Expos and Nationals All-Bust Teams 1: All-Failure Expos

This is an idea that’s been kicking around in the back of my head for awhile, and, as I’ve now reached the 500th post, I thought it was time to do something special.

My plan is to separate the two eras, as it wasn’t fair to either team to lump them together. Entry 1 is the Expos; Entry 2 the Nationals; Entry 3 a Battle Royale determining who is the “better” (worse) failed prospect. When that’s done, I’m going to try to acquire some of these key rookie cards that I don’t already have.

The guidelines for this battle:

• Player must have either been a hyped player or selected in the first three rounds.
• Not going for a full 25-man staff. Five starting pitchers, but max three relievers. They’re already kind of failed prospects in some respect as most are converted starters.
• I don’t have to own the key cards (yet). In fact, some may not be available. But I will make an effort to obtain them.

Without further ado…

• 1B: Thomas Pittman – A Supplemental first rounder in 1997, Pittman was a high school first baseman who started with a .152/.264/.196 line in rookie ball and never progressed past High A. His career ended in 2001 with a .244/.301/.373 line. Yuck. Key Card: 1996 Roox Prep Stars. I was unable to find a picture of Pittman, so here’s a sample Roox Prep Star card.

• 2B: Henry Mateo – He was seen as the heir apparent at 2B in Montreal behind Jose Vidro. I don’t think he was ever seen as a phenom or anything like that, but the thought was that he would be a serviceable middle infield guy, and it didn’t pan out. Not a giant disappointment like some of these other guys, just a mild blip. Key Card: 2004 Upper Deck pro Sigs auto

• SS: Hiram Bocachica – Boy, did this guy have high hopes behind him. I’ve already covered him. Key Card: 1997 Bowman Chrome.

• 3B: Boi Rodriguez – My description of Rodriguez when I reviewed 1990 Best: “Boi Rodriguez was someone who could do a convincing impersonation of a prospect, but never really hit enough to get a cup of coffee in the majors. It also didn’t help that as a corner infielder he never slugged above .446 in full-time action.” Key Card: going with the 1990 Best card here.

• C: Nelson Santovenia – Hard to believe, but this guy was a touted prospect at one point. I always thought of him as a guy who took up space in my junk wax packs, but he was a highly drafted catcher that just never lived up to the space Gary Carter left. Key Card: 1991 Topps Desert Shield

• OF: Glenn Murray – Another guy I’ve already talked about. Key Card: 1995 Signature Rookies Auto

• OF: Chris Schwab – Chris was the very first failed prospect covered on NatsTown! You can view his story here. Key Card: 1994 Bowman

• OF: Josh McKinley – Another one I’ve already covered: “McKinley was the Expos’ first choice in the 1998 draft, so big things were expected of the guy. It seems he was a pretty well-regarded amateur player who played with Austin Kearns and Michael Cuddyer in the 1997 World Junior Championships. Unfortunately, it seems that he couldn’t hit in the minors. At all. His highest OPS was a SLG-heavy .834 in 2003.” Key Card: 2004-05 USA Baseball National Team Alumni Sig

• SP: Clint Everts –Everts was picked in the 2002 draft ahead of Prince Fielder, Scott Kazmir, Nick Swisher, Zack Grienke, Cole Hamels, and Matt Cain, just to name a few. To this day he has not made the major leagues. He’s still 25, so I’m sure it will happen eventually, but he amply demonstrates the risks of picking a high school pitcher so high. Key Card – 2003 Topps Blue Chips Autographs

• SP: Tavo Alvarez – Already covered him as Failed Prospect #6. Key card- Tough choice. Nothing really stands out; ended up going with his 1993 Fleer Ultra.

• SP: BJ Wallace – Failed Prospect #17. Not sure if he was a bad choice or bad luck. Key Card- 1993 Bowman

• SP: Josh Girdley – The failed prospect so nice, I’ve featured him twice, once as a Failed Prospect, and once as an autograph. Key Card – 1999 Topps Traded Autograph

• RP: Don Levinski – I never even realized Don was an Expos prospect; I remember him as an Orioles relief prospect in 2004, but sure enough, he was a 2001 second-rounder who got dealt first to the Marlins, then the Orioles. I only ever had one card of him, but I saw him pitch for Frederick in 2004 during what would be the beginning of the end of his career. Key Card – 2004 Bowman’s Best auto

• RP: Nate Minchey – Failed Prospect #11. He did at least make the majors for awhile, I suppose. Key card – 1988 O-Pee-Chee Draft

So that’s our all-failure Expos team. Let’s recap:

