Moises Alou

Moises was one of the parade of prospects that I learned about early on, and how about that – he was actually good. Oh, and he was a great Expo, too (as I’ve talked about on that other site). Okay, so he peed on his hands. So what. Nasty? Yes. But effective. I can’t fault him if it worked.

 

Anyway, I don’t remember if I was excited to finally see an Alou card in the wild, but I know I had multiple copies of this card when I was a prospector, especially since he really only had this and the Fleer card in 1990. Come to think of it, why wasn’t he in the 1990 Upper Deck high numbers set? He was a fairly highly regarded prospect, especially with his pedigree. Kind of odd. Anyway, I still think this is a pretty cool card. It’s the kind of shot you don’t see much of, and on top of that it’s cool to see Alou in a Pirates uniform. 

Eric Lindros

Does anyone remember the hype behind this card? Lindros was, of course, a GIANT hockey prospect at the time, and I guess Score decided to cash in by taking some pictures of Lindros taking BP at the Skydome. Nobody really believed he was a baseball prospect – not even me, and I was crazy into the prospects at the time. Still, there was something almost mythical about this card, in a “Bo with Pads” kind of thing. It was the cherry on top of the cake when it came to getting the 1990 Score Update set.

 

Of course Lindros was never heard of within the baseball community, and this was more of an oddity than anything. I can’t comment too much on his hockey career, but from what I understand it was brilliant but damaged by multiple concussions. A shame…could he have done more in baseball? I doubt it, but it’s fun to think about.

Derek Bell

I covered Delino Deshields’ 1988 O-Pee-Chee card on my other site today, and as much as I’d love to write about Derek’s here, I think it’s better to offer some variety, so it is that we behold Derek’s 1990 Score Traded, his first mainstream card. Derek was one of the prospects that I first learned about in 1988, with his name mentioned in the same breath as Joey Belle when it came to being troubled. As a burgeoning Blue Jays collector, I was intrigued, especially by the Eric Davis comparisons that were being drawn; I was also really into Davis at the time.

Of course, finding the OPC card sent me over the moon, but I had to endure a few years’ wait after that for another Derek Bell card. It was an incredibly pleasant surprise to pick up the 1990 Score Traded set at a small coin shop in my hometown in 1990 (a coin shop that was the go-to-source for traded sets). 1990 Score had such a cool design, and though I was disappointed with the color scheme, I treasured all the random rookie cards in the set, including this Bell card.

 

This was also my first exposure to the conundrum of XRCs. I was confused at the time. Did the OPC card count as his rookie, or did this? Or would his 1991 cards count as rookies with both of these as oddities? I’m dismayed that this answer is just as, if not more, confusing than ever these days. I thought for sure it would eventually be answered. It makes me glad I got out of this rookie business.