Here is the 1989 Cedar Rapids Reds set from Best. This is the set where I got the Quinn Marsh card from. There is a bit more variety to the poses, and the pictures are at least taken on the field.
Best cards are often quite formal, using the player's full first name instead of a nickname.
So this set has a guy with the first name Jeffery, and the last name Jeffery. (Neither is spelled the more common way - Jeffrey).
This Michael Myers is not the Mike Myers who spent 13 years in the major leagues. This guy (who also usually went by Mike Myers) never pitched above A ball.
Here's a guy with a great name. He was just profiled on the blog
The Greatest 21 Days, which like this blog is also delving into minor league team sets.
Some sets include coaches. Here is current Yankees pitching coach Larry Rothschild!
Occasionally a minor league set will include some key off-field personnel as well as the manager, coaches and trainer.
Rarely, however, do you get a clubhouse attendant card.
Tony Vasquez is described as a "local Cedar Rapids boy".
The boy is now a man. He became the manager of a sports bar in Cedar Rapids that was destroyed by that region's massive flooding in 2008 (as a Long Islander I can relate, though thankfully not from personal experience). See this
article for pictures, including the baseball memorabilia that was destroyed in the flood. He has since rebuilt the bar.
The Cedar Rapids Reds were actually my hometown team growing up, though I grew up 30 miles away. We'd usually get up there once or twice a year around that time, more a few years later. That's sort of why I grabbed them as my first team set to go through.
ReplyDeleteAnd that flood was awful. Thankfully my parents were spared, but a lot of people obviously weren't so lucky.