Today’s Lineup…
💍 Card of the Day - Finding Mr. Wright
❄️ Celebrating Winter(s)
🐔 Rare as hen’s teeth
1983 Donruss George Wright (#116) - Card of the Day
This is the kind of baseball card that tripped me up for years.
See, when I started collecting cards for real in 1983, I latched onto every pack I could talk my parents into dropping their hard-earned 30 cents on.
The great Topps cards were fairly plentiful, and so was Donruss. There wasn’t much Fleer in our neck of the woods, though, so not all that many of the gray-brown cards appeared in my stacks of wax pulls that summer.
All of which is to say that I ended up with multiple copies of Donruss and Topps George Wright rookie cards.
Now, that probably doesn’t sound all that impressive today, not when you look at his stats and see that Wright hit just .245 with 42 home runs and 208 RBI in parts of five big league seasons.
But in 1983, the Texas Rangers surprised everyone by leading the old American League West for a good part of the summer. Heck, they were tied for first as late as July 24 until a 28-38 swoon dropped them 22 games behind the surging White Sox (and the Royals) by season’s end.
For about half of August, though, there was hope in Arlington that Texas would climb back into the race.
Much of that early success and the lingering flicker rested on the shoulders of guys like George Wright, who played all 162 games while batting .276 with 18 home runs and 80 RBI.
Those were all career highs, as it turned out, but that performance landed Wright’s cards a permanent place in my “prospects” or “check later” box, right alongside Steve Kemp, Mitchell Page, Sixto Lezcano, and Al Cowens.
The Rangers would struggle through a couple of rough summers after that before finally posting a winning record in 1986 with young stars like Pete Incaviglia, Bobby Witt, and Ruben Sierra in the fold.
Alas, Wright was gone by the end of that season, shipped to the Montreal Expos in June. Montreal would release him at the end of the season, and he’d never make it back to the majors.
But even as Wright spent the next few years beating the bushes for the Expos, Giants, White Sox, and Royals, and even when he followed up with stints in Mexico and Japan, I kept his rookie cards warm, just in case.
And, as gorgeous as Wright’s Topps RC was, I’m going with the Donruss here for its extra sparkle thanks to that white Rangers home uniform. And because the set always felt a little cartoon-y, which was just right for young me.
By the way, the first baseball George Wright was really first — he’s widely credited as the first batter in National League history, taking his initial cuts back in 1876.
He’s a Hall of Famer.
But our George Wright? The one whose rookie card might still break out big some day?
Well, today is his 65th birthday. So, happy birthday to a shoebox legend!
1990 Fleer Matt Winters (#134) - Card of the Season
The winter solstice hit last night, which means today is the first full day of winter.
In the long history of baseball, there have been only five players named either Winter or Winters to make it to the big leagues.
And of those, only Matt Winters played after 1932.
At age 29, Winters (Matt) played in 42 games for the 1989 Royals, hitting .234 with 2 home runs and 9 RBI. That was the extent of his MLB career.
Lucky for us, though, Winters debuted (and finished up) at just the right time, in the heart of the Junk Wax Era. So there are plenty of cards out there if you really want one.
To properly celebrate the beginning of winter, though, it’s tough to beat this 1990 Fleer entry:
With all those thick white borders and the blazing white Royals uniform and Matt Winters in the middle of it all, this is about as close as you’re likely to come to a snowstorm on a baseball card.
As Close as You Can Get to a Wagner…Twice!
Most collectors know that the T206 Honus Wagner has long been considered the holy grail of baseball cards thanks to its Hall of Fame subject matter, scarcity, and the folklore around that scarcity.
But old-time collectors probably remember that the T206 set actually offers up a trifecta of super rare cards — Wagner, Eddie Plank, and Sherry “Magie.”
As with the Wagner, the reasons for the scarcity of the Plank card have been debated for decades. The Magie card, meanwhile, is one of the first corrected errors: his name is actually “Magee,” and the gaffe was caught and fixed early on, making the error card a high-profile hobby chase.
Why am I bringing these cards up now? Well, because the PWCC Premier Auction featured both the Plank and Magie cards.
The auction ended last night, but the listings are still well worth your viewing time.
—
That’s all for today’s experiment. What did you like, if anything?
As always, thanks for reading.
—Adam
Thank you for linking to the Plank and Magie auction listings- quite enjoyable. I’m happy to have now “met” the GWs, having been previously unfamiliar with both. Delightful post, thank you, merry Christmas!
Wow, how did I never hear of George Wright till now? Maybe it's his everyman name--as reflected by his fellow George Wright way back at the dawn of ⚾️. The moral: not everybody can be Oddibe McDowell. Enjoyed this piece!