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How a fan and collector wound up on a 1988 Fleer baseball card
In the background of Dan Quisenberry’s 1988 Fleer baseball card, looking over the great relief pitcher’s shoulder, is a man in a red shirt and sunglasses.
Here is a guy, it would seem, who got to be on a baseball card simply by being at the right place at the right time.
“I’ve told people, yeah, I’m on a baseball card,” Patrick Melvin, the man in the red shirt, said. “And I think it’s worth ten cents or something like that.”
You never know when the topic of baseball cards—and actually being on a baseball card—might come up in a conversation. Card collector Stephen Newton, for example, met Melvin at a Chamber of Commerce meeting in Sherman, Texas. Newton, a financial consultant, is co-owner of Home Run Ranch in the little town of Bells, Texas. Melvin is co-owner of a candy store, Hey Sugar, in Denison, Texas.
“I was at this Chamber of Commerce networking meeting and had on a Home Run Ranch T-shirt,” Newton said. “[Melvin] asked me, ‘What’s Home Run Ranch?’ And I was telling him all about our mission and kind of all what we do here. We’re a nonprofit.”
Home Run Ranch provides a place for high schoolers in North Texas to hang out. Besides a Bible study, a variety of sporting activities are offered, including Wiffle Ball on a field that is a replica of Fenway Park.
As Newton and Melvin got to talking sports, Newton discovered that Melvin was a big Astros fan and invited him to visit Home Run Ranch.
“I said, ‘Hey man, I’ve got two seats from the Astrodome and some other old Astros stuff … you ought to come out and see our memorabilia collection,’” Newton recalled telling Melvin. “He goes, ‘Do you have any baseball cards?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ And he goes, ‘Man, I’m actually on a baseball card.’ And I said, ‘Really, which one?’ And he goes, ‘Pull up Dan Quisenberry.’”
Newton proceeded to do an online search for the red and blue striped Fleer card.
“I pull up this card, and sure enough [Melvin] goes, ‘That’s me right there in the red shirt,’” Newton said with a laugh.
Months later, Melvin made it to Home Run Ranch, where at the request of Newton he autographed a couple of the Fleer cards, including one signed by Quisenberry that Newton bought online.
The best part about the 1988 Fleer card, which is something Newton found out in his first encounter with his now good friend Melvin, was that Melvin’s appearance was not just a lucky photobomb. Rather, it was arranged by Quisenberry himself.
CHANCE MEETING
Melvin first met Quisenberry, who died of brain cancer in 1998, at a Super Bowl celebrity golf tournament in Florida sponsored by the pharmaceutical company Warner-Lambert. Melvin, in the wholesale grocery business at the time, was invited to the annual tournament as a customer of the company.
“I got to know Dan,” Melvin said. “I didn’t actually play golf with him. But we got to talking during the whole weekend and just started talking so much about baseball, because I’ve loved baseball all my life.”
Just about any baseball fan in the 1980s was familiar with Quisenberry, the cool relief pitcher with a distinctive submarine delivery. “Quiz” was a five-time Rolaids Relief Man Award winner and helped the Kansas City Royals win a World Series in 1985. The All-Star fireman had pinpoint control, throwing only four wild pitches over his entire career. Quiz also had a way with words, once stating, “I found a delivery in my flaw.”
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Before they parted ways following the golf tournament, Quisenberry came up with a way for Melvin and his teenage son, Shane, to catch extra games when the Royals were visiting Texas. Quisenberry told Melvin to buy tickets for the first game of the series the next time the Royals were in Arlington to play the Rangers. Then Quisenberry would have tickets for Melvin and his son for the rest of the series.
“So, I saw him the first game when we got there, and he said, ‘Alright now, meet me tomorrow and I’ll buy you lunch,’” Melvin remembered. “I said, ‘You don’t have to buy me lunch!’ And he said, ‘They give me $90 a day to feed myself, and I can get you guys, too.’”
Melvin would have the opportunity to enjoy other meals with Quisenberry when the Royals were in Texas and “just chit-chat, and he’d talk about his family.”
Once Melvin asked Quisenberry, “What do you do when you go home?”
“Well, I drive my kids to school and pick them up in the afternoon,” Quisenberry replied.
One day, Melvin recalls Quisenberry telling him, “After lunch, come back to the stadium. You meet me behind the dugout.”
Quisenberry had already been told that the Fleer photographer was taking pictures that day at Arlington Stadium, and for his 1988 Fleer card she snapped a photo of the relief pitcher standing near the dugout, arms crossed and grinning.
Just before the photo was taken, Melvin, who was hanging around behind the dugout, remembers Quisenberry telling him, “She’s going to take the picture today, so just stand there and I’ll make sure she lines up and you’re in the picture.
“And [Quisenberry] said, ‘Come on down to the ledge here,’” Melvin recalled. “Put your knee up or something and just look right here.’ Then he asks the photographer, ‘Can you see him?’ She said, ‘Yeah, I can see him.’ ‘Alright, take the picture.’
“He didn’t tell me we were going to do that,” Melvin said.
But now, thanks to a thoughtful friend getting him into the right place at the right time (and an accommodating photographer), Melvin could be found time and again in packs of those abundant 1988 Fleer cards. Not only that, he has a couple of the cards signed and personalized by Quisenberry. On one of them the pitcher inscribed, “To Pat, thanks for looking over my shoulder.” And on the other, “Pat, missed you at the golf tourney this year.”
Quisenberry, who signed with the Cardinals in 1988, perhaps would have liked to have his friend appear on more baseball cards. He later gave Melvin a personalized 1990 Topps card. Dan wrote, “To Pat, where are you in this picture?”
— Matt Bosch went to his first professional baseball game in Japan 20 years ago and has been a fan ever since. A collector, he enjoys researching and writing about baseball and baseball cards.
