final tributes like it's 1999

2 hall of famers played their final games in 1998 - paul molitor and dennis eckersley.  in 1999, upper deck tried to fool us by producing a final tribute card of wade boggs, but that proved to be premature.  here are some bona fide 1999 final tributes of molly and eck that i have in my collection.

1999 fleer tradition paul molitor

look at those full career stats on the back!

molly's career had begun at the same time i began collecting cards.  he was my favorite non-dodger for a while (until steve garvey went to san diego), and i was happy to have been able to see him play in person when he joined his hometown twins.

i don't have eck's 1999 fleer tradition card, but i do have his 1999 pacific crown collection card

it's only got one season of stats on the back, but a whole lot of espanol

here's molitor's

with a paul waner (dodger double dipper) mention

molitor also got a card in the regular 1999 pacific set

which has the full career stats on the back

molitor also got a card in the pacific private stock set

but the career stats on the back

take a back seat to the box score from the twins' second game of molitor's final season.

topps didn't produce cards for either of these guys - not even a checklist or highlight card - but upper deck did them justice with base cards and the 'final tribute' shield.

here are eckersley's complete career stats

and here's molitor's 1999 upper deck card

which, for some reason, leaves three seasons off of the back

molitor is currently 9th on the all-time hit list, but will be surpassed by derek jeter as soon as today (jeter is sitting on 3318 career hits).

as for the head-to-head stats, 11 of eckersley's 2401 career strikeouts came from molitor, and 13 of molly's 3319 hits came off of eck.  overall, eckersley got molitor out most of the time as would be expected, but molitor won the war - he hit .310 with a 1.024 ops off of eckersley over the course of their fine careers.