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Friday, July 22, 2016

1994 Topps Frank Tanana


Frank Tanana was an underrated pitcher, who nearly got 3,000 strikeouts in the Bigs. He pitched for 21 seasons in the Majors and tallied up 2,773 strikeouts, leading the AL in K's in 1975. He came up with the Angels in 1973, and played with them through 1980. He spent the '81 season in Boston, then pitched 1982-1985 with the Rangers. He was traded to the Tigers in 1985, and stayed with them through 1992. His final season in 1993 was spent with the Mets and Yankees.  I actually saw Tanana pitch in Spring Training in 1992. I was 9 years old and had a copy of his 1989 Donruss card. I took a few pictures of him warming up in the bullpen before the game, and I may still have them somewhere. We are hopefully moving in a few months, and if our new home is big enough, I will probably move some of my boxes out of storage and hopefully find my old pictures.  Anyways, after the game, I was outside the stadium trying to get autographs. I had managed to get Kevin Ritz of the Tigers and I believe Gary Redus of the Pirates to sign a softball I had. Barry Bonds came running out of the tunnel, and I had his 1989 Topps card. He ran off and didn't sign, but some guy who had a poster of him followed him and came back with it signed. If I knew how good Bonds was going to be in the next decade, I would've chased him too, but I was 9 and didn't know any better. Later, Frank Tanana comes out. I followed him (why him and not Bonds???), and he just walked to his car and got in, never signing a thing. I would get revenge about 10 years later when I went to the Tigers fantasy camp in Lakeland to try to get autographs. Frank was there and he signed my 1989 Donruss card as well as a few others. I never know why, but Frank is always kind of ambrasive when signing autographs in person. He signed my cards, but made a comment like I had a ton of them and like I was going to sell them. Oh well. I got my '89 Donruss card signed by Frank.

Tanana was only missing 1 Topps card from his career run, which was his final '94 sunset card. His Topps run is now complete with this custom. He only got 1 card in 1994 (from Score), and I actually had to use the same photo for my card since I couldn't find any online.

Now to something totally off topic, but earlier in the week, I had brought a pack of Topps Series 1. It was nothing special, but I did get the base card of John Jaso, as well as the Gold parallel card of Jaso. I'm sure if you've collected for 5 or more years, you have probably had it happen to you where you pull a base card and a parallel card of the same player in 1 pack. Does anyone know if there is a term for that?  I know if you get like 3 or more of the same card in a row in a repack/pack/trade stack it is called 'Getting Bipped' in honor of Bip Roberts, but what about when you get the base and parallel card in the same pack?  Can we call it 'Getting Jaso'ed'?  While we're at it, how did the term 'Getting Bipped' begin?  It would be cool if the term 'Jaso'ed' would catch on to describe the whole base/parallel in a pack thing. Any thoughts?

Thanks for checking out my latest post.
-Jeremy

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