My Oscar Taveras cards - a final look

His potential is what makes his untimely passing a tragedy in the sense that baseball fans care - who knows now what he could have done with a full season in the major leagues? He could have lit the league up on fire through the next 5-10 years, he might have been a star, All-Star or superstar but now he is gone.

The cards featured were the ones I hoped to get him to sign in-person at some point - I'll probably keep them together to put in one of my mini-collections [beyond the glory] as a constant reminder that Taveras was supposed to be destined for stardom.

I had printed an image of the Taveras 2014 Topps Update card [#US-113, the Rookie Debut subset card] earlier in the year - it was great on Topps' part to sneak in a card of Taveras taking a curtain call after his first MLB home run in his first game.

2012 Bowman Chrome #BCP 102 Blue refractor parallel - I found this one in a dollar box and while it wasn't autographed, I thought it was a sweet find.

2013 Topps Heritage Minors #200 - I wish I could have gotten the opportunity to get Taveras' autograph on one of his Topps Heritage Minors cards [2012-14].

2013 Topps Pro Debut #1 - Taveras was also the cover boy for the product's boxes.

2014 Topps Heritage Minors #119 - Taveras may have been a redundant inclusion but he added some star power to this year's base set.

2013 Bowman Platinum BPP #1 - while Taveras never had the chance to pile up a significant run of MLB cards, he had assorted prospect and minor league cards.

Damn

Top prospect Oscar Taveras and his girlfriend killed in a car accident.

Oscar Taveras find

In his long awaited MLB debut, the top prospect's first MLB hit was a home run - I think I got his autograph in-person on a dummy card in the Arizona Fall League in 2011, but was too busy trying to chase after Bryce Harper and Mike Trout to care about the then 'little known' prospect from the Dominican Republic.

He broke out in 2010, but had even a bigger season in 2011 - maybe it was the a lack of 'mainstream cards' that kept me from focusing on Taveras as someone to be serious about getting when I had the chance to do so.

In 2012, I was digging through an assorted dollar box and found a 2012 blue Bowman Chrome parallel to get autographed in-person - if I have the chance, I'm probably going to hold off on that now, since he's had his share of assorted prospect cards.