"It was after 3. His blood sugar was low!"

     Grinning maniaclly out of his little box on this 2009 Emerald Nuts Giants card (brought to you by Topps, the Giants and the letter 'C'), one has to wonder if that was what the Giants management decided was the problem with Carney Lansford's hitting coachery in 2009. No, that opening dependent clause really doesn't go with the rest of the sentence. But I threw a comma in there. And that's OHHHH-kay!

     As everyone knows by now, Lansford was asked to leave the store, and Multilingual Mister Meulens was brought up from Fresno as his replacement. But that's not important, right now.

     Flanked by Flannery in the first box and Lansford on the left is one Roberto Conrado Kelly. Kelly is the Giant's first-base and baserunning coach. Before the '09 season, I caught this article on MLB.com:

Giants work on better baserunning

     Now, Kelly was one of my favorite Yankees when I was watching them during their miserable 1989-1992 doldrums. But after reading that article, and then watching the Giants scratch and scrape for wins this season with their casualty list of a roster, one can't help but wonder if Lansford was the only one they might have asked to clean out his desk. The Giants finished 10th in the NL in stolen bases. Their team leader, Randy Winn, had a whopping 16 steals. 16. Even now, as a Hall of Famer, Rickey Henderson could still manage more than 16 steals.

Hensley Meulens/Leonard Griffin - separated at birth?

 

     If I thought anyone was actually reading this, I might attempt to cover my player collections more evenly, but since Hensley Meulens has been the focal point of my efforts for the last few years, you'll just have to bear through it as best you can. My most recent pickup arrived the day after Christmas in the form of 6 1991 Topps cards of various Yankees commons. All 6 of which had the backs of 1991 Topps football cards. I knew there were a scattering of these type of card out there, as I've seen them mentioned in posts of various trading forums, but I never thought I'd run across one that actually intersected with any of my interests.

     I may have to force myself to do some extra research on these and see if I can figure out how many of these were actually produced. I should be able to either find the listing, or reconstruct the listing of which cards made up the 132 card sheet that these 6 came from, and then see if I can reconstruct the football sheet that these were mixed up with. From the backs, it looks like there were at least two sheets involved; sheets C & D. I've got a pile of old baseball card magazines lying around the house that I picked up for shipping on eBay, I'll dig through those and see if any contemporary references were made to these oddities. In any case, this made for a great oddball addition to my Meulens collection that I otherwise would never have thought to look for!

     In addition to the Meulens, the lot also contained Eric Plunk, Jeff Robinson, Pasqual Perez, Alan Mills and Dave Eiland (wow, that heartstopping 1990 Yankees pitching staff!). I also know there is a Chipper Jones with a football back, as there are two on eBay (one bidding starts at $1, the other you can BIN for a mere $400!). On a side note, Plunk in a Yankee uniform is interesting as he was originally drafted and signed by the Yankees in the 4th round of the 1981 draft. He was traded to the A's, in 1985, as part of the deal that sent Rickey Henderson to New York. Where it gets even more interesting is that he was AGAIN traded, in 1989, as part of a deal that sent Rickey Henderson BACK to Oakland!