The Card

With his goonish Neanderthal face, Drew is in the running for being one of the ugliest players of the last 25 years (Willie McGee, Zane Smith, Gary Gaetti, and Otis Nixon are other contenders). He has lots of goofy cards, but this one takes the cake. Upon discovering his braces, did they ask him to smile as big as he could and not look at the camera?

In the photo on the back, he looks like he wants to kill somebody. Did he just blow a game? Is he going to pull a machete out of that bag and come after the photographer?

After Upper Deck’s big splash in 1989, their 1990 design was minimalist and a little boring, and their cardstock seemed thinner. A small step backward for the upscale card company.

The Player

Drew was a Kentucky boy who played on the 1984 Olympic Team. Drafted by the Chicago Cubs in the 1st round (3rd pick) of the 1984 amateur draft, he was and still is the highest draft pick by a Major League Baseball team in the state of Kentucky.

In the mid-80’s, Drew was a decent pitcher in the minors for the Cubs, but in 1987, he was converted from a reliever to a starter. The best pitchers in the majors were almost always starters in the minors. When you become a reliever in the minors, it generally means that they’re giving up on you.

In the majors, Drew pitched a few innings out of the bullpen for three different teams without much success. Then back to the minors, when he started to figure things out in his late 20’s. But it was too late.

I became familiar with Drew when he joined the Expos for a short while in 1990. But he didn’t last long.

Hall returned to his alma mater, Morehead State University, in 2008 to serve as pitching coach. He now works with Kentucky-area baseball teams.

The Card

What I like most about this card is Manny’s unusual uniform. It’s certainly not a traditional high school logo with a threatening logo or team name. “Youth Service League” sounds so benign. Turns out that Manny played baseball for New York’s inner city Youth Service League for 5 years while in school.

Topps was the only company to put high school stats on the backs of cards when players had no professional experience. I always thought those numbers were pretty neat.

As with many sets of the time, 1992 Topps was heavy in graphic elements to the point of obscuring the player. Lines, boxes, and colors surround the photo and made it really obvious that your card was off-centered and, therefore, worth less.

Around this time, Topps replaced its traditional stock that looked and felt like recycled cardboard with a firmer, whiter cardstock. Perhaps they took a cue from Upper Deck, the competitor establishing itself as the more upscale brand for collectors.

The Player

Sure, his high school statistics didn’t mean a whole lot, but Manny’s numbers were the best I’d ever seen. Those high school stats led this rookie sabermetrician to believe that Manny would a future star. After glancing at this card and carefully placing it into a rigid plastic sleeve, I was an instant fan.

Manny came up as a promising hitting prospect with the Indians and proceeded to put up steroid-assisted numbers and win steroid-assisted awards with a variety of teams.

He eventually became every bit the hitter I thought he’d be, his gaudy RBI numbers helped somewhat by playing on teams with solid hitters in the lineup around him. He had an extended peak from ages 27 to 30 with the Indians and Red Sox, but he remained one of the league’s best hitters until his late 30’s. Steroids probably prevented what should have been a gradual decline in his abilities. He was on the Mitchell Report in 2003 at age 31 and busted by MLB in 2009 and again in 2011.

Manny got repeatedly busted for steroids, retired and came back multiple times on a whim, alienated his teammates, his fans, and the press. He was also arrested on charges of misdemeanor battery of his wife.

Somehow, for Manny, it was OK taking a giant shit on the game of baseball and everyone around him for his entire career. To the inexplicably tolerant public, his hijinks were endearing. He was simply “Manny Being Manny”. I honestly don’t know how everybody didn’t turn on him and drum him out of the game. In a final act of irrational adoration, he will be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

At age 41, Manny batted .259 with AAA Round Rock, trying desperately to make it back to the majors and make a few more bucks before he lost his abilities for good. He was cut mid-season. Let’s hope he doesn’t try to come back again. We’ve seen enough.