1990 Classic Baseball

In football and hockey, I believe Pro Set ranks at the top of the list of "junk" wax, with unlimited print runs. While the set produced a few interesting rookie cards, such as Barry Sanders, Michael Irvin, Marv Levy and Deion Sanders, overall, I thought the 1989 set was pretty unimaginiative.

While digging through the boxes of cards I still have piled up around the basement, I came across one of baseball's versions of Pro Set - Classic, published by Classic Games. 

Created as a sports trivia board game, cards consist of five questions on the back, each good for a base hit, or a homer. You spun a spinner to see which type of hit you could try for, and then consult the card for your trivia question. The bigger the hit, the harder the question.

Of the hundreds of different cards that were produced, the company actually made some "Automatic Grand Slam" cards, which, believe it or not, could allow you to "slug" a grand slam, with no one on base.

In 1990, Classic made a Yellow Travel set of 100 cards (actually 99, with one unnumbered card), a Blue set (150 cards), Classic Update (t0 cards) and a Classic Draft Picks (25). 

I think everyone has to have a few of these cards laying around, as it seemed as if the print runs were astronomical and you could find them almost anywhere back in the '90s. According to the information I've been able to find, the blue with pink cards were produced in approximately 200,000 sets.

But, let's start out with the Classic Yellow Travel edition (with the blue lines). If you were looking to complete a set, forget about it, as the #51 card of Willie Blair was never issued. The card without a number, which also has a blank, blue back, features picturres of  Frank Viola, the "Texas Heat" duo of Nolan Ryan and his son Reid, and then Don Mattingly and Chipper Jones. That Texas Heat picture is also featured on card #T91.

The only three San Diego Padres depicted on the 1990 Classic Yellow set are Fred Lynn (#T59), Shawn Abner (#T20), and Greg Harris (#T13). As for 1990, it would be the only year Lynn would play for the Friars.

There would be a total of seven Padres within the 1990 Classic Blue set, with Tony Gwynn (#17), Roberto Alomar (#61), Andy Benes (#120), and Bruce Hurst (#102).

And finally, here's the three Padres from the 1990 Classic Update Pink with Blue set - Benito Santiago (#T44), Jerald Clark (#T10), and Joe Carter (#T9),

At the very least, this was an interesting concept and I think I played the game once. If I remember right, I thought it was pretty boring - it kind of reminded of the old "Bible Baseball" game we played when we were younger.

Stay healthy and safe out there.