Best Cards: Javy Lopez

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

I’ve clicked through a few stories on the subject, but as far as I can tell, Javy Lopez never carried any animosity toward Greg Maddux — at least, not outwardly — despite the fact that Maddux all but declared that his personal catcher would be “not Javy” for his 11-year Braves career. At one point or another, Maddux used Charlie O’Brien, Eddie Perez, Paul Bako, and Henry Blanco as his “personal catcher” with the Braves, with Lopez his personal not-catcher the entirety of his Braves tenure.

Now, there were reasons for that. Lopez was more of an offensively minded catcher than some of his glove-first backups, and the famously cerebral Maddux really valued his rapport and trust in a catcher. And the position more or less calls for regular days off anyway; why not tie it to a single pitcher and make things consistent? But that it’s logical doesn’t change the fact that for 11 years, Maddux wanted anyone but Javy Lopez behind the plate for his start. Per a 2002 New York Times piece, Lopez last started a game as catcher with Maddux pitching in late 1998, so unless there was a surprise Lopez start in 2003, their last year together, that was almost five years of “keep that guy away from me.”

It obviously worked out for the Braves, it obviously worked out for Maddux, and for the most part it worked out for Lopez — who wasn’t a Hall of Famer but was a dang famous catcher for a long time — but you’d have to expect that sort of attitude would have worn on a guy. In my research, I found some references to Lopez smiling and saying “It is what it is” and the like, which maybe was his way of acknowledging that he didn’t altogether love the situation. In a 2012 Fox Sports interview, you could see Lopez acknowledging that it bothered him from time to time, going so far as to say, “I still don’t know the answer. I don’t want to think the worst. I don’t want to think that Maddux didn’t want me because he didn’t like me behind the plate.”

I guess what I’m saying it that I doubt Lopez is one of Maddux’s regular golfing buddies in retirement, but I also expect one will show up at the other’s funeral.

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Javy Lopez

Career: 1992-2006 (ATL, BAL, BOS)
WAR: 29.7
Hall of Fame: Well, the Braves version. But he got one vote in his 2012 ballot appearance and fell off the list.

Because of TBS, Lopez is probably more famous than his career would otherwise have called for. He didn’t top 3.5 WAR over the first decade of his career despite being one of the most famous Braves (and therefore one of the most famous players), making only two All-Star teams throughout that span.

Lopez had just about the dead-cattiest bounce ever later on, though. After hitting .233/.299/.372 in 109 games in 2002 at age 31, and largely looking done, Lopez had a contract year for the ages in 2003, hitting .328/.378/.687 and putting up 6.8 WAR in only 129 games. He finished fifth in MVP voting. And sure, it doesn’t work this linearly, but that’s an 8.5-WAR pace over 162 games and probably and MVP crown if he could have kept it up. He followed that up with an also-great 4.8-WAR 2004 at age 33, but then it turned out he really was close to done, and his age-35 year was his last season.

Still, if you had to draw up a career from scratch, “good but not great catcher on the mid-‘90s Braves” was just about perfect. Lopez was a bunch of kids’ favorite player for a long time, got to play in a bunch of World Series, got to have every fifth day off, and made more than $60 million in his career. Not bad for a guy deemed not good enough to start for his star pitcher.

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

The worst Javy Lopez card

1991 Bowman #587

I’m guessing if they had known Lopez was going to be a star, they’d have taken a little more time on the cards early in his career. But instead, we got this nonsense from Bowman, featuring a guy in an obviously posed shot (couldn’t even take a second and get a helmet, fellas?), getting a shot of him squinting and scowling into the sun, and saying “Welp, good enough” before moving on. “This kid’s just a guy, nobody cares” is the kind of attitude you have to have to create a card like this, and the fact that Lopez went on to become a genuine star for the better part of a decade is one of the possible downsides of that approach.

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.

1996 Topps Stadium Club #103
1997 Topps Stadium Club #215

Listen, I have no idea how Lopez was as a runner. He was terrible as a base-stealer, but still, he was a professional athlete. I’m sure he could run just fine. But the aesthetic of his mid-‘90s Stadium Club cards was “guy who forgot there was a 2x4 in his pants who runs nonetheless.” It’s hard for a still image to convey how someone runs, but I defy you to look at these cards and not thing Lopez is a particularly athletic penguin.

