1995 Replacement Boston Red Sox

I've worked my way through the first team, and have made cards for as many players as I could for the Boston Red Sox. Before I show the cards, I wanted to go through all of the tools I have been using to figure this project out.

I have a main list of the position players from the 1995 STATS Replacement Player Handbook, which I started with first.

That is was what I had for the Red Sox. I went through each player, googling their name plus 'Red Sox', and if that didn't work, I would add 'baseball'. That would in most cases give me a photo of a minor league baseball card, or an actual picture. I would try to use COMC in most cases, just because Trading Card DB doesn't have pictures that you can zoom in on.  If one of the card sites didn't have a picture to use, I would search the other one. Off of this first list, the only name I couldn't find ANYTHING on was Jeff Hammond, an outfielder. Maybe because it said he probably wouldn't see any time because he went home or maybe he got injured?

After that, I went to the page listing 4 starters and a closer for each team.

I got all of the Red Sox for this page.

The last page from the book was one listing players they didn't have any (statistical) information for. You will notice that some of the players from the first page are listed on this page as well, so that leads me to believe that they just had their names and bio, and maybe not career stats. Boy, have we come a long way with the internet becoming mainstream.

I had a 2 players whom I couldn't find info for on these pages. Erik Lovedahl (found a guy named Erik Lovdahl who runs a pitching camp, but no useable pictures) and Lance Rathmell (found that he played in the minors for 2 seasons, no cards or picture). 

The last thing I did was check a file I saved for any names that weren't from the book. About 4 years ago, I was searching for replacement player names, and compiled a list of guys from every team that I got from scouring the internet. Since the book didn't list every single pitcher, I know some guys will be on the file who aren't on the book. For a few teams (Pirates, Twins, Indians), I have found various resources like old team photos, game programs and such, that I will have to research too. Here is a picture of the file I made. 

Since Ron Mahay was already on the first list, he is covered, so that means that I have the most complete 1995 Topps replacement player set for the Boston Red Sox. Here it is with notes.

 This was the only photo I could find of Huebner, and it just happened to be a game photo. Too bad it is blurry.

 Current Red Sox pitching coach and 2004, 2013, and 2018 World Series winning coach Dana Levangie.

 This team had some nice nicknames. Besides Pork Chop, there is also a guy named 'Pookie' Bernstine. They both have minor league cards if you want to start player collecting.

 Cesar appeared on a few Topps and Bowman cards in the early '90's.

 Lou played in MLB after the strike.

 Scott Wade was in the 1990 Topps TV Red Sox set. Let's hope the Topps people found him and gave him his $7,500.00 check.

 Andy Abad played in MLB after the strike.

 Pookie!  He was out of baseball since 1989.

 Ron Mahay was an outfielder, converted to pitcher, and was the last replacement player to appear in MLB after the strike, finally hanging up his spikes in 2010. He gets the hero number for this.

Dan pitched in the Majors in 1991 for the Detroit Tigers.

 Mike was out of baseball since 1990, but in 2015, he was set to make a comeback in the independent leagues.

Eric was out of baseball since 1989.

There's my first team set. I don't know if the rest will go as fast, but hopefully I will have as high of a success rate in finding pictures as I have with this one.

Thanks for checking out my latest post.
-Jeremy