10 October 2014

lurkers are lurking - sometimes in plain sight

one doesn't need to look very far or hard to find the dodger making his way onto joe mccarthy's 1993 conlon collection tsn card
dodger manager burleigh grimes gets some foreground respect in the photo from 1938.  not sure when/where this would have been taken, as mccarthy's yankees faced (and beat) the cubs in the '38 fall classic.

grimes gets a mention on the back of that particular card, but that is usually not the case with lurkers.  take this 1999 fleer ultra jeff bagwell card, for example
tom prince is just as much of the card as is bagwell, but he gets no acknowledgement which is as it should be.

jose offerman finds his way onto kurt stillwell's 1993 donruss card
and eric karros (with a cloud of dust) enhances kevin higgins' 1994 topps card
i don't consider the stillwell card to be a double play turn because i can't verify it as such, even though it looks like it might be one.  offerman didn't get on base a whole lot against the padres in 1992, and when he did, he was often sacrificed to second with stillwell covering first.

now here's a blurry lurker.
that's dodger first base coach john shelby in the background on miguel batista's 2003 topps card.  i wish there were more cards like this featuring manny mota or, these days, davey lopes.

here are a couple of hall of fame lurkers - eddie murray shows up on scott stahoviak's 1996 score card
and we get half of cal ripken jr on rickey henderson's 1983 topps record breaker card
this card would have qualified as a 'classic combo' by topps' 2007 standards.

1 comment:

Nick said...

I really need to go through my collection and see how many lurkers I can find. Never noticed the Ripken cameo on that '83 Henderson.