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Saturday, August 13, 2011

Happy Birthday Lemmer

Remember when I traded for every single Topps Mark Lemke card in the Original Transmogrifier? Well, I had 'em shipped too. And they've been sitting on my desk waiting to be scanned for several months. Well it's Mark Lemke's birthday today and that means it's time to show off my trading haul. Behold: every single Mark Lemke cards from Topps Base sets.

1989 Topps


The Rookie Card. The Pose that rivals the '52 Mantle. I like the Donruss Rookie better, but Topps didn't give any of those away last year for some reason. This one is pretty perfect too.

1990 Topps


Goodness, 1990 Topps has not aged well. Sophomore Lemmer is stoic inside his frame of moldy green.

1991 Topps


Lemmer would have been the World Series MVP had those dirty Minnesotans not cheated. Three straight years with those yellow stands in the background.

1992 Topps


ACTION LEMMER! Smack that ball! Man, this is such a great looking set.

1993 Topps


This one was a pleasant surprise. Check out the logo on the bottom right corner. For some reason the fulfillment company sent me a card from the Florida Marlin Inaugural Season factory set instead of a base common card. I'm totally fine with this as I didn't already have one. Also note the only appearance of Lemmer's glasses on the front of a Topps card.

1994 Topps


The first Topps base set dripping with glossy coating. Is it just me or have these cards started to yellow over the years like a old timey photo? You could combine the '92-'94 photos on a Sportsflics card to great effect.

1995 Topps


Justice got the homer, Glavine got the shutout, Grissom caught the ball, Wohlers got the save and Lemmer got a ring.

1996 Topps


The cool thing about seeing all these cards all together is that if you flip the '92 and '93 pics you get to see Lemmer smack a triple. A triple that took five years, but that's still faster around the bases than Bream.

1997 Topps


And now Topps finally stations a photographer on the first base side for an at-bat. Even though we can finally see the visiting team's dugout, I can't figure out what team is in there. And that row of turkey drumsticks in the stands... oy gevalt.

1998 Topps


And the last one. Finally we get to see Lemmer playing the field on Topps' first set of the current plastic era. I always liked the looks of this one, even though it sparked a streak of colored borders that got tedious after a while. Even though Topps was not offering traded set cards in the Transmogrifier redemptions anyway, I'm kinda glad there was never a Topps card of Lemmer as a Red Sox. Upper Deck took care of that along with a few other sets and that's enough for my collection. I like seeing Mark playing on just one club for his entire career as least as far as the Topps base set is concerned.

Happy Birthday Mark!

4 comments:

Captain Canuck said...

glorious.

now we need one for Blauser. i may be able to do that... but it would take some digging.

Scott Crawford said...

This was an act of dedication!

I'm trying to do something similar with Alex Johnson and Dock Ellis in this year's Transmogrifier, but so far I'm just planning on having the ones I don't own shipped.

night owl said...

Once, when I was covering a high school girls softball team, they beat a team in the playoffs. The team they beat reacted to the loss by having one of the greatest meltdowns I've ever witnessed in person. I was convinced that a few members of the softball team were seconds away from physically attacking their coach. It was pretty ugly.

Mark Lemke is a graduate of that school.

There's your useless info for the night.

Greg said...

I am from Lemmer's home town. I have met him many times. What school was it Night Owl? He went to Notre Dame out of Utica, NY.