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1998 Best Player Of The Year

1998 Best Player Of The Year

MiLB Madness: Kerry Wood's Rays jersey, mascot mysteries, missing out on Chico, Star Wars, blank cardboard & more
Minor league baseball cards from the past can include some weird stuff ... stuff you wouldn't imagine to be found on a baseball card. Here are some some new oddities in this latest edition of MiLB Madness.
WAIT, WHAT?
The Item: Kerry Wood 1998 Best Player Of The Year - Best Possibilities promo card
The Buzz On This: This card is one that I'd apparently never seen until just recently and it really threw me for a loop as Wood was a fireballer who only played for the Chicago Cubs back at this time as part of a 14-year MLB career. Why was it weird? Well, on 1998 cardboard, Wood was firmly a Chicago Cub and definitely not a Tampa Bay Devil Ray as they were known then and this logo is theirs for sure. But ... this card shows Wood as a member of the 1997 Orlando Rays and most MiLB cards of him from back then -- the ones I pulled -- used road unis, so the Rays name and the logo weren't as obviously seen like they were on MLB fields that year. The Orlando Rays were the Cubs' farm team until 1997, switched to the Mariners in 1998 when the Rays arrived in Tampa Bay that year, and then worked with Tampa Bay's prospects from 1999 until the team moved to Alabama to become the Montgomery Biscuits. Wood, of course, was a Cub from 1998-2008 (and a Cub on cards even longer than that) before he finished his career with stops in Cleveland and New York as a Yankee before a return to the Cubs. Somehow, I'd never noticed this card.
Keep reading for more examples of some weird or fun baseball cards you can find in MiLB.
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This entry was posted in Baseball, MiLB Madness and tagged MiLB, El Paso Chihuahuas, Kerry Wood, Lehigh Valley IronPigs, Tampa Bay Rays, Chattanooga Lookouts, Peoria Chiefs, Choice, Grandstand, Chico, 2020 Topps Heritage MiLB, Best, 2015 Choice Lehigh Valley Ironpigs, 2021 Choice El Paso Chihuahuas, 2018 Choice El Paso Chihuahuas, 1998 Best Player Of The Year, Looie The Lookout, 2019 Grandstand Chattanooga Lookouts, Orlando Rays, FeFe, Matt Tramp, 2010 Disabled American Veterans Sioux Falls Pheasants, Disabled American Veterans, Sioux Falls Pheasants, Christina Whitlock, 2023 Choice Peoria Chiefs, Montgomery Biscuits, 2014 Choice El Paso Chihuahuas, 2015 Choice El Paso Chihuahuas, 2016 Choice El Paso Chihuahuas, 2017 Choice El Paso Chihuahuas, 2022 Choice El Paso Chihuahuas on March 6, 2025 by BlowoutBuzz.

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