For reasons I will never grasp, I inspired a post from Brendan (The View From The Third Floor), where he created a roster of some of the greatest names to ever appear on junk wax. It's a list filled with Hall of Famers, would-be Hall of Famers, and John Franco.
That got me thinking about the lesser-known names in junk wax history, the solid day to day players who never got their flowers, just multiple copies of their cards in our doubles boxes.
I therefore present to you the Junk Wax No Stars, players from the era who remarkably never made an All-Star team:
Catcher - Rick Dempsey
First Base - Eric Karros
Second Base - Bill Doran
Third Base - Jim Gantner
Shortstop - John Valentin
Left Field - Tony Phillips
Center Field - Garry Maddox
Right Field - Tim Salmon
Designated Hitter - Kirk Gibson
Starting Rotation:
Tom Candiotti
Danny Darwin
John Tudor
Charlie Leibrandt
John Denny
Bullpen:
Gene Garber
Mike Timlin
Mark Eichhorn
Paul Assenmacher
Bench:
Chris Hoiles
Dwayne Murphy
Delino DeShields
Kevin McReynolds
Bernard Gilkey
Todd Ziele
Matt Stairs
That's quite a good team. I knew about Gibson, he seems to be the poster child for never-an-all-star, but I didn't know about the others.
ReplyDeleteThe late 80s seem unique to me in that most of the best and most popular players at the time won't make it to the Hall. Mattingly, Strawberry, Canseco, Gooden, Eric Davis, Dale Murphy, Gooden, Hershiser, Saberhagen, etc. Might be interesting to pit a team of the best players of the era in the Hall, vs. those without. Maybe I'll do that for a future post.
As an A's fan... I appreciate the inclusion of Dwayne Murphy and Tony Phillips. Murphy was one of my favorite players back in the early 80's.
ReplyDeleteTony Phillips is insanely underrated. He has over 50 WAR!
ReplyDeleteIf Brendan needed someone to "beef" with, he should've chose me, as I could go the rest of my life without seeing another card from most of these sets. And if that's not enough fuel, I've actually developed a genuine hate for a number of sets from the "junk wax" era in recent years.
ReplyDelete