That Time Carlos Delgado Went Deep *and* Wide
And he landed within two deeps of two legends
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1991 Classic Best Carlos Delgado (#63) - Card of the Day
Carlos Delgado probably came within about 27 home runs of making the Hall of Fame cut. After all, when he played his last game in May 2009, any hitter with 500 home runs was just about a lock to make the Cooperstown lineup someday.
But several factors conspired to sap Delgado’s case.
First of all, he didn’t reach 500 but had to settle for 473. He did give pro baseball one more shot, appearing in five Triple-A games for Boston in 2010, but by then he was out of gas.
Even worse, in the years between his retirement and his first shot at the Hall, the whole “Steroid Era” scandal erupted. While Delgado never had suspicion cast on him (that I know of, at least), PEDs cheapened home run totals in general and made even 500 something less than a lock.
So Delgado will likely never see his name and face on a Cooperstown plaque.
But the fact remains that he was one of the most feared sluggers of his generation, and he also helped push hobby boundaries during the crazy days of the 1990s.
Delgado first signed as an amateur free agent with the Blue Jays way back in October 1988, when he was just 16 years old. It took him a couple of years in the low minors to get his legs under him, but by 1991, he was flexing his bat muscles to the tune of 18 home runs and 18 doubles over 444 plate appearances split between Single-A and Triple-A levels.
That caught the attention of card makers, including Topps, who included him in their 1992 Bowman set well over a year before he made his big league debut.
But before that, there were other cardboard fish to fry.
See, up until the late 1980s, minor league cards were a thing, but they weren’t all that easy to come by. Usually issued on a team-by-team basis, you pretty much had to buy them at a minor league stadium, at a card show, or through the mail from dealers like Larry Fritsch.
In 1989, though, with the hobby still booming and more and more companies looking to cash in, Star Company did something unheard of — they released a 200-card, cross-team set of minor leagues…issued in wax packs!
Now, that set was not an immediate hit with collectors, but it sort of broke the seal on what was possible.
And two years later, Classic took up the challenge with a 450-card set issued as factory sets…but also as wax packs for the first 396 cards.
That’s where we find Delgado’s first widely distributed card, #63 shown above. If you were in the hobby back in 1991, the design at least probably looks familiar since it was plastered all over dealer and company advertisements in Sports Collector’s Digest and Baseball Cards magazine.
Todd Van Poppel was the posterboy back then, but today…
Well, today, it’s all about Carlos Delgado on his 52nd birthday.
Didn’t You Used to Be 1981 Pops?
Speaking of cards that look familiar, Delgado fell two homers shy of tying Willie Stargell and Stan Musial for (now) 32nd on the all-time list.
Pops appeared on the interesting looking pasteboard you see above a few years after he hung up his spikes. If you were around the hobby a few years before that, then, yeah, it probably has a familiar ring.
Read all about this unusual card right here.
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Big sluggers seem to be the order of the day, judging by my choice of cardboard fare for this Tuesday edition of Hobby Babble.
Does that mean we should keep our eyes on Aaron Judge and Gunnar Henderson? Well, that never seems like a bad idea these days, right?
Anyway, thanks for reading.
—Adam
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