The Lexington (KY) Legends, Class A affiliate of the World Series champion Kansas City Royals will honor one of the more famous (or infamous) baseball cards of all time this coming season.
The Legends are having a bobblehead made of Glenn Hubbard’s 1984 Fleer card, on which the second sacker has an eight-foot boa constrictor draped around his neck.
The famous photo happened when the Braves were visiting the Phillies at Veterans Stadium one afternoon. Hubbard told ESPN’s Jim Caple in 2012 that the snake was one of many zoo animals on the field that day as part of a promotion. He asked photographer Bob Bartosz to snap a photo just to have one but the image got sent to Fleer which decided to make it Hubbard’s base card in the ’84 set.
While the promotion should be fun, it seems like Larry Bowa would have been a better choice that day (Bowa Constrictor, get it?).
For a time, if fans and collectors sent Hubbard a copy of the card to have autographed, he’d keep it and send back another one, hoping to get them off the market. These days, though, he’s made peace with the unusual image, marveling more at the length of his scruffy beard.
Hubbard has been the Legends’ bench coach for the last few years. He still lives in the Atlanta area according to a Legends official who told us they didn’t have a prototype of the bobblehead as of yet but promise it has “lifelike beard and hair”.
It’ll be given away to fans in Lexington on the night of June 24. You’ll need to be one of the first 1,000 fans to come through the gates in order to get one.