Best Cards: Dennis Eckersley

(This is Best Cards Ever, a never-ending quest to find the single best baseball card of every player.)

There’s this Mike Birbiglia bit about performing at the annual BBWAA ceremony and sitting on the stage with a bunch of star players, and he does a little performance that makes fun of sportswriters. After his speech, Birbiglia has to go to the bathroom. When he comes back, there’s a sportswriter giving a speech, and he does a little snap back at Birbiglia, so Mike tries to steer into the skid and runs on stage like it was planned, reaches out to the writer for a handshake … and gets blown off. Mike, kinda disappointed, sits back down and says to the athlete next to him, “Did you see that? Blew me off.”

According to the bit, the player just shrugs and says “Fuck him!” It’s not until later, when Mike is talking to his brother and relating what happened, that his brother explains to him that the writer didn’t blow him off; the sportswriter was blind (I’m guessing Hal McCoy?) and had no idea what Mike was doing.

It’s a very well-done bit. In it, Mike lists off all these big-name players who were active at the time. Alex Rodriguez, Dontrelle Willis, Roger Clemens, etc. But the player he names as the one who tosses out the “Fuck him!” and is ultimately the bad guy in the whole story is Eckersley, who is such a random addition to the story. I assume some, if not all, of that story is true. And if so, was Eckersley really the jerk of the story? He wasn’t active at the time; what was he even doing there? Did Mike pick him out to be the bad guy of the story? Did he get permission from Eckersley before telling a story about him being a jerk? I need just a little more information about the story. But man, for all the great things Eckersley did as a ballplayer, that’s the first thing I always think of what he gets mentioned.

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Dennis Eckersley

Career: 1975-1988 (CLE, BOS, CHC, OAK, STL)
WAR: 62.2
Hall of Fame: Yep, 2004

So now that I spent 300-words-and-a-video talking about a comedy bit that sort of includes Eckersley, I should probably use this space to talk about his abilities as a player. And man, they were real good. He had two All-Star appearances and two top-seven Cy Young finishes as a starter, then became a closer in his 30s and added four more All-Stars, four more top-seven Cy Youngs, four top-six MVP finishes, and even won Cy Young and MVP in 1992 after rocking a seems-like-it-should-be-impossible 0.61 ERA in 1990. And dude pitched from age 20 to age 43, which … well, it makes searching through his cards a big task. I didn’t think this through.

(As always, thanks to Check Out My Cards for being able to track these down.)

The worst Dennis Eckersley card

1995 Topps Stadium Club – Ring Leaders #16

I’ve given praise to Topps in some of the other pieces here for trying something creative and it generally working. And maybe this is because it’s Stadium Club and not just Topps, but HOLY JESUS GOD WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE. There are rings. Okay, cool, the subset is called Ring Leaders, I get it. There’s an eagle swooping down holding a baseball? Maybe? Maybe he’s picking it up? There’s a starburst, which if anything would typically signify the ball being hit? There’s … part of a stadium? Maybe a crown? Some stars? An American flag color scheme?

And that’s just the front of the card. The back of the card lists off his rings, and … it doesn’t even mean World Series rings! It says he has a “ring” for leading the league in saves, a “ring” for winning a Cy Young, two “rings” for being MVP — once in the regular season, once in the playoffs — and six “rings” for making the All-Star Game. And, um, Topps? They don’t give rings for those things. Y’all just making up things.

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.

2012 Panini Cooperstown – Crystal Collection #42
2013 Panini Cooperstown Collection – Cooperston Signatures #HOF-ECK

I’ve mocked Panini for getting back into the baseball card game in the 2010s despite not having MLB licensing. It’s real silly. Like, either get licensing or don’t make cards. Those are your options these days. But their way of skirting the logo rules in these cards is straight-up hilarious. “Crop out the top of his hat! No I don’t care if it makes the picture look crappily framed! I’m not paying for Photoshop, and our free trial ran out!”

1996 Topps Laser #54

Man, die-cut was such a thing for a while there. Cards with rounded edges or fine trimming or whatever. Anything to make them absolutely impossible to keep in mint condition, I guess. But this Topps Laser set was specifically designed in a lab to make kids who wanted to be SERIOUS CARD COLLECTORS so sad. We wanted the fancy cool-looking cards, and LOOK HOW FANCY WITH THE ETCHING AND THE FLAMES AND THE FRINGEY BITS. But we also wanted to preserve the cards because that’s what you’re supposed to do, and these cards were patently impossible to keep in good shape. The mere act of flipping through the cards in a pack inevitably frayed at least one of the edges. If you have a mint condition Topps Laser card, you are a wizard and I fear you.

