Note: When you click on links to various merchants in this newsletter and make a purchase, this can result in this newsletter earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
1985 Topps Gary Pettis (#497) - Card of the Day
There are any number of baseball cards that could serve as master of ceremonies for our April Fools’ Day celebration.
Billy Ripken and his 1989 Fleer obscenity mess had us all fooled for years until he fessed up that the whole thing was intentional. Well, maybe not Fleer’s 31 flavors of cover-up “whole thing,” but at least the original FF thing.
But that card has more than had its day in the blackhole sun.
The 1969 Topps Aurelio Rodriguez is always good for a laugh.
And then there are the more obvious jokester/joke cards, like:
1976 Topps Kurt Bevacqua Bubble Champ
1984 Fleer Jay Johnstone Tap Cap
1984 Fleer Glenn Hubbard & Friend
1993 Stadium Club Oscar Azocar Love at First (At-)Bat
They’re all fun and even foolish, but I’m going for a more subtle option. One that tricked me for a lot of years.
Now, don’t get me wrong — I always recognized that there was something different about the 1985 Topps Gary Pettis rookie card. This was several years before Donruss unleashed their cheesy Studio cards, after all.
Dudes didn’t really pose like this for a baseball card. And they certainly weren’t so, uh, cheeky about it.
But I was just a kid myself when this card came out, so what did I know? And, heck, I knew I’d be pretty giddy if I ever landed on a card of my own. So who knows? I might have finger-pondered for the camera, too.
And, back in those analog, offline days, I had no idea what Gary Pettis looked like. I was mostly just happy to have another baseball card, and especially another rookie card.
It didn’t take me too awful long to remember that Pettis already had rookie cards, though, in both Donruss and Fleer sets from 1984. Not to mention a 1984 Topps Traded number.
Those cards told a sort of different story:
To my kid eyes, at least, the guy on these earlier Pettis cards looked older — by at least a few mustache hairs — than the Pettis on the 1985 card.
Huh. What to make of that?
Well, in a world full of Dwight Gooden and Benny Distefano rookie cards, of Olympic pre-rookies, of multiple Pete Rose cards in every set, a kid just didn’t have the headspace to ponder on a something’s-up Gary Pettis RC for too long.
So I didn’t, at least not until Pettis started to make a name for himself, winning a Gold Glove and stealing 56 bases in 1985. He repeated the GG in 1986 and swiped 50 more bags as the Angels nearly stormed to the World Series.
After a breather in 1987 to let Kirby Puckett take home the fielding hardware, 30-year-old Pettis found himself in Detroit in 1988. The Tigers swapped Dan Petry to get him, and Pettis kept right on flashing the leather and the wheels in Motown.
By then, most collectors realized that Pettis wasn’t that Pettis on his Topps rookie card. I can’t remember exactly when the news that Gary’s younger brother Lynn was the man-kid on the card broke, but Gary gave his account of the day it all unfolded a few years back in an ESPN story.
No wonder Gary Pettis looked so young on his RC, huh? “He” was a teenager!
Sure, it seems to have been more a mix-up than a foolin’, but you just never know about these things, right? After all Gary Pettis was supposedly born on April 3, 1958 — close enough to the big day that you at least have to wonder.
Fooling Batters for 24 Years
One guy who actually was born on April 1 was Hall of Fame pitcher Phil Niekro, who fooled plenty of batters over the years with his baffling knuckleball.
And, despite not debuting in the big leagues until he was 25 years old, Knucksie kept at it for 24 seasons. No wonder he looked so old on most of his baseball cards.
I poked some fun at that idea in a post awhile back, while “investigating” when Niekro made the crossover from “veteran” to “grandfatherly.” You can read that one right here.
—
Alright, I gotta go prepare for the eclipse and whatever other fool’s errands the day might hold in store for me. Only seven more shopping days ‘til we’re plunged into eternal (i.e., minutes-long) darkness, after all.
At least we have baseball until then.
Thanks for reading.
—Adam
Great story! .... back in the early 90s, Phil Niekro was managing the Triple-A Richmond Braves and stepped away from the cage during batting practice to walk over after I called his name to sign a ball for a much younger me. Definitely a class act by the man that I'll never forget.