Best Cards: Kirk Gibson
(This is Best Cards Ever, a never-ending quest to find the single best baseball card of every player.)
So the “Personal Life” section of Kirk Gibson’s Wikipedia page is just chock full of interesting information. In four paragraphs, fewer than 200 words, you learn that:
He and his Tigers teammate Dave Rozema married sisters in a double ceremony in December 1985;
He has a son who was drafted in baseball and another who plays in the East Coast Hockey League, which is now a league I know exists;
He set an aviation record in 1987 (in March, in Florida, so … during spring training?) by flying a Cessna 206 to a height of 25,200 feet;
He is in the College Football Hall of Fame but not in the baseball one;
He, David Wells, and Jake Peavy own a big hunting ranch in Michigan that is named Buck Falls Ranch;
He has Parkinson’s (I knew that one, and it’s sad, but it’s also in the section so I had to include it).
That is a lot of information for a short Wiki section. The most interesting part, to me? The double wedding. My brother briefly raised the idea of asking his girlfriend to marry him and piggybacking on my wedding years ago (he still hasn’t even proposed to her, so that was a fun moment), and while I knew he was mostly spitballing and it would never happen, I jokingly mentioned it to my now-wife, and I might as well have suggested we get married at Waffle House. It was the no-go-est thing of all time, and while I’m sure it would be different for sisters, like Gibson’s and Rozema’s wives, that still seems like a bear to pull off.
Anyway, for as interesting as Gibson’s sports career was (and it was and is very interesting!), his non-sports life seems like it has been fascinating as well.
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Kirk Gibson
Career: 1979-1995 (DET, LAD, KCR, PIT)
WAR: 38.4
Hall of Fame: Nope, one year and off the ballot
Bobby Thomson earned 33.9 career WAR, made three All-Star teams, and got MVP votes in three seasons, with a best finish of eighth place.
Bill Mazeroski earned 36.5 career WAR, made 10 All-Star teams (making it twice in a year three times because that era was weird), won eight Gold Gloves, and got MVP votes in two seasons, with a best finish of eighth place.
Joe Carter earned 19.6 career WAR, made five All-Star teams, and got MVP votes in eight seasons, with a best finish of third place.
Kirk Gibson earned 38.4 career WAR, made zero (!) All-Star teams, won one Silver Slugger, and earned MVP votes in four seasons, winning the award in 1988.
Obviously, the thing those four have in common is that they hit arguably the four biggest home runs in baseball history. So I ask you: Did their big home runs cause those guys to be overrated or underrated in a historical sense? I’ve gone back and forth on this a bunch since I thought of the question. Mazeroski made the Hall of Fame, though he probably wouldn’t have without that home run, slick fielding or no. Carter didn’t earn much WAR, but then a lot of his reputation came from his gaudy RBI totals and not that home run.
I don’t know the answer. I do find it interesting that none of the greatest homers in baseball history came from the greatest players in baseball history. If you exclude the home runs that were record-breakers (which by definition have to be hit by all-timers), the biggest homers ever are probably the above four, Carlton Fisk, Bucky Dent, and Kirby Puckett. (Right? Am I forgetting anyone?) Fisk in particularly was a great, and he, Puckett, and Mazeroski are in the Hall of Fame, but there was never some iconic, season-defining home run from anyone in the 500-homer club.
No great point there, just find it interesting.
(As always, thanks to Check Out My Cards for being able to track these down.)
The worst Kirk Gibson card
1991 Upper Deck #634
Literally all I can figure when they have cards that are this bad is that the photographer forgot to get pictures of a player that year, or the photos got ruined, or something else weird, and they just have to scramble. You could run this exact card and replace “Kirk Gibson” with “umpire’s ass” and no one would think anything of it. Add in the fact that Gibson at the time was aging and had a ridiculously receding hairline, and if I was him, I’d be real annoyed that that ended up being my card.
(Looks, notes that Gibson was likely 34 when the picture was taken, remembers that I’m 36, sobs uncontrollably for a while.)
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.
1995 Pinnacle #349
This is a slightly better version of the worst card. I mean, at least instead of an umpire’s ass, it’s Jim Thome’s ass. Gibson is still balding, and you can’t even see the name on the back of his uniform this time, but at least it appears to be a somewhat exciting play … though I’ll be damned if I know what’s going on. It’s third base, so … Gibson overran the base on a throw that got by Thome, and now he’s trying to get back before the backup throws the ball to Thome? That’s the best I got.
