While the base set was sold in packs across the nation for a buck or less ALL season long, the McDonald’s cards were available for less than a month in 11 restaurants in bucolic climes. Of course, the main difference between Clemens’ 1990 Score card and his 1990 McDonald’s Score card is availability. The back of the McDo nald’s card also is very Score-esque, with a full-color headshot, complete stats, and a biographical writeup. away), and photo angle being the main differentiators.
Knowing what we do now about Clemens’ propensity for physical fitness and healthy eating, it’s a bit jarring to see the red and yellow arches blazed just above The Rocket’s powerful right arm on his 1990 Score McDonald’s card.Īside from that bit of dissonance, the Clemens card feels very much like a Score product and is similar to his base 1990 Score card in layout and pose, with border color, uniform (home v. You also had a chance to pull, among others, Rickey Henderson, Ryne Sandberg, or Robin Yount. If you were lucky enough to find yourself at one of 11 (select) McDonald’s restaurants in rural Oregon and Idaho as winter retreated into the mountains, your order of fries and a soft drink would have netted you a four-pack of the blue-bordered beauties and a chance to win a trip the 1990 World Series, which suggests that the two companies might have had bigger, broader plans in the works.
1990 TOPPS ROGER CLEMENS FULL
Well, then you had more fun at McDonald’s than even the rest of the nation did, especially if you were a baseball fan.īecause, as teams and owners finally came to an agreement that sprung Spring training after a 32-day lockout that would ultimately push back the start of the season by a full week, Score and McDonald’s teamed up on a 25-set of some of baseball’s biggest stars. You had your folks, who were almost always the ones to take you to Mickey D’s.Īnd you had your fun: Happy Meals, heartburn, indoor playgrounds, Ronald.Īnd if you lived in a particular corner of the Pacific Northwest during a particular three-week window in the Spring of 1990? You had your food (allegedly): Big Macs, French Fries, Fried Apple Fritter Critters. Maybe a bit, but it was undoubtedly truthful. Never mind that, in 1990, McDonald’s seemed to be torn between Pee Wee Herman and The Little Mermaid with its advertising campaigns: Something we were always prepared for was more fast food, especially if it slid out from beneath a pair of Golden Arches.
1990 TOPPS ROGER CLEMENS SERIES
Click here to be notified when a new post in this series goes live.Īt the dawn of a new decade, the world was caught in a kind of cultural limbo, almost ready to let loose of the leg-warming, Cyndi Lauper excess of the 80s but not quite ready to embrace the Jerry Springer, Too-Legit-to-Quit excess of the 90s. More than 25 years later, though, it’s interesting to note that a card issued during that dim period between Roger’s first stumble and his baseball resurrection would be among the few pasteboards issued during the “junk wax” era to hold much value on the secondary market today.ĭon’t Miss Out! This post is part of a series on some of the most unusual baseball cards of the game’s great - or colorful - players. That Hot/Cold pairing almost always meant softening card prices, too, and those dreaded “down arrows” began appearing next to the vaunted Clemens cardboard.Ĭlemens rebounded in 1990 and, of course, went on to a storied career that, if you leave aside his extra-curricular activities, ranks as one of the best we’ve ever seen from the mound. It was an odd combination of adoration and disdain that’s reserved for the sport’s elite because a player must, at some point, be good enough to be “hot” before anyone cares enough to mark him “cold.”
Clemens, always a polarizing figure in the hobby, bounded up the “Cold List” in the old Beckett Baseball Monthly while also clinging to the lower regions of the “Hot List.” Then, his booster rocket fell off in 1989 and his ERA “ballooned” all the way to 3.13 while his record fell to a “paltry” 17-11. He followed up that Cy Young and MVP award-winning season with another Cy Young in 1987 and a top-notch campaign in 1988.
If you were in the market for a Roger Clemens baseball card during the peak years of the hobby boom, the spring of 1990 would have been as good a time as any to find a bargain.Īfter two “warm-up” years in 19, The Rocket had streaked across the baseball firmament in 1986 with a 24-4 record, 2.48 ERA, and 238 strikeouts.
0 kommentar(er)
