Tim Nahering 1990 Upper Deck and Spike Owen 1990 Upper Deck

On February 23, 2017 I received these cards from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

2019 Notes: TWO cards! Unprecedented. Cool action shot of Naehring. Owen looks a lot thicker than I remember.

On Facebook, I wrote: A few days ago, I received TWO more cards from the BCB. The Tim Naehring card is postmarked from Iceland while the Spike Owen card hails from Denver. 

If you were a Red Sox fan in the early 90s, all you heard about was the potential of Tim Naehring. He could play anywhere in the infield, he could hit, had a bit of power and could run a little too. Unfortunately Tim Naehring couldn't stay healthy, so he was the ultimate tease. 

I remember thinking, "Okay, we have Mo at first, Valentin at short and Cooper at third. All we need is Naehring the play second and our infield is set for the decade." It never happened. Naehring would inevitably go down with an injury sometime in April, return in a June, get hurt in July and that would be it. A lot of ink was spilled over the never-was career of Tim Naehring. 

2019: Like I alluded to in the last paragraph, through no fault of his own, Tim Naehring is the worst kind of prospect. He's the one who has a ton of potential but can't reach it because he's always injured. That's worse than simply being not good because if you're not good, things happen and you try your best but you can't just cut the mustard. It happens. But when you're always injured, it's a bit of a tease. You perform well when you're healthy and then the inevitable injury occurs. Then you come back, do well, get everyone's (including yours) hopes up and then you tweak something. You're back on the shelf. 

After a while people lose patience with you and you're discarded as an oft-injured has been who can't be counted on. Some people will go even so far as to say you're not "tough enough", which is crap. If you're a professional athlete you put your body through a grinder every day, sometimes it just won't respond. But the nagging little voice in the back of your brain, the one that keeps saying, "You could have been something if you were a little healthier" must be maddening. To be betrayed by your own body and have to think about that for the rest of your life is simply unfair. 

Nahering is a respected talent evaluator in the Yankees organization now. I bet that it's easier to deal with his frustrating pro career easier there than if he drove a tow truck or was a CPA after baseball. 

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Another Red Sox shortstop, Spike Owen was a part of the late 1986 trade that brought the AL Championship to Boston. Along with Dave Henderson, Owen was acquired for a handful of players who never amounted to much. He settled down the Boston infield that year and was--to a 10-year-old--a pretty decent player.

Owen played in those University of Texas super teams back in the early 80s with Roger Clemens and Greg Swindell. I always wondered whether Clemens and Owen would tell UT stories on bus rides to the park. If so, I bet their teammates wanted to murder them. 

Owen was eventually sent to the Expos for a package that brought the Sox John Dopson and Luis "Funky Cold" Riviera. I made up that last nickname.

2019: Spike Owen played 13 seasons in the big leagues. And for an undersized (5'9") guy who didn't hit a ton and played good defense, carved out a nice career for himself.  Aside from the 1986 Red Sox, he played on some mediocre teams: Mariners, Expos, Yankees and Angels. Here's something that I didn't know, in 1986 he was named team captain of the Mariners (they were terrible, but they could have been one of my favorite non-Red Sox teams ever -- I should write a blog on that some day) and then was shipped out of town by August. 

He also signed a pretty hefty deal with the Yankees in 1993 with the idea that he could provide veteran leadership. He didn't have an awesome year and the Yankees dealt him to the Angels after one season. Sorry Jetes. 

His older brother Dave also played in the bigs for two seasons. I wonder how Dave felt about his kid brother Spike being more successful than him? I bet that it eats at him. 

Scott Fletcher 1990 Upper Deck

On December 23, 2016 I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

On Facebook, I wrote: Is the BCB really Santa? That's what some people are saying. Postmarked from Salt Lake City too. Perhaps the BCB is Mitt Romney?After many moons, the BCB dropped a Scott Fletcher card on me with a note asking "Why can't we get players like that?"

This question was often posed by erstwhile Channel 4 reindeer/sportscaster Bob Lobel (not his nonunion Mexican equivalent Pablo Bell) when a former Bostonian did well in another uniform. 

2019 Notes: Hey! I refer to Bob Lobel here and I didn't need to do it in the last entry. I guess that just goes to show that I should probably read the next entry so that I'm not doubling up the work. 

Today's card features Fletcher in a different pair of Sox, White to be exact, getting upended on a double play. Fletcher was the prototype Dirt Dog that Boston fans have grown to love: scrappy, no power, no speed, and did the "little" things. He was one of the many who manned second base prior to the arrival of Dustin Pedroia. 

You should praise Zeus every day that you get to watch Pedroia instead of Scott Fletcher.

2019: I know that I wrote a bit about this a few days ago when I was talking about the Red Sox and their shortstop problems of the 1980s and into the 90s, but that also extended to the second base. I mean, Tim Naehring played pretty well but he was always hurt. Luis Alicea was okay for a little while and Todd Walker and Mark Belhorn were both good too, but once Pedroia showed up, that was the second baseman you wanted in your lineup every day. He hit for average and power, he was fast, he had great range and could throw too. 

Pedroia hasn't played in over a year (and in 2017 he was slowed down by a bunch of injuries) so I think that people forget how good of a player he is; but when he's on, he's one of the best in either league.  

This is a really cool shot of Fletcher jumping over Angels infielder Jack Howell to turn a double play. If I was him, that would be hanging in my living room. 

Fletcher played for 15 seasons in the big leagues and that's nothing to sneeze at. He did okay for the Red Sox when he showed up in 1993 (95 OPS+) but the most important thing is that he stabilized the second base position. The Sox had no idea who to put there after Jody Reed left, so Fletcher was the guy. The following season, he fell off the cliff and he spent his last year in Detroit before retiring. 

Fletcher only made it to the postseason once in his career (1983 when he was with the White Sox the first time), never made an All-Star game or win any awards (MVP, Gold Glove, Silver Slugger, etc). He just was Scott Fletcher, professional baseball player. And I think that for most people who never made the majors, that would probably be an okay lot in life. But I wonder if it gnaws at him that he was just a fine major leaguer. 

Getting to wear a big league uniform for 15 years is no easy feet, but I wonder if Scott Fletcher feels differently?