1986 Pittsburgh Pirates and Transitional Team Sets or Where Have You Gone, Sixto Lezcano

 

I’m not a religious man by any stretch of the word.

            But there’s a joke that I appreciate.

            It goes like this:

            How do you make God laugh?

            ….

            Make a plan.

            I had planned on doing a pot pourri baseball card blog post this week. What that meant to entail was me actually going to an LCS here in Brooklyn (and by LCS I mean a sporting goods shop that sells older packs of cards), buying some random packs, and then talking about them on Junk Wax Jay.

            For whatever reason (work, heat, laziness) that didn’t happen.

            There almost wasn’t a blog post this week.

            But then something happened.

            Some one on Twitter posted their copy of this card.

            He’d had the card signed by Sixto Lezcano and was showing it off in his Twitter feed. That’s not to say there aren’t die-hard Sixto fans out there. I’ve come across a few. It’s cool being a fan of those random players, not top-tier, not even second tier, from your favorite team.

            I happily celebrated this guy’s birthday this week.

            Seeing the Lezcano card got me thinking about the 1986 Pirates team sets. The Topps one in particular, but this blog post can also be subscribed to the 1986 Fleer and Donruss team sets. The Lezcano card got me thinking about how much the 1986 team sets were transitional sets. What I mean by ‘transitional” is that it’s a team set that bridges the gap from one era of a team to another era. In the case of my 1986 Pirates team set, it bridges the gap from the remnants of the 1979 World Series team to the beginning of the era that brought about the 1990-1992 NL East Champion teams.

            But first let’s go back a year to 1985.

            The 1985 Pirates team sets still had a good number of players left who played on the 1979 World Series champion team.

            Not including manager Chuck Tanner, the number would be seven.

            By 1986 that number would be dwindled down to two players.

            With the loss of those members of the Fam-I-Lee, the 1986 Pirates team set is made up of some players who hung on with the team throughout the early into mid-1980s, but never really excited me as a team collector, or a fan.

            Guys like these.

            You get a rookie or so with the team, trying to make it.

            A couple of mainstays on all-star teams of the era.

            Seeds of a new dawn.

            But a decent part of the team set is made up by a number of players who came aboard the Pirates ship in 1985 to try and reverse the fortunes of a team that was rapidly declining in the mid-1980s. You know the kind of players I’m talking about. Guys hanging around the end of their careers, hoping to get one more decent season out of their bodies, or maybe one more paycheck from a team willing to take a chance.

            Guys like these.

            The Pirates finished a dismal 57-104 in 1985.

            Sixto Lezcano would be out of baseball after that season stuck in Pittsburgh.

            Steve Kemp and Johnnie LeMaster would soon follow.

            With the exception of Kemp (albeit briefly) none of these “ringers” would be on the 1986 Pittsburgh Pirates.

            One of them didn’t even make it beyond the 1985 Traded Set.

            Transitional for sure.

            It’s not like the fortunes changed much for the Pirates in 1986. They were 64-98 and pretty bad.

            Some of the guys from the 1986 set were still hanging around.

            But there was a new manager bringing life to the team.

            And this guy made his debut in late May of that year.

            This World Series Champion was back in the Big Leagues to stay in 1986, after playing parts of the previous few seasons.

            All 1986 Traded cards, of course.

           Those transitional 1986 Pittsburgh Pirates team sets can seem a bit dull on the surface. 1986 might’ve been the first time I was excited more for the product on the field than the actual cards that I was pulling from packs. But I’ve grown fond of the ’86 team sets over the years. Fond of their oddity. Fond of their place in Pirates history, even if the 1985 team was somewhat of a black mark. Baseball in Pittsburgh in 1985 was a black mark…let’s not forget those drug trails, shall we?

            Transitional for sure.

            But the transitional often times leads into a new foundational.

            With the seeds planted in the 1987 team sets.

           And further solidified with some additions in 1988.

            By 1989 Pirates team sets would be full of players I’d root for and watch take three NL East championships. Sure, there were some random guys along the way. And the Pirates could never set away from giving a player on his last legs one of his last shots in Major League baseball.

            Gibson would actually play three more seasons in Detroit…I just love the strangeness of him on a Pirates card.

            I don't own any Gibson with the Pirates cards...something that NEEDS to change.

            On Pirates team sets from 1987-1992/1993, the players you’d pull would become commonplace. That same group of guys showing up year after year. Solid. A team you could count on. Like the Pirates team sets building up to and even after the 1979 World Series champion Pirates. The sets that had Madlock, Stargell, and Dave Parker headlining them. Mike Easler. Omar Moreno.

            The memories can go on and on.

            So I’ll take those 1986 Pittsburgh Pirates sets for the little weirdo sets they are.

 

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!