Carl Everett's Rookie Card was a Classic

Or, was that a 'Classc'??

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1990 Classic Carl Everett (#10) - Card of the Day

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Carl Everett was one of the most colorful and controversial players in the game during his 14-year major league career…and even afterwards. With incidents ranging from bumping umpires to shouting at managers to weapons charges (after his career), you never knew what to expect from Everett.

Heck, he even picked up the nicknames of C-Rex and Jurassic Carl for his stated disbelief in the existence of dinosaurs. He wasn’t too sure about the Apollo moon landing, either.

But Everett was also undeniably a talented and powerful hitter, which helps explains how he found a place with eight different franchises despite a string of wearing-out-his-welcomes and tired-of-this-town-agains. Over the course of his big league run, Everett hit .271 with 202 home runs, 792 RBI, and 107 stolen bases. He also struck out more than a thousand times but posted a .341 on-base percentage and powered out a .462 slugging percentage.

It all added up to more than 20 WAR for Everett, despite playing in 140 games in a season just twice and more than 130 just twice more. And also despite so-so showings in the outfield.

Given his offensive profile, Everett might have been an even more sought-after commodity in today’s game, especially if he had put specific focus on the soups du jour like “OBP above all else” and “launch angle.”

The mouth probably wouldn’t play even as well as it did back in the 1990s, though.

With all that as background, it’s sort of fitting that Everett helped usher in a new decade with his very 1990s first baseball card.

See…

Game Time LTD debuted their “Classic” baseball cards in 1987 as part of a board game of the same name — Classic. For the next three years, they stuck with that theme, issuing new base sets and “travel” update sets, all in the name of supporting the game. Sometimes, there was a new board included, sometimes the cards were issued alone but meant to be used with the existing game.

These weren’t baseball cards, really, Classic told us. They were more like glorified game pieces.

Yeah, right.

Give collectors a stack of player-adorned cardboard rectangles, and we’re going to collect them — intent be darned. So we collected the Classic cards, and bought and sold them, as sets, lots, singles, with and without any other game paraphernalia. And, since the original series was meant to be part of a game and was *gasp* used as such by some kids (of all ages), they were a bit tough to come by.

Especially in top condition, with the green borders making that quest a bit tougher yet.

But as the 1990s dawned, there were roughly 378 card manufacturers pumping out somewhere between a dozen and a few score different sets each. Collectors had plenty of choices, in other words, and we wanted rookies and future rookies and have-they-been-born-yet(?) could-be-rookies-someday rookies.

And we wanted them now, and in limited quantities so that we could sell them to fund our retirement someday. Or at least our Nintendo/Atari/King’s Quest habit.

Competition was fierce, and selling baseball board games apparently wasn’t quite as compelling as selling baseball cards. Especially rookie cards.

So Classic ditched the board-game requirement and released their 1990 set in three series, totalling 300 cards. But they didn’t stop there, also issuing a 27-card Draft Picks set once, you know, the 1990 MLB draft happened. The cards were numbered according to where each player was picked in the first round (plus an unnumbered checklist).

That was in theory.

In practice, Classic couldn’t get number-two pick Tony Clark or number-twenty-two pick Steve Karsay to sign on for the project, to there is no card #2 or #22 in the set.

There’s a card #10, though. That’s where the Yankees picked Carl Everett, two-and-a-half years before the Marlins drafted him away from New York in the expansion draft.

So, if you find yourself in the market for a Carl Everett pre-rookie card, 1990 Classic has you covered. Well, as long as you’re willing to overlook one bothersome detail.

If your eagle eye is warmed up and dialed in, you might have already noticed said detail. If not…that’s not a Carl Everett baseball card up there at the top of this piece at all.

It’s a Carl “Evertt” baseball card. But, hey, what’s one little missing “e” among friends, right? Certainly not anything big enough to make Classic go back to their drafting room and make an adjustment. Especially there in 1990, where the “error card era” overlapped squarely with the “rookie card era.”

So there was no corrected “Everett” version, but at least Classic announced their print run which was a tiny, guard-future-values 150,000 of each card. Today’s one-of-ones can just go ahead and hold Classic’s stadium beer.

And also today, we can raise a cardboard toast to the man himself, as Carl Edward Everett turns 54 years old. (Carl Evertt, meanwhile, is a youthful 35.)

The Best Packs of 1985…

…were the ones that yielded a Dwight Gooden rookie card.

If you pulled even one Doc that summer, you’ll never forget the adrenaline rush that accompanied the first glimpse of darkening sky behind the phenom’s intense game face.

It’s always a good day to remember hobby times like that, and Everett gives us a ready excuse, since both dudes played their prep ball at Hillsborough High School in Tampa.

Read more about Gooden’s still-magical RC right here.

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