Swing and a miss

How did Topps miss José Canseco in 1986?

Swing and a miss

For years, this was the most iconic baseball card of the 1980s.

It’s kind of funny to think about that today, actually. A whole generation of kids have now grown up not really recognizing this picture.

When I was a kid, this card was basically the face of the industry, up there with the 1952 Mickey Mantle and the T-206 Honus Wagner. It wasn’t really until around 1992 or 1993 that the 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card took its place.

Everybody wanted a copy of one of these cards — and they sold for quite a bit. This, of course, was back before the steroid confession, back before the scandals that shook the sport in the early 2000s.

These days, of course, a 1986 Donruss Canseco won’t get you much. Even a rare PSA 10 (no easy task with how Donruss’ quality control was in those days) commands a relatively unimpressive price:

But the interesting thing here isn’t really the front of the card, or the PSA population (only 805 got a 10 according to PSA), or the design of the card, or whatever.

The interesting story is actually on the back:

Note the language: “acclaimed as the No. 1 rated slugging prospect in baseball last year.”

Canseco was simply a terror in the minor leagues. Heck, he was a terror in the major leagues in 1985, going 29 for 96 with 5 home runs for a .302 batting average. He struck out a lot, sure — but the ball was going a long way once he connected.

So what?

Well, that leads us to this bizarre question: why in the world didn’t Topps include him in its 1986 base set?

It’s not that Topps didn’t have room. Topps printed 792 cards in 1986, just as it had for several years running.

It’s not that Topps didn’t include rookies. Darren Daulton got a card, though he only hit .204 in 103 at bats for the Phillies in 1985:

It’s not that Topps didn’t have room. Topps had so much room in its set that it printed no fewer than 9 Pete Rose cards - including a separate card for him as manager and player:

Feels like pretty extreme hero worship to me.

It’s also not like nobody else was printing Canseco cards. Everybody printed a Canseco card in 1986. Fleer did:

Okay — Jose had to share space with Eric Plunk. Still, it’s more than Topps did.

Sportflics gave Canseco a split card with Mike Greenwell — and 1986 was the first year Sportflics printed cards:

It’s kind of hard to find good quality pictures of Sportflics

Canseco even showed up in a lot of the stranger mini sets of 1986, such as Fleer League Leaders (which is hideously ugly):

And there was Donruss Highlights, which was printed at the end of the season:

Most of these cards are completely worthless, of course — but the point is that they existed.

Now, to its credit, Topps did come out with a 1986 Canseco card. It was in the Topps Traded set:

Jose doesn’t look too happy to pose for the camera here, of course. But at least it’s something.

The problem, though, is that it’s Topps Traded, which means that it loses the coveted “rookie card” status.

You see, in the imaginary world of baseball cards, where the rules constantly change and precedent is often ignored, collectors tend to prefer cards dedicated to a single player. Also, for reasons that are increasingly obscure, they seem to favor rookie cards over later cards of the same player.

Sets like Topps Traded, which were really only sold as complete sets directly to dealers, are treated as somehow lesser and inferior to sets that were sold in traditional packs.

It doesn’t make much sense — but, then again, none of these rules make much sense.

But the part that really doesn’t make sense is how in the world Topps decided not to put Canseco in the base set. I mean, just look at his stats:

Jose absolutely destroye dminor league pitching starting in 1985. It should have been obvious to anybody interested in baseball that he was going to stay in the majors for all of 1986.

How did the people who selected rookies for Topps miss that?