From Tom Glavine and Dave Parker to Gordie Howe, these baseball and hockey stars have cards in both sports

Baseball and hockey couldn’t be more different. One is a summer sport played outdoors on a field of green. The other is a winter sport played indoors on a sheet of ice.

Yet, several athletes have crossed over from one sport to the other in interesting ways. Here are eight great baseball-hockey crossovers, along with some of their cards to collect.

Key Cards: 1992 Pinnacle Baseball #594; 1992 Score Baseball #890; 1993 Fleer Pro-Visions #2; 2022 Topps Chrome Stadium Club #301; 2023 Topps Throwback Thursday #39

Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Glavine might have been a great hockey player if he had given hockey a chance. During his senior year of high school, Glavine scored 47 goals and 47 assists—in just 23 games!

The L.A. Kings drafted Glavine in the fourth round (69^th overall) of the 1984 NHL Draft, ahead of future Hockey Hall of Famers Brett Hull and Luc Robitaille. But Glavine was also drafted by the Atlanta Braves and opted for baseball. He went on to play 22 seasons in the majors leagues, winning the World Series with the Braves in 1995 enroute to a Hall of Fame career.

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Two years after he retired from baseball, and just five days before he turned 44, Glavine had a very brief pro hockey career. He played one game for the Gwinnett Gladiators of the ECHL, an AA-level league. Glavine took warmups and the opening faceoff in the Gladiators’ game against the Trenton Devils on March 20, 2010.

Also See: Baseball Hall of Famer Tom Glavine talks hockey

Glavine is pictured on a few of his baseball cards wearing his Braves uniform, but equipped with skates, hockey gloves, and a stick. A few notable cards that use these hockey/baseball hybrid photos include Glavine’s 1992 Pinnacle card and his 2023 Topps Throwback Thursday card, which fittingly uses the 1971-72 Topps Hockey design.

Key Card: 1995 Topps Stadium Club #148

Walker may be a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, but his original dream was to play in the NHL. Walker, a Canadian, grew up playing goalie and idolized New York Islanders’ netminder Billy Smith. He was also a teammate of future Boston Bruins superstar Cam Neely. Walker’s older brother Carey was also a goalie and won three championships in junior hockey.

Also See: Hall of Fame worth the wait for Larry Walker

Larry was drafted by the Montreal Canadiens in 1977 but didn’t make it to the NHL. Following in his older brother’s footsteps, he tried out for the Regina Pats junior hockey team twice—and was cut twice. He then switched his focus to baseball, and it paid off.

Walker went on to a 17-year MLB career, winning numerous awards along the way. As a nod to his hockey-playing roots, he is shown posing with a goalie stick on his 1995 Topps Stadium Club card.

Key Cards: 1990 Score Rookie; 1990 Score Traded Baseball #100

Card company Score made a big splash when it entered the hockey card market in 1990 by signing highly-touted prosect Eric Lindros as their official spokesperson. Lindros was considered a generational talent and was compared to superstars like Mario Lemieux and Mark Messier.

Score’s deal with the future first-overall pick gave the company exclusive rights to include him in its trading card sets until he appeared in an NHL game. Thus, Score put Lindros in every set that it possibly could. Lindros had his official rookie card in the 1990-91 Score Hockey set, a season before he was eligible for the NHL Draft. Score also included five bonus cards of Lindros in its Hockey factory sets.

Also See: Eric Lindros was hockey's first investable player

Additionally, Lindros had cards in Score’s “Young Superstars” and “Rookie & Traded” Hockey sets, as well as in Score’s 1990 “Rookie & Traded” Baseball set.

Lindros’ baseball card pictures him at batting practice with the Toronto Blue Jays. The back of the card states that Lindros “batted over .400 in high school and will be given a tryout with the Blue Jays.” However, that is not true. The closest Lindros came to having a pro baseball career was taking batting practice with the Jays for one day—and appearing on this card.

Key Card: 2021 Topps Project70 #458

Former Pittsburgh Pirates right fielder Dave Parker fractured his jaw and cheekbone in a 1978 game against the New York Mets when he collided with catcher John Stearns at home plate. Parker was sidelined for a little over two weeks, then did something inventive to get back into action: he donned a goalie mask.

“We were real creative with it,” Parker told ESPN in 2008. “We painted one side yellow, one side black. I put it on and then put my helmet on over it. The first time I wore it in batting practice, I was hitting balls in the second tier, third tier, so I used it in that first game.”

