1988 Donruss All-Star #34

Sticking with 1988 Donruss/Leaf is a card from what appears to be a separate "All-Star" set. Hmmm...


You'd think I'd know a little more about my Darryl Strawberry cards, but the truth is that I obtained so many of these when I was younger that I just can't recall where they came from. I thought this particular card was a part of the regular '88 Donruss set when I first came across it, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

OK, so the front appears to be normal ol' Donruss card, but the back has a different shape around the number: a star instead of a baseball.


Nothing else is unusual about the card. You've got the typical paragraph explaining the early start to what coulda-shoulda been the best career ever, and as usual the card maker makes an awkward attempt to keep the sentences as concise as possible, grammar and punctuation be damned. I say awkward because they never shorten things as much as possible, even if their oversight would've been a better way of wording things. Take the very last line, for example: "...leading all first-year NL players in HR...". They could've simply said "all NL rookies." Boom! 10 characters, gone.

The "1987 Oakland All-Star Game" logo on the bottom right of the card is what makes me think this may have been a limited release set.

Of course, limited by 1988 standards means a hundred thousand sets.

1988 Leaf #220

Quick and easy post today of Strawberry's 1988 Leaf card. No sense in going much in to detail since the card is largely unchanged from the American version, save for the French translations on the back and the "LEAF" logo on the front:


I did stumble in to one curious omission on the back. See where there's just one sentence in English, at the bottom? Well, there are two French sentences!!


Literally translated (at www.freetranslation.com), it says, "one among 8 players of the baseball has to do to mark and has to mark more than 100 points the last annee".

Errrrr... what? A little help from any French speakers out there, please!

And also, it's "runs", not "points." A translation error, I'm sure. Looking at the actual stats on the card, the only two significant numbers in the hundreds are Strawberry's RBI (104) and Runs (108) totals from the 1987 season, so I'm going out on a limb and guessing it has something to do with those two categories. I wonder why the French speakers got this added bit of info???

Who knows.

1988 Donruss #439

Close your eyes, kids, this post is gonna get ugly.

For some reason, when I think of overproduced cards of the late '80s and early '90s, I think of 1988 Donruss. Maybe it's because I have a billion of them laying around even though I don't remember ever opening them when I was a kid, or maybe it's because they're made of the cheapest card stock possible and are nearly impossible to keep in reasonable condition. I don't know. But a Strawberry card is a Strawberry card, so his '88 Donruss #439 must be posted.


Typical shot of Straw waiting to turn on a fastball. Half of Straw's cards from the '80s show this same pose, so I'm not knocking Donruss for doing what everyone else was doing. What I don't like is the border. Could it be any more uninspired? Black... blue... red... repeat.

The back:


Like the front, nothing to get excited about, but I always get a kick out of arbitrary abbreviations. If I didn't know any better, I'd think the writers texted in their blurbs for publication. "No. 1 choice in 6/80 am. draft." First off, to be less confusing, it should at least say 06/80, especially since they're referring to an event eight years prior to the printing of this card. It's not exactly fresh in everyone's mind. Sure, I figured out what they meant fairly quickly, but they could've squeezed in another character. Although for some reason my mind still processes the line as 6/80 morning draft because of the "am". Six o'clock in the morning?! That's awfully early for a draft that isn't televised, anyway!

1988 Fleer #637

First off, I want to give a truly sincere apology for not keeping up with posting to Darryl Strawberry Fields. I've been busy (as has everybody else in the world), and planned ahead with my other site, The Priceless Pursuit, but not so much this one. I'm sure nobody out there even cares all that much, but I just wanted to let you all know that DSF is back!

And what better card to get things started again than 1988 Fleer #637, Crunch Time: Darryl Strawberry and Eric Davis!


'88 Fleer is still one of my favorite designs from the late '80s. That's not saying a whole lot since most cards in that time period were absolutely hideous, but white backgrounds are timeless. And could there be two hotter '80s prospects to feature on one card?? I've always liked cards with more than one player on them - it's a nice little bonus, some added bang for the buck. Straw and Davis were absolute studs, so pulling this card in 1988 was truly a thrill.

Of course, I've pulled the card about 30 times since then, but that's just a testament to the absurd overproduction of cards two decades ago. Can't blame Straw for that.

