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!