The Thomas Weiner Card Company?

1981 is considered by many to be the year when baseball cards went from being a hobby to an industry. The main reason for this is that Topps' monopoly had come to an end thanks to the lankmark court case filed by Fleer. The end result was that collectors were given three options to collect in Topps, Fleer and Donruss. Heading into the 1981 baseball season, I had been anticipating Fleer's entry into the baseball card market for a few years as the court case was covered regularly in Sports Collectors Digest. Thanks to the heavy lifting done by the Fleer, a new and relatively unknown trading card manufacturer entered the baseball card market as well.

Donruss started out as a confectionary company in 1954 and was originally known as The Thomas Weiner Company. Somewhere along the way, I'm guessing the owners Donald and Russell Weiner probably figured that their last name was probably causing more harm than good since the products they were selling was targeting towards children. As a result, they changed the company's name to Donruss which was the combined short versions of their own names. Note: Looking back, it's a good thing that it happened. I don't see collectors dropping $50 - $100 in the 1980's for a 1984 Thomas Weiner Don Mattingy Rookie Card.

 

Below are images of all of Steve Garvey's cards from Donruss' base sets released during 1981-1987.

 



1981 Donruss #56 (front)

 
Here's my review of Donruss' initial effort in 1981

Bad

• Release comes off as rushed as almost the entire set was photographed in Chicago (Commiskey or Wrigley)
• Over half the cards in the set have one kind of error in it or another (Donruss arguably went out of their way to correct the errors in order to generate revenue)
• Card stock is poor
• Printing quality is bad
• The cutting of the cards is uneven
• Collation inside a pack is horrible. Often times, the 18 card packs consisted of just two or three teams worth of players.

Good

• The design was attractive
• The card backs were inivative and maximized space
• Multiple cards of star players
• Their gum tasted the best of the three manufacturers

I've always been curious on how Donruss' product development team produced their 1981 set. For a company that had been around since 1954 and had been producing popular non-sport trading cards (Kiss, Elvis, Monkees, Addams Family...etc) for twenty years, they really shouldn't have had as many mistakes with their initial set as they did. Was it a case where they got their baseball card license at the last minute?
 

1981 Donruss #56 (back)


The career highlights layout is now used by MLB.com on their player bios. For what it's worth, Donruss had a corrected (surpassed 21 HR) and error version (surpassed 25 HR) of the 1980 career highlight.


1981 Donruss #176 (front)



This is the second of two Steve Garvey cards in the 1981 Donruss set. It was actually taken in 1980 and at Dodger Stadium since Steve is wearing his home uniform and has the 1980 All-Star Game patch on the left shoulder of his jersey.

 

 

 

1981 Donruss #176 (back)

The back of the second Garvey card in the set is more of a highlight card. Unfortunately, multiple cards of the same player within a set wasn't received as well as Donruss liked and they nixed the idea. In it's place, they created the popular Diamond Kings subset.

 

 

1982 Donruss Diamond Kings #3 (front)


Steve was the third card in the inaugural Diamond Kings subset behind two of the most self absorbed players in baseball not named Reggie Jackson in Pete Rose and Gary Carter.

Diamond Kings were originally watercolor paintings created by Dick Perez.



1982 Donruss Diamond Kings #3 (back)



Donruss corrected the card stock issues from the year prior and produced a thicker card in 1982. 

 

 

1982 Donruss #84 (front)


The 1982 design was pretty forgetful (though that could be true for all three card companies). This appears to be a shot from Spring Training. I can't tell but I think that's a 1980 All-Star Game patch on his jersey.

1982 Donruss #84 (back)



Donruss revamped their backs in 1982 to include more statistics and condensed the highlights. This design must have been a hit in their corporate office as they chose to do very little updates to their card backs for close to a decade. Not to miss out on an idea, Fleer would do the same thing starting in 1983.

 

1983 Donruss #488 (front)

1983 Donruss in my opinion is an underrated set. While it looks a lot like their 1982 set, Donruss did a lot to clean up their set quality-wise by improving the quality of their photography as well as creating a second subset that would take the hobby by storm in 1984 in their Rated Rookies. Note: If you're not aware, Greg Brock and Al Chambers were Rated Rookies in 1983 and Donruss noted so on the back of their cards.


1983 Donruss #488 (back)

For much of his time with the Dodgers, Steve lived in Calabasas. It's a suburb in the southwest San Fernando Valley that's part of Los Angeles. Calabasas gets a lot of airplay today because the Kardashians live and film their TV show there (unfortunately, part of being married is watching shows like these which means that I guess I'm not going to be able to sue for $75K like some people). 

