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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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. 

SPOT THE MLB STARS ...
The Card: Portland Sea Dogs 2005 Grandstand team card
The Buzz On This: Player collectors might be the only ones to care here besides an occasional MiLB Maniac like me, but team cards like this can often be home to some big-league cameos. This one is a gem with a number of future big-leaguers in play -- Hanley Ramirez, Dustin Pedroia, Jon Lester and Jon Papelbon are probably the biggest names but they aren't the only ones. In fact, there are that many more big-leaguers here all on one super-cheap card. To me this is some oddball fun ... and while team cards aren't some exclusive-to-MiLB thing, they are more common in team sets than MLB sets.

Keep reading for more examples of some weird or fun baseball cards you can find in MiLB.

Continue reading →