Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Mike Moriarty, 2002 Upper Deck 40 Man #226

Look, I know that I didn't follow the Orioles as closely during my college years, when the funk of their eventual 14-year streak of irrelevance was truly taking root. Still, I have a hard time believing that there ever was such a person as Mike Moriarty. I know for a fact that I didn't see any of his eight big league games in 2002. (Boy, did I miss out: 3-for-16 with a double.) I'm always confusing him with Mike Mordecai, the fungible Braves, Expos, and Marlins utility man of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Then there's Mike McCoy, another mostly anonymous utility guy who batted .190 for the Rockies and Blue Jays from 2009 through 2012. In my mind, they could all be the same guy. No, I find it more plausible that Upper Deck, knowing that they didn't have a full 40 players for the O's anyway (there are 34), had somebody's brother-in-law pose in full uniform and included him in the set under a fictitious name as a sort of inside joke. Or is that more of a Topps thing?

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