Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Random Topps Card of the Day: 1990 Topps #75T Alan Mills

Thanks to the Topps Card Randomizer, introducing the Random Topps Card of the Day for Wednesday, October 3, 2012:


  • Official Card Set Name and Card Number: 1990 Topps Traded #75T.
  • Player Name, position, team: Alan Mills, pitcher, New York Yankees.
  • Major League Debut: April 14, 1990.
  • Last Line of Statistics: 1989 stats (Prince William A-Carolina): 26 G, 39.2 IP, 6-1, 5 R, 4 ER, SO 44, 13 BB, 0 GS, 0 CG, 0 SHO, 7 SV, 0.91 ERA.
  • Any special information about player: Drafted by the Angels, #1st (Spec), June 1986. Traded by the Angels to the Yankees 06/22/1987. Bats: both. Throws: right.
  • Number of regular Topps Cards (includes regular and traded cards only): 4. This is his first Topps card.
  • Blurb on the back: "Alan was signed as a #1 Special Draft selection of the Angels, June 10, 1986 by Scout Preston Douglas."
  • Commentary: I must be one of the few who actually liked the 1990 Topps design.  Not exactly loved it, but the colored borders made me want to collect every card Topps made that year (Score was good too, have the full set somewhere...).  It also helped that Topps Magazine first printed in the winter of 1990, so I had that magazine with me EVERYWHERE!!!  I mean, six different border colors (red, orange, green, blue, indigo, violet...okay, I'm a closet Crayola crayon collector too).  How cool would it have been for them to attempt a yellow border (not like 1991 Fleer)?  Well, Topps finally found a way to incorporate the missing color with their Traded set.  So it's not dominantly yellow.  Who would want to be blinded by a yellow-dominated border?  I can live with the yellow transitioning over to red borders.  Anyway, for a guy who played in the majors for parts of 12 seasons, you'd think he'd have more cards than 4 regular or traded cards (his others are from 1991 Topps, 1993 Topps, and 1994 Topps).  Mills had a great year in the minors in 1989 (both with Prince William of the Carolina League and Fort Lauderdale of the Florida State League), with a combined record of 7-5, and a 2.17 ERA.  Primarily used as a middle reliever, he spent parts of 2 years with the Yankees.  He appeared in 46 games for the Bronx Bombers, going 2-6 with a 4.19 ERA, with 35 strikeouts to boot.  Mills was traded by the Yankees for Baltimore, where, besides two years with the Dodgers, he spent most of his career.
  • Beckett value: $0.02-$0.10.
  • How many cards of this player do I own?: 5 cards.
Tomorrow's card will be 1994 Topps Traded #53T.  Post will arrive at 1:00 PM CST. Hope you will be too.

Sincerely,

JayBee Anama

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'll one up you, I LOVE the 1990 Topps design.

How the '75 set can be so loved, and '90 is so dismissed is beyond me. I think they're clearly sister sets (like '62 & '87).