1993 Bowman, Billy Ashley

#210 Billy Ashley

Here is a card that I picked up in a trade with an unlikely trade partner. A few years ago, I pulled a Jackie Robinson manu-bat knob out of a pack of Topps. While the card was really neat, it did not fit into my collection. I offered it up to Night Owl in exchange for some autographed cards.

I fully expected to get a few certified autos of some lesser known Dodgers. But, Night Owl surprised me by sending me three cards like this and a couple of certified lesser known Dodger autographs. Night Owl will be the first to tell you that he is not an autograph collector. Sure, he has some and has even sent out a few TTMs to some of his favorite players, but it is typically not something he chases. Because of that, I did not expect to get any cards like this. My only guess is that he is such a great trader on the blogosphere that he gradually acquires cards like this. However he does it is fine by me as I fully appreciated the trade.

Billy Ashley was supposed to be a big thing in LA. He was the supposed to be battling out his fellow Dodger rookies for Rookie of the Year honors. He absolutely killed in in AAA, having back-to-back 100 RBI seasons and hitting 37 homers in 1994, winning Minor League player of the year honors.

But, he was unable to translate that success to the Major League level. He only played in 268 games with the Dodgers over a six year span. During that time, he hit .231 with 25 home runs and 77 RBI. He had almost 100 more strikeouts than hits as a Dodger. The Dodgers released him prior to the start of the 1998 season and the Red Sox picked him up. He got into 13 games with the Red Sox that season before spending the rest of his career mostly playing for independent minor league teams.

I love this look of this card. When I think of 1993 Bowman, I do not think of horizontal cards. I wonder if all of the horizontal cards in packs of '93 Bowman were all together in the pack like they are with current Topps packs. That is doubtful because Topps used to know how to collate cards.