Best Cards: Dan Quisenberry
(This is Best Cards Ever, a never-ending quest to find the single best baseball card of every player.)
This one’s kind of on me. I had completely forgotten that Dan Quisenberry died of brain cancer when I included him in the poll for this entry. That makes him, following Gary Carter and Kirby Puckett, the third player out of four in this Best Cards Ever series to have died prematurely. What I’m saying is, um, someone put a bubble around Wally Joyner.
Anyway, the reason I wanted to do Quisenberry was because of the theoretical fun that would come with picking out cards that featured his iconic submarine delivery. And yes, that was fun … for a few cards. After a while, it became as redundant as anything else. When you’re looking through a hundred hodgepodge cards of various players, the occasional submarine delivery is a fun change of pace. When you’re looking through a hundred cards of one submariner, it becomes like that How I Met Your Mother scene where Ted says “bowl” over and over until the word loses all meaning.
Still, you don’t have to look at all the Quisenberry cards. I did. You only get the highlights.
Dan Quisenberry
Career: 1979-1990 (KC, STL, SFG)
WAR: 24.6
Hall of Fame: Um, the Royals one
Quisenberry was one of the earliest big-time closers, leading the American league in saves in 1980 and 1982-1985. He had five top-five Cy Young finishes and four top-10 MVP finishes, which is … remarkable, really. His problem was that his career started on the late side and dried up early — he wasn’t a full-time pitcher until he was 27 and was basically done as a significant contributor at 32. Still, for a few years there, he was amazing. (His Wikipedia entry, surely updated by someone with close ties to the Quisenberry family, even mentions that he received far less support than Bruce Sutter despite similar stats.)
(As always, thanks to Check Out My Cards for being able to track these down.)
The worst Dan Quisenberry card
1983 Fleer #122
What do you think he’s selling here? Amway? ItWorks? Or just a generic cult? (Based on his cheek, it is probably dip.) Regardless, this is the creepiest dang face. Take it easy, Quis.
Honorable mention
These aren’t the best of his cards. Sometimes they aren’t even that good. But they need to be mentioned one way or another.
1990 Upper Deck #659
1986 Topps #5
1988 Fleer #267
1987 Fleer Baseball All-Stars #33
Tinder
1987 Sportflics Team Previews #13 (Bo Jackson/Danny Tartabull/George Brett/Kevin Seitzer/Frank White/Charlie Leibrandt/Mark Gubicza/Bret Saberhagen/Willie Wilson/Dan Quisenberry/Hal McRae/Lonnie Smith)
Sportflics was a revolution in cards, letting us see little quasi-videos in the holograms when we tilted the cards back and forth. And like we as a people do with every last thing, we ruined it as fast as we possibly could. Seriously, 12 players on a single hologram card? Y’all. Four woulda been pushing it. You gotta chill.
And now, the top four Dan Quisenberry cards of all time.
4. 1977 TCMA Minor League #0555
When I get my time machine, the first thing I’m gonna do — after I solve the big problems and kill Hitler and tell my dad the right investments to make and all that — is to go back to the ‘70s and earlier and explain to people that they looked so old. Quisenberry was twenty-freaking-four here. He might even have been 23 when the picture was taken. He looks older than my brother, who turns 49 this year. Still, once you can wrap your mind around him being twenty-freaking-four here, it’s fun to see how excited he is, even without knowing that he was only a couple years away from being one of the best pitchers in baseball. Q wasn’t a top prospect. He made good.
3. 1984 Topps #138 (Al Holland/Dan Quisenberry)
The facial hair. The facial hair. Quisenberry was never that experimental in his look — he grew the ‘stache, he kept the ‘stache, he had the ‘stache — but oh what a ‘stache it was. But man, that look next to the nonsense that Al Holland was sporting is just a wonderful juxtaposition. I don’t know what it is that makes relieves of any era rock the worst possible facial hair looks. Maybe it’s just all the time they spend sitting around not doing much. But whatever the reason, they all do it.
2. 1990 Fleer #259
I mentioned above how looking at a hundred different submarine action shots actually got kind of old, because it was generally a similar pose every time. But this one’s different. This one got him at such a weird angle that they couldn’t even fit the dude on the card. His foot is tucked into a corner. His right hand is about to leave the photo on the left. His head pokes out the top. But they couldn’t even fit his glove into the shot. Pitchers work up-and-down. Fitting them on a card is supposed to be even. But the sidearm guys work themselves into such a contortion that he’s rolling right off the card. Even for a genre of photo that got old surprisingly fast, this one is a thing of beauty.
1. 1988 Smokey Bear Kansas City Royals Caricatures #115
This card is wonderful. The artist even had him picking up a chunk of dirt with his submarine throw. The hand-lettering of his name. The cartoon on the back. Sure, this isn’t one of the big card companies. I don’t care. This is my favorite card I’ve come across this whole time. I want this card in my life.