Rollie Fingers: Contemplating

I'm a sucker for an oddball card.  I love the scratch-offs, the inserts, the food issues -- I've been looking and hoping that I would find some company -- whether at gas stations, on cereal boxes, or with pizzas -- doing a baseball card giveaway somehow.  

I guess it's the difficulty in finding packs of cards any place but the Targets and Wal-Marts of the world.

The reason these cards appeal to me is the reality of providing something different from the base set.  All of that is a long way to getting to this gem of a card from Donruss in 1983.

The look on Rollie's face is priceless.  The photographer either caught him checking out some young hottie in the stands during one of Rollie's last seasons in the bigs -- and Rollie realizing that the young hottie was probably young enough to be his daughter -- or Rollie is about to belt out an aria from La Boheme. 

Brewer fans were lucky to see Rollie during his MVP/Cy Young year in the strike-shortened 1981. Fingers also figures prominently in Daniel Okrent's excellent book 9 Innings, pitching three innings to close out a vital game in June for Milwaukee in 1982.  Rollie wasn't able to pitch in the World Series that year, and I am convinced that he would have made a difference.

But the questioning look on his face, the contemplation evident here -- it's appearing all very philosophical and deep -- but Rollie eventually and rightfully made it to the Hall of Fame.