1986 1987 1988 Topps Mini League Leaders

The first of a two part series called "Things Topps tried to revive in the 80's that would not catch on until years later....."

Here a couple of months back I came across a website that had a lot of cheap wax boxes from the 80's. I remember messing with these a little bit way back when, but I don't think I ever collected full sets. Since the boxes are cheaper now than they were then I went ahead and picked up a box from each year. Hell, a box of these are about the same price as one rack pack of 2010 cards and these were chock full of HOF.

I'm on a quest to collect all of the 80's oddball stuff and these rank up there among the best. An obvious throwback to the '75 minis, as the name suggests this set is composed of the the statistical leaders of varying years. They are smallish sets (66 cards the first year, 77 cards the following two years) and Topps produced these for 5 years before giving up on them. As per usual with Topps, distribution within each box is awful. I got two of some guys and seven of some others. But I got a complete set out of each box and that's all I was after. Even though the design is minimal, I really think that's a positive thing coming from the 80's.


There's a mostly great representation of Tigers in these sets, Walt Terrell notwithstanding (Walt ranked tied for fourth in shutouts in 1985 with 3, hence his inclusion). Anyways.....

The 1986 Topps Mini-League Leaders Detroit Tigers:
13 Darrell Evans
14 Jack Morris
15 Lance Parrish
16 Walt Terrell

The 1987 Topps Mini-League Leaders Detroit Tigers:
53 Kirk Gibson
54 Willie Hernandez
55 Jack Morris
56 Alan Trammell

The 1988 Topps Mini-League Leaders Detroit Tigers:
10 Darrell Evans
11 Jack Morris
12 Alan Trammell
13 Lou Whitaker


Nowadays the tobacco card inserts that are roughly the same size are pretty popular. They are much harder to get of course, but these cards are available for a fraction of the cost and are pretty cool sets. It's a shame these never really caught on, but it seems like none of the oddball wax products that came out in the 80's were that popular.

1988 Score

I still remember the day I walked into Grand City and saw these cards. (Ok, maybe not the day, or even the month for that matter, but the year most defintely....) There was a new player in town and his name was Score! There was an end cap full of these rack packs. (Did Score ever release anything else?) I quickly shuffled through the packs to find as many as I could that had a Tiger on the top or bottom. (Yet somehow I am missing three cards, despite buying a factory set for $3 once upon a time.)

Anyway, Score was a welcome addition at first to the baseball card scene in 1988. All of the cards had action shots. The design was as elegant as it gets. But this set was not without its problems. (You didn't really think I wouldn't bring them up, did you?)

Problem #1. The Borders. There was no rhyme or reason to this madness. Purple, Green , Red, whatever. I could have lived with the multitude of colors, if they fit with a certain team's colors. But some of these are just an awful marriage (see Thurmond, Mark...)

Problem #2. The Cropping. Someone up there at Score decided that it was far more important to get the entire bat in the photo rather than the player. (No biggie, my Granny loved to take pictures of people's feet....)

Problem #3. The recycled card. Now I don't blame Score too much for this. But the same super star shortstops card, in the same year, was a little much. (But hey, who can bitch about too many Alan Trammell cards?)

The 1988 Score Detroit Tigers:

15 Matt Nokes

37 Alan Trammell

56 Lou Whitaker

75 Darrell Evans

119 Chet Lemon

138 Larry Herndon

156 Mike Heath

171 Pat Sheridan

199 John Grubb

217 Dave Bergman

233 Tom Brookens

272 Jim Morrison

382 Mark Thurmond

445 Bill Madlock

461 Dan Petry

471 Eric King

490 Frank Tanana

507 Willie Hernandez

520 Mike Henneman

525 Kirk Gibson

538 Walt Terrell

545 Jack Morris

549 Jeff Robinson

571 Jim Walewander

610 Doyle Alexander

648 Rookie Sluggers Matt Nokes

651 Super Shortstops Alan Trammell

There was nothing new in the 1988 Score Rookie and Traded set that you couldn't get elsewhere.

13T Luis Salazar

17T Ray Knight

38T Gary Pettis

79T Don Heinkel

All in all, this was a nice refreshing set in 1988. But before I go.....I just have one big issue with this set. If you think there were too many 1988 Donruss cards produced, I'm here to say that for every 1988 Donruss Mike Henneman, there are approximately 200,000,000 Score Hennemans. Should our sun ever start to go out, it would take nothing more than to box up all the 1988 Score cards in existence and rocket them into space to ignite that bad boy for another 6 billion years. Or 6,000 years, whatever you like....

1988 Donruss Baseball's Best

Just in case you thought I was bullshitting earlier about Donruss figuring out that there was a world full of suckers ready to pounce on anything in 1988, let me offer this set up as Exhibit A. Case closed, the glove fits, Colonel Mustard did it with the lead pipe in the kitchen. Fleer released a set of Baseball's Best in 1988. It contained 44 cards. Donruss issued one as well. 336 cards.

That's right. It's not a typo. 336 cards. Baseball's Best. 

Uh-huh.....

The 1988 Donruss Baseball's Best Detroit Tigers:

13 Doyle Alexander

35 Darrell Evans

69 Mike Heath

91 Mike Henneman

125 Willie Hernandez

147 Chet Lemon

181 Jack Morris

203 Gary Pettis

237 Matt Nokes

259 Frank Tanana

281 Alan Trammell

293 Walt Terrell

315 Lou Whitaker

At least the gaudy orange and black motif fits with the Tigers.....

(Photo of the boxed sets courtesy of ebay. Right now the high bid on these FIVE complete sets is $4.34. Amazing. Or pathetic. You decide......)