1. 1B – Thomas Pittman (Never made majors) Career WAR: 0.0
2. 2B- Henry Mateo (Made majors as Expo) Career WAR: -0.7
3. SS- Hiram Bocachica (Made majors as Dodger) Career WAR: -1.1
4. 3B – Boi Rodriguez (Never made majors) Career WAR: 0.0
5. C – Nelson Santovenia (Made majors as Expo) Career WAR: 0.8
6. OF – Glenn Murray (Made majors as Phillie) Career WAR: -0.6
7. OF – Chris Schwab (Never made majors) Career WAR: 0.0
8. OF – Josh McKinley (Never made majors) Career WAR: 0.0
9. SP – Clint Everts (Never made majors) Career WAR: 0.0
10. SP – Tavo Alvarez (Made majors as Expo) Career WAR: -0.3
11. SP – BJ Wallace (Never made majors) Career WAR: 0.0
12. SP – Josh Girdley (Never made majors) Career WAR: 0.0
13. RP – Don Levinski (Never made majors) Career WAR: 0.0
14. RP – Nate Minchey (Made majors as Red Sox) Career WAR: -1.0

That’s right, Nelson Santovenia is the MVP of this sad squad. We’ll look at the Nationals soon.

Finds From The National Part 8: The Throwbacks

As always, I’m a sucker for old-school style revivals, and I came across some that I had never seen before during The National.

Not sure how I feel about this. There are some pretty significant changes to the 1989 design, and they’ve thrown some foil on it. It’s also a lot glossier than the original issue. So it’s not really true to the original, but the set still seems worth having. Just a note, this is the second A-Rod 1989 design card I have, each with a different team. Now they just need to make one in a Yankees uniform and I’ll complete the trifecta. Oh, and I got one other card of this set:

Now that’s a sweet card.

I also found some cards that I was blissfully ignorant of: chrome versions of old Bowman cards! I scooped up every copy I found, which wasn’t much. Anyone know more about these and how many there are?

I also picked up a few 2002 Donruss Originals for my set, short prints, but I haven’t gotten to scanning them and they’re already in the binder with the set. Oh, well. Their time will come on the site.

Okay, only one more entry to go! I thought this might end up taking the whole week, and it looks like it will. Stay tuned…

2002 UD Authentics #2

Time to take a break from National finds…

Say what you will about Barry Zito, I like this card a lot. It totally captures the spirit of 1989 Upper Deck, and the colors on his uniform mesh so well with the colors on the border. A card like this is why I think this design was begging to be re-used at least once.

I think this card also captures the spirit of 89 Upper Deck really well; the photography is a bit sharper than the 89 set, but the contrast of dark and light is so well-done that I think it’s what they were shooting for with some of those darker pictures and just weren’t able to capture. I think a lot of thought went into the shot selection for this set.

Here we get to the first mediocre shot of today. I’m not really sure what to say about it other than it’s A-Rod from his few years with the Rangers and was one of the more expensive cards of the set.

Man, there sure are a lot of Yankee logos on this card. But see what I mentioned in my last post about saying a player signed with a team when it’s abundantly obvious on the card? I mean, ABUNDANTLY. Overall, I’m not sure how I feel about these kinds of cards. The first example I can recall was Darryl Strawberry’s 1991 Donruss, Score, and Upper Deck cards:

I guess if you’re trying to beat the other guys to show him in his new uniform, I could see it, but it seems like a waste of a potentially good card. I also take the view that a given set is a historical record of the previous season, so these kinds of cards should be saved for update sets or later series. I don’t know. I’m not crazy about the Giambi, but I get why they did it. Thankfully, it’s the only one in the set.

Contents of the Mysterious Box of Mystery, Act II

So what else was in the mystery box? Glad you ask. More Expos, for one:

1989 Topps

And cards that I had completely forgotten existed! Baseball playing cards:

1994 Aces

Yeah, it was a bit worn. Oh, let’s not forget the Paul Russo 1991 Bowman that I often cite as an example of why that set was horrible:

1991 Bowman

I mean, I guess I get what they were going at, but the way it was handled was pretty jarring, and I’m not a big fan of the artwork. Oh, speaking of artwork, I got Andre the Giant, who was pretty much a cartoon! Oh and the MACHO MAN. OOOOH YEAH!

Action Packed WWF

Finally, possibly the most WTF moment of the box came when I found this card:

Monsters of the Gridiron

What were they thinking? I’m embarrassed for Cunningham for participating, I’m embarrassed for the people who came up with the design…it’s just a fail on so many levels, I had to feature it here. I have to say this is fairly tame, though. I missed out on some real beauties, like the Ronnie Lott card:

I just...wow

Can we get a baseball version of this?

John Olerud 1991 Cards #5

Okay, kids, let’s finish up the 1991 Olerud quest with a few final cards.