1999 Pacific Aurora #19

So the kids who serve as batboy or ballboy for baseball teams have to wear little John Olerud-style helmets, and because they are kids, the helmets are invariably comically large on their heads. And I don’t know if he just had a tiny noggin, but man, Lopez looks like he’s cosplaying as a kid batboy on this card, and if he waggles his head just a tiny bit too hard, the helmet’s going flying off into the wilderness. Maybe that’s why he ran like someone who couldn’t move his spine.

1997 Pinnacle X-Press #53

Find someone who has never heard of baseball in any way. Explain to them the rules of the game (“You hit a ball with a stick”). Describe the size of the ball. And then show them this picture, this stick, and watch them try to figure out how this weird-ass game works.

1994 Upper Deck Fun Pack #6

Some time a bajillionty years ago, someone pointed at a couple of stars in the sky and was like “That’s a bear” and “That’s a hunter.” For some reason, this person’s fellow ancients were like “Yep, sounds good” instead of “Um, Grog, you are the worst Connect-The-Dots player of all time.” Constellations that actually look like a thing basically amount to the Dippers, and beyond that we’ve just all agreed to call something a crab for no real reason. That’s why whenever a kids show features the kids discovering the concept of constellations, they find detailed perfect drawings in the sky. No little kid is gonna see seven dots and be like “Oh, yeah, twins, I see it.”

Anyway, it would be cool if constellations were like this.

1998 SPx Finite #60

On the one hand, cool action shot. On the other, Javy’s out there with an action face of “My dog just died.” I don’t know how a guy can look so sad mid-play, but dang. (To be fair, maybe he was sad that Mark Grace was about to plow into him.)

And now, the top four Javy Lopez cards of all time.

4. 2002 Fleer Platinum #32

The front of this card is fine. It’s not an angle we often see of players, which is always nice. On the other hand, it’s “Doofy looking dude with a batting glove in his mouth,” so maybe that’s not an angle we need. But the back of the card! I don’t remember the 2002 Fleer Platinum set, but a full offering of slash lines in various situations? This was the first sabermetric card, and that’s just delightful.

3. 1998 Ultra #98

To be totally fair, this is the Gold Medallion Edition version of this card, because finding the base version is apparently not something the internet can do. But it’s a fun picture nonetheless, a clear warmup shot of a catcher with just his shin guards and glove, empty stands behind him. I imagine it was a lazy photographer who didn’t even stay for the game. But it works.

2. 1990 ProCards Minor League #2352

Sure, this card is just as much “Little League pose” as that 1991 Bowman card at the top. But at least it’s not pretending to be an action shot when it obviously isn’t. It’s just a dude holding a bat. And there’s a reason “High school photos of your favorite movie star!” is one of the most popular pieces of internet clickbait. Seeing these people who we know as seasoned, weathered faces when they were fresh and young is fun. Lopez wasn’t even 20 when this picture was taken. He had been the Ponce, Puerto Rico, Athlete of the Year every year 1984 to 1987 (age 14 to 17), so those in the know knew he had a bright future even then, but still, at a glance this is just a kid who liked baseball, not one of the best catchers of the ‘90s.

Also, a card set that numbers into the thousands is absolutely hilarious.

1. 1993 Topps Stadium Club #630

Come on, you can’t be that relaxed. Lopez debuted in the big leagues in 1992, playing in nine games, getting 16 plate appearances. He had no home runs, no walks, one strikeout. As I mentioned above, we were pretty sure he’d become a good ballplayer, maybe a really good one, but he didn’t even exceed rookie eligibility for another two seasons. He was 21 when this picture was taken, and I don’t know, maybe Javy was just the most confident guy of all time, but it’s hard to look much cooler than he did here (with the lone exception being his undershirt sleeves poking out from under his jersey, a dork move). I imagine he and the photographer having a long conversation about how many buttons to have undone, exactly how to rest his fancy necklace, whether to put one arm or two up. It takes serious work to look this relaxed, this cool. But the end result? So damn cool.