These three played a combined 40 years in the Major Leagues, that's pretty solid.

This post is kind of out of the blue, right? Not really. Recently, the MLB Network showed the classic 1995 ALDS Game One between the Boston Red Sox and the Cleveland Indians. The game ended in the 13th inning on a homer by guess who, Tony Pena.

I realize that there probably will be five people who read this, myself included since now one seems to give a crap about Tony Pena. But Pena has always been one of my favorites, even if he did hand the Red Sox — his former team — a loss during that playoff game.

When I was a Little League catcher, I liked to imitate Pena’s one-leg crouch stance, and once tried that funky deke move he used on base runners. Sometimes when a ball was thrown in the dirt, he’d pick it but then make a move toward the backstop as if he missed it. Sometimes it worked, other times it didn’t. When I tried it, the base runner didn’t fall for it, so I guess my intuitiveness went unseen. Did I mention I was 11 years old.

Anyhow, Pena’s sole rookie card is this 1981 Topps card, which he shares with two other players you probably remember: Vance Law and Pascual Perez. Not exactly the kind of card someone usually admits to owning, but I’m proud to say it is in my personal collection. That’s just how I roll.

This is the part 10 of an ongoing series. To see other parts in this series, click here.

This entry was posted on November 1, 2009 at 1:56 pm and is filed under Rookie Card Showcase with tags baseball, baseball cards, Cleveland Indians, Pittsburgh Pirates, Rookie Card Showcase, Tony Pena, Topps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.