I still recall going into a card shop in early 1993 and seeing two boxes sitting on the counter, both offering $1 packs: 1992 Bowman Baseball and 1992 Triple Play Baseball. Still feeling that 1991 Bowman Baseball was bad (I'm actually a big fan of the checklist now), I went for the fire-red borders of the kid-friendly Donruss product. A couple months later 1992 Bowman would catch the hobby fire and go-on to be a late-blooming classic of the excess-era.Fast-forward 17 years and I finally get to bust my pack of 1992 Bowman Baseball. It was a little more than the dollar back then, but on-par with most modern sets. And it was a jumbo pack as well. Let's look for some early-90s fashions.
350. Mike Bordick
282. Greg Perschke
536. Billy Spiers
358. Jason Bere (I'm wondering if the picture on the back is Bere as his alternate dimension zombie self.)
451. Johnny "HR" Ruffin "Stuff"
221. Alan Newman
267. Paul O'Neill
187. Bruce Hurst
666. Bob Walk (Is he throwing the ball or a fist?)
623. Ryan Klesko "Foil"
285. Keith Miller
352. David Wells
108. Henry Rodriguez
480. Doc Gooden
681. Willie Randolph blowing a bubble
239. Victor Cole
469. Steve Sax
No Mike Piazza, no Manny Ramirez, no Chipper Jones' jean shorts, no Cliff "Air Jordan" Floyd, but still a fun pack to bust. The Quantrill will go into my Canadians box and the rest will be set aside while I ponder building a set. I already have a number of the pricier cards somewhere so a starter set would likely be a cheap way to get a long way through at a fraction of the cost.
1992 Bowman Baseball benefits from a clean design that is dominated by white. The combination of an extensive rookie card checklist and the unique team-specific stats grid made Bowman a unique brand back in the early 90s. It was simply structured and a fun set I looked forward to building for a while. Then it became a brand that was gimmicked all to hell. Topps had a good opportunity to rebrand it with their Minor League license but rather it appears to be the same old stuff with USA Baseball replacing the World Baseball Classic cards from last year.
So here's to nostalgia, a modern classic set and a fun albeit uneventful pack break.
1 comment:
I think my uncles and I were two of the only people looking forward to this set when it came out. Then again, we were all also fans of the 91 set. We all thought correctly that the 92 set would end up being a hot set. It's just a shame that it didn't end up being as short printed as originally thought, but then again nothing from that period is.
I would have loved being able to scoop up some packs for a dollar each. We bought boxes at $54 a box when they first came out and that's only because the three of us bought everything that a deal had at a show (the only dealer that had the product the first week it was out, no one else ordered it from Topps and this was in Boston at a major show during the collecting boom)
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