I’ve wanted to do the same for the 1980s ever since I wrote that post. I realized doing the ’70s post that while I adore that decade as the one in which I discovered baseball and I have great fondness for the players from that time, I don’t know many of those players’ earlier history. For instance, I never knew Woodie Fryman as a Tiger. He was an Expo! Lou Piniella was a Royal? No way, he was a nasty Yankee!
Diving into all the players with a Topps card for every year of the ’80s would truly cover all the players I knew — from the start of their career til the end of the 1980s. Guys who started mid-1970s — think Keith Hernandez — were there through the entire ’80s.
Like when compiling the ’70s list, I was surprised by the number of players who received a card every year of the ’80s. The first guys who spring to mind are Rickey Henderson, George Brett, Mike Schmidt, Andre Dawson and the like.
But there are plenty of players who don’t spring to mind or who are even lost to the passage of time who were there for every single year of the 1980s, guys like Jim Clancy, Steve Trout, Mark Clear, Dwayne Murphy, Mike LaCoss and Ron Hassey.
You might be interested to know whether any of the players who appeared on a card every year of the 1970s also appeared on every card of the 1980s.
I found three.
Tommy John
Pete Rose
Nolan Ryan
Maybe some would eliminate Rose because he didn’t appear as a player late in the 1980s but I count it.
In total I found 86 players who showed up every year in Topps. I disregarded prospect cards, they must have had a solo card each of those years. Like last time, I researched this very informally. I’m not writing a program to figure out this stuff. It’s definitely possible I missed a few names. Last time I did this I came up with 87 names and it turned out there were 98 in total.
So if you see a missing name mention it in the comments. I didn’t miss it on purpose. There’s a lot to this blogging — like for instance a recent browser update caused me to have to save images two or three times per image before uploading. Sweet!
But enough crabbing. Here’s the list:
Doyle Alexander
Neil Allen
Tony Armas
Alan Ashby
Don Baylor
Buddy Bell
Bert Blyleven
Bob Boone
George Brett
John Candelaria
Gary Carter
Rick Cerone
Jim Clancy
Jack Clark
Mark Clear
Danny Darwin
Andre Dawson
Rick Dempsey
Bo Diaz
Brian Downing
Dennis Eckesley
Dwight Evans
Carlton Fisk
Mike Flanagan
Bob Forsch
Jim Gantner
Rich Gossage
Alfredo Griffin
Greg Gross
Ron Guidry
Ron Hassey
Mike Heath
Rickey Henderson
Keith Hernandez
Willie/Guillermo Hernandez
Rick Honeycutt
Bob Horner
Charlie Hough
Morris, Jack
Tommy John
Terry Kennedy
Bob Knepper
Mike Krukow
Mike LaCoss
Carney Lansford
Chet Lemon
Jeffrey Leonard
Fred Lynn
Denny Martinez
Lee Mazzilli
Paul Molitor
Dwayne Murphy
Dale Murphy
Eddie Murray
Ken Oberkfell
Dave Parker
Larry Parrish
Terry Puhl
Willie Randolph
Jerry Reuss
Rick Rhoden
Jim Rice
Pete Rose
Nolan Ryan
Scott Sanderson
Mike Schmidt
Ozzie Smith
Chris Speier
Bob Stanley
Dave Stieb
Jim Sundberg
Rick Sutcliffe
Bruce Sutter
Frank Tanana
Garry Templeton
Alan Trammell
Alex Trevino
Manny Trillo
Steve Trout
Claudell Washington
Lou Whitaker
Frank White
Willie Wilson
Dave Winfield
Joel Youngblood
Robin Yount
Those are my guys. Once the ’90s started, my players started cycling out and by the middle of that decade, my interest was waning. Not a surprise. Nobody from when I started watching baseball was left.
The kings were gone. And nobody who has arrived since has meant as much.