1988 Donruss

1988 was the year that Donruss decided to take full advantage of the card collecting explosion that was starting around this time. I am convinced of three things regarding 1988 Donruss. One, this mother is as ugly as it gets. (only because I'm only up to 1988. Donruss would stake this claim many, many, many times in the years to follow...) Two, there were so many cards produced that year that the energy crisis could be solved for the next three generations by rounding all these babies up and burning them. And three, if you think I'm kidding about number two, go to ebay and do a search for "1988 Donruss set." There is never a bid on a single set, simply because no one is willing to pay the $8 shipping for one, even if it was being given away for FREE. (In fact, a quick check of ebay right this second shows that there is a lot of EIGHT complete factory sets that has received a bid of 99 cents. That's right, 99 cents for 5,280 cards.....)

The 1988 Donruss Detroit Tigers

4 Alan Trammell Diamond King

50 Eric King

91 Walt Terrell

107 Tom Brookens

127 Jack Morris

152 Matt Nokes

173 Lou Whitaker

215 Chet Lemon

230 Alan Trammell

250 Darrell Evans

275 Kirk Gibson

296 Jeff Robinson

338 Mike Heath

353 Larry Herndon

373 Dave Bergman

398 Willie Hernandez

420 Mike Henneman

461 Frank Tanana

476 Dan Petry

496 Bill Madlock

522 Pat Sheridan

543 Jim Morrison

584 Doyle Alexander

599 Mark Thurmond

615 Scott Lusader

Donruss also introduced their first "insert" cards in 1988, but really all they are is a 26 card MVP subset. They weren't any harder to pull than any other card. They are the same crappy design on the same crappy stock. I dunno what the "BC" designation is supposed to stand for in a subset of MVPs, but I don't really care.....

BC-11 Alan Trammell

The Rookies entry was:

19 Paul Gibson

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.............................................

1988 Fleer

In 1988 Fleer began their journey into spectacularly mediocre cards. For the first of many years to come their cards bore a strong resemblance to those over produced 44 card box sets that would flood the hobby. There's nothing much special about these.

Save for Nate Snell. Chalk that up as another "he played for the Tigers?" entry. I don't see that he was ever featured again on a Tigers card. A quick check of retrosheet shows that this was the end of the line for ol' Nater. Thanks for the memories.

The 1988 Fleer Detroit Tigers:

51 Doyle Alexander

52 Dave Bergman

53 Tom Brookens

54 Darrell Evans

55 Kirk Gibson

56 Mike Heath

57 Mike Henneman

58 Willie Hernandez

59 Larry Herndon

60 Eric King

61 Chet Lemon

62 Scott Lusader

63 Bill Madlock

64 Jack Morris

65 Jim Morrison

66 Matt Nokes

67 Dan Petry

68 Jeff Robinson

69 Pat Sheridan

70 Nate Snell

71 Frank Tanana

72 Walt Terrell

73 Mark Thurmond

74 Alan Trammell

75 Lou Whitaker

626 Super Star Special Jack Morris

635 Super Star Special Alan Trammell

638 Super Star Special Matt Nokes

654 Team Checklist

There were a couple of goofy pastel spearmint candy cane looking All-Star insert cards:

1 Matt Nokes

9 Alan Trammell

The Update set gave us a couple more cards than the Topps Traded set did, but they weren't much to sneeze at. The 1986 World Series MVP was easily the best of the bunch.

26U Paul Gibson

27U Don Heinkel

28U Ray Knight

29U Gary Pettis

30U Luis Salazar

1988 Topps

As much as I like to bag on Topps for being a bunch of bastards, I give them credit where it is due. This set is one of the most underrated Topps ever offered. Nice, simple, clean design with a nice player selection. It doesn't hurt that these were the guys from the 1987 A.L. East champs. The Twins cards look like shit though, but luckily for me I don't collect 'em.

My favorite card of the set isn't even considered by many to be a Tigers card. My rule of thumb is that if the featured player is pictured in a Tigers uniform, or card has a Tigers designation despite the player being in another uniform, then he's considered a Tiger in my book. While the Dickie Noles card itself is not that great, the story behind it is. According to retrosheet, he was loaned to the Tigers on Sept 22, 1987, as the Tigers were making their run at the A.L. East crown. He threw a total of 2 IP over 4 games, and inexplicably was returned to the Cubs one month later after the Tigers season had ended. 

The 1988 Topps Detroit Tigers:

14 Sparky Anderson

78 Dan Petry

106 Jim Walewander

128 Johnny Grubb

145 Bill Madlock

177 Fank Tanana

237 Mike Heath

267 Billy Bean

289 Dave Bergman

320 Alan Trammell

340 Jack Morris

366 Chet Lemon

389 Alan Trammell All-Star

393 Matt Nokes All-Star

429 Team Leader Card

449 Jeff Robinson

474 Tom Brookens

492 Doyle Alexander

499 Eric King

514 Pat Sheridan

552 Mark Thurmond

582 Mike Henneman

605 Kirk Gibson

630 Darrell Evans

645 Matt Nokes

668 Walt Terrell

713 Willie Hernandez

743 Larry Herndon

751 Jim Morrison

768 Dickie Noles

770 Lou Whitaker

There was a pretty powder blue box bottom card of Darrell Evans.... 

E - Darrell Evans

....as well as two Glossy Rookies....

7 Mike Henneman

8 Matt Nokes

There were a few cards in the Traded set. You can start to see that this bunch wasn't getting any younger.

59T Ray Knight

86T Gary Pettis

100T Luis Salazar