Milt Wilcox 1983 Donruss #155

For one day, Milt Wilcox was nearly perfect. Pitching for the Detroit Tigers against the Chicago White Sox on April 15, 1983, Wilcox retired 26 batters in a row. He was just one out away from a perfect game when pinch-hitter Jerry Hairston hit a clean single through the infield. Wilcox retired the next batter and had to settle for a one-hit shutout.  

Wilcox’s 1983 Donruss card features a really cool photo of him. He has a look of grim determination on his face as he’s just delivered a ball to the plate. The crowd in the background is blurred and out of focus. I’m a sucker for that type of sports photography, where the player is in focus, but the background is blurred and indistinct. It’s sort of a visual metaphor for how I imagine sports must be for professional athletes—the crowd fades into the background; what’s in focus is only what is right in front of you. All that matters is getting this batter out.  

The back of Milt Wilcox’s 1983 Donruss card also features one of my favorite random facts. After recapping some of Wilcox’s career, the final sentence tells us: “Once raised chinchillas during off-season.” What?? Was there a Milt Wilcox Chinchilla Farm? Why did he only raise them once? Are chinchillas that troublesome or unprofitable? I have so many questions.  

Rediscovering this baseball card made me think more about Milt Wilcox’s career. Wilcox had a 16-year career in the major leagues, finishing with a career record of 119-113. He never won 20 games in a season; he was never an All-Star. He was just a gamer who battled arm and shoulder injuries throughout his career. Wilcox had a taste of glory at the very beginning of his career, as he first came up with the Cincinnati Reds at the end of the 1970 season. He won a game in the NLCS against the Pirates and pitched in two games in the 1970 World Series. But after that promising start, Wilcox was traded to the lowly Cleveland Indians. Wilcox spent the entire 1976 season in the minor leagues. His fortunes started to turn around when the Tigers purchased him from the Chicago Cubs in June of 1976. His major league record at that point was a pedestrian 22-30.  

Wilcox recovered some of his arm strength during the winter of 1976-77 through bowling. By the time spring training started, his arm finally felt healthy again. In June 1977, Wilcox was called up to the Tigers and appeared in his first major league game in two years. In 1978, Wilcox won 13 games, his first time in double digits for a season. He threw 16 complete games, pitching a career-high 215 1/3 innings. From 1978 to 1983, Wilcox won between 11 and 13 games every season. Wilcox was the Tigers’ union representative during these years, including during the 1981 baseball strike. After the 1981 season, Wilcox suffered what his 1982 Donruss card called a “career-threatening” injury, as he sprained ligaments in his right index finger during a charity basketball game. Fortunately, Wilcox healed over the offseason.  

In 1984, Wilcox and the Tigers had an amazing season. The Tigers opened the season with a 35-5 record and never looked back. Wilcox won his first 6 decisions. Wilcox was pitching through an immense amount of pain—he later revealed that he received 7 cortisone injections in his shoulder during that season. Wilcox slowed down during June, and after a loss to the White Sox on July 4, 1984, his record stood at 8-6. Wilcox was on fire for the rest of the year, as he went 9-2 in the second half of the season, to finish with a record of 17-8. Wilcox had won the deciding game of the 1970 NLCS that sent the Reds to the World Series, and in 1984 he threw 8 shutout innings, beating the Kansas City Royals to send the Tigers to the World Series. Wilcox joked that he couldn’t wait for the 1998 postseason, to continue his trend of winning a Championship Series every 14 years. In the 1984 World Series, the Tigers and the Padres split the first two games in San Diego. Wilcox started Game 3 in Detroit, the first World Series game in the city since 1968. He threw 6 innings, scattering 7 hits and giving up just 1 run, as the Tigers won, 5-2. The Tigers won the next two games to win the World Series.  

After his triumph in Game 3 of the 1984 World Series, Milt Wilcox won just one more major league game. He missed most of the 1985 season and signed as a free agent with the Seattle Mariners for 1986. In 13 games with the Mariners, Wilcox went 0-8 with a 5.50 ERA. The Mariners released him in mid-June. But the competitive fire was still there. Wilcox had a tryout with the Giants in 1988, which didn’t lead to him being signed. In 1989, Wilcox pitched for the St. Petersburg Pelicans of the Senior Professional Baseball Association and had a fantastic season, going 12-3 with a sparkling 3.19 ERA. Wilcox was 3-1 in 1990 when the league folded, bringing his professional baseball career to an end. Wilcox’s baseball career began in 1968, a pretty remarkable run.  

While researching Milt Wilcox’s career for this article, I discovered that Milt Wilcox said he had no superstitions. It was just a coincidence that he ate blueberry pancakes on the days that he started and never stepped on the foul line. I appreciate someone with a sense of humor like that.

Milt Wilcox is just a great baseball name. When I was a kid collecting baseball cards, there were players I was just drawn to because they had cool names: Julian Javier, Mike Lum, Bill North, Kurt Bevacqua, Chris Chambliss. Milt Wilcox had a cool name. He was a player whose cards I would buy when I found them in the commons bin. I doubt that I’m related to Milt Wilcox, but my great-grandmother's maiden name was Wilcox, so maybe that accounted for some of my affection for Milt Wilcox.  

