MiLB Madness: Odd baseball cards from down on the farm

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. 

MONEYBALL DOWN ON THE FARM?
The Card: Amanda Brady 2021 Choice Hudson Valley Renegades #34
The Buzz On This One: When was the last time you saw an "advanced scouting analyst" baseball card? This is a first for me and I've seen quite a bit of oddball cardboard in my time doing this series. Brady is an analyst in the Yankees organization and this card is "exactly what I always dreamed my first baseball card would be," she tweeted. There's a pretty good chance there are other analyst cards to come as the MiLB checklists continue to include the non-traditional but, right now, this is the only one I've ever seen.

Keep reading for more examples of weird baseball cards you can (almost) only find in MiLB.

STAY THIRSTY, MY FRIENDS
The Cards: Nathan Alleyne 2010, 2011-13 Grandstand San Jose Giants
The Buzz On This One: If you're a regular reader, you might recognize this name from a newer set where this guy did some grilling on a baseball card. (Why? Who knows ... ) But in his younger years? Alleyne was apparently all about hydration as a 20-year-old, a 22-year-old, a 22-year-old and a 24-year-old (yes, there's an error in there) as watercooler bottles cameo every single time. His newest card here shows he night have more baseball cards out there as a former MLB player picked him to be a batboy when he was younger and he actually has worked for other teams. These were pocket-change cards but this oddity was too weird not to show here.

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NEW BOGGS ON THE SOX?
The Card: Brooke Boggs 2021 Choice Greenville Drive #38
The Buzz On This One: Trainers actually appear in MiLB card sets way more than you might expect. This one just struck me as different, though, as it's got a funky design for sure (how much of that front is the border?) but also the fact that there was another Boggs in the Red Sox organization last year. Are they related? Does she eat a lot of chicken? These are things I do not know ... but I'm totally tagging the Hall of Famer on Twitter about this. I think he can solve part of the mystery.

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LEGENDARY NAME, DIFFERENT UNI
The Card: Ryne Sandberg 2012 Choice Lehigh Valley Ironpigs #26
The Buzz On This One: There are a lot of past MLB players who you can find on MiLB cardboard as managers but Hall of Famers? They aren't as plentiful. If you don't remember, Sandberg worked in the minors for the Cubs from 2007 to 2010 but didn't get the call when the team made a change in Wrigley. After that, he moved to the Phillies organization and he led this team to a title in 2012 after taking Manager of the Year honors from Baseball America in 2011. He got his second call to The Show with his original MLB team and led them for parts of three seasons. The back of this card does a good job of documenting everything to that point -- and it might have been be the priciest card here -- but I grabbed it since his MiLB cards might be the rarest basic stuff out there.

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REMEMBER ME?
The Card: Glenn Hubbard 2021 Choice Columbia Fireflies
The Buzz On This One: The last time I saw this guy on cardboard he had a lot more hair -- that was in the late 1980s when he moved from the Braves to the A's and was part of their World Series team that was shocked by Dodgers and Kirk "Thwack, uh" Gibson and that home run (among other things). His playing career ended the following season -- before the A's got a ring as a player but this card brings us to the here and now. He's been in the game many if not all of those years since -- see the card back -- and this card also shows "now" in a different way. It's got a 2021 trademark on there as he's wearing a mask. That's actually very common in big-league sets but I didn't see a ton of this when recently looking around at MiLB stuff.

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FINISHING WITH A RING
The Card: Max Fried 2017 Topps Heritage Minor League #77
The Buzz On This One: I picked this up in the wake of his dominating finish in the World Series this year -- I didn't snap a pic of the back as I didn't intend to drop it here -- but I'll finish with it as a reminder that even the standard in-pack MiLB cardboard out there can be cheap even with a good name attached. (This was $1 or less.) Fried appears on cards in this brand a few years -- 2013-2017 -- and he's in unis that are a variation of his Braves stuff on some of those. If you want to collect something different with big names and familiar but still unique unis, this is the brand to try.

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