Juan Gonzalez, 1990 Donruss

Name: Juan Gonzalez
Team: Texas Rangers
Position: Outfield
Value of card: Minus-1 cent
Key 1989 stat: 618 backward K's
ziuq poP:

Why is Juan Gonzalez backward?
A) He's not. He's wearing his "rally jersey."
B) He's not. He's taunting the pitcher by changing his number to e1.
C) He's not. That prankster Al Newman is just messing with your head.
D) He's not. That reverse 19 is just where Nolan Ryan branded him.
E) It's just a cardmaking error, you idiot. Stop giving us all these damn quizzes!

Juan Gonzalez, 1990 Donruss

Andre Dawson, 1993 Upper Deck

Name: Andre "The Hawk" Dawson

Team: Chicago Cubs

Position: Outfield

Value of card: An afternoon of laughter by teammates

Key 1992 stat: 239 clumsy stumbles

The Hawk says it's pop quiz time:

What caused Andre Dawson to fall?

(A) His massive flip-up glasses weighed him down.

(B) He was attacked by a hawk that didn't approve of his nickname.

(C) It's not Dawson; it's three players dressed like him whose homoerotic conga line went wrong.

(D) At his advanced age, he mistook a brick wall for third base.

(E) He slipped on the tears of title drought-weary Cubs fans.

(F) All of the above.

Andre Dawson, 1993 Upper Deck

Albert Belle, 1992 Score

Name: Albert Belle
Team: Cleveland Indians
Position: Left field
Value of card: One free visit to a chiropractor
Key 1991 stat: Three broken ribs
Albert gets his Belle rung: Everyone know Albert "Don't Call Me Joey" Belle was crazy. He threw baseballs at fans, hit Halloween vandals with his car and once smashed Kenny Lofton's boom box in the dugout after a failed at-bat. But when he took his rage out on the Fenway Park visitors locker room, one entity had had enough. The Green Monster, tired of Belle's childish antics, decided it was time for revenge. When Belle retreated to catch a deep fly ball off the bat of Wade Boggs, the Monster struck, jumping forward eight feet and striking Belle square in the back. The slugger fell to the ground in a heap; the Monster drew back to its usual spot, never to move again.

Albert Belle, 1992 Score

Dan McGwire, 1991 Pro Line Portraits (Football Friday No. 28)

Name: Dan McGwire
Team: Seattle Seahawks
Positions: Quarterback, leg model
Value of card: One class on how to stop taking bad photos
Key 1991 stat: One start to a non-existent career
Top 10 fun facts about Dan McGwire:
10) Threw exactly two more NFL touchdowns than his brother, Mark McGwire
9) Refused to allow his left foot to be photographed
8) Spent way too much time with one hand on his hip
7) Bought his shorts at the same store as John Stockton
6) First team, NFL's All-Irrelevant squad, 1992-95
5) Often thought of as the league's best kneeler
4) Loves Ovaltine
3) Parlayed failed football career into failed T.G.I. Friday's bartending career
2) Preferred to throw the football like a shotput
1) Moonlighted as a cover model for Leg & Windbreaker Fancy Magazine

Dan McGwire, 1991 Pro Line Portraits (Football Friday No. 28)

Jerome Brown, 1990 Score (Football Friday No. 22)

Name: Jerome Brown

Team: Philadelphia Eagles

Position: Defensive tackle

Value of card: Three squares of toilet paper

Key 1989 stat: 10 awful smells wrapped into one

Quite a price for a play: Jerome Brown played hard. He'd do anything to make a play. This zeal was witnessed during a 1989 Philadelphia Eagles-Washington Redskins game when the defensive tackle crammed his face into quarterback Doug Williams' rear end to secure a third-down tackle. Lucky for Brown, this defining moment will live on forever thanks to the crack Score photography team. Too often early 1990s football cards showed interior linemen on sidelines with steam rising from their heads, or down on a knee, trying to lift themselves from a dogpile. But here, in all its glory, scores of American children were given the chance to see a 300-pound man with his nose, mouth, lips and chin jammed into the sweat-sopped backside of a 35-year-old Super Bowl champion. As Brown remarked after the game, "It smelled of sweat, crap, rotten fish, a rest stop mop, an amputee stump, crap, desperation, defeat, crap and a Sahara nomad's jock strap, and it tasted worse, but I made the play, and we won." So did the children of this great nation.

Jerome Brown, 1990 Score (Football Friday No. 22)

Charlie O'Brien, 1992 Topps Stadium Club

Name: Charlie O'Brien
Team: New York Mets
Position: Catcher
Value of card: One run
Key 1991 stat: 2 passed balls
Nice catch, butterfingers: Poor Charlie O'Brien. It's bad enough that he hit .185 while platooning behind the plate in 1991, but imagine his embarassment when his kids brought home a pack of Topps Stadium Club cards the next year. A lot of other players had awesome photos on their cards that obviously had a lot of thought go into them. "Ooh, look at Ruben Sierra," the young'uns would say. "He's got such an awesome medallion! Oh, wow, Tim Wallach looks like he's from the future. George Bell's hair is so shiny! And Bill Wegman, um ... Dad, why did they put his name placard there?" Picture Charlie O'Brien sitting with his kids, laughing and poking fun at his major league colleagues — until they find his card. "Dad," the kids say, "why does your photo show you dropping a throw home?" Charlie just sits there, silent, his face turning eight shades of red. Since the Bust in no way endorses child abuse, we'll leave out what happened next, but suffice to say that the children knew to never bring baseball cards home again.

Charlie O'Brien, 1992 Topps Stadium Club