Dave Winfield - Traveling Man (Part 4)

    As aging All-Stars get to the point in their career where their long-term contract prospects have dried up, but they're still producing respectable numbers, their opportunities lend more toward the short-term, hired gun variety.  In Dave Winfield's case, it was also an opportunity to play in front of his hometown. Dave was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, and was a star baseball and basketball player for the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers, so it was an easy decision for him to sign with the Twins, joining a roster that included another future Hall of Famer, Kirby Puckett.

     Winfield signed with the Minnesota Twins in mid-December 1992.  By that time, the first series of all the main 1993 sets had already been printed and were already being shipped.  As a result, Winfield would appear as a Blue Jay for the first couple months of the baseball season.  However, given the move to multiple series and the expansion of sets issued around the start of the season, there were a lot of non-update type cards to feature Dave in his new duds.  I'll just take these alphabetically.

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.

1993 Columbus Clippers Cornucopia of Hensley Meulens

      After another impressive AAA season in 1992, but another disappointing trip to the Majors, 1993 would be the last year for Hensley Meulens to play in the Yankees organization.  The writing was on the wall even in January, as there were rumors of the Yankees dealing Meulens for some extra bullpen depth, and Meulens openly requesting a trade, alas the it wouldn't happen.  For whatever reason, the Yankees had protected Meulens in the 1992 expansion draft.  As a result, they lost Charlie Hayes, their regular man on the hot corner to Colorado.  A converted third basemen, Meulens had no where to play.  Dion James was filling in well in left and to make matters even worse for Meulens, never a smooth fielding third basemen to start with, the Yankees signed Wade Boggs to replace Hayes.

      Not able to secure a spot on the Yankees roster to start the season (not aided by a 5 strikeout performance in late March; four swinging, one looking with the bases loaded), Hensley would start the year in Columbus.  He would be recalled in late May, when Danny Tartabull went down with a bruised kidney after an outfield collision with Gerald Williams (somewhat ironically, Randy Velarde would join Tartabull on the DL, ten days later, with a fractured pelvis after an outfield collision with Meulens).  But getting into only 30 games over June & July, he would be sent back down to Columbus in early August, effectively killing his playing time for the year.

     However, as unsatisfying as the year was for the frustrated slugger, 1993 was a good baseball card year for the Columbus Clippers, and Meulens by association, with three sets being produced.  From the looks of them, all of the photos came from the same photo session.  The Columbus Police Department and Cracker Jack sponsored a set, once again; the 10th straight year of Police sets for Columbus.  For the second year in a row, the set features the players' vital stats and card number on the front of the card.



    There was also this set, produced for the team by Metro Media Marketing, Inc., and on much thinner stock than most sets:


    Finally, there was the big name, Fleer/ProCards checking in with their yearly team set:

     By November 27th, New York had finally run out of patience, and Meulens would get his wished-for release, being placed on waivers by the Yankees and signed by the Chiba Lotte Marines and head to Japan for the 1994 season.