1991 Line Drive AAA, Razor Shines

#194 Razor Shines

Seeing this card makes me realize that Impel got a little carried away with their "Pre-Rookie" label for this set. By the time these cards came out, Razor Shines Major League career was over. He had made his Major League debut eight years earlier and then played in his final game in 1987. I realize that the "Pre-Rookie" label is part of the card and cannot be taken away from certain player's cards. Maybe they should have just dropped the label for the AAA set.

Razor signed this card, and one other, for me on this years Spring Training trip to Arizona. He is the manager of the Dodgers AA team in Chattanooga and he signed for me after the minor leaguers morning practice.

Razor played in the minors for sixteen seasons and nine of them were spent with the Indianapolis Indians. That has got to be some kind of modern day record. Even when the Indians changed affiliation from the Expos to the Reds in 1993, Razor stayed with the club. He ranks fifth in games played for the franchise, third in home runs, fourth in doubles, and second in RBI. The Indians all-time leader in games and RBI played for the club ninety years ago.

The Indians hosted "Razor Shines Day" in 1993 and there is apparently a suite named after him at Victory Field. The Indians even gave out a bobblehead of him in 2003.

1990 CMC

#73 Jose Castro

This wasn't the start to the '90s that I was looking for. I don't have any '90 Bowman signed, so we start off the '90s with a minor league card of a career minor leaguer.

I got this card signed at a Ranger's game in September. Jose was the hitting coach for the Mariners. Jose must not get many requests to sign cards because I asked him to sign as he walked by, and he said "Who, me?". He then came over and signed this card.

Looking at his stats, he is the deffinition of "career minor leaguer". He played thirteen seasons in the minors, ten of them in AAA. So he got to AAA pretty fast and put up decent numbers in his first season, hitting .303 and posting an OPS of .846. He had two more seasons later on that were nearly identical. But, he never got a shot in the Majors.