MiLB Madness: Derby balls, AFL stars, a gift guitar & more

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

PULLED FROM THE FIELD ...
The Item: Home Run Derby X used baseball from Dunkin' Park, home of the Hartford Yard Goats (Aug. 11, 2023)
The Buzz On This: This could have made its way into my monthly Collecting Game-used series here on The Buzz, but instead, I'll break up my pair and use one of them right here this time. Why? This exhibition event took place at a MiLB venue with four former MLB players leading the way smacking baseballs around the park -- Jonny Gomes, Jake Arrieta, Dexter Fowler and Nick Swisher. I read that the baseballs were not made to be sold, so the only way one could get their hands on them was to be there ... and with one of the four names being a player I collect, I did some power-shopping and landed a pair of them from a seller in Connecticut. Why? Just to have something from the event that's tied to my player. Who smacked this ball out of the park? No idea. There's no paperwork, there's no MLB Authentication sticker ... it just is what it is. I'm surprised that this event has never had any kind of card presence and really the only thing I have seen beyond used baseballs are posters ... but even those don't seem plentiful. This was from the second year of the traveling series -- the 2022 events were international and last year they showed up in different MiLB parks -- and this event was the first on American soil in 2023. The final score between the top two teams was 49-48 ... so a lot of baseballs went flying that day.

Keep reading for more examples of some weird or fun baseball cards you can find in MiLB.

LEGENDS OF THE FALL?
The Cards: Jason Varitek, Makato Suzuki, Chan Ho Park & Darin Erstad 1995 Split Second Arizona Fall League All-Stars
The Buzz On This: The AFL doesn't have a boatload of card sets in the past, but that doesn't mean you wont find some notable names in uniforms you might not recognize. I landed this team set in a bulk lot years ago and I think I've already spotlighted some of the better names here in a past month but this fearsome foursome was arguably the next tier down in that one and still good enough for a mention. This design is busy ... but it's not an awful one for 30 years ago.

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SHOWING OFF THE HARDWARE
The Item: Rick Sweet 2023 Choice Nashville Sounds
The Buzz On This: That NASH logo is seriously distracting to me -- it almost makes me think that it's somebody's name when that huge on a card back -- but it didn't distract me from grabbing this pocket-change classic where Sweet shows off his trophy guitar for winning Manager Of The Year. The card back pretty much sums up his career ... this is a tight little card with some quirks -- a perfectly simple oddity of a card for this series.

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GO NUTS!
The Item: Zinger 2011 Grandstand Richmond Flying Squirrels
The Buzz On This: That card back is absolutely nutty in how much info it includes for a newer member of a team's group of mascots and other furballs found at the field. But ... how many times doe Nutzy need to be mentioned on Zinger's card, though?

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TWO MORE MASCOTS ...
The Item: Rall E. Camel 2017 Choice Great Lake Loons & Buster T. Bison 1989 ProCards Buffalo Bisons
The Buzz On This: This pairing is quite the contrast -- a mascot on cardboard of today that's packed with an another energetic card back (though no Nutzy mentions) vs. a Most Valuable Bison who clearly had better things to do with his time than giving info to the card company. (We're probably lucky they even rounded Buster up for a photo.) Also ... look at that Bisons logo? That's some minimalist doodle stuff there -- it looks like it could have been on some 1960s stationary but, alas, it's a tweaked version of a 1985 logo for a team that arrived in 1979. That team is still going and the logo isn't that much different now all these years later. Go figure. I'll go with the camel card, myself.

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