Also See: Dave Parker's big swing lands him in Hall of Fame

Parker wore the mask for just one game on July 16, 1978, and was intentionally walked in his only at-bat. Since it limited his ability to see certain pitches, Parker dropped the idea and experimented with football helmets until his face was fully healed.

Topps did not picture Parker wearing his Pirates-colored goalie mask on any of his baseball cards, but years later, pop artist Alex Pardee illustrated Parker wearing his goalie mask on a Project70 card released in 2021.

Also See: Dave Parker talks signing autographs, baseball heroes

Key Card: 1997 Upper Deck #517

One night while watching a hockey game, Toronto Blue Jays catcher Charlie O’Brien observed a goalie take a puck to the head and shake it off like it was nothing. But catchers who got hit by a fastball weren’t so lucky.

“There are times when you get hit with a 90-mph-plus ball and you lose sight of what you're doing, even where you are, for a while,” O’Brien later told Popular Mechanics magazine in 2004.

Drawing inspiration from goalie masks, O’Brien co-developed a new type of catcher’s mask, referred to as the HSM or “hockey style mask.” On Friday, Sept. 13, 1996, O’Brien debuted his creation.

The moment was immortalized on O’Brien’s 1997 Upper Deck baseball card, with the front stating that O’Brien was “sporting a revolutionary new look” and the back further proclaiming that he “may have forever changed the look of the ‘tools of ignorance’ when he took the field donning this hockey-goalie-type mask.”

Key Card: 2016 Topps First Pitch #FP-3

Don Cherry’s NHL playing career was as short as it could get. He played a single playoff game for the Boston Bruins in 1955.

That summer, he got injured playing baseball.

According to Cherry, that injury was enough to derail his dreams of playing in the NHL. He spent the rest of his career toiling in the minors as both a player and later a coach. Cherry then coached six seasons in the NHL, winning coach of the year honors in 1976.

Most notably, he went on to a successful career as a commentator on “Hockey Night in Canada” for nearly 40 years. Cherry appears on a baseball card in the 2016 Topps “First Pitch” insert set, showing the Canadian icon throwing out the first pitch at a Blue Jays-Red Sox game.

Key Card: 2004 Upper Deck First Pitch #SP8

Gordie Howe and Al Kaline were two of Detroit’s biggest sports stars in the 1950s and ’60s. The Red Wings and Tigers legends became friends in 1956 when Kaline attended a Red Wings game with a mutual acquaintance and was introduced to Howe at a restaurant later that night. Mr. Hockey and Mr. Tiger hit it off and even went into business together. Howe sometimes participated in Tigers’ practices, too.

“Gordie would come down to the ballpark once in a while and maybe take batting practice with us at that time in Briggs Stadium,” Kaline told the Detroit Free Press in 2016.

Upper Deck issued a baseball card of Howe, clad in a Tigers’ uniform, in its 2004 “First Pitch” insert set. The eight-card insert set, found one in every 72 packs, pictured famous athletes, politicians and actors throwing the ceremonial pitch at an MLB game.

Key Cards: 2007-08 In the Game Ultimate Memorabilia–Cityscapes (Silver /24 and Gold 1/1 versions); 2009 O-Pee-Chee Retro #RM-13

Justin Morneau played 14 seasons in the majors as a first baseman, but he was originally a catcher—and a hockey goalie. Like many Canadians, Morneau played both sports and was a star netminder on his youth hockey team.

He was also a member of the Portland Winter Hawks junior team in 1997-98 when they won the Memorial Cup Championship, albeit in a very small role.

 “I was the third goalie. A backup to the backup,” Morneau told Yahoo! Sports in 2008. “I played in an exhibition game and backed up some regular-season games.”

A year later, Morneau was drafted by the Minnesota Twins. While in the minors, he switched from catcher to first base, and when he later became a regular on the Twins, he chose number 33 in honor of his favorite goalie, Patrick Roy.

Morneau appears on a hockey card in the 2007-08 In the Game Ultimate Memorabilia “Cityscapes” insert set. The card pictures him with fellow Minnesota athlete Marian Gaborik of the Wild, along with pieces of their game-worn jerseys.

A few years later, Morneau was pictured on a 2009 O-Pee-Chee Baseball “Retro” insert, which mimics the iconic “Gretzky rookie year” design of the 1979-80 Topps and O-Pee-Chee sets.