30 Day Baseball Card Challenge

Sunday, March 2, 2014

Celebrating w/ a Bowl of Fruit

Four years ago I made the decision to start this blog and begin documenting my cardboard adventures.  According to Hallmark, you celebrate your 4th Anniversary with fruit.  So this morning I woke up, popped a handful of fruit snacks into my mouth, poured a glass of orange juice, and began scouring my collection for cards featuring athletes with "fruit" names.


Right out of the gate, Darryl Strawberry came to mind.  I grew up watching him play and reading about his off the field struggles.  I remember everyone scrambling to buy his rookie cards.

That's when I remembered Left Field Card's set of Edible All-Stars.  She has a Strawberry card in the set, so I figured she might have a few more fruits on the checklist.  And I was right.  I can't believe I forgot about Chet Lemon.


Lemon was another guy I grew up watching.  He had a solid career, playing for the White Sox and Tigers.  While looking up his career statistics on Baseball Reference, I noticed that he stole 58 bases, but was caught 76 times.  Makes me wonder which athletes have the worst stolen base percentage in MLB history

By the way...  I encourage you to click on the link above and check out Amelie Mancini's unique baseball cards.  They're not cheap, but they're really cool.

After that, I hit a brick wall.  I couldn't think of anymore baseball players with "fruit" names, so I opened it up to other sports.

I immediately thought of former Kansas City Chief's safety... Deron Cherry:


Cherry was a 6x Pro Bowler and is a member of the NFL's 1980's All-Decade Team.

A few minutes later, Raymond Berry popped into my head:



The hall of fame, wide receiver played his entire thirteen year career with the Baltimore Colts.  He led the league in receptions from 1958 to 1960 and was known for his amazing hands.  In his career, he dropped only two passes.  That's insane!


I eventually turned to Beckett and began entering "fruits" into their search engine.  They came up with a few names:  Eli Apple (football), Chris Peach (hockey), and Milt Plum (football).  But I don't own any of their cards.


However I did find one more "fruit" card sitting in my collection:


I had never heard of Mr. Pear until this morning and was lucky to find this sitting in a box of 1980 Topps football I picked up at the flea market a while back.  According to Wikipedia, he was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers first Pro Bowler.  He's also a fellow blogger who covers NFL injuries and pension issues.

Anyways... that's all the "fruit" I could find in my collection.  I'll wrap things up by saying thank you to anyone and everyone who has ever taken the time to read my posts.

Happy Sunday and sayonara!

25 comments:

Commishbob said...

That Ray Berry card is an error. The guy on the card is actually Bobby Boyd who wore #40 for the Colts. Sloppy work by Philly Gum.

defgav said...

Happy Anniversary!

Zippy Zappy said...

No Bob Lemon?

Mark Hoyle said...

Congrats on the anniversary

The Lost Collector said...

Congrats!

Eric Bracke said...

Congratulations Fuji!

night owl said...

Happy anniversary! I'll have some Frankenberry in your honor.

Nick said...

Congrats on four years!

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on the anniversary! When I saw your subject line, I thought of the one Michael Palin line from "Monty Python's Meaning Of Life"... "I must have fruit!!!!"

I'm not looking to start a rhubarb or to detract from a great post idea, but there's also Jim Lemon, Ken Berry and Rocky Cherry.

Anonymous said...

...Sorry, the line is from "Time Bandits", not "Meaning Of Life".

BASEBALL DAD said...

What a delicious idea !

Congrats on your four years !

Yankeejetsfan said...

Congrats on 4 years of a great blog and here's to the next 4 years.

Btw, there is also Don Cherry an announcer for Hockey Night In Canada who played and coached in the NHL.

CaptKirk42 said...

Hey congrats on the Anniversary. It ain't easy doing this for just one year let alone 4. I was going to mention Don Cherry (I've known about him from his Bruins Coaching days) but Mike beat me too it. Guess you don't have any Meadowlark Lemon cards? Me neither. Wow it is a little hard to think of players with fruit names. Congrats on the ones you found anyway.

Hackenbush said...

Happy #4!

Corky said...

Congratulations on your 4th year.

BobWalkthePlank said...

Happy anniversary!

Daniel Wilson said...

Great post! Happy anniversary!

Zippy Zappy said...

Oh and Happy Anniversary!

Fuji said...

Thanks everyone! I appreciate the kind words. Hopefully I'll have enough energy to continue writing for four more years.

Fuji said...

Good eyes. Thanks for pointing that out.

Fuji said...

I'm embarrassed to admit that I completely forgot about the other (more famous) Lemon.

Fuji said...

Damn... might have to buy some of that. It's probably been 20 years since I've had some Frankenberry.

Fuji said...

Nice. Never heard of any of those guys. I guess I need to do a little more homework.

Fuji said...

I actually thought I had a Don Cherry card (think he had a subset or insert set in the 90's)... but I didn't see anything in my 90's hockey insert binder.

Fuji said...

I totally forgot about that Lemon too. Ironically, I do have a Meadowlark:

http://sanjosefuji.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-are-these-1-harlem-globetrotters.html