2020 trade package #27: All Trade Bait, All the Time

Now that I've covered the group break stuff from Colbey, let's take a look at a cool surprise bubble mailer that arrived from mi hermano Oscar of All Trade Bait, All the Time a couple weeks ago.

Besides being a talented artist and beer enthusiast, Oscar's a big Dodgers fan, and that makes it pretty easy to come up with some stuff to send to him on the other side of the country. And means sometimes he sends cards back my way, like he did with this nice bunch of Tigers:

Most of the cards were of guys I still enjoy collecting, starting with this group. Miggy stars on a recent Topps insert that didn't look familiar to me, 2019's Stars of the Game. While he hasn't really been one for a few seasons his body of work speaks for itself. He's followed by a trio of cards of a guy who reached Cabrera's ultimate destination of the HOF way back when it opened, Ty Cobb. They include a fun mix of an 80s Donruss DK-type card, a Topps mini from more than a decade ago, and Panini's Cooperstown product from 2013. Nice!

Pretty much the entire envelope minus the Miggy card is comprised of former Tigers, but that's awesome because there's plenty of guys I still happily collect like Fryman. And of course I'll never have too many Grandersons, even when I can add new ones like Grandy's 2016 Topps Archives base. There's lots of cards of him with other teams people can send me since I didn't really chase them after he was dealt.

A trio of '84 champs is a good way to finish up this scan. Lemon may have spent his first seven years with the White Sox (as a first-round pick!) but I'll always remember him as a Tiger. When Morris' '80 Topps base seen above was made he had just come off his first full season as a starter, going 17-7, a sign of things to come. And '93 was Tanana's sunset season, spent with the Tigers (nice throwback!) and Mets, capping a very nice 21-year career.

Next is a trio of former Tiger favorites: a pair of catchers and a lifer. All three Pudge cards were new to me, which kind of surprised me even though they're all Rangers cards. He was just one of the guys I tended to keep long before he joined the Tigers since he was such a big star. Bonus points for one of Collector's Choice's best--Stick Ums!

And while Pudge was entering his prime years in Texas, former Tigers C Mickey Tettleton was winding down his career there from 1995-97. I definitely remember enjoying Fruit Loops' four years in Motown, though!

Rodriguez's fellow HOFer, and a native Californian, Alan Trammell is a fixture of any Tigers package worth its salt. Especially when they're cards from his excellent 20-year career. Yes, much of that overlapped with the junk wax era, but that doesn't matter when the subject is a bona fide star!

And since you can't have one without the other, here's another Tigers fixture, "Sweet" Lou Whitaker. Thanks for the reminder on your '89 Bowman card--that's some fine writing there, Lou! Twins CF Alex Cole looks to be trying for the steal on that '95 Collector's Choice SE base, but I'd argue that "trying" is the key word. That was probably one of his eight caught stealings of the season.

The hits keep coming with "Big Daddy" Cecil Fielder, seen here on a pair of '95s (which I flipped for some reason). While I already had the nice looking Flair base, which includes a good shot of the slugger's follow-through, I needed the card to its left from the Pinnacle-branded UC3. That product was kind of superfluous thanks to Sportflix but it also had its own thing going, and it was the era of sports card excess, so no complaints here!

I grouped one more Tram card ('97 Pinnacle) with the horizontal cards of Fielder. An anonymous runner might just get tagged out by the SS wearing the throwback Detroit Stars uni!

I grouped these cards into one miscellaneous scan, and again there's an interesting mix. I'll have to see if I have the Fleer sticker card, which is the kind of thing I would have been applying to my card binders in my younger days. Was the late Jose Lima ever that skinny? Jones and the three-player future stars card joined the previously seen Morris from '80 Topps. Jones, a Rule 5 pick, left Detroit for the Royals after the '83 season so he missed out on a ring there (thanks to the Tigers defeating KC in the '84 ALCS), but chipped in a couple of hits in '85 when his new team won it all.

As for the "future stars," we'll start with Chris, who almost had as many first names as he did Major League seasons. The late Greene was a Detroit native who also spent only the '79 season with the Tigers, the sum total of his MLB experience. And Robbins at least lasted into 1980 before washing out. These cards are always really interesting to look back on, especially 40 years in the future.

That's not quite it, though, because these were also in the envelope. What do we have here?

Ooooh, 1986 Donruss All-Stars jumbos of Tram, Sweet Lou, and "free agent" Wade Boggs! These are a cool reminder of some of the less "out there" oddball items from the '80s. By the way, if you're curious, the double-play combo went to the same All-Star games in 1984, 1985, and 1987.

That was definitely a lot of stuff to cover, so thanks once again to my amigo/hermano out in Cali, Oscar! I'm happy to have been included in what looks like a pretty nice group of mailings. I hope you're staying safe out there as you keep posting art/beer review/card videos which I'll be watching. Hasta la proxima, adios!