Does the name Greg Swindell ring a bell? If you’ve spent time poring over the biographical snippets on Score baseball cards, you might recognize him as “Zeke” Swindell. Or perhaps “Flounder” Swindell, if Wikipedia is to be believed. Even “Greg” is a bit of stretch, as that is actually an abbreviated form of the pitcher’s middle name. But what name do the dedicated collectors prefer? That’s a mystery I’d love to solve—if only I could find someone who actually specializes in Swindell memorabilia.
That should not be a tall order. After all, this guy pitched for the 1984 US Olympic team and was the second overall draft pick in a period that will probably be the high water mark for card collecting participation. He accumulated more than 30 WAR, putting up solid numbers similar to those of Madison Bumgarner and a WAR/Inning ratio close to that of Hideo Nomo. Swindell’s career stretched over 17 seasons, long enough to develop a collector following.
When I was a kid, my baseball card collection was stored in three tiers. The best cards were kept in a wooden box, secured inside top-loaders. The rest were in a couple dozen binders, consisting of 28 mismatched team-specific binders and one, large purpose-built D-ring monster reserved for my own player collections. Swindell did not quite make my personal collecting threshold, but his cards did warrant premium placement at the front of several of my team binders in the early ’90s.
Out of curiosity, I browsed the Player Collection section of the PSA Registry in search of who owns the best Swindell collection. There are 44,472 distinct player collections cataloged, most of which have multiple hobbyists competing for the top spot while being scored on checklist completion and card condition.
It turns out none of those 44,472 player checklists are focused on Swindell. Bumgarner has 4 different checklists with 32 distinct registry sets actively being worked on. Hideo Nomo has 2 checklists with 8 active player collections underway. Even vintage era pitchers with similar stats from unpopular teams have decent representation in active registry sets: Ned Garver has almost a half dozen collectors publicly competing for his cards. It cannot all be a weird quirk of name recognition, either. After all, 1970s backup catcher Bob Montgomery and his career 2.2 WAR have nine different collectors chasing his cards with 15 active sets across 2 different checklists.
The Swindell card now residing in my collection identifies him as Greg, the name by which he is best known. Flounder, it turns out, was a mean-spirited title bestowed following the release of the 1981 film Animal House. It’s one of those forgettable ’80s house party films that aged poorly, so we’re safe in leaving that nickname in the past. The name Zeke, appearing in the biographical text of some of his cards, appears to be name reserved for those involved with Greg on a more personal level. His wife wrote a memoir a few years ago that appears to refer to him as Zeke.
Of course, the lone Swindell card in my collection is part of my attempt to gather one of each 1993 Finest Refractor. This one wasn’t particularly hard to find as the market is still absorbing the dozens of copies that were released when a longtime refractor hoard was broken up. The photo selection on this card follows a pattern I particularly enjoy: Home and away uniforms shown on opposing sides. The effect is not uniform across the set, but definitely earns points in my book if it was done as a conscious design element.
Fun Fact: Greg Swindell apparently blocked Night Owl on Twitter. Maybe the long-running baseball card blogger (and fellow owner of the name Greg) bragged one too many times about how many more Hideo Nomo cards are in his collection.
