MiLB Madness: A few familiar names from MLB past & present, a new Bull Durham nod & check out this obscure memorabilia

Minor league baseball cards from the past can include some weird stuff ... sometimes stuff you wouldn't imagine to be found on a baseball card. Here are some some new fun cards and oddities in this latest edition of MiLB Madness. 

ONE MORE DURHAM NOD ...
The Card: Steve Dalkowski 2009 TRISTAR Obak T212 Minis Green (/25)
The Buzz On This: This set isn't one limited to MiLB players per se -- it's more about the history and oddities around baseball at every level in every direction -- and it's not one issued in team sets, either. But, this card popped up in my digging for unique and different stuff with a story and, well, this one has it. Dalkowski is a legendary minor-leaguer whose powerful arm -- and unruly control -- inspired Bull Durham creator Ron Shelton to create Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh. How unruly was he? As an 18-year-old in Class D- Kingsport in 1957 he struck out 121 batters in 62 innings. He also walked 129 while recording a 1-8 record in 15 games. That's 17.6 Ks per nine innings and 18.7 walks per nine. The next season, he went 4-10 with a 7.63 ERA, striking out 203 batters in 118 innings and walking 245. The final stats, though not complete due to it being MiLB and being way back in the day, are impressive. You can find his only MLB card in 1963 Topps among the higher-numbers (despite never actually pitching in MLB) and basically his cards in this release are the only other option. He was slated to sign certified autos for it, too, but they were never completed. This one will always be an add for me if I see them.

Keep reading for more examples of some weird or fun baseball cards (and other stuff) you can find in MiLB.

A MYSTERY MAN COLLECTION
The Items: Jean Pierre Leduc 1978 TCMA The Minors card + signed 1978 Pittsburgh Pirates payroll check ... and more?
The Buzz On This: During a recent run of eBay digging over in the checks realm, the name Leduc just seemed different -- that or vintage wrestling name Jos LeDuc made me think that -- so I searched his name ... and, well, I didn't find much. Jean Pierre Leduc pitched three seasons of MiLB ball from 1976-78, compiling a 15-14 record with 132 Ks in 211 innings and, weirdly, his Baseball-Reference bio is otherwise pretty barren despite him not being a player of many, many decades ago. Naturally, none of those stats appeared on what looks to be his only baseball card -- though it does have more basic bio info than that site. Go figure. (MiLB cards were just starting to become a more-organized thing like these in the 1970s, though there are cards for lower-level players in a number of past sets.) The one payday slip here is a payroll check signed by Leduc, his $242.31 then being around $1,300 today, while the other is one that's the Pirates paying out an expense to an odd place (at least in my mind) for an MLB team, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. That's roughly $50 today and there's no tie to this Canadian -- and I'm confident he's wasn't the lone international player in their organization -- but these being a week apart made me wonder, so I grabbed both. Just like the player, there's a lot I'll never know here ... but these just struck me as interesting and a reminder that there are many, many scenarios like this out there in the sports world -- pro players who definitely existed and competed but without much, if any, cardboard to be found after the fact. Another fun fact that I just realized writing this up and that I didn't know when I grabbed the check just for fun? On June 4, 1978, Leduc threw a no-hitter against the Asheville Tourists, winning 9-0 -- this paycheck covers that game. 

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TWO MORE FROM THE STAFF
The Cards: Ericka Ventura 2013 Bridgeport Bluefish & Liz Pardo 2021 Choice Delmarva Shorebirds
The Buzz On This: There's not really any deep story here with this pair of staffer cards -- one's a head trainer and on'se a strength and conditioning coach (I only said staffer since I don't know if these roles would be the same thing) -- they are just the last from a batch of oddball finds I picked up months ago for this series. You'll find non-player cards in MiLB sets if you do some looking -- there are a lot of them -- and there's a lot of different cardboard you can find only in MiLB.

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FOUR FAMILIAR NAMES?
The Cards: Wilfredo Pujols 2005 Choice Johnson City Cardinals, Jeff Ballard 1987 ProCards, Joe Kelly 2011 DAV Palm Beach Cardinals, Chad Mottola 2011 DAV Las Vegas 51s
The Buzz On This: Pujols is a cousin of the future Hall of Famer and was drafted in the sixth round in 2005 -- and by 2006 he was released after legal issues led to him being on probation. Then it got way worse from there. Familiar name, though, right? You might know The Pride of Billings, Mont., Jeff Ballard from late-1980s and 1990s cards as he was a Baltimore Oriole and Pittsburgh Pirate and this is among his earliest (if not first, I didn't check) cards. Meanwhile, the last two are former big-leaguers -- Kelly a two-time World Series champ with the Red Sox and Dodgers and Mottola a former first-round pick who played five years in The Show and is now the hitting coach for the Tampa Bay Rays.

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NOT-MILB VISUALS
The Cards: Tyler Soderstrom 2021 Topps Heritage Minor League 1972 Topps Poster Cards & 1972 Topps Pack Cover Cards
The Buzz On This: This pair of cards might have an Oakland/Sac Vegas look to them, but they are actually from when he was a member of the Arizona Complex League Athletics. The cards are from the 2021 take on 1972 Topps for MiLB -- a brand that has since been killed off -- with these two being re-dos of styles from long ago as the set names indicate. With his strong start this season for Sac Vegas -- 15 homers so far in the first half -- I did some looking on the cheap and added these to my stash. Why? They look like big-league cards.

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ROLL TIDE ROLL CALL
The Cards: Andy Phillips 1999 Multi-Ad Sports Staten Island Yankees, 2002 Grandstand AA All-Stars, 2002 Grandstand Norwich Navigators, 2004 Choice Columbus Clippers
The Buzz On This: This former New York Yankees standout turned Cincinnati Reds and New York Mets (and Pirates/White Sox for games that didn't count) player was on a decent amount of MLB cardboard back in the day and during his five-year MLB career. But before all that he was an Alabama Crimson Tide standout who became a seventh-round pick in 1999. He joined a long list of players who were in and around Yankee pinstripes, including Hall of Famer Joe Sewell, legendary broadcaster Mel Allen and World Series winner David Robertson. They're not alone, so every once in a while I'll do a dig for cards with Bama names -- and MiLB stuff is where a school collector can find a lot of those standout names who never made it into big-league sets. Some have more than others.

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