Today’s Pittsburgh Pirates Card of the Day comes from a player who I have been avoiding here for obvious reasons. I was old enough to remember the end of the 1992 season, which has scarred me to this day. I still don’t watch the highlight of the thing that happened to end that season. We don’t need to rehash that detail.
There were players I’ve avoided posting here for one reason of another. I didn’t like the way Nate McLouth burned bridges when he left, but he got a Card of the Day recently. Nyjer Morgan irritated me to no end with over-sliding bags and getting picked-off because he was such a 100% player (which I liked the enthusiasm), but he got a Card of the Day recently. There are three other players in that group, one being Derek Bell, who you probably won’t see here for obvious reasons. Stan Belinda was another for being on the mound at the end of the 1992 playoffs, while the Benedict Arnold who slid during that same play will never be here (What did I just say about rehashing!). We can check out an early card of Belinda though, so we head to the 1990 Score set for today’s featured card.
Here’s the front of the card:
The 1988 Score set was the third full-size offering from the company. They went with six different color borders in their first set. The were down to three colors for this set, which were non-specific for the teams. You either got the blue you see here, or one of the Christmas colors (red and green). That great Pirates logo on the front is always a nice addition.
Belinda was part of the Rookie subset, which were all blue border cards near the back of the set. That’s actually a strong subset, with players like Curt Schilling, Larry Walker, Deion Sanders, Bernie Williams, Marquis Grissom, Delino DeShields and Juan Gonzalez.
I liked the rookie tag here, the Pirates logo and the photo of Belinda, which gives you a nice shot of his pitch grip and sidearm delivery. He only wore the #60 for the Pirates during the 1989 season, before switching to the #50 for the rest of his Pirates time.
Here’s the back of the card:
Score backs were the head of the pack back then (using the word “pack” was an unintended pun). Upper Deck had better quality/better photos, but the combo of the photo, full stats and bio information was unmatched at the time here. There was clearly some work put into these cards, back when Topps would tell you that “Stan likes fishing in the off-season” for his entire bio section.
Hey look, Belinda turned 57 today. That explains why he is here today.
I know I’m cutting this one short, but I make no apologies. If you want this card, then don’t pay more than $2 delivered. It’s easy to find and plenty of options are very cheap. I quick counted 30+ auctions that were under $2 delivered. Only one has sold in the last three months. There are two autographed copies. One is $20, one is $6. There’s one auction that might interest you for $3 delivered. There are two Belinda cards and a Moises Alou card, who is another one of the players tagged as a rookie in the set. There is actually a seller who has the 24-card Pirates team set for $4.25 delivered. You would get Barry Bonds, Jay Bell, Bobby Bonilla, Doug Drabek, John Smiley, Andy Van Slyke and all of your heroes from that 1989 team.
