I love that Frank Thomas card. It was hilarious to see this giant man in an Auburn uniform apparently playing against a little league team. Worst border/card design ever for Topps, by the way. Quite a career by any measure.

Thomas played tight end for the Auburn football team a little too

how if you look around at these current / recently retired HOFer, very very few if any of them were 1st overall (well A-rod is.) many even went a lot later than first round.

baseball drafts are probably the most unpredictable result wise.

In 1990, Frank Thomas started his professional career at AA-Birmingham. Along with him hitting .323/.487/.581, he was selected to the Southern League’s All-Star Team. He started at a level many consider one of the toughest minor leagues in all of the minors, batted well over .300, was on base nearly 50% of the time, and was selected to the Southern League’s All-Star Team. Looking back on it, he was a for sure Grade A prospect and potential Hall of Famer.

The 1990 Southern League’s All-Star Game was held in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the home of Cincinnati’s AA-Affiliate Chattanooga Lookouts. I was 15 years-old at the time and Thomas was just then starting to get some notice. He was joined on that team by Jeff Conine, Brian McRae, Scott Erickson, and Scott Brosius. I did notice while watching warm ups there was something that made Frank Thomas stick out over the others on the field. (Although, his size did make him easy to find.) I, too, am a card collector and was collecting that year (fortunately). I started my collection in 1982 and had been following card values since 1986. During 1990, I had gotten plenty of doubles of the 1990 Score 1990 Topps Thomas rookie. Leaf made its return to the card collecting. The 1990 Leaf Frank Thomas was highly sought after at the time. A pack of 1990 Leaf of the time was anywhere between from$6 to $8. Within a year of its release, the ‘90 Leaf Frank Thomas was book price in Beckett was approaching $100. Just another side note to obvious greatness.

Side Bar: I agree with that the 1987 and 1990 boards are just bad, but I tend to lean toward the 1986 cards. In my opinion, Topps started going down hill from the release of the 1986 set. Coupled with poor design and over production, made Topps the old grandfather of baseball cards in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.

at Auburn. I actually had a class with him there and he showed great respect to the teacher and appeared to do his work. He was a good tight end at Auburn but was injured some and saw his future in Baseball

I once talked to a Reds scout about him and he said they shied away from him because of some personal issues. When I asked about it, they said attitude and there were some other things that wouldn’t go over too well in Cincy like having a white girlfriend. Hard to believe that 20 years ago those things were big issues but they were.