Opening 25-year-old baseball cards with Reds coach Tom Hume

Mike Oz

For this week’s installment of 25-Year-Old Baseball Cards we’ve got a guy whose old baseball cards I remember well — but probably not for the reason you’d think. It’s the glasses. Tom Hume, a big leaguer for 11 years and All-Star in 1982, had some of the most memorable baseball glasses of the ’80s.

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I remember his 1985 Topps card well, but his 1983 Donruss is also a winner. Hume didn’t leave baseball and go directly into the Baseball Glasses Hall of Fame, he was actually the bullpen coach for the Reds from 1996 to 2007. These days, he still comes back to spring training and helps Reds pitchers each year.

Reds coach Tom Hume opens 1992 Topps. (Yahoo Sports)
Reds coach Tom Hume opens 1992 Topps. (Yahoo Sports)

As Hume and I opened our packs of 1992 Topps, I noticed a familiar theme — pitching coaches. So we talk about the ones Hume knows, plus how Kirk Gibson broke my heart back in 1988 and we pull the card of a young Sammy Sosa, still in his White Sox days. We even do something crazy and make TWO trades.

If you’re new to this series, here’s the backstory: I collected baseball cards with my grandma when I was kid. She died 14 years ago and ever since, my family keeps finding more boxes of unopened baseball cards she kept, hoping they’d be worth lots of money one day. They’re not, so instead we use them to take a trip down memory lane with baseball people, sharing stories and nostalgia.

If you like this, please check out our preview episodes:

PREVIOUSLY IN THIS SERIES:
•Delino DeShields
• Sandy Alomar Jr.
• Hank Azaria
• Bronson Arroyo
• Terry Francona
• Brad Mills
• Kyle Hendricks
• Eric Davis
• Joe Maddon
• Todd Coffey
• Cliff Floyd
• Clint Hurdle
• Dan Plesac
• Dusty Baker
• Bruce Bochy
• Aaron Boone
• Clayton Kershaw
• Buck Showalter
• Frank Thomas
• Alex Rodriguez
• Scott Boras
• Bobby Bonilla

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Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at mikeozstew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!