1995 Leaf Limited

So it's been six weeks since my last entry and in that time I have not been able to come up with anything to say good or bad about these cards. I guess I'll leave it at that.

The 1995 Leaf Limited Detroit Tigers:

25 Chad Curtis

52 Travis Fryman

93 Alan Trammell

106 Bob Higginson

139 Cecil Fielder

142 Lou Whitaker

I don't think I have ever cared for these little card sets that don't even give you a full page of Tigers. There, that's something.

1995 Leaf

This is a sweet looking set. The rainbow foil comes off the card really well. This might well be the best looking Leaf set to date. I can't say anything good about the foil stamped player name at the bottom, so I won't.

The 1995 Leaf Detroit Tigers:

9 John Doherty

35 Chris Gomez

63 Cecil Fielder

78 Kirk Gibson

113 Jose Lima

139 Greg Gohr

178 Lou Whitaker

207 Travis Fryman

224 Alan Trammell

248 Danny Bautista

254 Sean Bergman

278 Mike Moore

297 Chad Curtis

I only have one insert and it's fabulous. The best part is that the scan is about a million times better looking than the actual card. In real life, the border is a silverish looking color. But the scanned version actually makes it look like a 3D rainbow orange tiger skinish sort of thing, which totally rocks! Seriously, the card I'm holding in my hand looks nothing like the one pictured.

Cornerstones

2 Fryman/Fielder

1995 Studio

One cool thing about Studio is that they were always trying to do something not seen on cards before. These are no exception. Yeah, they're a little bit schlocky, but as a one-time issue I like 'em. The credit card motif works and lends itself well to the info on the front of the card like the debut year and birthday. 

The 1995 Studio Detroit Tigers:

27 Travis Fryman

45 Cecil Fielder

53 Chris Gomez

70 Chad Curtis

80 Lou Whitaker

98 Alan Trammell

191 John Doherty

This is one of the few cases where the parallels turned out better than base set. Technically, they are not parallels, since they didn't do this for every player, but trust me, they're parallels.

The Gold and Platinum series were a no-brainer for something credit card related. I like the rounded corners and the gold foil hologram pops a lot more than the silver base set cards. Personally I would have like to seen an insert set along the lines of Past Due or Credit Declined, but that's just me speaking from personal experience.....

Gold

27 Travis Fryman

45 Cecil Fielder

As Platinum cards typically designate something exclusive and hard to get, it should come as no shock that there were no Tigers in the Platinum set. (FTR is looks like about half the teams didn't land a single player in the Platinum set.)

1995 Donruss

I would be tempted to rank this as one of the best looking sets Donruss ever made. It could be right up there with '83, '84, and '93. It's got the great looking picture-in-picture similar to '83 Topps, except with an outstanding home plate frame bordered in team colors. But I can't do it, and regular readers will know exactly why. 

The silver foil absolutely ruins these cards. Making it even worse, the debossing of the team and player names makes them virtually unreadable. It's not hard to imagine how much better these cards would look if the ribbon was dark blue, with the team and player names reversed out in orange. Or vice versa. Instead it's all to easy to see how they add nothing to a fantastic design. What a shame.

The 1995 Donruss Detroit Tigers:

45 Lou Whitaker

82 Travis Fryman

109 Cecil Fielder

137 Jose Lima

154 Mike Moore

172 Chris Gomez

219 Chad Kreuter

249 Danny Bautista

257 Kirk Gibson

274 Milt Cuyler

309 Junior Felix

312 John Doherty

339 Tim Belcher

362 Joe Boever

407 Tony Phillips

434 Bill Gullickson

465 David Wells

502 Alan Trammell

506 Juan Samuel

537 Mickey Tettleton

Donruss issued a parallel called Press Proof, that looked just like the regular cards, except they were gold foil instead of silver, and had the words PRESS PROOF written across the top of the card. They did not look any better. 

