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.

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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. 

THIS CARD GOT ... NUKED
The Card: Steve Dalkowski 2009 TRISTAR Obak Autographs (unsigned)
The Buzz On This: This one comes from a set that features a lot of minor-league names you know and others you don't -- and in this case, well, you probably know the type of player (check his real, yet unreal, stats) but not this particular card. The back notes the trivia that gets him here -- click here to learn more in The Buzz Archives -- but that's not why I had to have this. This is the card that was planned for Dalkowski as a certified autograph to go into packs but it was never released. Sheets of this released did get out with this and other cards on them, which were then cut down into singles and I had to have it. I had eyed the sheets for a long time but never bit -- storage is just not as easy with uncut sheets.

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

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It's been a busy day on The Buzz for headlines in the here and now of today -- you know, modern cardboard and sports business -stuff -- so I'll work from left field on this quick and simple vintage item with a story.

Call it a Buzz Buys (it is), call it afternoon/evening filler (yeah, it is), call it whatever you want depending on your collecting tastes ... I like to call this one interesting.

I recently found this old, semi-mangled print from the archives of The Sporting News from a dealer of other non-card materials and the simplicity of that clean pose got me to stop and look. Why? Well, a lot of photos just don't look like that from back then -- where, for example, you can see plenty of details on the fabric of Bill Connelly's Philadelphia Athletics jersey. (Yes, Philadelphia ... that's the Oakland A's two cities ago where they made plenty of MLB history from 1901 to 1954, winning five World Series and nine American League pennants.) This one just felt really different, though. That just felt like a superstar kind of pose, or at least somebody of note who needed a portrait taken by a major publication, and yet ... I didn't know his name.

Who's in the background? I dunno. When's it from? Based on what's scribbled on the back of this one -- a patchwork of handwriting from a few uses over the years -- I'm not that sure. So that's when I headed over to Baseball Reference to learn more and that's where this one got interesting to me. I learned plenty more.

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