1995 Dennis Martinez

There are a lot of things I like about collecting baseball cards but one of them is finding two cards, from different sets, which show the same play.  Look at these two Dennis Martinez cards from 1995.

1995 Select #130

1995 Pinnacle #374

I've seen cards which have different moments from the same fielding play but this card shows different moments from the same pitch, Dennis Martinez throwing a big looping curve ball to some poor left-handed batter.  The two photographs must have been taken by the same photographer with an auto-winder.

There are a number of players that I causally collect cards of. By causally, I mean, that I don't go out of my way to find cards for these players but when I get a card, I save it from the commons box and put it in a binder with the rest of his cards.  Martinez is one of these players. Sometimes I can't remember why I collect a particular player but collecting Martinez cards started with the perfect game he threw in 1991. There were a number of cards in 1992 celebrating that game. It was the 13th perfect game in MLB history and the first thrown by a Latin-American player.

Martinez had a 23-year career in which he compiled a 245-193 record, a career ERA of 3.70 with 2,149 Ks (60th on the all-time list). He also pitched 3,999.2 innings. He finished his career with the Braves in 1998. They couldn't let him get one more out?

One thing I didn't know about Martinez is that he broke Kirby Puckett's jaw on September 28, 1995. It was Puckett's last at-bat.