jose canseco final tributes

i am not ashamed to say that i was, and still am to a degree, a jose canseco fan.  as any good card collector in 1986, i tried for as many of his rookie cards as i could, and i followed his home run and stolen base exploits with quite a bit of interest.  you may recall that i had adopted the a's as my american league team with the arrival of rickey henderson and billy ball in 1980, quickly and shamelessly abandoning the excitement over the angels and don baylor that i had felt in 1979.  so, i still had a soft spot for oakland in the mid-80's, and was glad to see canseco making them relevant again.

even as i joined the 'ste-roids' chant from the right field pavilion at dodger stadium during game 1 of the 1988 world series, i marveled at the grand slam canseco had hit in the first inning.  it is still one of the top 3 hardest hit balls i have ever seen in person (willie mccovey and willie stargell hit the other two, with albert belle and carlos delgado not far behind).  anyway, i was always willing to give canseco the benefit of the doubt even as there became no doubt.  i was annoyed when the yankees claimed him on waivers in 2000 just to block another team from picking him up as i knew it would be difficult for canseco to sign on with another team in 2001.  as luck would have it, the angels signed him just before spring training, but then released him in march (although topps still put out cards of him in 2001 in the angels' uni).  i thought that that may have been it, but to his credit, canseco went to the independent league and played minor league ball until the white sox came calling at mid-season.

thanks to canseco's perseverance and the fact that frank thomas was lost for the season, we were treated to some non-yankee (and angel) final tributes in 2002.  i've got a lot of them.

2002 donruss

with full career stats on the back

2002 donruss fan club

perhaps the 'bulkiest' photo of canseco on any card, and also with complete career stats on the back

2002 fleer maximum

the back of which gives a closer look at the travels of canseco towards the end of his career

he came oh-so-close to another 30/30 season while with the blue jays in 1998.  i believe he also hit the longest home run in skydome history that year as well.

2002 fleer platinum

more full career stats

did anybody ever look at those graphs on the back of 1987 (and 2002 fleer platinum) cards?  i didn't.  if i had more initiative, i would dig up canseco's 1987 fleer card and compare the graphs between this card and that one.  i just looked his card up on comc, and now recall that the graphs on the back of '87 fleer cards were different than those above.  never mind.

2002 fleer tradition

again with the full career stats, with room to spare at the bottom

202 fleer triple crown

another final tribute with the full career stats, although fleer doesn't care to give individual rows of stats to each team played for in a single season.  advantage donruss and topps.

speaking of which, here's canseco's 2002 topps 206 card

no stats on the back, but a note that canseco became the first man to hit 400 home runs and steal 200 bases in a career

2002 upper deck authentics

here, even though there is just one row of stats on the back, we can see his career totals

and notice that he stole 2 bases on the season to finish with exactly 200 steals.  he was caught one time.

2002 upper deck vintage

this was the most blatant to-date rip off of topps that i recall; upper deck's 2001 decade 1970's set kind of looked like 1975 topps, and their 2001 vintage release looked a lot like 1963 topps.  here, they dropped the text to the bottom of the card and made the backs yellow to look like the late series o-pee-chee cards did in 1971

they weren't ripping off topps, it was o-pee-chee that they were using.  the only problem was that upper deck didn't acquire the rights to o-pee-chee until 2006 if i recall correctly.

perhaps my favorite two final tributes for mr. 40/40 came from topps.  canseco, as he had done in 2001, signed a deal prior to 2002's spring training, this time with the expos.  topps, as it had done in 2001, issued cards featuring canseco his his new uniform.  never mind that he was released again during spring training, we get these final tributes from 2002 topps

full career stats, with league leader designations.  i thank you, topps.

and 2002 topps chrome

with the same info on the back

i also appreciate topps (and fleer platinum) for putting strikeouts on the backs of their cards.  canseco retired with 1942 k's, which at the time was good for second on the all-time list behind only canseco's 1987 a's teammate reggie jackson.  jackson had 101 more homers than canseco, however.

canseco eventually returned to the white sox organization in 2002, appearing in 18 games for their triple-a  affiliate and slugging 5 home runs, but didn't get back to the big leagues.  he has since played in the minors in a few different seasons (2006, 2010-2013), and even had a short (one-day) stint in dodger camp prior to the 2004 season.  it's too bad topps didn't put out a card that year like they did in '01 and '02...

