1988 Topps Big Card #79 Willie McGee

I loved Willie McGee and he was a great player and one of the rare non-power hitters of that era who could change the momentum of a game. He got clutch hits and could run the bases. Given that everyone he was playing against was on steroids, he maybe should be a Hall of Famer. I believe he won a couple of batting titles. He played for the Red Sox for a year or two, I was glad they picked him up. 

The best thing about him though was his facial expression, he always looked like he'd just smelled something bad.  

1988 Topps Mini Tim Wallach

“Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.”

I'm glad I went to see the Expos play while they still existed. Their stadium was interesting enough, and what I remember most is that tickets were crazy cheap and they had corn dogs, which pleased my kids greatly.

1988 Topps Big Cards 14 Dale Murphy

I love the little cartoons on the backs of these cards.

Humungous Vida Blue baseball card

Card number 59 of 60, Vida Blue San Francisco Giants. I thought Vida Blue was about the coolest guy ever. Great pitcher.

1988 Topps Mini Zane Smith

Card 42 Zane Smith. Always know where your towel is.

1988 Topps Mini Dave Parker

I liked this guy. Dave Parker was a great player and supposedly a pretty decent guy. 

1988 Topps Big Card #19 Scott Fletcher

I like "all-star" sets in baseball cards like the Big set because there's so much speculation as to which player will be a hall of famer and which will become a "Who?" Here's Scott Fletcher. I think the best thing about this card, besides Scott Fletcher himself of course, is the fact that the base-runner in his picture is Rickey Henderson.

1988 Topps Big Card Jeff Reardon

Jeff Reardon was a fearsome pitcher with the Twins but sadly late in his Red Sox career it became "Oh $%#@! Here comes Reardon" out of the bullpen. 

1988 Topps Big Card 18 Fernando Valenzuela

I loved watching this guy pitch, the way Fernando Valenzuela breathed through his eyelids was amazing! 

JJ Nissen 1989 Bobby Bonilla baseball card

I loved Bobby Bonilla, I thought he was going to be as big a deal as his Pirates teammate Barry Bonds. The best thing about his career is that I believe the Mets are STILL paying his contract. JJ Nissen is a bread- baking company, they did several  runs of cards that came in the package with bread. I always noticed that they always airbrushed the team logo off the hat, as they paid the players association, not MLB.

1988 Topps Mini Leaders #71 Willie McGee

I loved Willie McGee as a player. He was fast and could hit and field like an all-star. What I loved most about him though was that his facial expression always looked as if he smelled something really, really bad. Loved this guy.

1988 Topps Mini Leaders #72 Ozzie Smith

Ozzie Smith, The Wizard, really was an amazing baseball player to watch. You may not ever see a better shortstop than Ozzie Smith in his prime.

JJ Nissen Baseball Card- Don Mattingly

This is card #4 from the 1989 JJ Nissen Superstars collection.
Nissen is (was?) a New England bread company that each year (at least a few times) issued a series of "superstar" baseball cards. Get one in each loaf. (Not actually IN the bread, but that would have been fun).

My parents knew I liked baseball cards at this time actually saved the cards for me from their bread. I think the cards are super cool because my parents took the time to set them aside for me, but also because they are so super low-budget- they obviously bought the rights to the players from the player association, but not the full license from MLB, so the players don't have any team logos on them.

1988 Topps Mini Leaders #53 Orel Hershiser

Orel Hershiser was a great pitcher and is a decent broadcaster and has one of the best baseball names in the last 50 years in my humble opinion.

1988 Topps Mini Leaders #31 Mark McGwire

Here's a controversial one! Mark McGwire, the year before this card came out, set the American League rookie home run record. He and Jose Canseco were "The Bash Brothers." Then McGwire was hurt all the time, and then in late 1990s he became the most feared power hitter in the history of the game, until Barry Bonds became The Hulk and all the home run records fell.

McGwire and Sosa still piss me off. I remember waking up in the fall of 1998 with all kinds of things going on in my life, but wondering if McGwire and Sosa had homered the night before. I was excited for the home run duel going on. Baseball was awesome again. The Roger Maris single-season home run record fell that year to, what we later learned was these cheating, lying douchebags.

To be fair, when they started juicing, Major League Baseball wasn't doing anything about it. None of us knew what steroids could do for player performance. But they denied and denied and denied that they had taken anything to help them hit baseballs so far. I trusted them and they were lying to me.

"Lying, cheating, hurting, that's all you seem to do." -Led Zeppelin, Your Time is Gonna Come. 

1988 Topps Mini Leaders #37 George Bell

Jorge Antonio Bell Mathey, better known as George Bell, is a Dominican former left fielder and American League MVP in Major League Baseball who played 12 seasons for the Toronto Blue Jays, Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox.

1988 Topps Big Card #27 Ozzie Guillen

Ozzie Guillen was always a firey player and he was even more interesting as a manager. In this ultra PC era it will be interesting to see if anyone ever gives in another change to manage! (He last managed, the Marlins, in 2012). 

Under his leadership the White Sox won the World Series in 2005, their first pennant since 1959 and their first World Series win since 1917.

1988 Topps Mini Leaders #47 John Franco

Franco had a long career as a relief pitcher for the Reds and Mets and maybe someone else. He was a good pitcher.

I believe he got into some trouble for some alleged ties to organized crime, but then again, our current President has those also and can't pitch nearly as well.

1988 Topps Mini Leaders #4 DeWayne Buice

I mentioned this a while ago when I started scanning this stack of cards and posting them here- I love "Leaders" and "Future Stars" sets and "Diamond Kings" type card sets because you look at them thirty years later (these cards are thirty years old!) and wonder "Who the Heck was DeWayne Buice?"

So I googled him. He only played 2 and a half seasons in the majors, BUT he happened to be at the right place at the right time and literally walked into a deal where he became a partner in the Upper Deck Baseball Card company at the peak of the baseball card craze in the late 1980s. 

He made WAY more money not really doing much for them than he ever made in baseball. The world we live in is just crazy. 

1988 Score Great Moments in Baseball #28 Denny Wins 30 Games

This is a little tiny card with that old-timey 3D printing process on the front, hold the card one way and it says "Great Moments in Baseball" and hold it the other way and it says "Do you Remember Tiger Stadium September 14, 1968"

The card celebrates Denny McLain's 30 win season. We won't see another of those ever!