1973 Topps Dwight Evans RC #614

Rookie cards of the hall of very good or guys with borderline cases, who end up getting jumped into the Hall of Fame - maybe the new market inefficiency in collecting cardboard.

I've never thought much about Evans except as an older veteran guy pictured on junk wax era cards through the early 1990s - as is, I picked up his multiplayer rookie card because with Harold Baines getting into the Hall of Fame, it might reopen the door for a better all-around player like Evans.

Evans was a longtime star for the Boston Red Sox, but not a national superstar in terms of sentiment - as the story goes, through the first part of his playing career, Evans was a good defensive right fielder with a competent bat, but his year-to-year numbers as a hitter didn't quite 'pop' until he was in his 30s.

Evans fell off the HOF ballot 20 years ago, but there would have been a campaign to get him in the Hall of Fame like a Bert Blyleven or Tim Raines - instigated by a generation of writers / bloggers more inclined to look not just at the counting numbers, but also the advanced stats to push through their personal pet projects.

If Evans' career was quite unfamiliar to me past his junk wax era cards, I can kind of see where picturing him like Tim Salmon would make sense - Salmon [for my 'home team' Angels of the early 1990s] wasn't quite a true franchise quality player, but as a hard hitting outfielder / DH, he was the heart and soul for the Angels for his career.

#CARDCORNER: 1991 Topps Dwight Evans