Lenny Randle played in the Majors from 1971 until 1982. I didn't really know much about him until the MLB Network had a documentary about him that I saw. Turns out, he is quite the interesting character. He is most famous for trying to blow on a baseball to make it go foul when he was playing 3B for the Mariners. He also became known for punching Rangers manager Frank Lucchesi during a 1977 Spring Training game. He was famously at the plate when the power went out at Shea Stadium during a blackout in 1977, and the documentary also said he was an amateur comedian.
In 1983, he became the first MLB player to play baseball in Italy, where he set many records, and then in 1989 and 1990, he played in the Senior Professional Baseball Association. In early 1995 when the Major League players were on strike, he signed with the California Angels as a replacement player. He missed his chance on returning to MLB when the strike ended that spring.
Topps didn't have to make cards of replacement players because nobody ever played, but I always wondered what would have happened if Topps released a 1994 Topps Traded "Update" set in early 1995 with the replacement players in it. We would've got cards of Randle, Oil Can Boyd, Pedro Borbon, Guillermo Hernandez, and others.
This Randle card was a doozie. The only picture I could find of Randle in an Angels uniform was from Lenny's website, but it was in black and white. I ended up using it and trying to blend a lot of the colors on the uniform after I tried colorizing it, and then inserting his face from a different color picture in it. It looks a little suspect, but it's better than some of the crap airbrushed stuff we've seen from Topps before.
Hope you enjoyed the latest card in my custom set. Thanks for reading.
-Jeremy
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