MiLB Madness: Sarge, Swish, diamond dogs and ... a dietitian?

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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. 

TWO SURPRISES, ONE CARD
The Card: John Lannan & Katrina Mangieri 2021 Choice Trenton Thunder #5
The Buzz On This One: I'm always on the hunt for cards with unusual position players on them as part of this series and this time it's a double-whammy with a mental performance coach and a dietitian sharing a spot on the checklist. I'm 99.99 percent sure nothing like this has ever shown up in an MLB set and it's the weird stuff like this that can make MiLB team sets stand out from the rest. Why do they have cards? Well, they're part of the team. Why don't they have cards at the next level? Probably because those off-field teams are big as it is ... and a lot of players don't get cards or lesser names that do prompt "value" complaints from collectors. (I'm sure of that.) It's inevitably not valuable here -- pocket change -- but it's definitely oddball ... and it's not alone this time.

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

NOT THE FIRST ONE HERE ...
The Card: Sam Niedorf 2019 Choice Down East Wood Ducks #39
The Buzz On This One: This isn't the first time I've had some Wood Ducks cardboard in this series -- a data analyst is here for starters -- and this baseball position is listed as an "IT" which I'd assume is "information technology" as it applies to player development since (I cheated) his LinkedIn shows him as still working in player development for the Texas Rangers organization and having had a "systems integration" role at this time. There aren't a lot of cards I've seen with this angle covered -- maybe a handful at this point working on this series -- but I suspect there will be more.

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THREE OF DIAMONDS ...
The Cards: Miss Babe Ruth & Miss Lou Gehrig 2014 Brandt Greensboro Grasshoppers (#33/35) and Ollie 2015 Choice New Hampshire Fisher Cats #32
The Buzz On This One: This might be the end of my diamond dogs cards I had stashed for this one -- there are a lot of them throughout MiLB and could be a big collection all on their own -- and there are a lot of stories about a lot of them out there, too. Here's the obituary for Miss Babe Ruth who died in 2018 and it gives you an idea of their story with the team. Ollie's story is here. Will they be the last baseball dogs I find on cards? Probably not ... but that's all for now.

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THE FIRST ...
The Card: Steve Swisher 1974 Wichita Aeros One Day Film #123
The Buzz On This One: I bought this one almost a year ago and had it stashed -- not for this series (hence no card-back photo) -- but I figured a year of waiting in my stacks was enough to pop it in here for something different. It's not a perfect card -- the stock is thin and it's slightly aging here -- but it's the only time I have ever seen this one pop up in years of saved searches and I had to snag it (around $6). It's his first baseball card -- it pre-dates his 1975 Topps Rookie Card -- and it came not long after he was a first-round pick of the Cubs in 1973. He's, of course, the dad of a big-leaguer you might know about and this was a long-term need as I attempt to "collect it all." Minor League team sets weren't as much of a thing until more toward the end of this decade, so some players don't have tougher finds ... imagine if some of the beloved Hall of Famers from the past did. Atop that, how many sets for something like this would have even been made back then? How many might have survived?

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FOUR OF A KIND?
The Cards: Todd Zeile 1989 Louisville Redbirds #2/3/4/5
The Buzz On This One: This future big-leaguer's final MiLB stop was in Louisville where he hit .289 with 19 homers and 85 RBI in 118 games in 1989 as a 23-year-old and a former second-round pick out of UCLA. He was a kind of a big deal back when with Rookie Cards in some 1989 MLB releases and a full arrival in 1990 on cardboard before he was a big-leaguer for 16 seasons and on 11 teams. I've seen a card or two for notables in some team sets but four? Not bad. This team set had a few MLB names in it and was dirt cheap so I grabbed all of it. He's not that valuable now but if you were in cards back then you know he was a big deal back then.

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NO, NOT SGT. SLAUGHTER ...
The Cards: Sarge 2011 & 2018 Grandstand Jackson Generals #NNO
The Buzz On This One: Mascot cards always get a look from me when it comes to MiLB cards and one of these was a double-whammy with the left one showing him on a sweet ride (a subset of mascot cards I look for ... mascots on wheels or something close to that). That card actually has extra bonus points as it's a debut card for the mascot, which was introduced in 2011.

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