Saturday, October 11, 2008

The Original Rated Rookie?

I'm not entirely sure where or when Rated Rookie cards began their life, but the oldest one I remember seeing happens to be in the 1983 Donruss set. For some reason, my faulty brain is telling me that there were 6 of these in the set, but the only one I currently own is someone named Keith Creel. The classic Rated Rookie logo first appeared in the 1985 Donruss set (Danny Tartabull was King back then) and the 1984 cards first designated Rated Rookies on the fronts of cards, but here in 1983 there was just some plain bold text printed on the back that set the cards apart from the rest.

Unfortunately for Mr. Creel, he seems to be best known for making an appearance in a game that ended Don Mattingly's streak of seven consecutive games with a home run. Apparently you can purchase t-shirts (actually, don't click that... 32 dollars??!) with the classic logo on them, so that dream of walking around looking super-awesome in Rated Rookie gear, Jose Canseco style, and starting that band up with the logo printed on the kick drum head is probably dead. (My brother actually gets full credit with the kick drum head idea.) Somehow I keep envisioning a terrible ska band called The Rated Rookies.

1 comment :

  1. I never liked the "rated rookie" logo. I thought it just cluttered up the photo. ... The T-shirts look like something you'd find in Wal-Mart, with "I'm with stupid" and old Jeff Gordon T's

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