When I talk to people about my days working at Pinnacle in the 1990s, I am often asked what my favorite Pinnacle card is.
There are a few.
In hockey, there was the 1997 Certified Paul Henderson autographs from the 15th anniversary of the Canada-Soviet Summit Series, Willie O’Ree’s first ever NHL card in 1997-98 BeeHive, and the 1997-98 Wayne Gretzky Emerald Epix card.
In football, 1997 Totally Certified Gold John Elway and Terrell Davis top my list, as I worked on that set and being a Broncos fan, they were my two favorite NFL players at the time.
As for baseball, on my Ikea shelf full of cards and memorabilia, there is a big Pinnacle card holder with my favorite Pinnacle baseball card in it. It has a black and white photo from the 1982 season of John Elway, outfielder, Oneonta Yankees.
For the second straight year, Topps is playing the “what if” game, marketing a baseball card of an NFL superstar who was drafted by an MLB team. Last year, they had a fun campaign involving Montreal Expos 1995 draft pick Tom Brady.
This year, the “what if” player inside Bowman Draft is former New York Yankees prospect John Elway.
In 1981, Elway was coming off a sophomore season as a quarterback at Stanford in which he was the Pac-10 Player of the Year.
But he was also coming off a sophomore baseball season at Stanford that made him a bona fide Major League prospect. In the spring of 1981, Elway hit .361 with a .493 on base percentage, a .627 slugging percentage, and a 1.120 OPS. The 21-year-old outfielder played 49 games for the Cardinal and hit nine home runs with 50 RBIs. He also hit 15 doubles and stole three bases.
The Yankees did not have a first round draft pick in 1981. Their first pick in that draft was number 52, in the second round. The Yankees chose Elway ahead of another two-sport star, Tony Gwynn, who played baseball and basketball at San Diego State. Yankees owner George Steinbrenner wanted Elway, and even had him penciled in as the team’s right fielder in 1985.
Elway was excited about the Yankees. It wasn’t the first time he had been drafted by a Major League team. In 1979 both Elway and Dan Marino were drafted by the Kansas City Royals. Both opted not to sign with the Royals, but to pursue college football. Marino, a fourth round pick, went to Pitt. Elway was picked in the 18th round and chose Stanford.
After the draft, he went back to Stanford to play his junior season and threw 20 touchdown passes, though the Cardinal finished with a 4-7 record.
In 1982, Elway signed a $150,000 contract and headed to Oneonta, a New York town southeast of Syracuse and about 20 miles from Cooperstown.
Elway spent six weeks playing for the Yankees Short Season A-Ball team in the New York-Penn League. For those of us who grew up as fans of the league in that area, John Elway was a big deal. There were future stars going through that league every year, but few brought the attention to the league Elway did.
Oneonta was also the perennial powerhouse of the league. In the handful of seasons before Elway, we got to see Rex Hudler, Don Mattingly, Mike Pagliarulo and Bob Tewkesbury. Joining Elway on the 1982 Oneonta Yankees was a pitcher who grew up in Massena, NY, close to where I am from, Jim Deshaies.
By this time, Elway was already being talked about as a potential first overall pick in the NFL draft. But he was serious about baseball.
In 1982, Elway started out in a slump, going one-for-22 before turning things around. He his .318 with a slash of .432/.464/.896. He was arguably the best offensive player in the team, and one of the best players in the league.
Elway drew a lot of attention wherever Oneonta played that year. He spent time signing programs and baseballs, and chatting with fans.
When shows started popping up at malls and small hotels a couple years later in Syracuse, Watertown, Jamestown and other New York-Penn towns, there were a lot of Elway autographed programs and TCMA cards on the show floor.
Although Elway was in the New York-Penn League for one year, he loved his summer as a Yankee prospect in Oneonta.
He was one of 12 players living in a frat house. The guys walked to the ballpark. After the game, they walked to the local pizza place for pizza and beer. Then they walked home.
Elway went back to Stanford for his senior season. The Cardinal finished 5-6, thanks to the famous play against Cal where the Golden Bears used multiple laterals and ran through the Stanford band to score a touchdown.
That was the last play of Elway’s college football career. It cost Stanford a bowl appearance, and many say it cost Elway the Heisman Trophy.
The Indianapolis Colts had the first pick in the 1983 draft. Elway had let it be known he would not play for them. He was intent on following his path to the New York Yankees.
Eventually, he was traded to the Denver Broncos.
1998 Pinnacle Elway
The Pinnacle John Elway card was produced for the 1998 Major League Baseball All-Star Fanfest in Denver. Just two weeks before the event, Pinnacle filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. I found that out the hard way. I was working at the NHL Draft, when on the morning of the draft my Pinnacle American Express card was rejected at the gas station in Buffalo.
At the beginning of 1998, Pinnacle had more than 200 employees. In July, 1998, the month of the Fanfest, that number dwindled down to about 30.
Pinnacle still took part in the MLB All-Star Fanfest that year. I didn’t get to go to that event. As you can imagine, my travel budget was cut by approximately 100 per cent. Being a lifelong Broncos fan – my first number 7 Broncos jersey was a Craig Morton, not a John Elway – I was hoping to go and thought I might be able to meet Elway.
Instead, I stayed behind. The projects we were working on were getting put on hold one by one. The number of employees was shrinking by the day. Once thriving and vibrant floors of an office building were now hollow. Office furniture and supplies were being returned and repossessed.
What I did not foresee was that two months later, I would be working in Denver for Collector’s Edge and its parent company, Nashville-based Shop at Home TV.
In the two years I worked there, the Broncos won two Super Bowls. I got the chance to meet John Elway a couple of times. On one occasion, I told him that I grew up following the New York-Penn League and had gone to a lot of games and even became a team photographer for one of the clubs at one time.
I remember him saying that there were times that summer when he considered pursuing a pro baseball career instead of a football career, and how much he loved his time in Oneonta.
In 2011, Alfred Santisiere III interviewed Elway several times for a feature story in Yankees magazine.
“Finishing the season the way I did gave me the confidence that I could play baseball at a high level,” Elway said in the interview. “Baseball became a viable option for me that summer. I enjoyed playing baseball everyday. I left there thinking, “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but this is something I would definitely be happy doing for a long time.”
Elway also told Santisiere that he often asks himself if he should have chosen baseball over football.
“I think about that all of the time,” Elway said. “Even though my football career turned out the way it did, to be dead honest with you, if there is one thing I would have liked to have done, it would have been to be a Yankee. I look at the legacy that Mr. Steinbrenner has left there, which is one in which they do everything they can to win baseball games and championships, and I am in awe. I really don’t think about what it would have been like to play baseball. I think about what it would have been like to have played for the Yankees.”
The Bowman Draft campaign with Elway will draw a lot of attention to his two-sport prowess, just like it did for Brady last year.
If Topps wants to continue this theme, there is no shortage of NFL stars who were MLB draft picks. They include Ken Stabler, Archie Manning, Joe Theismann, Johnny Rodgers, Mark Brunnell, Daunte Culpepper, Michael Vick, Ricky Williams, Steve McNair, Colin Kaepernick, Kyler Murray and many more.
Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson pulled off being two-sport stars. But if anyone else could have done it, it would have been John Elway.