I didn't notice until this post that his contract status says, "Became a free agent after the 1982 season". I still remember the Dodgers excuse (in particular Al Campanis' excuse) for letting Steve go as a free agent. It was "It's better to let a player go one year to soon than one year too late". If I remember correctly, Steve actually was willing to take a hometown discount to re-sign with the Dodgers but Peter O'Malley/Al Campanis weren't really interested since future Hall of Famer (sic) Greg Brock had just hit 50 Homers in AAA Albuquerque in 1982 and was set to take over at first base.

Without going on too much of a tangent, I'm as much a fan of what the O'Malley's (especially Walter) did for the Dodgers as anyone. With that said, Peter O'Malley unfortunately had one major character flaw that resulted in my two all-time favorite players leaving the Dodgers when in both cases they didn't have to go.

That flaw was the inability to adapt to changes as the changes were happening. In the first case, the change was Free Agency. Instead of accepting it, he initially tried to low ball the system. It wasn't until he brought in an outside influence in Fred Claire that he was able to figure Free Agency out. In the second case, the change was cable television and the player was Mike Piazza. While sports was growing into a 24/7 industry, Peter O'Malley feel asleep at the wheel while Jerry Buss of the Lakers was starting a sports cable channel in Prime Ticket. The extra money and exposure from Prime Ticket helped the Lakers take over the Los Angeles market and dominate NBA in the 1980's (and arguably since then).

The Dodgers on the other hand were missing out on this opportunity and soon would be taken over by a corporate entity that would establish a local sports cable channel (see page 216) but result in Mike Piazza getting traded in order for it to happen.

That's enough reminiscing for one day.

 

1984 Donruss #63 (front)

1984 saw Donruss issue their landmark set that's arguably the most popular release of the entire decade (sorry 1989 Upper Deck, 1984 Fleer Update and 1983 Topps). For Steve, it meant a chance to model his self-proclaimed "Taco Bell' uniform.

1984 Donruss #63 (back)

Donruss started another ritual with their card backs in 1984 that continued on for the rest of the decade in numbering the major stars card backs right after the first two subsets (Diamond Kings and Rated Rookies). This was an attempt to replicate Topps' success of issuing cards ending in 5, 0, 50 and 00 for stars and superstars.


1985 Donruss # 307 (front)
  

Donruss recesistated black borders in 1985 and ended up doing a rather fine job of it. Two years later, they'd try it again but not be as successful. Fortunately for Steve, this is his last Donruss card in the Taco Bell uniforms.



1985 Donruss #307* (back)

* I guess you could say I pulled a Donruss (circa 1981). In my rush to scan the cards for this post, I ended up scanning the 1985 Leaf version instead (as evidenced by the French writing on the back of the card).

1986 Donruss #63 (front)



Judging by the look on Steve's face, reality has probably set in the he's a Padre. At least he can take comfort in the fact that the Padres changed their uniforms.

 

1986 Donruss #63 (back)

During his playing days as a Padre, Steve lived in La Jolla (pronounced La Hoya). It's known as the Beverly Hills of San Diego and has some of the richest real estate in the country.



1987 Donruss #114 (front)

Steve's shown here wearing the Padres' jersey he made famous during Pete Rose's 4192nd hit on 09/11/1985. It's interesting to see that some of his cards show him wearing one batting glove and others show him wearing two.

1987 Donruss #81* (back)

* I dropped the ball again and scanned the 1987 Leaf version.

Hope Springs Eternal - Part Two

A friend of mine and I got into a conversation recently about old baseball cards and some of the ones mentioned (Lou Piniella and Bill Davis' multiple Topps Rookie Star cards) were covered in a post I wrote a while ago. He mentioned two other players that had multiple Topps rookie star cards that I found interesting. Details on each of them are listed below.

The first player is Wally Wolf. Wally was a right-handed pitcher for USC in college and was one of the very first players for the Houston Colt .45's organization when, as a 19 year old, he signed with them in June 1961 (one year prior to the .45's inaugural season). In 1962, he had an amazing season (16-3 W-L, 2.87 ERA, 172 K's in 160 innings) for Durham in Class B (the same as Single A today). This prompted Houston to move Wally all the way up to AAA at the end of 1962. He wasn't ready for the league as he ended up getting bombed (0-6 W-L, 9.93 ERA in 9 games). Regardless, Topps ended up including Wally Wolf on a 1963 Topps Rookie Stars card with Ron Herbel, John Miller and Ron Taylor.

1963 Topps # 208 Wally Wolf and Friends

In 1963, Wally had a strong season in Double-AA San Antonio for Houston (7-3 W-L, 3.13 ERA, 82 K's in 92 IP) but it appears to be abbreviated since he only made twelve starts. That would be Wally's last season with Houston as he was packaged along with Jim Dickson in a trade to the Cincinnati Reds for veteran infielder Eddie Kasko in January 1964.

