Sometime in October 2022 I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):
When I was younger, I was obsessed with rookies. The promise of a new ballplayer waiting in the minors to ply his trade in the Majors was like catnip to me for a number of reasons. For one thing, I was always one to appreciate the anticipation--the journey--rather than the destination. Christmas Eve was always more exciting to me because of the unknown; maybe Sana would bring me an AT-AT this year or a Millennium Falcon or a 2-XL robot.
A lot of kids were excited about the minutes after ripping open their presents. The gifts still in the packages, framed by feet and feet of colorful wrapping paper. "What am I going to play with first," they thought. Me? I was always a bit depressed. "Is that it? Do I have to wait another 364 days to get what I really wanted?"
The anticipation was the killer, because reality never was as good as your imagination.
In the 1980s, rookies were big business in the baseball card world and it was because of the promise of "What if". What if Mark McGwire hits 70 home runs in a year? What if Al Pedrique makes people forget Ozzie Smith? What if Ellis Burks is a perennial All-Star who leads the Red Sox to a World Series?
And what if I have their rookie cards? Shit. I'll be rich. More than that. I'll be filthy rich. My college expenses? Taken care of--my kids' education too. New car? How about a sweet ride for every day. My parents? They could retire. These flimsy pieces of cardboard were the keys to my financial stability for the rest of my life. The key was that not only did I need to own and keep these cards mint, but the ballplayers on the front of them need to fulfill their promises.
They'll get rich and so will I.
So being very keen on rookies was both something that was encoded in my DNA (anticipation of greatness) and was important to my budding financial portfolio. The one thing that ratcheted this up even further was that there was probably 100 rookies making their debut every season. You could collect all of their cards, but you couldn't collect the multitudes of their cards necessary to make you wealthy. So you had to pick and choose. Who had the look of a guy that was going to not only be good, but capture the zeitgeist in a way like Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays did?
You find that guy and not only are you made in the shade, but you can tell everyone how you picked him. You saw the thing that made him special. You're the smartest one in the baseball card shop. It's an ego stroke.
With that preamble, today's card: Carlos Quintana, I was never a fan of. I can't tell you why, because I was immediately invested in every Red Sox rookie but from the time he was called up to Boston until the day he left Fenway five seasons, I wanted him gone. I don't know whether it was because he didn't have the makeup of what I thought a first baseman or right fielder (his two primary positions) should have: namely power.
For his career Quintana slashed .276/.350/.362 and hit 19 home runs. Total. He played 149 games in back-to-back seasons (1990 and 1991) but I couldn't tell you a single big moment that he came through in. He was just there. There was nothing exciting about him. He hit close to .300 those years, but his power was low (11 homers was his career high in 1991) and he was particularly defensively gifted either.
At the time I just wanted my stars to be bigger than life: Rickey Henderson, Bo Jackson, Jose Canseco. Dudes who were fast and knocked the ball into next week. Quintana was nothing like that. He'd hit singles and play station-to-station baseball. He was an uninteresting player on a good, but ultimately uninteresting team.
Watching him every night was anger-inducing. Why does Oakland have all the good rookies? Pittsburgh too. And Cincinnati. And Chicago! They have two teams with two awesome young players (Mark Grace and Frank Thomas). Boston's best rookie is Carlos Quintana. Gross.
In February of 1992 the most interesting--and worst--thing happened to Quintana. He was in his home country of Venezuela playing winter ball. He had to drive both of his brothers to the hospital, they were both shot. As he was speeding to the hospital, he got into a pretty big car accident and broke his left arm and big toe, while his wife broke both of her legs. He was out for the entire 1992 season.
It was a tragedy that I don't remember anyone ever getting to the bottom of. I think that reporters asked about it, the Red Sox made some statements and then it was dropped. I don't want to say that's how boring Carlos Quintana was but if that happened to Wade Boggs or Roger Clemens or Mike Greenwell, I think people would still be talking about it.
That injury opened the door for a player who was already pushing Quintana, Mo Vaughn. Vaughn was the rookie that everyone wanted to play. He was loud, he was a big dude, he could hit for power and average, he had presence. I thought that he was the Red Sox version of Frank Thomas. And now he was getting his shot! This was the anticipation that I was talking about!
Handed the first base job, Mo didn't have a great year in 1992 and when I read the reports Quintana was working his way back, I was nervous. Was this going to be like the Christmas days of the past? Not really. Quintana came back and played the 1993season and he was clearly still hurt. The Sox kept big Mo at first and bounced Q around from first (to give Mo a break) to the outfield, but he wasn't the same player. They released him after the 1993 season and he never played in the Majors again.
Mo turned into an All-Star, won the MVP in 1995 and had some truly great seasons for the Sox before departing to the Angels for big money. That wasn't his best decision as he was hurt, fat and ineffective for California before getting traded to the Mets and finishing his career.
At the end of the day, no one really got rich off of baseball cards. I paid my college loans every month, I wasn't able to allow my parents to retire early and my wife and each have a car (not seven). But that anticipation is what keeps you going. You just never fucking know.
