Friday, January 22, 2010

1979 TCMA Hawaii Islanders Baseball #5, Andy Dyes

How far can an American travel to see some baseball? Back in 1979, a Boston resident could circumnavigate a fifth of the globe, 5087 miles total, and see the Hawaii Islanders play AAA ball at Honolulu's Aloha Stadium. If you do, be like Mr. Dyes and bring your beach towel.



Awesome tie-in, courtesy of the team's Wikipedia entry:

The Islanders baseball team is mentioned on a number of occasions in the 80's television series of "Magnum PI". The main character played by Tom Selleck was a baseball fan for the Islanders and often he wore a Detroit Tigers ball cap.

(The 1979 Islanders served as a San Diego affiliate, not the Tigers; that part's Magnum all the way.)



TCMA left Andy's 1978 stats off his card, possibly because he split time between 3 organizations--Seattle, Toronto, and the aforementioned San Diego. (Full stats at Baseball-Reference.com.) It proved his best professional season; Andy retired after two more years in Honolulu, something we can all aspire to doing.

Value: I bought this #5 on eBay for $1, about what you'd expect to pay for minor league singles.

Fakes / Reprints: People have probably reprinted valuable minor league league cards of big MLB stars, but I don't know of any for commons.

2 comments:

night owl said...

Oh my goodness, what a great card.

Matthew Glidden said...

I liked its inclusion of the team's insignia in prominent fashion (for lack of stats). He's a pretty dramatic-looking dude in the cape and hat.