KayBee Superstars!

You can thank the man, the myth, the legend, Scott Berger (@SBergerBOSTON) for this post. We got to talking about oddball card sets a couple of weeks ago after I included the Jose Canseco KMart card in my Nostalgia Night post. Before I get too far into the post itself, be sure to take a moment and check out Scott’s twitter profile and give him a follow. First, you should follow him because he’s a great member of the Hobby Community. But more importantly Scott is a fighter. He is a 2x Brain Tumor Survivor and has a fundraising page set up for “The Berg and the Burb Phoenix Brain Tumor Walk” that you should check out. If you have some cards or items that you can donate to the cause, you can find a place to do that on his Twitter page. Scott is a good dude and respected member of our awesome group here on Twitter.Back to our conversation. He found the 1990 Unopened Kmart box in his closet and shared a photo with me. That led me to my box of oddballs. I have a lot of unique old stuff like that still in boxes that I peruse from time to time. I found this 1989 Superstars of Baseball Set made by KayBee Toys. Scott had mentioned that he worked at Kaybee at one time during college and remembered sheets of cards that were available. My wife worked at KayBee when she was in college too but that would’ve been after the card heyday so I didn’t get any employee perks. When I found this, I immediately felt like a kid again and wanted to go through the box. So naturally, I did. And the result is this blog post!The set was manufactured by Topps and advertised as 33 “Super Glossy” Photo Cards. Let me tell you, they are still quite glossy some 28 years later. The checklist is really strong and Topps got it right for the most part. I’m not saying that all of the players weren’t stars but there were a couple there that didn’t quite have staying power. Jack Clark was just so-so in my book and Pedro Guerrero was good but not great. You may disagree and that’s fine. That’s one of the fun parts of collecting. Stars are classified differently for each collector. I am not sure where the number 33 came from because it’s not an even distribution among the teams or the leagues. Here’s a photo of the checklist to see for yourself. And yes, I got an “error box” as Carlton Fisk is spelled Carlston Fisk. The card is correct.Boston has the most with four superstars in the set, which is almost legit when you see that they include Mike Greenwell, Wade Boggs and Roger Clemens. If I’m making the checklist, I’m leaving out Dwight Evans. I’m sure this isn’t the case in Boston but I always thought Mike Greenwell was grossly underrated. He should’ve received a lot more love than he did. The same could be said for Ellis Burks in my opinion. The Yankees and Mets each had three superstars. They were Rickey Henderson, Don Mattingly, Dave Winfield, Doc Gooden, Daryl Strawberry and Gary Carter. I’m iffy on Carter to be honest. A great catcher but I think putting more than two superstars on a team really limited the set if they were going to be married to that 33 number.The other multi star teams were Oakland (Canseco/McGwire), San Diego (Gwynn/Clark), Chicago Cubs (Sandberg/Dawson), Expos (Raines/Galarraga), Los Angeles (Hershiser/Gibson), St. Louis (Smith/Guerrero) and Minnesota (Puckett/Viola). No offense to these players, but you could remove Clark and Guerrero to make room for other teams. I’ll get to the notable players left out in a minute. So to recap, I think they could have nixed Evans, Carter, Clark and Guerrero. That’s four players that could be replaced. And as an aside, the Raines card may be my favorite in the set. The photo is awesome and they used the nickname “Rock”.Finally, you have the one star teams and it’s hard to argue against any of these because I think they were legitimate stars for those teams. Those were Kansas City (Brett), San Fran (W Clark), Cincinnati (Davis), Chicago WS (Fisk), Atlanta (Murphy), Baltimore (Murray), Philadelphia (Schmidt), Detroit (Trammell – the one not in the HOF) and Milwaukee (Yount). Those are legitimate stars in my opinion and I’m ok with it.But going back to the checklist of 33 – I don’t understand it when you consider the teams and players left off. In the American League, the Blue Jays were left out. They had Fred McGriff, George Bell and Rance Mulliniks that year. Of course, I’m joking with Rance as I just like bringing him up. Then the Indians were absent. To be honest, they were pretty brutal in ’89 but they did have Joe Carter. Is he not worthy of a spot that Jack Clark gets? The Angels didn’t make the cut which meant Wally Joyner, Chuck Finley and Bert Blyleven were left out. The Texas Rangers were nowhere to be found so Topps must not have thought enough of Nolan Ryan to give him a card. The Mariners weren’t very good either but they had Alvin Davis and a young kid named Ken Griffey Jr., who Upper Deck had the foresight to make #1 in their checklist.  Over in the National League, the Pirates were left off the checklist. They only had Barry Bonds, Bobby Bonilla, Andy Van Slyke and Doug Drabek. The Astros were pretty much abysmal like the Indians but they did have Glenn Davis and Craig Biggio. Perhaps the strangest omission from the set altogether was Cal Ripken Jr. Who made that decision? Leaving Bo Jackson, Ruben Sierra and Kevin Mitchell out are one kind of mistake. But leaving Cal Jr. out of a “Superstars of Baseball” set was plain sacrilege. I got off on a tangent there because I really love the set. I just have an issue with the checklist in certain areas.The cards themselves are on pretty good card stock for 1989. As I mentioned above, they were pretty dadgum glossy, but they haven’t stuck together like the UV coatings of the early 90’s. They are in relatively good condition for cards of their age. The fronts of the cards have a white border with a reddish pink inset border. They read “Superstars of Baseball” at the top. The player name is just below the Superstar banner. The Topps logo is visible in the top right or left of each photo. Finally, the KayBee logo is centered at the bottom of the card.The backs of the cards leave a bit to be desired as it relates to design. I do like the information included on the back but the old Padres yellow and brown print is not very easy on the eyes. It does not seem to match up with the front of the card design. There is an inset photo on the back that gives a bit of a profile shot. All of the requisite info is included; team, position, height, weight, draft info, DOB and a little blurb about the player’s career. The stats include 1988 and the career totals. One interesting aspect of the back is that there is a section for their first year in pro ball and their first year in the majors. I found it interesting that Robin Yount played his first professional game 4 years before I was born.In general, these sets are not very valuable and only register on the nostalgia scale. That is what collecting is to me though, as I’ve discussed many times here. I personally like all of these old sets like KayBee and KMart. I am fully aware that these sets are part of what brought the industry down in the early 90’s because everybody had to get involved with card manufacturing. But they also take me back to when collecting was carefree and more about the player on the card than the serial number or the autograph. There were no subtle variations that you had to study when you went through these cards. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, it’s just not what got me hooked in the first place. So while I’ll buy the new product, collect and trade it and enjoy it, I’ll still go back to my roots when I need to slow life down. Those roots are buried at KayBee and Big B Drug and anywhere else you could buy shiny new baseball cards!So let me hear your thoughts. We can talk about the checklist. We can talk about other sets that you remember buying back in the day. We can talk about why you think Jack Clark should be in the Hall of Fame. What say you?

J-Dub