Steve Finley, 1990 Donruss #215

1990 was the first year that Donruss had really gone out on a limb design-wise since the mid-Eighties. These cards were like nothing that came before them, with the distinct white script player names and blood-red borders, not to mention the splatters of black and white. It almost seemed as if the cards had been designed by Jackson Pollock.

Steve Finley was a player that Pollock would have loved, had he been a baseball fan. His entire career was a splash of this, a sprinkle of that. He broke in with the Orioles in 1989 as a speedy little singles hitter whose glove kept him in the lineup. Eventually he would develop surprising power, clouting 30 or more home runs in four different seasons and topping 300 for his career. He was a terror on the basepaths in the early years, swiping 78 bags between the 1991 and 1992 campaigns. But over his last eleven seasons in the bigs, he never notched more than 16 steals. Steve even pitched an inning for the Diamondbacks in 2001, ending his career on the mound with a spotless 0.00 ERA. He also spent his time in baseball playing here and there, jumping from team to team just like those contrasting splatters on the card above. In addition to his brief time in Baltimore, he played in Houston, San Diego, Arizona, Los Angeles, Anaheim, San Francisco, and Colorado. I'm still disappointed that he never made it to Oakland; he would have probably been the first to play for each of the five California teams.

In Baltimore, Steve Finley is known largely as a symbol of a future denied by one disastrous trade. But he was the odd man out in the trio that included Brady Anderson and Mike Devereaux, and hindsight is 20/20. Did you really predict in 1990 that Steve Finley would last 19 years, or that he would hit 304 home runs and 449 doubles? If so, you've probably got an attic full of Jackson Pollock paintings that you bought on the cheap before he hit it big.