Best Cards: Jay Buhner

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

Because I’m writing about Jay Buhner, this is my opportunity to say it (I’ll probably write about this more extensively at some point): Seinfeld was a bad television show. It was a bunch of awful people doing nothing (yes I know that part of it is the hook), and it had some absolutely fantastic set pieces or quotable bits (see the Buhner stuff), but as a whole unit it was pretty bad.

If you want to argue it, I will accept that it was a fine TV show in its time (but not more than fine) that has aged so bad as to be unwatchable in 2020. That’s as far as I’ll go. If you want to argue it was a good show, I will be very polite and tell you very clearly that you are wrong.

Anyway, that’s Seinfeld. This is Jay Buhner, traded from the Yankees to the Mariners in 1988. He was a fan favorite in Seattle for 14 years and one of the most recognizable players in baseball for most of his career. That all said, were it not for the Seinfeld joke, Buhner would not have 5% of the nostalgic appeal he does today.

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Jay Buhner

Career: 1987-2001 (NYY, SEA)
WAR: 23.0
Hall of Fame: No, got one vote in his only year on the ballot. Which is at least better than Wally Joyner.

A thing I knew about Buhner: He was a nice power hitter for a while there. He had 20-plus homers every year from 1991 to 1997, 40-plus in 1995-1997. He only made one All-Star team (1996) but got MVP votes three different times.

A thing I didn’t really know: He never had a season worth more than 3.5 wins above replacement. He only topped 2.8 twice and was essentially done as a contributing ballplayer by 33 years old. It was a precipitous fall.

A thing I super didn’t know: Buhner was the worst base stealer of all time. Like, almost literally. We don’t have full caught-stealing data before 1954, but for his career, Buhner was somehow 6-for-30 at stealing bases. That’s 6 steals, 24 caught stealings. That’s a 20% “success” rate. That’s … literally, I could be a better base stealer than that, because I just wouldn’t go. 30 attempts over 15 years means Buhner wasn’t trying that much, but man, you’d think if you were picking your sports, you’d … pick better than that.

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

The worst Jay Buhner card

2012 Topps Update Series – Blockbusters #BB-6

As I mentioned above, the Buhner trade was not a blockbuster. It was not, as this card intimates, one of “the biggest moves in baseball history.” It was a very good trade for the Mariners. It was one they’d do again 100 times out of 100. But if not for Seinfeld, that’s all we’d call it, not an all-timer. Heck, Ken Phelps put up a 120 OPS+ over parts of two seasons in New York, so it’s not like the Yankees didn’t get something out of it. The fact that Topps felt the need to reference this middling-but-okay-kinda-meaningful trade 11 years after the above-average headline player retired is just silly. Y’all let an average TV show that ended in 1998 dictate a card you made in 2012.

(Also contributing to this being an awful card: Is there really no way to make the “TM” next to “Mariners” a little smaller, Topps? That looks like they’re called the “MARINERSTM.”)

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.

1993 Upper Deck #224
1996 Score #323
1997 Upper Deck Collector’s Choice #333

I can’t exactly say I blame them, but card companies spent a few years there slapping Ken Griffey Jr. on Jay Buhner cards, like Griffey was Grey’s Anatomy and Buhner was Station 19 and they were doing crossover episodes to boost the lesser-known one’s ratings. And yes, I acknowledge the overlap in interests there is minimal, but trust me when I say that it’s a fantastic analogy, right down to them all being based in Seattle.

1994 Upper Deck Fun Back #216

And then there’s this card, which I guess is ostensibly a Griffey card but definitely features both of them. It’s unconscionably ugly, and features a brain-teaser on the back that (a) isn’t even clear what it is asking (I think it’s saying that Buhner picked Griffey up?), and (b) (if you can’t read the mirror writing) has an answer of “Well, I guess the umpire can use his judgment,” which … is not how brain-teasers are supposed to work! It’s so bad. I might need to move it up to the worst card. I’m thinking about it.

1990 Fleer #508
1998 SPx Finite – Radiance #37

There is no greater gap in coolness of a person than “Jay Buhner with sunglasses” and “Jay Buhner without sunglasses,” with the possible exception of “every single country singer without his cowboy hat.” A sunglassesless Jay Buhner looks like the biggest dork on the planet. A sunglassesed Jay Buhner looks like a guy who will build you a deck with no tools using a tree he yanked out of the ground.

(Also relevant: “Radiance”? Really with the random words?)

1995 Pinnacle #234

This would be an exception to the “he looks cool with sunglasses” rule. We regret the error.

2013 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions #119

Okay, maybe he would use tools to build the deck. (I promise I didn’t plan that; I made the deck joke and then found this card.)

1989 ProCards Minor League #544

I just want to know the background on this card. Buhner was and is a righty. Did he just steal someone’s glove and decide to have some fun with the photographer? I need background.

1993 Upper Deck #55 (Kevin Mitchell/Ken Griffey Jr./Jay Buhner

I had forgotten Kevin Mitchell spent a season on the Mariners, during which he played only 99 games. The back of this card, though, is hilarious — it basically says “These guys were supposed to be really good together, but instead there were a lot of injuries and now Mitchell is gone.” Like, I get that they had the picture and wanted to use the image, but man, after things fell apart, maybe you just move on from the idea, UD?

And now, the top four Jay Buhner cards of all time.

4. 1992 Pinnacle #305

A thing I’ve learned about myself doing this: Apparently I have a thing for things showing up in sunglasses reflections. But c’mon, this is cool, even if they should have reversed the image of Buhner because it is supposed to be a reflection.

3. 1997 Upper Deck Collector’s Choice Team Sets – Seattle Mariners #SM10

This is an example of Buhner looking like a goofball without his sunglasses, though the goatee and cutoff T-shirt and pine-tar-y bat help him on the other side. One thing, though: If this card were made today, 23 years later, a guy with Buhner’s reputation would be way more jacked, right? That’s a surprisingly unripply arm.

2. 1994 Pinnacle #343

Griffey got all the backward-hat publicity, but Buhner rocked the look too, and he looked pretty good doing it as well. This is a quintessential Buhner image.

1. 1994 Fleer #282

Someone show this card to Brian McCann or Madison Bumgarner or one of those “don’t batflip” guys, because this is a dude more than 25 years ago clearly doing a very pretty bat toss, and I’m 95% sure he was doing it during a spring training game at that. Maybe Buhner wasn’t always a cool dude (please note that “Radiance” card above), but man, when he was going cool, there just weren’t many dudes who were cooler. He … well, he radiated cool. Maybe I was too quick to mock their use of that word. Even if you would expect sunglasses for something radiating.