1987 Fleer Update #U-30

Okay, maybe I’m imagining things. I will accept that as a possibility. But this is the update set, meaning Eckersley almost certainly was not in an A’s uniform when this picture was taken. Happens all the time! Only … he was clearly not wearing a hat when the picture was taken either, right? That hat was just laid on there in card design? There’s no way he’s wearing that hat. Nice floating hat, Dennis.

1993 Leaf – Gold Leaf Stars #10 (Dennis Eckersley/Rob Dibble)

This insert set had the honor of putting players on both the front and back of the card, a fraught decision in a world of card sleeves where people might put cards pointing in either direction and therefore cover up one of the two players. But that happened a lot; the problem with the Gold Leaf Stars set is that they somehow made both sides look as much like the back of the card as possible. Only the trademark info on the Dibble side really gives away which is the back. But if you showed me just the Eck side, I’d probably guess that’s the back too. I don’t know how they did it, but they definitely did.

1993 Pinnacle #474

I mean, I know that’s Dennis Eckersley early and late in his career. Obviously that’s what it is. But tell someone that’s a kid about to enter ‘Nam and the same man 20 years later, and it would be literally no different. “I seen some shit, man.”

1993 Score – Dream Team Gold #9

“You know, when I’m not striking hitters out on the diamond, I’m striking erectile dysfunction out in the bedroom. I’m Dennis Eckersley for Cialis.”

1993 Fleer #717 (Dennis Eckersley/Roger Clemens)

Maybe this card was the inspiration for Birbiglia’s jokes.

1997 Hostess All-Star Team #106

Hey, Ashton Kutcher!

1993 Metz Baking – Food Issue #DEEC

Hey, Keanu Reeves!

2004 Topps Bazooka – One-Liners Relics #BOL-DE

I have no idea what the One-Liners series was doing. Like, a “one-liner” is usually a solid joke. But this set was generally just “sentences the player said,” and they were all as benign as possible. And then there’s this? Who the hell knows what this means? What’s a kudo? What does a kitchen have to do with pitching? And did Eck also say the “authentic game-worn jersey” part? It’s got a quote bubble too? I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS.

2015 Topps Stadium Club #226

This is another one of those “points for trying something creative” cards, but that is so damn terrifying.

1994 Topps Stadium Club #125
1994 Fleer Ultra Firemen #5
1994 Fleer #260

No one had a better throwing-a-pitch face than the Eck. No one.

And now, we count down the top four Dennis Eckersley cards of all time.

4. 1997 Score #98

I 100% believe this picture was chosen because the card designer saw the name “Dennis Eckersley” and said “Okay, this is going to be a horizontal card. You find me a horizontal card or I’m just gonna stretch that shit out. I don’t even care, that name is too damn long.” But it works. I’ve realized doing this series that I am an absolute sucker for horizontally oriented cards in a typically vertically oriented set. They get me.

3. 1976 Topps #98

I don’t even care that this card is obviously staged. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out there isn’t even a baseball in his hand/glove. I don’t care that he’s wearing a windbreaker under his jersey. This card is wonderful. The hair. The 6% sideburns. The very clearly forced glare. This is the most 1976 card ever, and I love it for that.

2. 1989 Bowman #190

(I seriously don’t mean to reference Friends as often as I do in this series.) Do you remember the Friends episode where Chandler and Monica have to take engagement photos, and Chandler can’t take a good picture, so Joey teaches him the “look down, look down, look down, look up and smile!” method? That is 100% what Eck did for this picture, and I will accept no arguments to the contrary.

1. 1998 Ultra #409

I was born in December of 1983. My first concrete baseball memory is “We’re having an earth…,” and even that is really just that sentence, which got replayed so many times over the years that I can’t definitively say I actually remember it and didn’t just convince myself I do. So I don’t have any actual memories of Eck as a starting pitcher — he got his last start in 1987 before becoming a full-time reliever. In 1989-1992, when I was really finding my footing as a baseball fan, he went 20-7 over a four-year span with 175 saves and a 1.79 ERA. Saves are saves are saves, but at the time we thought they were phenomenal, and even if you take them out of the equation, Eck was a monster pitcher out of the bullpen, when we first started to realize that “star closer” could be a thing. So he was never my favorite player or even that close, but he was one of the most impressive pitchers that existed in my formative days as a baseball fan.

This card came well after that. In 1998, his lone year back with the Red Sox to close out his career, Eck had a 4.76 ERA over 39.2 innings with only a single save. He was no longer the Eckersley I remembered. But he still looked the exact same. His long hair and mustache were his signature from the ‘80s on. So this card, the intimidating stare, the split-finger grip. He wasn’t the pitcher he once was, but you wouldn’t know it. It couldn’t be more Eck.