Thursday, June 2, 2011

A Wayne Gross Kind of Day

For whatever reason, I've been struggling to churn out posts lately. I don't know if the extremely hot weather has fried my brain, or if it's just my annual Orioles malaise kicking in, but I apologize if I haven't been producing high-quality reading material lately.

Since the Orioles have never had anyone named "Blah" play for them, Mr. Gross will have to do.


While I have nothing against Wayne, and am pretty much too young to recall having seen him play, the combination of his name and this card work together to convey my mood. I'm sure Wayne is a decent guy since he's a 90+% TTM signer according to SCN, but I'm no fan of '85 Fleer, even though it has a nice orange border.

Anyway, Wayne played 11 seasons in the Majors from 1976-86, spending 1984-85 with the Orioles, while book-ending his career with the A's. He was an All-Star in his rookie season in 1977, in what would really prove to be the best season of his career.

Probably the most interesting thing I found out about Wayne is that he had a cameo in the 1994 remake of "Angels in the Outfield" as a relief pitcher for the White Sox. At least he did according to his Wikipedia page, and I couldn't confirm that fact on the IMDB page for the movie, so can't say it's 100% accurate. But it's very cool if it is!

2 comments:

night owl said...

Wayne Gross' card is one of my favorites in the 1978 Topps set.

So, there's that.

Orioles Magic said...

Now that's a good looking card. If only it was an O's card!