1988 Donruss Rookies, Mark Parent

#8 Mark Parent

Here is the first of three cards that Mark Parent signed for me at a Royals game two summers ago. Mark was the bench coach for the White Sox at the time and he was nice enough to sign for me before the game started.

Mark played in the Majors for parts of thirteen seasons. Over that span, he saw time with the Padres, Rangers, Orioles, Cubs, Pirates, Tigers, and Phillies. The man got around. In fact, he even did two separate stints with the Cubs and Orioles. He was the quintessential journeyman backup catcher. The most games he ever started in a year was 71 and those games were split between two clubs.

Despite playing for seven different teams in his career, I could only find Padres cards of him and two of those were in 1988 boxed sets. He has a couple of Orioles, Cubs, Tigers, and Phillies cards, but all of them are from the mid '90s when there were a billion card sets out and I was barely collecting. That is why I only have Padre cards.

While Mark's signature is not legible, it still looks nice.