30 Day Baseball Card Challenge

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Living in the Past

As an Oakland A's fan, there haven't been a lot of exciting baseball memories in recent years regarding my beloved team.  Ever since they fell flat on their face in 2014, they've traded away most of their big names and have gone on to have back to back losing seasons.  And by the looks of it, this year won't be any different.

But that's okay.  It just makes me appreciate the happier times.  One of those eras was in the late 80's when Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco were smashing balls and bashing forearms in celebration.


Were they using PED's?  Sure.  But let's not ruin the mood.  We can always travel down that road another day.  Let's just bask in the beauty of these 2016 Topps Legacies of Baseball on-card autographs that I added to my collection a while back.

Last Friday marked the 30th Anniversary of The Bash Brothers hitting home runs in the same game for the first time.  On May 19th, 1987... Jose Canseco hit a home run off of Dennis Rasmussen in the bottom of the first inning.  Two innings later, Mark McGwire hit one too.  They'd go on to accomplish this feat forty more times as teammates and once more as opponents.


Six weeks later on America's 211th birthday, The Bash Brothers hit back to back home runs in the bottom of the fifth inning off of Bruce Hurst for the first time ever.  They would go on to accomplish this feat ten more times during their careers.  Athletics fans wouldn't need to wait long... as the duo would do it again the next day off of Dennis Oil Can Boyd in the bottom of the fourth.

It's been almost twenty years since The Bash Brothers were teammates.  Since then, a lot has happened and these days they have little to do with each other.  Maybe one day McGwire will find it in his heart to forgive Canseco for opening his mouth.



Heck... Paul patched things up with Yoko.  Anything can happen, right?  In the meantime... as long as the Athletics continue to fight for last place, I guess I'll have to be content with living in the past.

Happy Tuesday and sayonara!

4 comments:

Man said...

As a Midwesterner they were all about the sun, fun, and the aching-California dreaming-they were hella fun to watch-and bring back to my college years-damn I am old

BobWalkthePlank said...

The Bash Brothers were awesome. I was a big A's fan as a child.

Big Tone said...

They were a fearsome one two punch.I can't think of any two players on the same team today that could hit jacks as far and as consistently as Jose and Mark did.

Collecting Cutch said...

Bautista and Encarnacion
Trumbo and Crush Davis
Arenado and Cargo

Those are the 3 most recent team mates I can think of that hit mammoth and consistent jacks