Dale Murray, Yankees - Card(s) of the Day
Today is Groundhog Day.
It’s also Dale Murray’s 74th birthday.
As it happens, the two go together like Sonny and Cher.
After all, what comes to mind when you hear the words, “Groundhog Day”?
Sure, you probably get some grainy mental images of a sorta scary-looking creature sniffing about for a few seconds while anxious onlookers look on, waiting for him to seal their/our wintry fate.
But if you’re an American of a certain age, chances are pretty good you also think of Bill Murray and his 1993 movie by the same name — Groundhog Day, that is.
You know the one, where the same day plays over and over and over and over and over while the universe waits for Murray to get his poop together.
It’s a concept that Columbia Pictures just may have lifted from Topps cards 8-10 years earlier.
Dale Murray’s Topps cards, in particular.
See…
From the day in December of 1982 when the Blue Jays traded Murray and Tom Dodd to the Yankees for Dave Collins, Fred McGriff, Mike Morgan, and money, Topps decided to lock Murray in cardboard purgatory.
There was nothing The Real One could do about Murray’s 1983 base card — the die had already been cast.
But Topps sure as heck could make some choices going forward, so they decided to just lock in and not choose at all. The result is the run of sameness we see at the top of this post: 1983 Topps Traded (#79T), 1984 Topps (#697), 1985 Topps (#481).
Those 1983 and 1984 cards might be from the same pitch or the same at-bat. Or they could have been taken at different times, and Murray was just that consistent.
The 1985 card sort of leads credence to that last idea, since Murray’s neck attire is different but everything else is pretty much the same.
Murray appeared for both the Yankees and the Rangers in 1985, but his last game was on May 13. There was no way in Punxsutawney he was getting a 1986 baseball card.
And so we have Dale Murray, forever trapped in a run of baseball cards that have him repeating the same pitch over and over and over. He’s the hurler equivalent of Bill Murray.
Then there’s the other repetitive aspect of Murray’s cards. All through the early and mid-1980s, collectors across the land felt their hearts skip a beat when they pulled a Murray card only to realize a blink later that it wasn’t a Dale Murphy card.
The effect was especially pronounced if you were sorting cards, back-up.
But it’s not all bad, right? Murray put together a nice 12-year major league career, becoming one of the most reliable relievers of his era.
And today, we get to celebrate his birthday and also hope that blasted rodent brings us some good news.
1983 Don Mattingly Rookie Cards
When Murray joined the Yankees for the 1983 season, he arrived just in time to bear witness to an unknown rookie who would go on to upend the hobby the next summer.
In 1983, Don Mattingly was pretty much unknown outside of southern Indiana and Yankees followers, but that would change in a flash as he battled teammate Dave Winfield for a batting title in 1984.
Of course, that was the same summer when collectors were pulling Mattingly rookie cards from wax packs. But wouldn’t it have been cool if he had been in the 1983 sets?
Baseball Cards Magazine thought so and issued this nifty panel of fake Mattingly RCs — replicards, they called them — in 1987.
Today, you can generally find these on eBay for $10-100, depending on card condition and seller ambition.
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That’s all for this Groundhog Edition of the daily ramblings. Unless I get caught in some sort of Murray-esque repeat loop.
If that happens, you’ll probably get another copy of this post tomorrow. And the next day. Etc.
Otherwise, see you next week.
Thanks for reading.
—Adam