Danny Heep 1990 Fleer

On June 12, 2017 I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

On Facebook, I wrote: Almost by definition, sports are unfair. But baseball might be the most unfair game of them all. Ted Williams, Yaz, Ernie Banks, Barry Bonds and scores of other Hall of Famers have never stood on the mountaintop as a World Champion. 

2019 Notes: What I mean by sports being unfair is that you can be the absolute best at your game, but you can still have nothing (in terms of championships) to show for it. And baseball seems to be the toughest. Even someone like Barry Bonds only stepped to the plate (at most) four times a game. If his other teammates don't deliver, it doesn't matter. 

And unfortunately, people don't take that into consideration when they talk about all-timers. "Did he win a Championship?" is usually one of the first questions. And it's unfair, I think. 

Danny Heep won two World Series with two different teams in three years. Unless he made his living rescuing babies and nuns from burning buildings in a previous life, karma sucks.

2019: This is sort of a weird analogy. I think that what I was trying to get at was you have to be lucky--not necessarily great--to be on a championship team. And for Heep to be on two in three years is a pretty lucky especially when juxtaposed with his career. Danny Heep played for 13 seasons in the major leagues and he had a skill set, pinch hitter extraordinaire, but he wasn't Williams or Yaz or Banks or Bonds. So what's the explanation for his good fortune? Karmic retribution? I was making a joke, but at the same time, how can you explain luck?

This 1990 Fleer card was sent to me through Tulsa, Oklahoma from the BCB. To me, Danny Heep was an anomaly. When I was a kid I loved when the Sox picked up veteran players I had heard of. By 1989 I had heard of Danny Heep and I was not a fan of this move. At all. 

2019: Not to go all Paul Lukas on you, but I'll tell you what I am a fan of, those Spring Training uniforms that the Sox wore that year. I love the Red Sox over the heart and the v neck; man it's great. I remember when the Sox came out with those uniforms for Spring Training, people were a little pissed (probably not the right word) that they wouldn't train in their every day uniforms any more. Boston is so fucking weird some times. 

The Sox gave him 320 at bats that year (WTF?!?) and he did hit an even .300 but it was hollow. Out of his 113 hits, only 22 were for extra bases (five were homers). That left a lot of singles. He wasn't fast (zero SBs), so he was just a banjo hitting corner outfielder. 

In fairness to Danny Heep, he was the perfect NL player who was adapt at pinch hitting (a monumentally difficult task) but the Red Sox play in the American League and pinch hitters aren't needed as much. He batted .179 the following year in Boston (where he also pitched an inning in relief) before ending his career with the Braves. 

I don't know what Danny Heep does now but if I were him, I'd spend my days polishing my rings and thanking Vishnu that I was part of TWO World Series teams.

2019: Danny Heep is probably a good guy, I don't know him, but he must have been a hell of a pinch hitter to play consistently for 13 seasons. Pinch hitting is hard, I bet. You sit around all game until the manager tells you to grab a bat and hit against the guy that is currently mowing your teammates down. It doesn't sound fun. So I can see why that skill is admired. 

But Danny Heep (you have to write out his full name--it's the law) is nowhere near an American League player and when I was a kid, even I knew that. There's barely any pinch hitting going on this league. And he's not someone that you give 320+ at bats and expect your club to win. When you're 15-years-old and your favorite baseball team signs a guy that you think is not the right move, I guess it sticks with you. I'm not blaming Danny Heep, I'm blaming Lou Gorman. There had to be an outfielder out there with more pop than this guy. Right?

I was also probably a little pissed that the Sox got a guy from the 1986 Mets too. They were supposed to be our rivals! They cut out our hearts! And now we have one of them playing for us? I don't think that I really got sports for a long time. 

Trivia: in 1983 Danny Heep was traded from the Houston Astros to the New York Mets for future Cy Young Award winner and 1986 postseason nemesis Mike Scott (not the dude from "The Office"). I wonder what Danny Heep's life was like in 1986 with people asking him what it was like to be traded for a guy who was completely dominating the league?