1991 Topps Rookies

This is another one of those latter-day discoveries for me, but when I saw it on checkoutmycards.com, I just had to have it. I had always associated this set with the late 80s and had no idea it had lasted until at least 1991, so in an odd way it was like seeing a modern throwback card: a player I’d never associated with the design. It was a bonus that it was Olerud. I also think the 40 year logo, which was so distracting on the prime 1991 set, looks really nice here. I think this also may be one of the few Olerud batting practice shots I have, so all in all I give this one high marks.

1991 Topps Toys R Us

This one…not so much. Dog-standard Spring Training shot (albeit with a hat, so that gets a rarity mark). Distracting elements on the borders. It’s all just…eh. It never was my favorite and hasn’t improved with age.

1991 Upper Deck

On the surface I feel like I should really like this card. It’s a pretty good shot, and I think it would work well on a full-bleed card, but the 1991 Upper Deck design is iffy at best. There’s just too much real estate taken up by the border design, and the picture seems a little too squished for me. Oh, and I’m amused by the old-school stirrups. Man I hated wearing those things, but of course we couldn’t lower our pants to cover them. Anyway, in the context of 1991, this is a pretty good card, but I just can’t bring myself to say I like it.

And that’s it for 1991. Soon we’re onward and upward to better things and the creep of better quality into baseball cards.

John Olerud 1991 Cards #4

Today, we continue to delve into the John Olerud collection with the penultimate 1991 entry.

1991 Sports Cards

FOIL! I’m not sure about the legitimacy of this card. I had never seen or heard of it before, then it was suddenly all over eBay. So of course I ordered it. Also, is it just me or is Olerud’s head concave on the left-hand side, near the temple? My first thought was it was from his aneurysm surgery, but that would have been on the back, given that it was subarachnoid, right? But…I went and reviewed his other early cards, and the dent is in those, too! How have I collected this guy for 20 years and never noticed this? MIND = BLOWN. And yes, that was also a way of avoiding saying that this is a dull card. Sue me.

1991 Stadium Club

Man, I love this card. I have a special place in my heart for 1991 Stadium Club. It was expensive at the time, yes, but it was a noble experiment and just hits such a warm spot in my photo-loving heart. I really should try to complete the set one day. Full-bleed photos, non-intrusive design elements, mmm mmm. They missed the mark with the following sets somehow, but this will always be a classic to me.

1991 Studio

And then there’s this abomination. I mean, black-and-white studio photos could have been an awesome set. Imagine this kind of photography on a Stadium Club design and you see what I’m getting at. Instead they frame these photos in the worst puce disaster possible, and your eyes just kind of slide right off. Not to mention the information on the back is kind of interesting, but…eh…not what I want. And good lord, has he got chicken neck going on here or what?

1991 Topps/Topps Tiffany

1991 Topps Desert Storm

Putting these three together. Okay, the 1991 is a regular scan, but I also have the Tiffany.

Contents of the Mysterious Box of Mystery, Act I

So the other day I posted a shot of the box that my friend Robbi sent to me. I’ve finally had some time to sit down and sift through the box, sorting out the Expos and Olerud cards that I want, along with some trade bait and the…other…stuff that I want to show here. This box originally belonged to a dear friend of mine who was like a brother to me. He passed away at a tragically young age in 2007, and his widow has had this box kicking around ever since then. She thought it would be more fitting for me to have it, so she sent it my way. And I know just what to do with it.

1992 Leaf Marquis Grissom

As I expected, the box was full of junk wax – beautiful, glorious junk wax. Monetarily, sure, it’s worthless, but the funny thing is my collection is oddly devoid of junk wax. The bulk of my collection is from the mid-00s, and I always had trouble with paying money for junk wax cards, so I kind of rely on trades and “donations” to fill in these gaps in my collection, which means there were a lot of cards I didn’t have, like the Grissom above and the Colbrunn, below. There were also a few John Olerud cards, but nothing that I didn’t have already.

1991 Bowman Greg Colbrunn

I was born in 1976, so I decided to start collecting the 76 set a few years back. I’m still WAY short of the set, but the box contained two 76 cards I didn’t have, including this beauty. Just feast your eyes upon the maximum 70s contained herein. The pornstache. The glasses that swallow his entire face. I just…I just shed a tear.

1976 Topps Bob Coluccio

I’ll cover a lot more of the junk wax-era stuff later, but for now I want to take a look at some of the other stuff in the box. You see, Jeremy was a football collector and a non-sports collector, and some of this stuff is just incredible. I’d never seen it before. Like this Peanuts All-Star Sally card (one of two Peanuts All-Star cards in the box):

I believe these were from Hostess.

