MiLB Madness: Musical stars in MiLB? That and even more ...

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Minor league baseball cards from the past can include some weird stuff ... sometimes stuff you wouldn't imagine to be found on a baseball card. Here are some some new fun cards and oddities in this latest edition of MiLB Madness. 

98 DEGREES ON THE DIAMOND?
The Card: Nick Lachey 2009 TRISTAR Obak T212 Minis
The Buzz On This: His musical genre isn't on my radar, nor are the reality shows ... but the baseball card? Now we're talking. The pop star was among the ownership group of the Tacoma Rainiers baseball franchise (a Mariners farm team as you can see on the card) for about five years and that got him an appearance in this MiLB-celebrating oddity of a card set from TRISTAR. His 10 baseball cards in this release (this is one of the parallels) are all there are for him when it comes to sports cards ... unless the team snuck him into a set and nobody noticed. Obak is a fun one full of weird stuff and I've trotted some of them out in this series a few times ... and there will be more.

Keep reading for more examples of some weird or fun baseball cards (and other stuff) you can find in and around MiLB.

A MYSTERY GROUP?
The Card: Front Office Staff -- 1979 TCMA West Haven Yankees
The Buzz On This: Group cards like this always get me to stop and notice when it comes to old sets ... I often wonder if there's somebody who's a name now we haven't noticed or somebody famous for, say, not baseball? In this case, it's a mystery as seven people are seen but only four are mentioned on the back ... and two of those four mentioned have their own cards in a set that also includes coach Hoyt Wilhelm (a Hall of Famer), Dave Righetti, Buck Showalter, Stump Merrill and Willie McGee -- and even a batboys' anomaly where "Cool Breeze, Danny and Pepper" get carded. Robert Zeig went on to work advertising for the Yankees a few years in the 1980s and for a firm that has helped with more than 20 Super Bowls among his rundown on LinkedIn. Meanwhile, Lloyd Kern bought this team in 1977 and moved it to Lynn, Mass., in 1980 before selling it a year later. Robert Namar was in that role for a couple years and has since worked for Merrill Lynch, Deloitte & Touche, Morgan Stanley and more from beyond the baseball world ... LinkedIn had that, too. No word on the others ... but that's a lot of trivia for a single card, which is unlike pretty much anything you will see in an MLB set.

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LOOKING SO CLOSE TO MLB
The Card: Denzel Clarke 2022 Topps Heritage Minor League Edition
The Buzz On This: This ode to 1973 Topps is a card that could pass for an MLB creation save for those three little letters "ACL" on there ... and that's a reason I added this to my stash after Clarke showed some flashes of defensive genius with the Sac Vegas A's this past season. With Heritage MILB's death -- this was the final set -- that left just Pro Debut as the lone in-pack MiLB release from Topps each year.

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WHAT?
The Card: Bing Crosby 2009 TRISTAR Obak T212 Minis
The Buzz On This: This singer and actor had a legendary multi-decade career where he appeared in countless films and recorded more than 1,600 songs ... he's even got three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for movies, radio and musical performances. With his vast wealth and fame, he invested in all kinds of companies and projects, including ownership shares in the Pittsburgh Pirates, Detroit Tigers, Billings (Mont.) Mustangs and, as this card notes, the Hollywood Stars, another MiLB team, that popped up in pop culture a few times. Crosby has a lot more cardboard -- particularly cut autos and, of course, in non-sports sets -- vs. Lachey, but this is also his only standard baseball card appearance. 

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THE TACOMA TIGER
The Card: Art Popham 1982 TCMA Tacoma Tigers
The Buzz On This: That cardboard bio isn't the norm for oldschool TCMA -- and it recaps everything from being a batboy to getting a World Series ring working for a dynasty and then being a MiLB broadcaster. After this job, he joined the The News Tribune in Tacoma in the early 1990s where he was a business columnist for more than 20 years -- here's his Tacoma Sports Hall of Fame bio to recap it all.

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