Finding this baseball card yesterday was a great reminder that a baseball card set is really 600 or 700 individual stories, each with their own points of interest.  

Steve Carlton 1983 and 1984 Topps Gallery of Champions

 

Steve Carlton 1983 and 1984 Topps Gallery of Champions. These are some of my favorite Carlton oddities. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

You'll need a magnifying glass to read the stats on the back. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

These cool little bronze cards of Steve Carlton are from the Topps Gallery of Champions. The Gallery of Champions bronze cards were included with cases of Topps Traded cards from 1983-1991. I don’t remember ever seeing them during my childhood, but they’re cool little collectibles. Another oddity that I didn’t know I was missing until I started trying to complete my Steve Carlton collection. I was able to track down the 1983 Carlton bronze pretty easily, but the 1984 eluded me for a while. I thought I had the 1984, but the collector actually sent me the 1983, which I already had. This happened a couple of times, so I ended up with several 1983 cards, but that’s fine with me. The Gallery of Champions bronzes are some of my favorite Carlton oddities, and they’re not too expensive if you want to collect them. Be warned, you’ll need a magnifying glass to read the stats on the back.

Vida Blue: 110 Baseball Cards

 

A collage of some of the Vida Blue baseball cards I bought. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

A while ago, I decided I should collect more of Vida Blue’s baseball cards. So, I bought a lot of 110 cards from eBay. The oldest cards in the lot are from 1980, so there’s nothing covering his years with the Oakland A’s.

I just wrote an overview of Vida Blue’s career in baseball, and I was planning on writing about these baseball cards in the same post, but the overview became longer and longer, and it felt like too much to shoehorn the discussion of the baseball cards into it, so I decided to discuss Blue’s baseball cards in a separate post.

1981 Topps Scratch-off, 1982 and 1983 Fleer Stamps

There was nothing truly rare in this lot of cards, but there were some fun oddities included, like the 1981 Topps scratch-offs and the 1982 and 1983 Fleer stamps. These are the types of curiosities that I never encountered at the card stores back in the 1980’s and 1990’s, so it’s nice to add them to my collection.

Vida Blue's 1980 and 1981 Topps cards. Blue with a blue sky.

Blue’s 1980 and 1981 Topps cards are similar, as I guess the temptation to photograph Vida Blue against a blue sky was just too much. Both cards still look cool, though. I like the classic simplicity of the 1980 design, and I have a soft spot for the 1981's, with their ridiculous hat, because I was born in 1981.

1983 Donruss and 1983 Fleer, featuring those cool power blue uniforms.

Because of his name, it seems only fitting that Vida Blue got to play for the Kansas City Royals when they had those cool powder blue uniforms. One of my cool baseball card treasures is a Vida Blue 1983 Topps card of him with the Royals signed in blue sharpie. Blue on blue on blue. Unfortunately, Blue’s tenure with the Royals wasn’t that successful, and they ended up releasing him in August of 1983.

Shortly after the Royals released Blue, he pleaded guilty to cocaine possession and served about 3 months in jail. Blue was banned from baseball for the 1984 season. He went to spring training in 1985 with the Giants as a non-roster invitee and pitched well enough to be added to the roster.

1986 Topps and 1987 Fleer

Blue went 18-18 for the Giants over 1985 and 1986, and he picked up his 200^th win in April of 1986. After the 1986 season, Blue became a free agent. The photo on Blue's 1986 Topps card has the glossy look of a traded card.

1987 Topps and 1987 O-Pee-Chee. Blue retired just before spring training 1987 began, so he didn't get to finish his career with the team he started with.

Blue signed with the Oakland A’s in January of 1987. This is reflected in his 1987 O-Pee-Chee card, with the designation “Now with A’s.” A month later, Blue abruptly retired just before spring training began. It turned out that Blue had tested positive for drugs, and no doubt this was his impetus behind retiring. Blue's O-Pee-Chee card remains the only baseball card evidence of his short-lived second tenure with the A's.

SPBA cards featuring Blue with the Orlando Juice and St. Lucie Legends.

Vida Blue pitched again in 1989 for the St. Lucie Legends and the Orlando Juice of the Senior Professional Baseball Association. Blue was 2-7 with a 4.87 ERA for the Legends over 11 games, and 1-2 with a 7.20 ERA in 4 games for the Juice. He finished the 1989 season with a record of 3-9 with a 5.55 ERA over 15 games. In 1990, Blue pitched for the San Bernardino Pride and pitched in 3 games with no decisions and a 4.15 ERA when the league went under. The Senior Professional Baseball Association is fascinating to me, as I only heard about the league, made up of former MLB players, maybe 10 years ago.

Blue pitched in 3 games for the San Bernardino Pride in the winter of 1990 before the SPBA folded.

The fact that this lot included Blue’s cards with the SPBA helped me in deciding to buy it. The SPBA cards aren’t especially valuable, but you don’t see them very often, and they’re cool post-career mementos to have.