Orioles Card "O" the Day

An intersection of two of my passions: baseball cards and the Baltimore Orioles. Updated daily?

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Mike Adamson, 1991 Crown/Coca-Cola All-Time Orioles #5

I've spent most of a fairly leisurely Saturday watching and thinking about football. It's the opening weekend of the playoffs, after all. As such, I didn't give much thought to today's post. So follow the stream of consciousness that led to this card and this player:

-The Jets defeated the Bengals, 24-14. Much was made of the matchup between quarterbacks Mark Sanchez of New York and Carson Palmer of Cincinnati, both of whom attended the University of Southern California.

-I wandered over to baseball-reference.com to find a list of major leaguers who were once USC Trojans.

-There have been 100 Southern Cal alumni in MLB to date. The most notable are Tom Seaver, Mark McGwire, Randy Johnson, Fred Lynn, Barry Zito, Dave Kingman, Bret Boone, and Don Buford.

-Despite the significant number of former USC players, only one has ever pitched for the Orioles: Mike Adamson. He was their first-round draft pick in 1967, debuted with the Birds days later at age 19, and went 0-4 with a 7.46 ERA in 11 games over three seasons. He was the first player to ever go straight to the majors from the draft, for all of the good it did him.

2 comments:

Goose Joak said...

Cool card. Is that a die-cut, or is it just my imagination? Either way, it looks waaaaayyyyy different than the 1992 Nolan Ryan Coke cards.

Kevin said...

Dave - Not die-cut. That would be a cool look, but there's a straight strip of white space at the top that doesn't scan clearly.