Double Rated-Rookie Got Paid Then Didn’t Pay
Danny Tartabull’s professional baseball-playing father once attributed his son’s prodigious power hitting ability to his mother. I presume she was also better with finances.
1993 Finest Refractors
Don’t Kill Seagulls When the Home Team is Named After a Bird
This advice would have served Dave Winfield well in a trip to Toronto.
1993 Finest: Harold Reynolds
Harold Reynolds is the only guy not named Rickey Henderson to lead the AL in stolen bases during the 1980s.
Home Runs: Dean Palmer > Roger Maris
Dean Palmer is largely overlooked today, but there was a time when he consistently outperformed the famed Roger Maris.
Bobby Bo and the Sport’s Most Famous Contract
A contract so good it gave rise to the semi-official New York holiday of “Bobby Bonnilla Day.”
The Closest Thing to a Rookie Pitcher in ’93 Finest
Topps generally avoided putting rookies in the ’93 Finest set. Cal Eldred’s incredible rookie performance in 1992 got him into the checklist.
1993 Finest: Darryl Hamilton
A hidden ball trick, sneaky trade demands, and a murderous girlfriend.
VIEW From the Mound
My first 1993 refractor features the lead singer of two different alternative rock bands.
Looking at 1993 Finest: John Jaha
Here’s a stat that summarizes the career of John Jaha: He led the 1995 Milwaukee Brewers in homeruns despite appearing in only 88 games that season. Injuries were a regular feature of Jaha’s decade in the majors. Of the 1,620 games scheduled during his 1992-2001 career, he appeared in just 826 of them (51%).
Moonwalking With Sandy
There’s a favorite stat that gets passed around whenever Mariano Rivera is discussed: More people have walked on the moon than scored against him in 16 years of postseason play. Taking the story further, fewer players homered off of Rivera in the postseason than travelled with the Apollo 11 spacecraft in the first lunar mission. Neil Armstrong became the first to touch the lunar surface, and Cleveland Indians catcher Sandy Alomar, Jr. became the first to touch Rivera for a postseason homerun in 1997.