I bet if you get traded and the guy you're traded for does really well and you just kind of do your thing, that must not be a lot of fun. 

Tony Fossas 1991 Upper Deck

On July 30, 2016, the Baseball Card bandit sent me the above baseball card. I took to Facebook to write this:

“The domestic BCB has been caught and sent to the baseball gulag (Minneapolis) but there seems to be a national copycat in the mix. 

I received this pristine Tony Fossas card in the mail (think El Guapo 1.0) and the only return address is DFW. Dallas Fort Worth? Down For Whatever? (Gross) Don't Forget Willis?

What does it all mean?”

What does it all mean, indeed? The meaning of life is this: throw lefthanded. When Tony Fossas last threw a baseball, he was 41-years-old and his ERA was 36.00 over five games. It was 1999 and he was a member of the New York Yankees. If you remember your baseball history, 1999 was a year that the Yankees won the World Series.

Somewhere in his home, despite not actually pitching a single inning in October, Tony Fossas has a World Series ring. Ted Williams doesn’t have a World Series ring. Ernie Banks doesn’t either. Neither does Ty Cobb or Barry Bonds or Tony Gwynn or Carl Yastrzemski or Rod Carew or Willie McCovey or Robin Yount. All of these guys are Hall of Famers. Despite not being in the Hall of Fame, as a player, Don Mattingly doesn’t have a Yankee World Series ring. That probably has to sting a bit. 

Tony Fossas does. No matter how many games you play in a championship season, if you're on the team; you get a ring. 

Fossas is also a left-handed specialist who looks like everyone's dad and played 12 years in the major leagues without really doing anything excellent. He always got work despite giving up a bunch of hits, walking a bunch of guys and not striking anyone out. He never pitched more than 51.2 innings in one season, made zero starts and accumulated seven saves. For that, he made over $4.1 million in his career.

Again, Tony Fossas is lefthanded. I can not stress the importance of this fact. 

When he was with the Red Sox, I remember him being pretty good and his numbers show that: in 1991 he appeared in 64 games and had a 3.47 ERA. In 1992, he was even better: 60 games, 2.43. But the wheels started coming off in 1993 when Sox manager Butch Hobson began to trust him a little more and brought him into 71 games. Fossas returned that trust with a 5.18 ERA. It seemed like he was a shade better in 1994 with a 4.76 ERA, but not really.

Then the Sox released him and he bounced around the Bigs. First to St. Louis for a few years, then in 1998 he went to Seattle for a third of a season, then to the Cubs for eight games, then back to Texas (before he was in Boston he plied his trade for the Rangers and Brewers) for ten games before finishing his career with the aforementioned five games with the Yankees in 1999.

Fossas was in the minors for ten years before he made his major league debut in 1988 and he was thoroughly mediocre there too. But again, he was a lefty. And when you’re left-handed and don’t strike out a lot of guys, you get stuck with the adjective: “crafty”.

Tony Fossas was a crafty southpaw who wrung every drop of talent from his left arm. He stuck with the game for ten years, desite traveling by bus from one shithole town to the next, playing in front of dozens of uncaring fans. One day he wins the lottery, is brought up to the majors and he holds that ticket for 12 years. Even when it was evident to everyone that Tony Fossas wasn’t a major league pitcher, he stuck with it.

At the end of the day he has $4 million in the bank and a World Series ring. Baseball is a crazy game, a pitcher like former Yankees and Red Sox reliever Ramiro Mendoza can somehow accumulate five World Series champions and Ted Williams can have none, despite being a much better ball player. Every once in awhile you hear someone hold that fact against a guy like Fossas or Mendoza. Don't. Life is not fair, kids. Sometimes it’s not what you can do, but where you can do it.

Speaking of where you can do it, either this card or the Jeff Reardon card was the first card that I got from the second Baseball Card Bandit. This one was sending me cards from around the country. As I alluded to in the Facebook post, this one was postmarked in Anchorage, Alaska. I still don’t know who sends them to me, but I like their style.