Wednesday, May 1, 2019

#125T - Jose Uribe


What a card: This is the 31st rookie card in the 1985 Topps Traded set. Jose Uribe became the Giants' starting shortstop in 1985, appearing in 147 games but batting .237. Uribe's weak hitting stats would not prevent the Giants from maintaining his starting role for the next five seasons.

My observation on the front: Those orange Giants uniforms remind me of pumpkin pie without the spices added. Yuck.

More opinion from me: I never knew Jose Uribe and Juan Uribe were cousins until researching this post. I guess I should've figured that out already.

Something you might know: Uribe is most famous in the card collecting community for a few goofs who are selling his 1990 Fleer card on ebay for exorbitant amounts of money. A fast check turns up entries that are selling the card for $300, $1,575, $12,000 and $20,000. Really people, if you pay more than 30 cents for the '90 Fleer card, you've overpaid.

Something you might not know: Uribe ran for mayor of Juan Baron, Dominican Republic, in 2006 but did not win. He died later that year in a car accident.


My observation on the back: Uribe changed his name from Gonzalez in part because there was already a Jose Gonzalez playing in the Dodgers organization.

Also, it's interesting that Topps didn't just omit those years from 1978-80 when Uribe didn't play. Guess it needed to fill space.

The blog wants to speak now: The Pop Culture tab is updated.

1 comment:

NPB Card Guy said...

There was a joke that was made at the time he changed his name that he had become the "player to be named later".