Cooperstown: 1989 Upper Deck

Today's player: Carl Keliipuleole, College Performance

Next up in the latest Cooperstown pack opening is 1989 Upper Deck. This was actually the first pack of 1989 Upper Deck I've opened.

I remember back in the day skipping over Upper Deck because a pack of Upper Deck was just more expensive than, say Topps. I was a thinking kid. Why pay more for the same amount of cards? I had the same thinking about Fleer.

Anyway, by the time I decided to try a pack, the local card shop was out. But this shop in Cooperstown in 2010 had a box, so I grabbed a pack, figuring I'd see what this new 1989 "Upper Deck" thing was all about.

Before anyone asks. No, I didn't get a Griffey. I did get another player with an Upper Deck rookie designation, the great Mike Harkey. Harkey actually gets me into the main thing I'm looking for in these packs, players who were in the CMC set or other, however tangential, connections to players in the set.

Being a set from 1989, the year before the CMC set came out, there should be several set members in the 1989 Upper Deck set. I didn't get any of them in this pack.

What I did get was the Harkey, and a checklist. Harkey I referenced back in May when I wrote about Portland Beaver Larry Casian. It was Harkey whom Casian saw was his competition for scout attention in college.

The back of Harkey's card doesn't reference college. It just references a quick rise through the minors to Chicago, including a one-hitter in his second start at AAA Iowa.

Without an actual member of the CMC set in the Upper Deck pack, I had to do some more reaching for a reference. I got that in this Alan Trammell Tigers checklist.

On the back are the names of all the Tigers in the set. Right there on the back, at number 454 is the name of Jim Walewander. I featured Walewander, a member of the 1990 Columbus Clippers, back in August.

Elsewhere, no Hall of Famers came out of the pack. There was even a double in the pack, two Cory Snyders.

There weren't even terribly interesting photos. The back photo on Mitch Webster's card is the closest thing to interesting. That's it there, him making a catch with Wrigley's ivy as the backdrop.

So that's it, a rather uneventful pack. These two cards I picked up individually, among the stack of cards that I got. There's the corrected version of the Dale Murphy card. The reverse negative version would be a cool one to pick up someday. I remember all the talk about it back in the day.

The other card is, of course, Edgar Martinez, whom I recently wrote about. But, just in case there was confusion, I picked up the below card, just in case. Covering my bases, and all.

212 - Jim Walewander, Free Spirit, 8/18/10
439 - Tino Martinez, Quality Player, 10/9/10
439 - Edgar Martinez, Greatest DH, 10/8/10
555 - Larry Casian, Collegiate Competition, 5/1/10