Pirates All-Decade Card Collection: One Teams’ Trash Edition

Rum Bunter has yet to find the elusive Honus Wagner card that sold for  $2.8 million, but thinking it could have been misplaced with the awful Pittsburgh Pirate cards of the past decade, we took a look. 

No luck.

But we were able to compile a Pirates All-Decade collection worthy of the incinerator EBay account.    We will eventually post ’em for auction, so please no emails until we get around to it.   Until then, feast your eyes, but don’t spill anything on them dammit.

The All-Decade Card Collection:

Catcher Keith Osik had a career year in 2000 when he hit .293.  The Pirates gave him an $800K contract the next season.  Osik never hit again.  However, his eyes consistently made love to his bloop singles before he ended his career in 2005 with the Washington Nationals.

Sure 1B Brad Eldred  only hit .199 for the Pirates.  But Eldred was very nervous when the Bowman photographer came to town.  He flew out to (deep) short all seven times commenting, “the shortstop plays really deep in the majors, those blasts were always outta the park in AAA.”   In what is sort of a theme for these Pirate cards….Eldred now wears a Washington Nats hat in his MLB page after signing a free agent contract in November 2008. 

2B Warren Morris partied like it was 1999 when he hit 288/360/427 for the Bucs.  But when the new decade hit, Morris posed for his picture coming out of this baseball party cake.  Morris hit his head on the ceiling.  The last time he ever hit anything.

SS Jeff Reboulet played his final season in 2003 with the Bucs.  He was a 39-year old shortstop, who as you can painfully observe, always had to piss when he came to the plate.  Thus he only hit  .241.  However, when he wasn’t making a dash for the men’s room, he did dazzle the ladies two songs at a time on the dance floor at Chauncey’s with his fantastic stache.

If our math is correct, 3B Jose Hernandez struckout once every four plate appearances for the Pirates.  Or for those of you who are visual learners, we refer to his card.  Sure it’s a small sample size, but the two black bats were the bats Hernandez used to strikeout, the other six bats were used to mash opposing pitchers for a career .240 average as a Bucco.

OF Chad Hermansen was a first round draft pick for the Pirates who could, according to Manager Woody Huyke, “walk on water.”  Although the talent Hermansen shared with Jesus was never confirmed, he could fly for small increments of time.  Hitting?  Well that wasn’t a power he possessed.  In four years, Hermansen batted .199.

OF Michael Restovich was another Pirate who actually hit better with Pittsburgh, .214, than he did with the Nationals, .143.  Despite his impassioned pleas to Nationals management, Restovich couldn’t convince the Nats to introduce the source of his powerful stroke in Pittsburgh. The white polyester, body defining, nine button man vest.

OF Chris Duffy disappeared from the Pirates in 2007.   We aren’t sure, but his card appears to be a sketch, perhaps done from memory by the missing persons bureau.  He returned to the majors in 2009 and hit .125 with the Brewers.

OF JJ Davis was another first round draft pick of the Pirates that ended up a Nat.  Please pay no attention to his career .179/248/217, just stare at those massive forearms.

RHP Ian Snell.  Long before the chick from the church softball team tried to pick him up, and shortly after he gave up his failed modeling career, Snell was a young, innocent rookie on a baseball card.  But in 2009, the pressure of playing for the Pirates under three seperate names including Ian Oquendo(as the card is signed), Ian Davila-Snell and Ian Snell became overwhelming.  The aliases, the ballooning walk rate, the declining K rate and those damn blogging kids living in their parent’s basement took their toll.  Snell demoted himself  to the minor leagues and eventually was traded to the Mariners.

RHP Jonah Bayliss was remarkably terrible as a Pirate.  He is better known for his rookie card which was entitled, Where is Jonah?  (Still can’t find him?  Look in the bottom right corner)  Bayliss only wished his fastball was that invisible.  He posted a   7.22 ERA, 1.77WHIP, 11H/9, 1.5HR/9, and 4.6BB/9 as a Pirates ‘relief specialist.’

The All Name Bench Squad

Known for his ability with the ladies, P Eric Ridener  [Ride-en-‘er] was proud of the family name.

Yurendell DeCaster .  We are guessing that Yurendell [Urine-dell] must translate differently in his native Curacao.  And guess what team Yurendell ended up playing for?  Yeh, the Nats.  But like the saying goes, one teams’ trash is another teams’ …  well…, just nevermind. 

This baseball card had some value, but we left it lay on the Spring Training bleachers when we went on a beer run.  We came back and saw Pirates GM Dave Littlefield had put his autograph on it.  Not to matter, half the team would end up with Nats uniforms soon enough. 

But, heh Dave, thanks for also autographing the worst decade in baseball.

Thanks:  Some of the cards are from Freedom Cardboard and inspiration came from the funniest card collection site known to man, Joe Sports Fan.