Wally would spend the next three years in the Reds organization trying to regain the form he showed in 1962 and 1963 in the minors for Houston. Eventually, Cincinnati gave up and let the California Angels select him in the minor league draft in November 1966.

With a new team in a new organization, Wally righted the ship in 1967 while in AA El Paso (11-7 W-L, 3.55 ERA, 134 K's in 142 IP) and appeared destined for the Majors. Unfortunately, things didn't work out as planned and the Angels converted Wally to a reliever during the 1968 season as a result of a mediocre year split between AA and AAA.

1969 ended up being a great year for the now 27 year old pitcher as a solid season in AA El Paso (9-4 W-L, 3.38 ERA, 88 K's in 96 IP) resulted in a September call up with the Angels. On September 27th, 1969, Wally was called on to get the last out in bottom of the 7th inning against the Oakland Athletics and allowed an RBI single to Joe Rudi. He then proceeded to get Dave Duncan to fly out to Jim Fregosi. The results had little outcome on the game as future Hall of Fame Catfish Hunter was in the process of throwing a three-hit shutout.

Three days later, Wally would have his second and last appearance of 1969 against the Kansas City Royals. In that game, he ended up pitching the last two innings of a game started by Tom Murphy with the Angels. Trailing 5-2, he ended up giving up a three-run home run to Ed Kirkpatrick.

1970 Topps # 74 Wally Wolf and Friend

Topps' took notice of Wally's 1969 season by including him on a 1970 Topps rookie stars card with Greg Washburn. This resulted in what's probably the longest period of time (seven years) a player had been on two of Topps'rookie stars card. To make things even more ironic, Topps used the same photo on the 1970 card that was on the 1963 card.

His 1970 season with the Angels lasted all of four games. After that, he never reached the majors again and he soon retired. Wally's final career numbers were: 0-0 W-L, 7.04 ERA, 7 K's in 7 2/3 IP.  Topps never produced another card of Wally outside of those two Rookie Stars cards.



The second player my friend and I discussed was George Korince. George was a right-handed pitcher out of Ottawa, Canada with the nickname Moose that the Detroit Tigers signed as an amateur free agent in 1965. George quickly moved up the Tigers minor league ladder with two strong seasons in 1965 in Single-A and 1966 in Double-AA (9-8 W-L, 3.76 ERA, 183 K's in 182 IP).

He eventually caught the attention of the folks over at Topps (at least his name did) as they included him on a Tigers Rookie Stars card in their 1967 Topps set along with John Matchick (who went by his middle name Tommy).

1967 Topps # 72 George Korince and Friend (Error)

Unfortunately for George, Topps mistakenly put a photo Ike Brown on his card which is odd because George was Caucasian and Ike is African-American. What's even more interesting is that Ike didn't have his first Topps card until 1970 so this card pre-dated his rookie card by three years!

For whatever reason, this mistake (unlike the Dick Ellsworth/Ken Hubbs fiasco from the year prior) must have embarrased the folks at Topps because they chose to correct the card by issuing another George Korince Rookie Stars in the same 1967 Topps set. This time they included him with Pat Dobson and noted that this is a correct photo of George on the back of the card!

1967 Topps #526 George Korince (front - corrected) 

1967 Topps #526 George Korince (back - corrected)
Note: Topps wants you to know this is actually George in this photo.

In retrospect, I believe this is the only time an error has been acknowledged by a manufactuer and corrected with a different card. Because 1960's cards were produced in multiple series, Topps must have felt that issuing a low numbered correction in a high numbered set would have been confusing to kids.

I'd note that fifteen years later, Donruss would repeat the mistake of confusing persons of different race only this time they put a photo of a Caucasian player (Gary Lucas) on an African-American's card (Juan Eichelberger). When the error was corrected, it was done the more traditional way of updating the photo in later printings.

1982 Donruss # 422 Juan Eichelberger (error that pictures Gary Lucas)

1982 Donruss # 422 Juan Eichelberger (corrected)

Going back to George Korince, he would pitch in nine games for the Tigers in 1967 highlighted by his first and only career win on May 13th against the Boston Red Sox. Topps was impressed enough to include him on another Rookie Stars card in 1968. This time with Fred Lasher

1968 Topps # 447 George Korine and Friend

A successful major league career would never happen for George. He would never appear in another major league game after 1967 and was out of professional baseball by 1970. George's final career numbers were: 1-0 W-L, 4.24 ERA, 13 K's in 17 IP and 11 Games. Ironicaly, the only cards Topps produced of George were these three Rookie Stars cards.