Classic card of the week

*Special Friday edition
George Bell, 1989 Baseball Cards magazine

There are afros. There are jheri curls. And there are mullets. These are the facts of life. You pick one, and you stick with it. Well, back in 1988, George Bell said, “F#@* it. I’m going for all three.” Then, he threw in the mustache just for good measure. The results were obviously fantastic, but more importantly, this enabled George Bell to revolutionize the way baseball hats were worn. In the past, players wore hats for utilitarian reasons (i.e., to keep the sun out of their eyes, to shield them from Pterodactyls, and to cover up the effects of baldness). George Bell disagreed. Bell decided to wear his hat more like a yarmulke, so as not to disturb any of the jheri curl-ed goodness that was happening underneath. Style over substance was George Bell’s motto. (Please notice how the sun is definitely in his eyes. Look at him – does he care? He doesn’t care.) And if the hat should fly off while running after a ball headed into the gap, so the hell what? It would make for good theatre, plus give the fans what they came to see in the first place – a full, up-close look at the world’s finest afro jheri curl mullet. Of course, that’s not even the best part of the card. Notice my excellent command of the scissors as I was cutting this out of whatever cardboard monstrosity it originally appeared in. Keep in mind how I obsessed as a kid whether or not a card was in “mint condition,” yet this butchering cut-job somehow made it into my collection. Did I think I did a good job? I cut off his name for crying out loud. I was 10 years old at the time, and it looks like a three-year old cut this out. Whatever. I also enjoy how George Bell’s face is inside of a circle, like at the end of a Looney Tunes cartoon. Th-th-th-th-th-that’s ALL, bitches.

Did you know?
The back of this card states that George Bell stole a career high 15 bases in 1988, but baseball-reference.com says he only stole four that year. Somebody is lying. I’m leaning towards this card as the liar, especially since baseball-reference.com says that Bell had 21 SBs in 1985, meaning that 15 wouldn’t even be a career-high. This card is full of shit.