2002 was a pretty good year for some final tributes

when the 2001 season ended, it took with it the careers of many players.  not all of those players, such as jose canseco, knew at the time that they had played their final big league game, but some did.  there were at least three players that i recall had announced their impending retirement during the season.  harold baines may have done so as well, but i don't think he made it into any 2002 card releases.  the three i am referring to, of course, are tony gwynn, mark mcgwire, and cal ripken jr.

all three of them were included in a number of card sets in 2002, which made me pretty happy.  lots of final tributes to collect.  unfortunately, some of the cards were short prints or some other sort of shenanigans, so i don't have them all.  here are the ones that i do have

2002 donruss - gwynn

thanks to donruss for putting the complete stats on the back

i'm not sure if donruss took a page out of topps' book or vice versa, but numbering the card to match gwynn's jersey number was a nice touch

ripken jr

also numbered to match the jersey number

cal had more hits than tony, but played in a lot more games too.

no big mac in 2002 donruss, which is weird because he was in this next set

2002 donruss fan club - gwynn

again with the complete career stats, and again card number 19

here's big mac

and his full career stats.

donruss didn't give him the card number/jersey number tribute, though.

ripken jr

card number 8 again

one of my favorite cal ripken jr. final tribute is from 2002 fleer maximum

that's a great photo for a final tribute

but they didn't bother with the full year-by-year career stats.

both gwynn and ripken had cards in the 2002 fleer tradition set, but i believe they were both short prints.  i don't own them anyway, but i do have mcgwire's card from the set

here's the back

all three are also in 2002 fleer ultra.  here's gwynn (i only have the gold medallion edition parallel)

mcgwire

ripken

there's no mention of mcgwire's retirement on the back of his card like there is on gwynn's and ripken's.  still, i am pretty sure everybody knew mcgwire wasn't coming back in 2002.

no mcgwire in 2002 leaf certified, but there were cards for gwynn

and ripken

the 2002 topps flagship set had a great final tribute for gwynn

and featured his total career stats on the back, of course

there's a lot of red on the back, too.

here's mcgwire's card from the set

he gets the hero number from topps

and a lot of red on his card back, too.

for some reason, topps did not make a card for ripken in 2002 which boggles the mind.

they didn't include him in their fantastic 206 release, either.  gywnn's card from that set is one of the best, however.

just like the ripken fleer maximum card, it's the salute photo that belongs on a final tribute card.  plus, the back notes his retirement

even though it's light on the stats.

there are three mcgwire cards in the set - two feature him as a cardinal

with a variation of the second card showing him as an athletic

all three cards mention his retirement.

as a side note, i decided to collect the 206 set when it first came out.  i don't know what happened to my want list, but i will be posting it soon, just in case anyone has any of these to spare.

2002 topps heritage again left ripken off the checklist.  gwynn's card is a short print, so i only have big mac's card

mcgwire is the only one of the three to be included in the 2002 topps opening day set

and the same goes for the 2002 topps stadium club set

upper deck gave cards to all three, however, in their 2002 flagship set, although they are mostly checklists; pulling a strategy from topps (1975 al kaline and 1978 brooks robinson for example).  here's gwynn's

mcgwire's

and ripken's

at least they are all in the set.  the only one to get a regular card in the set is big mac

and it has all the stats on the back, too

no mcgwire in 2002 upper deck piece of history, but gywnn is there

as is ripken.  ripken's base card is a short print, but i do have an insert from the set of cal

don't worry about mcgwire, though.  upper deck put out a mcgwire-centric subset as part of their 2002 ud prospect premieres set.  here's one of the four cards in the subset

mcgwire was also included in the 2002 upper deck sp legendary cuts set, but i don't have that card.  i do have tony gwynn's card from the set

but there was not a ripken card made for this set.

finally, we have 2002 upper deck vintage.  the final tribute lineup is identical to the upper deck flagship - gwynn only got a checklist

but he's on a motorcycle!

mcgwire got a regular card

with a back that matches the late series 1971 o-pee-chee cards

plus a checklist that is more about albert pujols than mcgwire

and ripken gets a card with a nice camden yards view

that's a lot of cards from a lot of sets for three big careers.  only two hall of famers, though.