Card Spotlight: 4-17-09

1990 White Sox Coke #5 - Dave Gallagher

In a box full of Canadian and promotional cards, I found this gem of an over-performing player that just faded from his bright start. I'll talk about the box that it came in, in another post.

Let's take a look at this card of Dave Gallagher. It's from a promotional set that I probably will never complete. Why, you may wonder? Frank Thomas and Sammy Sosa have essentially rookie cards in this set. Since this is a promotional item from Coca-Cola, there aren't too many copies floating around in mint condition.

The card is slightly wider than a standard size. It should fit well into the eight pocket pages. That would be your best bet for slightly larger than standard cards.

According to the back of the card, Dave is the only player to appear in all 161 games in 1989 and he carries a 198 consecutive game streak into the 1990 season. That's pretty impressive, even for a team that finished in seventh place in 1989. He must be a glutton for punishment. I don't even think that the mascots wanted to be around for all 81 home games that year.

Dave was supposed to be the next greatest rookie, but he fizzled out after a hot 1988 with the White Sox. He quickly returned to his rookie season form with the Indians. Dave would hit a career high .306 in his last year, split between the Phillies and the Angels. He performed miserably in limited time with the Angels and it was all over.

Some may be wondering why this is card five, when there is a seventeen listed on the front. Seventeen was Dave Gallagher's uniform number. The card catalogs list this set by alphabetical order, so Dave ends up being the fifth card.

This set holds a special place in my heart. The logo in the top left corner depicts the eightieth anniversary of the original Comiskey Park. 1990 would be its final year and the White Sox would almost pull off an amazing feat in that last year. The Sox were in the pennant race until late September. If the White Sox were in any other division that year, they would have gone to the playoffs. Only a red hot Oakland team prevented them from the post season.

The Sox would have taken the AL Central Division by fifteen games, if it existed back then. The Athletics and the Pirates were the only teams to post more victories for the 1990 season. I could lament about how the Sox were robbed, but I accepted long ago the limitations of the older divisional setup.

I'm not completely certain if these cards were just offered through the White Sox kid's club or if they were given away at games. The Sox went through periods of doing one or the other and sometimes both. Still, this is a great memento for a magical season that turned out to be the beginning of some great years for the Sox.