1994 Studio

I'm a big fan of the Studio "franchise." I get what they were trying to do and more often than not they were a nice issue. But this is one of those "not" times, and not because these are bad looking cards. It's more to do with the way they went about it once they came up with the concept. 

I like the "locker room" concept. It's a fresh idea. But it was all down hill from there. The first glaring mistake is the jersey hanging on the wall. Any half-assed fan can tell that those aren't Tigers jerseys hanging up there. There's no name on the back for one. Second, the numbers on the jerseys are huge, and in no way resemble the numbers on the real jerseys. I could live with that though, if it wasn't for the other glaring noticeable mistake.

They used the same locker for every picture. Every card shows a picture of a locker in the corner of the room. It's easy to identify by the shadows on the right side of the card. A closer look at the left of the card shows that there is no locker on that side either. But when you really look at the card close, it looks like the "locker" is actually one of those cheap pieces of Sauder furniture, that any bachelor can easily identify. You know what I'm talking about. The thing that comes unassembled in a box, with four pieces of wood and eight screws, yet takes three hours and several expletives to assemble, and there is always one screw left over. Yeah, those.....

The 1994 Studio Detroit Tigers:

189 Eric Davis

190 Cecil Fielder

191 Travis Fryman

192 Tony Phillips

193 Mickey Tettleton

194 Alan Trammell

195 Lou Whitaker

1994 Leaf Limited

If I was in the mood for bitching, this is one of those sets I would bitch about. Five Tigers cards in the whole set, foil printing ON TOP of more foil, and just a putrid design. These look like something I'd get from the Bellagio. These are awful. 

Did I mention that they FOIL PRINTED ON TOP OF FOIL? I had to blast the shit out of this scan to even show any sort of contrast. The dark area is all silver foil. The white area is some sort of silverish rainbow foil. The first time I scanned this card all you could see was Trammell, that's how much foil is on here.

The 1994 Leaf Limited Detroit Tigers:

31 Cecil Fielder

32 Travis Fryman

33 Mickey Tettleton

34 Alan Trammell

35 Lou Whitaker

There was also a Leaf Limited Rookies set, but I can't recall if they were insert cards, or their own set. I'm not really all that curious about it though. 

12R Danny Bautista

35R Chris Gomez

1994 Leaf

The folks at Donruss/Leaf mailed it in with these. The marble background was played out by '94. There is not much more going on with these than there was the year before. You know the drill, if I'm not convinced they put much effort into something, neither will I...

The 1994 Leaf Detroit Tigers:

5 Chad Kreuter

39 David Wells

50 Cecil Fielder

80 Lou Whitaker

120 Alan Trammell

147 Bill Gullickson

160 Tony Phillips

183 Mike Henneman

197 Mike Moore

202 Scott Livingstone

232 Tim Belcher

256 Eric Davis

279 Mickey Tettleton

342 Kirk Gibson

371 John Doherty

405 Travis Fryman

There were also your typical handful of Cecil Fielder inserts, with a Danny Bautista thrown in for giggles.

Clean Up Crew

5 Cecil Fielder

Gold Rookies

7 Danny Bautista

MVP Contenders

A6 Cecil Fielder

Power Brokers

7 Cecil Fielder

1994 Triple Play

Another year of Triple Play, another nicely done set. It's funny that I didn't care much for these cheap issues back when, but now I would love to see a cheap set like this that was given its own great looking design instead of the refurbished look of Topps Opening Day and Upper Deck First Edition year after year.

The gigantic player name, use of the team logo, and prominent use of team colors all score high marks from me. That's also a cool masking effect with the player name. As someone who has spent a career in desktop publishing/printing, it's fun to notice something like that being done for the first time. But as I've noticed, Triple Play was always about fun.

