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1981 Dennis Kinney - Card of the Day
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What does it take to land yourself on a baseball card?
And, of course, I don’t mean now, when any Joe Blow with seven Super Bowl wins can push his way onto a baseball card.
No, I mean back when baseball cards were meant for bicycle spokes, and bicycles were meant for all-day-’til-sundown-and-beyond adventures.
What did it take then?
You’d think maybe 25 pitching appearances in a season would do it, right? That’s what Dennis Kinney managed for the Indians and Padres combined as a rookie in 1978.
That followed an eight-year run through the Cleveland minor league system after the Indians drafted him in the 10th round in 1970.
But Topps (the only game in town back then) didn’t take the bait, so there was no 1979 rookie card for Kinney.
To be fair to The Real One, those 25 games in ‘78 weren’t enough to exhaust Kinney’s rookie status, so he was eligible for Rookie of the Year voting in ‘79.
That turned out not to be a concern, though, as 18 innings in 13 appearances ate up his rookie status but left him back in Triple A for the second part of the summer. It also left him without a rookie card in 1980.
But Kinney spent that entire summer — 1980 — with the big league Padres, making 50 relief appearances and posting a 4.25 ERA in 82 2/3 innings.
That performance at least and at last caught the attention of the card makers in 1981, the first year that Topps had company at the candy counter since 1955.
And so it is that Dennis Kinney has three 1981 rookie cards, issued 11 years after he made his pro debut — Donruss (#363), Fleer (#505), and Topps (#599).
But wouldn’t you know it? Kinney wasn’t even with the Padres by the time he made his cardboard debut!
The Pads had traded him to the Tigers for Dave Stegman in December of 1980.
Kinney made just six appearances for Detroit in 1981, then the Tigers released him in December 1981.
The Oakland A’s swooped in to sign him as a free agent in February 1982, but they only had room to give him 4 1/3 innings in the bigs that season. Kinney would finish out the campaign in the minors, then ride off into the sunset.
And he never would appear on another card in a big league uniform.
Kinney’s legacy had slightly longer legs, as Stegman stayed in the bigs through July 1984.
And Dan Spillner — traded from the Padres to the Indians for Kinney back in 1978 — made it all the way through 1985.
Today, Dennis Kinney turns 72 years old, and he already has three of the best birthday cards a boy could ask for.
Reds Connection
Kinney’s last major league appearance amounted to mop-up duties as the A’s lost their road game against the Tigers on May 20, 1982, by an 11-3 tally.
The score was 8-2 when Kinney came in to pitch the bottom of the sixth, and he finished out the game.
The man that Kinney replaced in that game was lefthander Bob Owchinko, who had replaced starter Tom Underwood.
Owchinko is near and dear (or something) to Reds fans’ hearts, as he was on hand to help Cincy limp through another lost season in 1984 while Dave Parker got warmed up and while Pete Rose headed home.
Owchinko would go 3-5 with a 4.12 ERA for those Reds, who let him walk (back) to the A’s in free agency that winter. He spent 1985 in the minors before making it back to the big leagues one last time in 1986, a three-game run with the Expos.
But during that “lost” summer of 1985, Owchinko was right there on our Reds cards, just like he had never left.
And thus, he joined former teammate Kinney in the distinction of appearing under wax wraps for a team that was already part of his past — see 1985 Topps card (#752) above.
Donruss and Fleer got in on the act, too if you care to hunt them down.
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These cards remind me of finding an old company or school ID in a drawer somewhere, right next to that 1987 dime and the ear guard off a pair of glasses I haven’t seen for ten years.
They were all pretty important to me at some point, just like Kinney was to the Padres and Owchinko was to the Reds. And both were to Topps — important enough to allocate .126 (repeating) percent of an entire set to each of them in their now-defunct uniforms!
Anyway, happy Monday, and thanks for reading.
—Adam