Best Cards: Frank Thomas

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

Every longtime ballplayer has his “thing.” You mention Bobby Bonilla, people think of the contract. You mention Joe Carter, it’s the home run.

What is the “thing” for Frank Thomas?

He was a big dude. He was insanely good. He does the Nugenix ads. He had that nameless baseball card (we’ll get to that). But there’s no real “hook” to Frank Thomas’ career.

Frustratingly, that problem extends to his baseball cards. As we’ll get to later, card companies tried super hard to make him into some exciting prospect. You wouldn’t think it’d be hard. He was an enormous human who was one of the best in the world at what he did. And he’s most famous for? Generically being an enormous human who was one of the best in the world at what he did.

That’s no shade on Frank. At all. I’d give multiple appendages to be one of the best in the world at what I do and not be stuck with all the extenuating circumstances that come with being famous. I’m sure Frank has some of them, because he’s insanely recognizable. But dude has no hook.

(Want to contribute to me doing this? Join the Patreon!)

Frank Thomas

Career: 1990-2008 (CHW, OAK, TOR)
WAR: 73.8
Hall of Fame: 83.7% of the vote in 2014, his only year on the ballot. Sailed right in.

Sometimes you bring up a player’s Baseball-Reference page and just stare. Like, obviously The Big Hurt was good. We know that. But for the first eight years of the dude’s career — literally from the first moment we saw him — Frank Thomas was like an android set to destroy. From 1990 (his debut) to 1997, Thomas’ slash line was .330/.452/.600. That’s eight years, 1,076 games, 4,790 plate appearances of “Holy crap, what a month”-type numbers over, and over, and over. Starting with his first full year in 1991, he had seven straight top-eight MVP finishes, including four top-three finishes and back-to-back crowns in 1993 and 1994.

Frank turned 30 and things took a slight turn. But only slight! He still had a 1.061 OPS and a No. 2 MVP finish in 2000 at age 32. He still had a .926 OPS and a No. 4 MVP finish in 2006 at age 38. I’m not saying post-30 Frank Thomas was a schlub by any means. But holy crap, in-his-20s Frank Thomas was a baseball mutant.

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

The worst Frank Thomas card

1993 Leaf – Assertive #5

It’s not so much this specific card — though “Assertive” is a really stupid damn adjective to include in a card subset — as it is the entire subset. They did a whole run of Frank Thomas cards in the same design, with an adjective or noun (couldn’t even pick a part of speech?) over his name. “Strength,” “Serious,” “Intense,” “Concentration,” “Power,” “Preparation,” “Confidence,” “Aggressive.” And sure, Frank was great in the early ‘90s. But holy crap is this the most boring subset of all-time. “Here’s a good player as many times as we can possibly make a card of him, oh and a word.” This set is hideous.

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.

2014 Upper Deck Conference Greats #43

Frank did play college football. That much is true. He was a tight end at Auburn … for one year, in 1986, when he played 11 games and caught 3 passes for 45 yards. I know, I know, an injury cost him his football career, and he actually came to college under a football scholarship before proving himself as a baseball player. But maybe we chill a little on “conference greats”? More like “conference guy-who-showed-up-briefly-and-got-famous-for-something-else.” I know it’s neat to show a great baseball player in a football uniform, but … c’mon.

1993 Studio – Frank Thomas Collection #2

The card companies tried so hard, man. They wanted to pull something interesting out of Frank. “Hey, let’s do an open-shirt look. You’ll be smoldering, and sexy. Instead he looks more like “Friendly captain on a gay cruise.” Which, I don’t know, maybe that was the look they were going for. He is a sculpted son of a gun. But I feel like that wasn’t the goal.

2008 SP Legendary Cuts #42

There is roughly a million percent chance that they drew up this card set with the player’s position prominently featured before remembering that designated hitter is a real thing. “Shortstop” and “pitcher” and “catcher” all work just fine there. So do, uh, “politician” and “4th president,” if you can believe that those are real entries in the set. And then they were making this Frank Thomas card, and they realized that he hadn’t played a single game in the field in 2007, or 2006, or 2005, and had only played one there in 2004, and they couldn’t really refer to him as a first baseman anymore. So they went with “Des. Hitter,” which is just the saddest abbreviation ever.

1994 Topps Stadium Club #285

Why isn’t this card as famous as the Billy Ripken “Fuck Face” card? Seriously, why?

2006 Upper Deck Special F/X #109

The White Sox won the World Series in 2005, the only crown of Frank Thomas’ career. In the playoffs that year, he … threw out the first pitch of Game 1 of the Division Series. That was about it. He played only 34 games that year due to injury and hit only .219 (albeit with a .905 OPS, because dude was still just an insane hitter — 15 of his 23 hits went for extra bases, including 12 homers). It was his last year with the White Sox. So yeah, he got to hold the trophy. But I have to imagine it was at least a little bittersweet.

