2018 Sportlots purchases: Hall of Tram

Credit:  Detroit Free Press

Like all Tigers fans I was thrilled for Jack Morris and Alan Trammell as they joined four other very deserving players in entering the Hall of Fame this afternoon.  To celebrate Tram's admission here's a look at the 13 cards I added to his collection via Sportlots this time:

We'll begin way back in 1981 with a fun Kellogg's hologram food issue.  This one has stats from the previous year when Trammell earned the first of his six All-Star nods, plus it looks awesome.  That's followed by somewhat of a spiritual successor, 1989 Sportflics.  While the '88 season for both player and team didn't live up to the exciting 1987 run he was again an All-Star and also won a Silver Slugger Award.

The next bunch is from the latter years of Alan's career, starting with one of his two 1994 Fleer base appearances; he shares the other with double-play partner Lou Whitaker, who should have joined Trammell in Cooperstown today.  Then there's a quartet of 1995 parallels:  Score's Gold Rush, SP Championship's Die Cuts (again, one of two), Stadium Club's Virtual Reality, and Topps' Cyberstats.  The latter pair extrapolate some stats from the strike-shortened '94 campaign, coming up with 108 hits (78 in actual games), 10 homers (8), 51 RBI (28), and a .254 average (.267).

Sticking with 1995 we move on to Upper Deck's good looking if hard-to-scan Special Edition.  The back refers to Tram as "The linchpin of the Tigers offense and defense throughout the 1980s".  Got that right!  Then we have the first of three cards today that were produced after his retirement:  UD's 2002 Sweet Spot Classics.  That beautiful design does justice to a great player's career.

The second group finishes off the vertically oriented cards, moving on up to Donruss' Team Heroes product from 2005.  The back makes this one of several cards today to note Tram's 1984 World Series MVP nod, and it mentions that he was the first in franchise history to combine 150+ homers with 200+ steals.  As it turns out, Trammell is one of just five Tigers to pile up more than 200 stolen bases, and the next closest to the HR/SB feat were all PC guys:  Kirk Gibson (short by six steals), Charlie Gehringer (19), and Lou Whitaker (57).  That's good company!

Next is a 2013 Panini Product, Hometown Heroes, and its Homegrown Heroes insert.  This one actually justifies the "hometown" name somewhat as Trammell's MVP performance in the '84 Series led the Tigers over the Padres from San Diego, where he lived as a kid.  Hey, he was a hero for somebody, just not the home team San Diego hoped!

At least we get to a pair of horizontal cards.  The first--a 1986 Fleer base--was an obvious choice because it pairs Tram with the other great AL SS of the 80s, Cal Ripken Jr.  As a matter of fact the back states that they "have no challengers in the American League"!  I'd definitely agree with that assessment.

Last up today is a '96 Score Dugout Collection parallel, a card that was produced as Alan was playing his sunset season, the end to a career that saw him put up the following numbers and accomplishments:

• 1984 World Series title (MVP)
• Six All-Star selections
• Four Gold Gloves
• Three Silver Slugger awards
• .285/.352/.415 BA/OBP/SLG
• 2365 hits, 185 HR, 1003 RBI, 1231 runs, and 236 steals
• 70.7 career bWAR and 57.8 JAWS (currently 11th overall among SS)

A career Tiger who even came back to manage (if unsuccessfully), he rightfully enters the Hall today and will be further honored in August by seeing his #3 retired by the team.  Congratulations, Alan Trammell!

Complete sets: 1992 Denny's

A bit more than a year ago while I was at a show I made one of those fun oddball purchases you sometimes find yourself making at shows:  I grabbed a 1992 Denny's Holograms complete set, which even came with the little collectible binder, for less than a buck.

Here's a look inside at the four-card pages:

Like the original 1991 versions, this 26-card set highlighted grand-slam hitters in hologram form on cards produced by Upper Deck, and you had to get them by purchasing (but not necessarily consuming, I suppose) disgusting "food" at Denny's.  A number of the players are holdovers from the previous year's set and the player selection hasn't exactly aged well almost 25 years later, but that's fine because there's still plenty of fan favorites.

In terms of design, the fronts are 100% hologram, and to my surprise they actually scanned pretty nicely.  All photos show each player in some sort of hitting-related action, though Ripken appears to be running out a fly or foul ball and Daniels looks like he just walked.  The backgrounds represent the players' cities in some fashion.  Besides the Upper Deck and Denny's Grand Slam logos, plus the player and team names in tiny lettering, they have a horizontal "Limited Edition" banner and "Collector Series" running vertically down the right.  The former has always been funny to collectors who know how plentiful these could get, and the latter has always seemed pretty much redundant to me--of course people know you can collect these!

The backs are much more subdued as they start with the player and team names again in a horizontal blue bar that also includes the card number--and the total number of cards in the set, a feature I tend to like in my sets, though it's so rarely used.  The main focus here is grand slams so we're told in BOLD CAPS how many that player's hit, then given a write-up on him and why he's in the set.  This is all contained on a bright white back in between a couple red bars, making this a set Hulk Hogan and other Real Americans could be proud of.

Here's a look at the full set--fronts and backs!--plus I'll mention how many slams each player ended up with in his career--some of these guys hit a bunch more after they appeared in this set.

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Marquis Grissom:  4

Ken Caminiti:  6

Fred McGriff:  9

Felix Jose:  2

Jack Clark:  9

Albert Belle:  13

Sid Bream:  3

Robin Ventura:  18  (Tied with Willie McCovey for fifth all-time!)

Cal Ripken Jr.:  8

Ryne Sandberg:  5

Paul O'Neill:  5

Luis Polonia:  1

Cecil Fielder:  11

Kal Daniels:  5

Brian McRae:  5

Howard Johnson:  7

Greg Vaughn:  6

Dale Murphy:  5

Kent Hrbek:  8

Barry Bonds:  11

Matt Nokes:  6

Jose Canseco:  6

Jay Buhner:  10

Will Clark:  5

Ruben Sierra:  9

Joe Carter:  10

Of this group, only three players never hit another grand slam after appearing in the set:

• Jack Clark, whose final season was 1992, in which he hit just 5 HR
• Luis Polonia, who hit 36 career HR and rarely came up to bat with ducks on the pond, meaning his lone slam was a happy fluke
• Dale Murphy, who hit 2 HR in 1992 and none in '93 before retiring

Meanwhile, a few of these guys bumped up their numbers nicely:

• Ventura:  +16
• Belle:  +12
• Bonds:  +10
• Buhner, Fielder, and Sierra:  +8

Ventura just went full beast mode, and it's no coincidence that he became the first player to hit a slam in each game of a double-header on the way to his spot at #5 overall on the career record board.

The most notable card in the set for me--and there aren't many since Fielder is the only Tiger, though Nokes is another former Detroit favorite--is Cal Ripken Jr. as it adds another card to his PC.

What other complete (and possibly oddball) sets will I be showing off in the future?  Who knows?