Card #34: 1989 Fleer #300

YEAR: 1989
BRAND: Fleer
SET: Fleer
NUMBER: 300
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: San Diego Padres

My third rookie card of Alomar was his Fleer rookie.  Like the previous two (Topps and Donruss), this card features a staged shot of Alomar.  Specifically, crouched in a catching stance.  This particular design of Fleer is definitely not one of my favorites, but it does stand out reasonably well.  This is an error card that was never corrected, listing his birthdate as "6/16/66" instead of the correct "6/18/66".  If it had been corrected, it would have probably been a little more valuable as this was the height of the error craze.

Card #33: 1990 Fleer #150

YEAR: 1990
BRAND: Fleer
SET: Fleer
NUMBER: 150
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: San Diego Padres

This is one of my favorite Padres cards of Alomar.  Most of that is due to the fact that it was one of the rare cards of him that showed a little bit of action.  Most Padres cards of Alomar were portrait shots or staged poses.  Much of the reason for this is the fact that Alomar only played in eight games with San Diego.  So there were not a lot of opportunities to catch him in action.  But Fleer managed to pull it off and here we have it.  Now, that is probably not a home run swing, but there is so little competition for decent action shots that this became a favorite.

Card #32: 1990 Leaf #232

YEAR: 1990
BRAND: Donruss
SET: Leaf
NUMBER: 232
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

After 1989's Upper Deck release, other brands decided to jump on the premium bandwagon.  The next big one was 1990 Leaf which was buoyed by the rookie card of Frank Thomas.  This was likely one of the earliest cards portraying Alomar with the Indians.  It does not seem as impressive now, but this was one of the better Alomar cards early on, probably next to the 1989 Upper Deck Rookie Card.

Card #31: 1990 Upper Deck #655

YEAR: 1990
BRAND: Upper Deck
SET: Upper Deck
NUMBER: 655
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: San Diego Padres

There is not a whole lot to say about this card.  It is not a terribly exciting shot.  Alomar was coming off a season in which he won the Minor League Player of the Year for the second year in a row and then played in about seven games with the Padres.  One of the things that has changed for the worst in baseball over the years from when I first became a fan is the size of sets, resulting in a much smaller number of players getting cards.  Granted, Alomar was one of the biggest prospects in the world, but I have more than 40 cards of Alomar with the San Diego Padres, with some more out there.  He had 23 plate appearances in seven games with the Padres.  By contrast, Alomar spent 22 plate appearances in eight games with the New York Mets at the end of his career and there is not a single Major League card of him in a Mets uniform.  Go figure.  

Card #30: 1991 Upper Deck Final #81F

YEAR: 1991
BRAND: Upper Deck
SET: Final
NUMBER: 81F
SUBSET: All Star
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

Here is another card honoring Sandy Alomar Jr. for being named the starting catcher in the 1991 All Star game.  I have said it before and I will say it again: he did not deserve it.  But he took a good position on it: he said he would play because the fans wanted to see him, but he felt he did not deserve it.  Another catcher for whom I am a big fan also was a non-deserving All Star choice later on (Jason Varitek in 2008).  This is a very nice action shot with the bat barrel and the strap from the catcher's mask seen on the fringes of the card.  I can not tell, but the shot may be from the All Star game.  I cannot make out the players in the background, but they appear to be wearing two different uniforms (White Sox and Royals maybe?), and it does appear to be in the SkyDome.

2 New Cards

A couple more cards came in, both somewhat hard to find.  The MVP Celebration card features Alomar holding his 1997 All Star MVP trophy, a rather large trophy really.  I like the star-spangled chest protector as well.  The Collector's Choice card is actually from the Indians-only set, a common practice in mid 1990's sets.  I was not aware Collector's Choice did this.

Card #29: 1989 Donruss #28

YEAR: 1989
BRAND: Donruss
SET: Donruss
NUMBER: 28
SUBSET: Rated Rookies
TEAM: San Diego Padres

My second Alomar rookie card was the Donruss card.  This featured the Rated Rookie logo, which was one of my favorite Donruss subsets, next to Diamond Kings.  Alomar was a Rated Rookie twice actually.  Fitting, since he was the Minor League Player of the Year in both 1988 and 1989.  The 1989 Donruss set was one of my first favorite sets.  Though I have no real idea why that is.  There are a number of variations for the 1989 Donruss set.  On the back, the "INC" came with a period and without and there was an extra asterisk in the stats section as well.  My first of the four variations came with the period and the extra asterisk.

Card #28: 1991 Score #879

YEAR: 1991
BRAND: Score
SET: Score
NUMBER: 879
SUBSET: Award Winners
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

This is the fifth and last card from the 1991 Score set in my collection.  This is the card celebrating Alomar's winning of the American League Rookie of the Year award in 1990.  I had a friend back when I started this collection who insisted that this award was for the 1991 season, not the 1990 season because it was on a 1991 card.  Big argument about it.  Hey, we were 10.  He also insisted that only 100 players changed teams throughout the entire season because Upper Deck only had 100 updated cards.  Anyway, this is a pretty boring picture.  But it was good to have all five Alomars in the massive 1991 Score set.  

Card #27: 1992 Stadium Club Dome #6

YEAR: 1992
BRAND: Topps
SET: Stadium Club Dome
NUMBER: 6
SUBSET: All Stars
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

The Stadium Club Dome set was kind of an extended set to 1991 Stadium Club.  Why it came out in 1992, I have no idea.  It was called Dome because the 1991 All Star Game took place in Toronto's SkyDome.  All Star cards were featured in the set, along with draft picks.  Alomar was voted the starting catcher in that year's game, although he definitely did not deserve it.  Still, nice action shot here.

A Lot More Tek Progress

A lot of stuff came in the past two days and here I am to show it all off:

This is only my third variation of the 2005 Topps Rookie Cup base card.  There is still a green, blue, and orange version out there that should be relatively easy to get.

Up next is four more patterns for the Topps Tek set.  There are two more in the second scan putting me at 17 different variations.  Only 73 to go.  If anyone has any I have a list of what I have on my Sandy Alomar Collection page.  I really want to complete this set.

The Beisbol Amigos card is kind of odd.  A number of Latin Indians show up on this card, including Felix Fermin, Carlos Martinez, Jose Mesa, and Carlos Baerga.  There are some others as well, but I can't remember them all and one player is not even named on the card.  Annoying.

Here is another Beisbol Amigos card with just Alomar and Baerga.  

The Leaf buyback is the card I bought for myself for my birthday.  It is numbered 5/5 and even though the buyback thing is kind of dumb, I still like it.  

The Bowman card is the Tiffany version.

The Tristar is a cut autograph card.  I decided not to break the case open to put the card in my binder.  Tough decision to make.  Now I have a separate card floating around from the rest of my Alomars.

These are two parallels from Pacific sets in 1998.  I always liked the Platinum Blue parallels and Invincible was a favorite set of mine anyway.  Nice to add the Alomars.