1981 Fleer Steve Renko: A Cardboard Mystery

I present to you the mysterious Steve Renko player card from 1981, Fleer edition:

You may be asking yourself, What is that "thing" behind Steve? Here are a few possibilities:

1. What's left of the bomb that has just toppled Steve Renko. (He's falling and falling fast.)

2. That freaky smoke cloud from LOST. (Could Ben have been a Yankee fan in 1980?)

3. Evidence that Jim Rice spontaneously combusted during a game. (Then came back from the dead?)

4. Maybe it was Yastrzemski practicing for his now defunct Vegas magic act.

5. The shadow of the tree that was planted as a memorial to the Bucky "freakin" Dent baseball. (Like goal posts and Yankee monuments, trees should not be in the field of play. Neither should weird sloping hills. I'm looking at you, Houston Astros!)

6. God, in an updated burning bush, letting the Sox fans know that there time will come.

7. Rick Burleson was a shape-shifter.

8. Manny was being Manny even back in 1980.

9. Fleer was being metaphorical: When Renko pitched, Fenway became a war zone. (Steve was 9-9, average at best, but not terrible.)

10. This was the precursor to the 1989 Billy Ripken card. The rare original has Glenn Hoffman flipping the double bird right at the camera. This more common version shown here is referred to as the black smoke version. I have heard there is a version where Hoffman is behind a big black box. Other versions include a scribble and Hoffman's birds replaced by "thumbs up".

The Albino from The Princess Bride?

Still busy organizing.

Came across this card of Charlie Sands:After his playing career, he went into the farm boy/pirate torturing business.
Charlie has no highlights to speak of but the back of his 1974 Topps cards shares some interesting tidbits.

1. Caught a 7-hour, 29 inning game. The whole thing? That's quite impressive. (Maybe if they made Westley catch for that long instead of using that water device, he would have been more than just mostly dead.)
2. Won a World Series ring while just batting once in the 1971 Series. (Fred Savage was in the movie for 5 minutes and he still gets royalty checks!)
3. Came back from a fractured knee cap that required 3 stars to demonstrate how painful it was to Charlie. (I give The Princess Bride 4 stars.)

The Curse of the Caps?

David Wells was Ruthian, both in girth and in his love of the Babe's baseball memorabilia. He once wore an actual Babe Ruth baseball cap onto the field and pitched an inning. The game-used cap, from 1934, set Wells back a cool $35 K. When Torre made him take it off for the second inning, he responded by blowing a 3-run lead. The Yankees went on to lose 12-8.
But this post isn't about David Wells. Its about Mitch Williams. He too was a fan of the memorabilia. He collected a different kind of cap. You see, Mitch was a fan of the Smurfs, Papa Smurf to be more specific. Some say that the Smurf leader was instrumental in teaching Williams that awkward, fall-off-the-mound delivery. That cannot be proven, but one thing we do know is that Mitch Williams liked that red cap.

I do not believe he had to pay quite the sum Wells paid for his hero's hat, but like Wells, Williams chose to don his cap in the field of play in 1992. And also like Wells, the manager, Jim Fregosi made him remove his red cap, as it did not conform to uniform standards.

Williams' performance was not not immediately affected by his lose. He saved 29 games for the Phils that year. He went on to save 43 more in 1993. But then fate had its day. The "dead-baseball great/cartoon celebrity" gods intervened in game 6 of the 1993 World Series. Joe Carter blasted one to left field and Phillie fans united in hating Mitch Williams. John Kruk even wanted to kill him, but didn't when he found out that it was illegal to do so.

Was it the cap, or the fact he had to take off?

Since then, Joe Carter was inducted into to Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and has appeared on Pro vs. Joes. It makes me wonder what cap he was forced to take off.

OUCH!!!

Cecilio is grimacing because he has just thrown off his hand. You can just make out the mangled nub and a haze of shattered hand innards.

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Impressively, Guante pitched for another 6 seasons after this horrific injury. He was a slightly above average pitcher for 9 seasons and paved the way for handless pitcher, Jim Abbott.

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The Yankees traded Doug Drabek for Guante in 1987. They also traded JT Snow for Abbott in 1992. If Johan Santana was missing a few digits, the Yankees may have pulled the trigger on a deal with the Twins!