The 1994 Donruss Triple Play Detroit Tigers:

241 Eric Davis

242 John Doherty

243 Cecil Fielder

244 Travis Fryman

245 Bill Gullickson

246 Mike Henneman

247 Tony Phillips

248 Mickey Tettleton

249 Alan Trammell

250 Lou Whitaker

Inserts:

Bomb Squad

2 Cecil Fielder

Medalists

1 Mickey Tettleton

5 Lou Whitaker

7 Alan Trammell

9 Travis Fryman

Nicknames

1 Cecil Fielder

1994 Donruss

For reasons unknown to me, I have been stuck for over two weeks now trying to come up with something to say about these, but I am at a loss. This is a great looking set. There is nothing about the design that I have any major qualms with. I have nothing to work with here. About the only thing I noticed is that the team logo changes from the old circle logo in Series 1 to the current tiger jumping through the D logo in Series 2. 

In the spring of '94 one of my friends and I would take our morning break at work by walking across the street to Mapco to get a fountain drink and a pack of cards. I would get a pack of Fleer and he would get a pack of these. I'd give him any Cardinals I got, and he returned the favor with Tigers. 

That's pretty much all I've got. 

The 1994 Donruss Detroit Tigers:

27 Cecil Fielder

44 Mickey Tettleton

78 John Doherty 

108 Kirk Gibson

138 Dan Gladden

167 Greg Gohr

195 Bill Gullickson

224 Chad Kreuter

252 Bill Krueger

280 Alan Trammell

307 David Wells

360 Lou Whitaker

378 Travis Fryman

415 Bob MacDonald

442 Danny Bautista

445 Tony Phillips

475 Milt Cuyler

496 Mike Henneman

554 Mike Moore

597 Scott Livingstone

618 Eric Davis

628 Chris Gomez

637 Buddy Groom

645 Rich Rowland

There was a lousy parallel/insert set called Special Edition that looked like the regular cards, except every element other than the photo was covered up with some sort of foil stamping. Not surprisingly, I don't own one of these.

27 Cecil Fielder

44 Mickey Tettleton

80 Lou Whitaker

98 Travis Fryman

Other inserts included:

Diamond Kings

22 Cecil Fielder

Dominators

1 Cecil Fielder

Long Ball Leaders

1 Cecil Fielder

MVPs

20 Cecil Fielder

It's a shame there were so few Cecil Fielder insert cards in this set.....

1993 Triple Play

For the second year in a row Donruss came up with a nice looking card for their Triple Play release. Is this day and age of hard to read player names that have been foil stamped on the cards, I like it that the name is plastered across the top in 30 point type.

For whatever reason, this set is not listed in my team set checklist book, so my attempt at putting one together may be inaccurate. (I've only got four of these cards, so I'll give it a shot....)

The 1993 Donruss Triple Play Detroit Tigers:

5 Cecil Fielder

44 Milt Cuyler

59 Travis Fryman

92 Mickey Tettleton

137 Rob Deer

176 Tony Phillips

191 Alan Trammell

224 Lou Whitaker

There were some sort of scratch off insert game cards. I kinda remember these, but not really all that much.

15 Cecil Fielder

Also a League Leaders insert card that I don't recall at all.

L5 Cecil Fielder

1993 Studio

It's not often I praise a Donruss release, but I will do so here. This is one of the nicest looking sets ever made. This was such a simple concept that it begs the question of why it was never done before. The only thing I don't like about this set is that I didn't collect the entire thing. Even the foil stamping looks elegant when used in this format. 

Of course it's a shame that they found the doofious (yeah, I made it up, so what?) picture of Kirk Gibson they could possibly dig up, but I still love them. I may have to hunt down a complete set on ebay after the holidays. These are that nice. (I just looked and you can find one for about $15-20. Not a bad deal at all for a set this awesome.)

The 1993 Studio Detroit Tigers:

26 Rob Deer

37 Cecil Fielder

76 Lou Whitaker

108 Travis Fryman

138 Mickey Tettleton

165 Kirk Gibson

213 Tony Phillips

Okay, I only have two beefs with this set. How the hell could they leave out Alan Trammell, yet include Jerald Clark and Orestes Destrade? How?

There is an insert card that I was never aware of at any time in life until fifteen seconds ago. 