If digital cameras had been around in 1988, the photographer surely would've taken at least one more picture of the two. Davis looks serious enough, but Darryl's moth is hanging open as if he's telling the cameraman to hold on a second, he's not ready. Both players are wearing road gray pants, so it must've been during Spring Training.

This card reminds me of a t-shirt I once had, featuring the two players as teammates on the Dodgers. On the front was Darry Strawberry, on the back was Davis. Through the middle of the shirt (essentially connecting the front pic to the back) it read, "Bat 2 Bat". Like back to back, like in the batting order. Get it?

As for the back of the card (see what I did there?), the card highlights how both players went from mere prospects to superstars and mentions the crazy 1987 seasons both players had, even by today's standards: Davis hit .293 with 37 homers and 50 stolen bases, Strawberry hit 39 homers and stole 36 bases. Remember, this was 1987! Those numbers were prodigious back then and would be MVP caliber in 2009.


It's good to be back! Darryl Strawberry fields is much more niche than my broader site, but I enjoy it just as much, and I hope you do, too. I've scanned enough cards ahead of time to ensure I don't fall too far behind again, even if I do post a bit less frequently than I do over at The Priceless Pursuit..

Moving

The site's not going anywhere, but I am. The wife and I just purchased our new home and have been absolutely slammed with packing, cleaning, painting, moving, and now unpacking. I've been a bit negligent when it comes to keeping this site updated, but rest assured that I'm aware of that and will be back to posting Darryl Strawberry cards with some semblance of regularity very soon!

I planned well enough with my other site, The Priceless Pursuit, and wrote lots of entries in advance, so visit it for more regular updates!

Duo-tang-ks a lot!

OK, if you found your way here from the link I posted at The Priceless Pursuit, you can see that I'm double dipping on the posts today. Perhaps the two sites have different readers, and I'd hate for a gift like the one I recently received to go unrecognized.



Duo-tang-ks... thanks... get it? No?? I think it's fairly creative, and I'm nothing if not a sucker for horrible plays on words, so I'm gonna force this one down your throat. You may be wondering why I'm showing you a 1989 Topps card of Darryl Strawberry. Couple reasons: Darryl is my absolute favorite player (obviously) and also because Dave at Tribe Cards sent me a different "version" of this card, except much better.

Stay with me.

I want to give a big "duo-tang-ks" (now it's growing on you, right?!) to Dave, the king of crazy giveaways and easily one of the most generous bloggers out there. Check out his site and make it part of your regular reading if you're unfamiliar with it. Introduce yourself to him and sign up for a giveaway or two - you won't regret it!

If you're not in the know, you're no doubt wondering, "Why does he keep saying 'duo-tang-ks'?" (one more shot... is it funny yet?) Well, 20 years ago or so, a company by the name of Duo-Tang released a series of pocket folders that were actually blown-up versions of Topps cards, accurately depicting both the front and backs. Dave actually sent me two of them:



I have no idea how these were distributed, but I can only assume it was a regional deal. Pocket folders were always on my school supply list, and my mom always let me pick out my own folders, but I never had any Darryls. I distinctly remember an Eddie Murray from his days with the Orioles, and at the time our family was living in northern Virginia. I don't know why I'd pick out an Orioles folder for a reason other than this.

Thanks again, Dave! The wife and I are in the final stages of the home buying process, so we now have a safe place to keep all of our documents. After that's over with (IF it's ever over with - it sometimes feels like a never ending process), little Joseph III will some day have the coolest pocket folders in his class.

1988 Fleer #151

I swear, the older I get the faster time seems to slip away.

My wife and I have had a lot going on in our lives lately, most importantly learning that our first child is going to be a boy - and no doubt a Darryl Strawberry fan, too! He'll be our first, so we're excited. I'm currently tricking myself in to thinking that I'll have lots of late nights to write about baseball cards while baby Joseph (the 3rd!) sleeps, though I've got a funny feeling that won't happen.

I'll still write, of course, but I'm told that we'll sleep when the baby sleeps. Which means I can write about baseball cards in the 20 hours a day he'll be awake. Yippee!

But enough about me - let's (finally) get back to the Darryl Strawberry cards. Next up is 1988 Fleer, #151.


