Jeromy Burnitz was drafted by the New York Mets in 1990 and was a mega prospect. He missed getting a card in the 1991 set, but got prospect cards in the 1992 and 1993 sets before making it to the bigs in '93 and getting his own '94 Topps card. Burnitz never made it in New York, and was traded to the Cleveland Indians in '95. He didn't get a card in the 1996 Topps set (which if I'm not mistaken, was the smallest one Topps has ever done at 440 cards). Burnitz got traded to the Milwaukee Brewers in '96, and his career started taking off and he had multiple 30-HR seasons. He appeared on tons of cards in his Brewer years, and after 2002, he started towards the end of his career and played for a few different teams. Burnitz's 2002 Topps Traded bat relic card was the first Game-Used card I ever pulled from a pack, and it featured him with his first team (and 2003 team), the New York Mets. Burnitz went on to play for the Dodgers, Cubs, and Rockies, before suiting up for the Pirates in 2006, his last season. Jeromy missed out on a sunset card in 2007.
All in all, Topps did a pretty good job of getting Burnitz a card in all of his seasons. The 1996 set was pretty small (probably due to lack of interest in baseball due to the 1994 strike), so many middle-of-the-run players and younger, unproven players missed out on getting cards in that set. Not sure why he missed out on the '91 Draft Pick card, but Todd Van Poppel also missed out on a card that year, and he was supposed to be Nolan Ryan. Many players have missed out on sunset cards over the last 20 years at Topps, and I suppose because the Pirates were rebuilding in '07 that Topps didn't include him.
I hope to do a few more players for this blog theme. None currently come to mind, but if you can think of a player who missed 2 or more cards from Topps who played from 1988 to the present, let me know, and I should be able to come up with a few Topps cards to complete their Topps run.
Thanks for checking out my blog.
-Jeremy
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