Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Card Of The Week November 6

I finally started watching NPB games on Justin.TV when the Climax Series started.  Since I usually get up around 5 AM, the schedule worked out really well for the evening games.  Should have been doing this a long time ago.

I'm amazed at the lack of commercials during the broadcasts.  Lots of times it seems that there's none at all during the breaks between innings or pitching changes.  One of the commercials that I do keep seeing though is one that I remember Yakyu Baka mentioning a few months back - Randy Bass for Owner's League baseball cards.  Here's a card of Bass from the 2009 BBM Premium Malts set with a very large can of beer (#10):


Here's something a little obscure about Randy Bass - he played for the Orlando Juice in the short-lived Senior Professional Baseball Association in their inaugural season 1989-90.  He joined the team about a month into the season and hit .393 with 5 home runs in 29 games.  He actually parlayed this performance into a non-roster invitation to spring training with the Baltimore Orioles for the 1990 season but IIRC he retired before actually appearing in any exhibition games with them.

There were four companies that produced cards for the first (of two) seasons of the SPBA.  Because he joined the team late, Bass only appears in two of the sets - the one from Topps and the one from a company called Elite (who put out a kind of Upper Deck-esque set).  Here's his Elite card (#49):

2 comments:

Jason Presley said...

As nice as the Elite set was, I'm surprised that they don't have more sets to their credit. It is also surprising that the SPBA attracted enough attention to produce sets from four different companies (Topps, Elite, Pacific and T&M). Lots of former NPB alumni in those sets.

NPB Card Guy said...

I remember that the Pacific set was ugly but it had most of the players. And they were the only ones to do a set for the second and final season.

Didn't the Elite sets come with a team magnet? I think I still have a Winter Haven Super Sox magnet kicking around here somewhere...