1992 Upper Deck – Specials #SP4 (Tom Selleck/Frank Thomas)

Confused by Frank in a Yankees uniform? He had a brief appearance in Selleck’s Mr. Baseball, as prospect Ricky Davis, who forces him off the roster. It’s easily explained, especially since Selleck and “Mr. Baseball” are on the card … but that’s still really weird to look at. I even zoomed in to make sure that was Frank and not just a Frank-a-like, before remembering his appearance in that movie.

I also like to imagine the image of Frank as a Yankee (Frankee!) got leaked somewhere before people knew about the movie and gave some White Sox fans heart attacks. Let me believe that.

1990 Topps #414 (Error: No name on front)

I mean, I had to mention this card. It’s one of the most famous cards from the over-saturation era, and it’s just because of a printing error that left Thomas’ name off the front (if you look at the blue box, you’ll see some of the black lines that normally surround the box are also missing; it’s a weird printing error). The thing is, if this had been a card of, I don’t know, Mike Jeffcoat, it wouldn’t be 1% as famous as it is. The printing error just happened to also be a rookie card of a team’s No. 1 draft pick who went on to become maybe the best hitter of the ‘90s. And before the conspiracy rumors start up, Thomas was the only Hall of Famer taken in the first three rounds of the 1989 draft, and he and Jeff Bagwell were the only ones taken in the first 10 rounds. Ben McDonald and Tyler Houston and Roger Salkeld and Jeff Jackson and Donald Harris and Paul Coleman and Earl Cunningham and Kyle Abbott and Charles Johnson (the other top-10 picks in 1989’s draft) didn’t have error cards. This was just a happy accident.

It’s funny, because error aside, it’s not much of a card. Fine, I guess, but utterly unremarkable.

1995 Pinnacle #226

Card companies just so badly wanted Frank Thomas to be a big personality. And he just wasn’t. He was a big dude. Props for that. They tried so hard to make something out of that. But he’s just a big dude.

1996 Select Certified Edition – Inter-League Preview #3 (Sammy Sosa/Frank Thomas)

Sammy Sosa was kind of a spindly dude when he entered the league, but this was the mid-‘90s, by which point he was maybe not the hugest he ever got, but he was still a big dude. And next to Frank Thomas, he looks like Billy freakin’ Hamilton. Frank was so big.

2000 Upper Deck MVP All-Star FanFest #AS28

You ever think about how weird it is that we send these giant dudes out and about wearing “SOX” on their hats? Like, forget that’s a team name, imagine you’d never heard of the team. That’s weird. Bet you’re thinking about it now.

1993 Starting Lineup Cards #500555
1994 Donruss – Long Ball Leaders #8
2001 Upper Deck Reserve – UD Royalty #R9
2004 Upper Deck – Authentic Stars Jerseys #AS-FT

A sampling of the ever-elusive “great athletes being bad at athletics” collection. I always wonder about these. Are the pictures chosen by people who don’t know anything about baseball, so they don’t know Frank was clearly screwing up here? Or does someone not care? I could really see either way, and I just don’t know.

1995 Score – Double Gold Champs #GC-1

I just want to know if that dude knows he’s featured so prominently on a Frank Thomas card. Someone find him and let me know.

1992 Fleer #712

Swinging three bats and having one filled with dynamite seems like a bad idea, actually.

And now, the top four Frank Thomas cards of all time.

4. 1995 Select #242

I imagine him looking at the cameraman and that face saying, “Y’all really gonna waste this awesome freaking picture on a checklist?” But they did. Still an awesome freaking picture, though.

3. 1991 Star – Ad Cards #FRTH

I kind of wish Thomas had steered into this look in his career. Just go a total pro-wrestler heel turn. He would have been so damn interesting if he had walked around talking about how he was big and bad and could squash those little pitchers like bugs. And he could have! He chose the teddy bear route, which is infinitely more likable and less difficult, but also less interesting. This picture, though. Man, he was intimidating.

(Funny: Last week I did “Albert Belle never smiles!” And now I’m following it up with the smiliest dang dude. Unintentional juxtaposition.)

2. 1999 Topps Stadium Club #50

This card took me a minute. It’s a cool angle that we almost never get, but it also kind of looks like it’s just batting practice, since there’s no catcher or umpire. But then you realize that’s a … Phillies pitcher? It’s an opposing pitcher, if nothing else, without a batting practice screen. There are fans in the stands. And at the bottom of the card, you can actually see the shadow of the catcher and/or umpire. So no, this really is just a very cool, unique angle of a game swing, and Frank is just standing a long way from home plate. (Seriously, how often do we get a rear angle of a swing where the player is front and center? Usually you see part of the swing obscured by the other dudes back there, and the hitter is on the side. I love this card.)

1. 1992 Score – Dream Team #893

Hey, they found a bat that made Frank look normal-sized. I wonder how long it took them. (He looks so happy!)