Silhouettes #5 Travis Fryman

1993 Leaf

Another Donruss issue that looks like it borrowed heavily from '92 Fleer Ultra. Same old marble background corner and goil foil circle thingy. Pretty lackluster and unimaginative. Much like this paragraph. 

This is also another one of those sets where the backs of the cards look better than the fronts. At least in concept maybe. I mean, instead of just putting two different shots of the Ren Cen in the background, why not mix it up a little bit some other iconic Detroit landmarks like Motown Studios, the Windsor Tunnel, or even the downtown Borders on Woodward Ave.?

The 1993 Leaf Detroit Tigers:

16 Travis Fryman

38 Milt Cuyler

60 Dan Gladden

81 Mike Henneman

103 Bill Gullickson

110 Tettleton/Fryman

126 Tony Phillips

148 Lou Whitaker

191 Mike Munoz

213 Mickey Tettleton

246 Rob Deer

283 Cecil Fielder

314 Kirk Gibson

348 Bill Krueger

375 Scott Livingstone

401 Mike Moore

421 Alan Trammell

463 Chad Kreuter

484 David Wells

534 John Doherty

I have no way of verifying that this checklist card #110 is of Mickey Tettleton doing a flip over the railing while Travis Fryman watches from the dugout, but my theory is the only one I've ever heard, so I'm running with it. 

There were a few ho-hum insert cards. And by ho-hum I mean, "Oh really? Who gives a shit about a Greg Gohr insert card?"

Fasttrack #19 Travis Fryman

Gold All Stars #3 Cecil Fielder

Gold Rookies #6 Greg Gohr

1993 Donruss

I like this set although it kinda reminds me of '92 Fleer Ultra. I think it's the embossed look of the little diamond and bar on the front, I dunno. I do know however that this was Donruss best effort since '84. 

I love the pic of Shawn Hare with the bat back on his shoulder as the ball is about to whiz by him. I like what they did with the checklists too. A Fryman-Livingstone high five should be preserved for all of eternity. 

The 1993 Donruss Detroit Tigers:

13 Mickey Tettleton

41 Rico Brogna

71 Mark Carreon

77 Rich Rowland

99 Kevin Ritz

127 Travis Fryman

145 Kurt Knudsen

173 Milt Cuyler

203 John Kiely

231 Rob Deer

259 Mike Henneman

277 John Doherty

305 Shawn Hare

335 Dave Haas

391 Phil Clark

409 Scott Livingstone

437 Skeeter Barnes

467 Dan Gladden

495 Mark Leiter

523 Bill Gullickson

541 Cecil Fielder

569 Buddy Groom

599 Frank Tanana

605 Greg Gohr

627 Mike Munoz

655 Alan Trammell

673 Chad Kreuter

686 Lou Whitaker

701 Tony Phillips

772 Walt Terrell

There is also a card of Scott Aldred pictured as a Tiger but listed as a Rockie, #733.

They ran out the same looking Diamond Kings in '93 as they did in '92.

DK-15 Cecil Fielder

There were a few inserts, all of which featured Cecil Fielder.

Elite 34 Cecil Fielder

MVP 17 Cecil Fielder

Spirit of the Game 10 Cecil Fielder, Rob Deer, and Mickey Tettleton

I don't have a lot here. I really don't, and I've had two weeks to think about it. Beer is not even getting the juices flowing.

1992 Triple Play

Just to make sure the kids didn't go a wanting in '92, Donruss released a set specifically marketed for them, and it says here that they did a great job. The fiery borders somehow work here. The player selection is ok for a 264 card set. I vaguely remember that you could put this whole set together for under $10. (That would explain why I am missing a few of these....) So despite my ragging on Donruss for their previous childish designs, it's ok to do so in my book as long as the cards are cheap and made for kids to begin with.

