1980 TCMA Columbus Clippers Baseball #5, Garry Smith

Hey, another oddball minor league photo in a long line of them. Convincing 6'2" guys to bend double is the textbook look for "gangly." Did the photographer really catch Columbus outfielders during grounder practice?

Columbus looks like a Cubs affiliate with those hats and pinstripes, but were the Yankees AAA farm club for almost 3 decades, 1979-2006. Garry Smith bounced around New York's system for seven years, suiting up for as many as three teams annually (career stats).

Garry's frequent A-AA-AAA movement reminded me of another peripatetic player (recently mentioned by an OBC trading friend), Wally Wolf.

Wally got the Rookie Stars treatment twice, but seven years apart, the longest such gap I've seen.

Why, Wally hasn't aged a day! Oh, they just airbrushed his Colt .45s cap. (Read the Hope Springs Eternal posts at 1207 Consecutive Games for more of Topps "rookie mistakes" from the 60s and 70s.)

Unlike Garry Smith, Wolf got two cups of coffee in the majors, but his minor league travels look very similar.

This TCMA set's rich with future Yankees and past big-leaguers as coaches.

1. Tim Lollar
2. Roger Slagle
3. Chris Welsh
4. Wayne Harer
5. Garry Smith
6. Brad Gulden
7. Roger Holt
8. Joe Altobelli MG
9. Roy Staiger
10. Bob Kammeyer
11. Jim McDonald
12. Jim Nettles
13. Brian Doyle
14. Sammy Ellis CO
15. Bruce Robinson
16. Jim Lewis
17. Dave Righetti
18. Mark Letendre
19. Dave Coleman
20. Marshall Brant
21. Greg Cochran
22. Jerry McNertney CO
23. Dennis Sherrill
24. Marv Thompson
25. Dave Wehrmeister
26. Joe Lefebvre
27. George Sisler Jr. GM
28. Juan Espino

Value: This #5 cost $2 as part of my TCMA haul from MinorLeagueSingles.com. Some sellers ask as much as $50 for the team, but $20 seems more reasonable to me. (A team set with 5 autographs recently sold on eBay for $15 with shipping.)

Fakes / reprints: TCMA reprinted several 1980 teams for "collectors kits" in the late 1980s. Those reprints use black ink; originals have blue backs.