Friday, August 1, 2014

WenDell Bolar solves a baseball card mystery

Outfielder WenDell Bolar played in the Mariners organization in 1986 and 1987. Now an elementary school PE teacher in Yuba City, CA, I reached out to him for baseball card stories. He responded by leaving a comment on my blog post from two years ago regarding the mystery card in the 1987 Wausau Timbers set. In that set there is a card with no name and nothing on the back to indicate who the player was.

Bolar, who was a member of that team, has the answer:
"That's Fausto Ramirez! He played SS/2b behind Mike McDonald and Greg Briley."

The mystery is solved - the player in the picture does look like Fausto Ramirez. Ramirez actually did not end up playing for Wausau in 1987, instead spending a second year at Belllingham. (He did get promoted to Wausau in 1988). It seems likely that Ramirez was originally going to be with Wausau, but was instead sent to Bellingham at the last minute, and ProCards removed his name and information but never fully removed him from the set. I could only find a very small photo of Ramirez online, but he does appear to be the same person on the mystery card.
 Thanks, WenDell Bolar, for clearing up a baseball card mystery! Here is his card from that ProCards set.

1 comment:

  1. Yet another Unsolved Mystery of Baseball Cards....SOLVED! Awesome, I've updated the checklists on SCF and TradingCardDB with the correct name.

    ReplyDelete