The 1992 Donruss Triple Play Detroit Tigers:

29 Cecil Fielder

44 Mickey Tettleton

86 Travis Fryman

99 Awesome Action Tony Phillips

100 Milt Cuyler

117 Lou Whitaker

161 Bill Gullickson

176 Alan Trammell

218 Tony Phillips

249 Frank Tanana

Now to perhaps one of the best baseball cards ever. Check out the "Awesome Action" card of Luis Polonia stealing second base on the Tigers. Now look at the second picture of the ump calling Polonia out while the ball is clearly above Phillips's head. Now look at what it says on the back of the card.

Awesome. Simply awesome. They even let the kids write up the backs too. How could anybody not like these?

1992 Studio

Donruss did a much better job with their second year of Studio cards than they did with their first. The metallic gold borders and grainy sepia tone photo were both innovative in '92. Unfortunately, there isn't much else going on here. Unless you count the photo of the dad from Seventh Heaven on Frank Tanana's card. You don't think that's him? Look at the t-shirt. Enough said.

The 1992 Studio Detroit Tigers:

171 Milt Cuyler

172 Rob Deer

173 Cecil Fielder

174 Travis Fryman

175 Mike Henneman

176 Tony Phillips

177 Frank Tanana

178 Mickey Tettleton

179 Alan Trammell

180 Lou Whitaker

1992 Leaf

Some sets don't really give you much to work with, and this is one of those sets. They used the metallic silver again to excess and didn't do much with the design. The parallel cards look much much better, but again, gold foil over black doesn't scan worth a shit, so you won't see much here.

The 1992 Leaf Detroit Tigers:

21 Frank Tanana

40 Tony Phillips

61 Bill Gullickson

75 Milt Cuyler

127 Scott Livingstone

153 Cecil Fielder

172 Alan Trammell

193 Rob Deer

207 Mark Leiter

239 Dan Gladden

259 Mark Carreon

285 Mickey Tettleton

304 Travis Fryman

325 Mike Henneman

386 Kevin Ritz

391 Lou Whitaker

402 Les Lancaster

496 Chad Kreuter

There was another Gold Rookies insert set that was pretty ho-hum. The cards themselves don't look that great, but the picture of John Doherty makes him look like a bad ass flame thrower, which he never was. If I had the card I would post it, but I don't, and I can't find a decent scan on ebay.

BC24 John Doherty

1992 Donruss

I like to refer to these as Donruss' comeback set. Ok, I have never actually referred to these as Donruss' comeback set, but I would like to. Donruss leapt ahead of most of their competition in base sets in 1992. You can tell that desktop publishing was really starting to take off around this time. The gradiated blue borders (green on The Rookies of course...) really are a nice, simple touch to these. 

Donruss also figured out that the gold foil worked much better as an accentuation on their Diamond King inserts, which were the best looking DK's every produced. The cards are printed on a nice thick white card stock with a glossy finish. While this is not one of my favorite Donruss issues, it at least showed that they were done appealing to kids with their base set. Consider this a springboard to some of the fantastic cards they produced in the mid-90's.

The 1992 Donruss Detroit Tigers:

42 Andy Allanson

85 Mickey Tettleton

111 Frank Tanana

131 BIll Gullickson

164 Alan Trammell

206 Cecil Fielder

232 Milt Cuyler

253 Mike Henneman

285 Milt Cuyler

328 Tony Phillips

349 Travis Fryman

375 Paul Gibson

443 Lloyd Moseby

486 Scott Aldred

512 Mark Salas

532 Rob Deer

565 Walt Terrell

607 Jerry Don Gleaton

633 Mark Leiter

675 Scott Livingstone

709 John Cerutti

749 Skeeter Barnes

DK-25 Tony Phillips Diamond King

This was the last year of The Rookies as we would know them. If that didn't make you shed a tear, perhaps the list of Tigers will do so:

17 Rico Brogna

33 John Doherty

44 Buddy Groom

48 Shawn Hare

62 Kurt Knudsen

1991 Studio

Wow. Where to begin. Somebody at Donruss was dating someone at Olan Mills and voila! Studio!! I graduated HS in 1986, and I swear that 99% of the guy's senior pics in my yearbook look exactly like Lloyd Moseby's. Sadly, the other 2 pictures look just like Rob Deer's. (and Wyatt Earp's...) I will not be posting my own picture at this time.