It's an all too familiar pose of Strawberry crushing a fastball, this particular shot apparently taken in Wrigley Field. All of Darryl's accessories are the same, except this time he's wearing a gray undershirt. Must've been laundry day - to this point, he's usually rocking a blue or orange shirt underneath his jersey.

Unlike other Fleer issues a couple years before and after this card, I like the design of this card; I think we've all got a soft spot for white cards (Allen & Ginter, anyone??).

I enjoy the back, too:


I could do without the excessive empty space between the stats and the bottom of the cards, and I've never understood the uneven colored columns. But I've never paid attention to the very bottom, where Fleer breaks down Strawberry's day, night, home, and road statistics. How progressive! Strawberry seems to have been best in home night games.

He must not have been a morning person.

Now on twitter!

Well, sort of.

The Priceless Pursuit - my other site - is on twitter. If you like Darryl Strawberry, you probably grew up in the same era of baseball as I did, so you'll like the broader card entries over there. Seriously, check it out.

Keep updated on my "priceless pursuit" of the junk wax era of card collecting, along with cheaper purchases of newer products, in short 140 character snippets at twitter!

Follow Priceless_Cards, and you'll never miss an entry!

In the mean time, thanks for reading Darryl Strawberry Fields! More great entries coming soon...

1988 Score #360 of 660

We're going from one of the most visually appealing Strawberry cards in my collection to something definitely not so visually appealing: 1988 Score.


I'm sorry, but the green just doesn't work for me. Why couldn't Score have color coded this set with colors more appropriate for the player pictured? Topps did, so it couldn't have been that difficult. They captured a nice enough action shot of Straw, taken just a fraction of a second before the ball was launched in to the grand stands, but the green is soooo ugly. It completely ruins the card.

Things aren't any better on the back:

Red, green, blue... I don't get it. But if there was ever a writer who knew how to talk up a player, it was the guy who wrote the copy on the back of Darryl's card.

"Darryl has so much natural talent that it would not be surprising if he someday won the Triple Crown, stole over 50 bases and gained a Gold Glove, all in one season."

Woah, easy there. Wouldn't be surprising? I think that sort of year would turn a few heads, don't you? Continuing to get carried away, the writer describes Strawberry as "the first player picked in the entire nation in 1980." Technically, yes, Strawberry was the first player picked in the entire nation in the 1980 draft, but that's a flowery way to put it. The sentence describing Darryl has having "prodigeous power, terrific speed and a cannon for an arm" is yet another reminder of how great Strawberry could've been.

The way Score chose to display each card's number was a little strange. Notice that it's displayed as 360 of 660 as if it was serial numbered. That'd be an absurdly small print run for a card of the '80s! 360 of 660 thousand, maybe.

1988 Topps #710

I think we'll all be thankful that Strawberry's hideous '87 Donruss Diamond Kings painting won't be the first thing visible at this site any more!

Next up, 1988 Topps #710:



Topps hit a grand slam with the aesthetics on the front of this card. I'm not a Mets fan, but even I can acknowledge that this is a perfect blend of blue and orange. It just seems so... evenly distributed.

You've got the orange "METS" at the top, the light blue border, the darker blue background behind Strawberry's name, and a whole mish-mash of blue and orange on Darryl's uniform. He's even wearing what appear to be "real" stirrups - as opposed to the fake stripe version. No wonder Strawberry was such an unstoppable force on the diamond: If you look good, you play good.

This was the first year I remember really liking the back of a card, or at least noticing it:


The orange just continues with the overall color scheme of the card. Even though all of the card backs in '88 were orange, it's especially appropriate on Darryl's card. We've got the game winning RBI stat (he had five in 1987, 47 in his career to that point), a blurb about his Texas League dominance (34 HR, 100 walks and a .602 slugging percantage in '82), and a shout out to the scout who signed him, Roger Jongewaard. Nice find, Roger!

The light, white baseballs across the top behind the player's name are a nice, albeit subtle, touch.

The only thing odd is the absurdly high card number assigned to a superstar of Strawberry's caliber, #710. Topps is notorious for assigning round numbers to the game's elite, but 710 seems like they almost forgot about Straw.

Roger Jongewaard never would've overlooked him. Multiple pages in my Strawberry binder are filled with this '88 Topps card.