cover, for Pete's sake! (sorry Pete)

     However, this is also probably one of the first issues to announce the coming of Yankees minor league power prospect, Hensley Meulens. He even got a piece of the cover with his first baseball card from the 1987 ProCards Prince William set. Inside, the writers present a team-by-team analysis of the prospects who seem to be on their way to the big time. As would be a trend for a couple years after, most of the speculation for the Yankees was on the order of how much of their farm system would they continue to sacrifice for below-average middle-relievers and under-achieving infielders to pad out their roster. The writers here were of the belief that, while he had been declared by New York as "untouchable", there was still a strong likelihood Bam Bam would end up being traded for the likes of Ron Hassey or Roy Smalley on a whim. They also went on to say that beyond Meulens, there really wasn't much else to work with in the Yankees' farm system.
     Every June must have been their minor league system report issue, as a year later, despite Junior getting the cover all to himself (something usually reserved for BCM favorite Mickey Mantle), Bam Bam got no less than a FOUR PAGE spread all to himself!

     It's a pretty good article, covering his life in Curaçao, his signing with New York and the fact that he actually grew up a Dodger fan and hated the Yankees! In hindsight (and maybe even back then) one has to chuckle at the next to last paragraph of the story by writer, the late Pete Dobrovitz:

"I'll make one prediction. Grab that Meulens Donruss card, and hold on to your price guides. You thought the Jefferies craze was something? Wait 'til you see what rabid Yankee fans can do to the rookie card market. Forget a buck and a half for Leiter. Yes, $3 for Mark Grace was amazing. But how about $5 apiece for Bam-Bam? Don't laugh yet."

     As of this particular issue, the BCM price guide had that 1989 Donruss card at an over-priced $0.80, which is probably where it would top out.  When I started collecting Bam Bam in 1989, all my friends were just giving me his cards for nothing...not even trading.  It became something of a joke over 1989-90, and in a year, I ended up with about 70 or so of that 1989 Donruss card.  Since I got back into collecting a few years ago and really set to work at finishing up my Meulens collection, I started picking them up again as filler for trades.  A handful of 1989 Donruss Meulens cards will go a long way toward getting something I have for trade.

 

     Incidentally, despite sitting on a pile of this card for years, it wasn't until about 18 months ago that I learned about all those *Denotes and INC. variations among 1989-1992 Donruss cards. After shuffling through the stack, all four variations were present! There's an extensive discussion of card variations over at Freedom Card Board. The discussion began back on the old Beckett message board before the Beckett ran their site through the shredder in favor of impressing potential investors with style over substance.

     What I find most odd about the coverage Meulens got in Baseball Cards is that he never had a card in any of their magazine inserts. Sam Horn? Joey Meyer? Cameron Drew? Absolutely! Hensley Meulens? Nope.