The 1991 Studio Detroit Tigers:

51 Milt Cuyler

52 Rob Deer

53 Cecil Fielder

54 Travis Fryman

55 Bill Gullickson

56 Lloyd Moseby

57 Frank Tanana

58 Mickey Tettleton

59 Alan Trammell

60 Lou Whitaker

1991 Leaf

Year 2 of Leaf gave us these uninspired cards. It sort of looks like the cards are supposed to look like they are pictures in a photo album. A photo album full of lead paint maybe.

A great shot of things to come from Milt Cuyler though.

I can't imagine how pissed off if I would be if I were not a Tigers fan and I bought a pack of these high end cards and pulled a Jerry Don Gleaton......until I look at the Brewers checklist and see Kurt Knudsen. Suddenly I'm not so pissed anymore.....

The 1991 Leaf Detroit Tigers:

4 Tony Phillips

18 Mike Henneman

55 Paul Gibson

92 Dave Bergman

106 Cecil Fielder

120 Lou Whitaker

135 Jerry Don Gleaton

149 Travis Fryman

187 Steve Searcy

223 Lloyd Moseby

237 Rob Deer

251 Milt Cuyler

270 John Cerutti

322 Mickey Tettleton

351 Alan Trammell

366 Pete Incaviglia

402 Bill Gullickson

455 Andy Allanson

497 Frank Tanana

Leaf also added a boring insert set called Leaf Gold Rookies, which included Nolan Ryan and Rickey Henderson. No, I do not make this stuff up.

BC11 Rico Brogna

As we will see in the many years to come of Topps products, gold foil does not scan worth a damn. It pretty much shows up as black.

EDIT: Thanks again to Jon for this one.

1991 Leaf Previews:

18 Cecil Fielder

1991 Donruss

The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round, the wheels on the bus go.....ah, screw it. Donruss hit rock bottom in '91 with these turds. They hijacked the '86 design and released these in two series with two different color schemes so we could swear at them twice. This is one of those cases where the cards themselves say more than I ever could. The Cecil Fielder Diamond King card is not even worth showing.

The 1991 Donruss Detroit Tigers:

3 Cecil Fielder Diamond King

40 Milt Cuyler

65 Mark Salas

76 Mike Henneman

118 Alan Trammell

133 Lance McCullers

174 Lou Whitaker

188 Lloyd Moseby

230 Mike Heath

245 Jeff Robinson

286 Tony Phillips

301 Chet Lemon

342 Dave Bergman

353 Paul Gibson

397 Cecil Fielder MVP

422 Scott Aldred

451 Cecil Fielder

492 Jack Morris

508 Frank Tanana

549 Steve Searcy

563 John Shelby

605 Clay Parker

620 Edwin Nunez

661 Jerry Don Gleaton

675 Dan Petry

717 Walt Terrell

728 Gary Ward

729 Rob Deer

768 Travis Fryman

Donruss added their MVP insert cards to the base set in '91, and replaced them with Highlights insert cards, which weren't really insert cards either. They were just numbered like they were.

BC-5 Cecil Fielder

They continued with their Rookies box set, this time fooling us by making them red instead of green. Which makes me wonder. Series 1 had blue fronts and blue backs. Series 2 had green fronts and green backs. The Rookies had red fronts and......slightly different green backs? I don't know, and I don't care. Hell, we didn't even get the good Leiter brother.

6 Milt Cuyler

29 Mark Leiter

53 Rusty Meacham

The one saving grace is that this would be the end of the crappy era for Donruss. They would come up with some nicer cards in the years to follow, but good god are these awful.

EDIT: Thanks to my new friend and Tiger collector Jon for telling me about one I have missed.

1991 Donruss Grand Slammers:

7 Cecil Fielder