There were also TONS of 1990 NFL Pro Set cards. Man, I had a ton of these back in the day, but the whole trend of non-numbered, supposedly rare cards in the Pro Set…sets…started with the Santa Claus phenomenon and reached its logical conclusion in a super hero specifically created by the NFL and Marvel…SUPERPRO! Boy did this card bring back memories.

YES

He also had some wrestling cards from the mid-90s that I didn’t even realize existed, but man, was it a trip. Presented last, but certainly not least, in this edition, I give you Paul Bearer. What a face.

John Olerud 1991 Cards #3

1991 Panini Sticker

These were produced for the 1991 Panini Sticker album (albums that my mother collected in the mid-80s, acquainting me with baseball players). The album looked something like this:

Panini Album

I don’t remember seeing these back in 1991, and I’m not actively pursuing these as much as cards, but they’re a pretty cool find, and actually pretty informative for what they are.

Did you know?

John had no intention of signing when the Blue Jays drafted him in the third round. I was able to track down a newspaper from the time via Google News Archive that shows:

An interesting read. I’ll detail some more items along this line as we go on…

1991 Post

I always hated this card. That airbrushed helmet makes it look like he’s wearing an egg on his head, and I’m pretty sure “Toronto Blue Jays de Toronto” is not proper French, but who am I to argue? There’s just not much to say about this card outside of “came with cereal”. Kellogg’s did it much better.

1991 Score

I also used to despise 1991 Score, but now I just think of it as kind of workmanlike. The design works okay; I think it was the color choices that were throwing me off. I mean, look at this monstrosity. The shot is a bit washed-out (I color-corrected it), and the border choices…teal, yellow, and purple for a Blue Jay? Really, Score?

1991 Score Boxtop

This is the same thing, but was a pop-out on the 1991 Score wax box. I *had* to buy a box of Score back then just to get this. Funny thing, this box actually came with one of the rare Mantle inserts, so I guess it was worth it.

1991 Score The Franchise

That’s better. The shot is more humanizing, the design is a lot more sedate, and the black-and-white works well on the black borders. I’m not sure how I feel about the blue background, but it kind of works here. It’s funny, when this set came out I never really liked this card, but these days I think I appreciate it a lot more than the base score card. Odd how that goes.

1991 Score Rising Stars

Finally, we have the Score Rising Stars card. While not the best issue from that year (far from it, in fact), I would have been a lot happier with this being the design of the base Score set. There’s a lot more real estate for the picture, and the colors aren’t as garish. Not to mention there’s some matching blue in the border! All in all, not a bad way to wrap up this entry.

John Olerud 1991 Cards #2

One end-of-the week post to go, and I figured I’d tackle some more 91 Olerud cards. Just as a note, this is definitely not meant to be a definitive overview, but rather what I have in my albums so far…

1991 Fleer

Dear lord, I abhor the 1991 Fleer set. There’s just nothing appealing to it for me. The yellow borders are god-awful, the line design looks more fitting for a textbook, the photography ranges from blah to downright awful, and the card stock renders the photos themselves even muddier. I hope whoever came up with this was not in the baseball card business long. That said, this isn’t a completely terrible card; the shot is kind of nice (if blurry).

1991 Fleer Ultra

That’s more like it. While it may not have the flash or grace of later Fleer Ultra issues, I have a soft spot for the first issue. It’s like an awkward baby who shows promise, and I think this card itself is just pretty, even if you can’t see John’s face. The blues just balance so nicely, and I even like the placement of the Ultra logo. Definitely one of the better 1991 issues.

1991 Leaf

Or, how to take a good concept and smother it in its sleep. I LOVE 1990 Fleer to this day, and even have this pie-in-the-sky idea of collecting the entire set one day, as expensive as that might be. But 1991 Fleer? Ugh. I guess I get what they were going for, but this seems like a far more drab, oppressive border, and it takes a significant portion of real estate that was dedicated to the photo  in the 1990 issue.  Throw all those issues on top of a boring photo, and I just don’t care for this card at all.

1991 O-Pee-Chee Premier

This is not my beautiful O-Pee-Chee. I still plan to acquire his regular-issue OPC from that year, but ugh. What a busy, ugly border. The photo is even darker than this scan shows, and I don’t like the back of the card, either. I’ve come to the conclusion that 1991 was just not a good year for baseball cards at all. Thankfully, there are still a few decent issues to come.

We have an answer!

Thanks to Carlos from Olerudfan’s blog (always good to meet a fellow collector), a scan of the 91 Classic red single John Olerud. Thanks for filling in that gap, and check out his blog, as he’s new to the community and the first post is excellent.