1991 Studio #66
Personal-testimonial-for-an-ED-drug lookin’ card.
1995 Topps #519
By 1995, Gibson was nearing the end of his run. He was 38 that year — his last in the bigs — and played only 70 games, mostly at DH. So I’m not saying it would have been easy to find a card where he looked super athletic that year, but it had to have been easier than this. If he made contact with this pitch, it was a slow roller off the end of the bat to third base, and given the condition of Gibson’s legs by that age, he was thrown out by 30 feet. More likely he got fooled by a breaking ball and swung over it, losing his handle on the bat and looking kinda silly. Sure, yeah, let’s make that into a baseball card.
1989 Fleer – World Series #5 (Dennis Eckersley/Kirk Gibson)
Okay, I’m gonna go a little dark here. But I understand why they included an Eck/Gibby card in this set. It was an iconic home run. But, like … did they make a Donnie Moore/Dave Henderson card after the ’86 postseason? Moore famously gave up a crucial home run to Henderson in the ’86 ALCS, and according to legend that play was part of what led to his suicide in 1989. Obviously, the Fleer folks didn’t know that was going to happen when they made the Eckersley card, but man, imagine if Eckersley had gone down the same road, and five years after the card came out, we had this permanent monument to the singular play that led a guy to kill himself. Like I said, dark.
1988 Topps #429
Can I confess something? Maybe it’s my age and the fact that by the time I was really cognizant of baseballing, Gibson was past his prime and mostly just around to sock a few dingers, but I had no idea he stole as many bases as he did. Literally, he had more career stolen bases than he had home runs (284 to 255), averaging 30 a year from 1984 to 1988. I absolutely did not realize that until I looked at the back of this card and saw his name there as the team leader. And even then, I laughed to myself, like “Oh, the slow guy had a weird stolen base season, how random.” And then I looked at his career numbers. What a weird blind spot.
Anyway, I love the halfassed nature of the Topps team cards this year. Just take a picture and kinda ghost out an amorphous shape around the players. Done!
1986 Donruss – Super DKs #1
Really not sure why the artist chose to illustrate Gibby being angry about a bee stinging his face, but maybe he was under time constraints.
And now, the top four Kirk Gibson cards of all time.
4. 1992 Topps Stadium Club #495
Once again, we have Stadium Club being the best at this. This card wins just because it’s such a weird situation. How many cards have their pictures taken in a batting cage? How many cards have players wearing … what are those, batting practice uniforms? Weird spring training alternates? I don’t know, but it’s not a Royals uniform you see very often. And the lighting is cool. Bravo, this card.
3. 1987 ProCards Minor League #1981
The funniest thing about this card is that it’s not a minor-league card in the sense you’d expect, a card made of a prospect as he heads toward the big leagues. No, this card was a set made in 1987, eight years into Gibson’s career. It was one of our first flashback sets, capitalizing on big names in weird uniforms. But considering Gibson is such a giant human (remember, he was an NCAA wide receiver) and in such a lesser-seen uniform (plus the Toledo Mudhens are an all-time great team name) that it looks like a still from a movie that couldn’t get MLB licensing. But I don’t care, this card is captivating.
2. 1996 Upper Dekc Collector’s Choice #142
This card is a cool shot to begin with. If you add in the fact that it’s a “tribute” card commemorating his retirement (or as the back of the card says, he was “traded to my family”), it’s that much better. Gibson gets an excellent farewell card. And the optical illusion of the bat being out in front and then subtle tilted toward the viewer makes this giant human look like he has an even more giant bat. This card just works in so many ways.
1. 1991 Topps Traded – Collector’s Edition #46T
Dear god, I love this card. Gibby looks like an actor in a movie who is 20 years older than the character he is playing. The fact that the picture for this card was taken before the 1992 Stadium Club card above is just amazing, since the Stadium Club Gibson looks 30 years old and this Gibson looks 60. He spent just that one 1991 season with the Royals, and he even looks like he knows that uniform looks weird on him. “Yeah, I’m wearing it, what the hell do you expect? It’s my job, get outta my face.” I can’t exactly explain why this card is so amazing, but this card is so amazing.