Clubhouse Bonus: 40 Years Ago

Grading 19-year-old me on my Hall of Fame predictions in Beckett Baseball Card Monthly

On Wednesday, I revisited a series I did for Beckett Baseball Card Monthly when I was just 19 years old — my first paying gig! — called “Future Hall of Famers?” where I predicted which active players would be elected to the Hall of Fame. And then, for fun, I predicted which active National Leaguers I think will end up in Cooperstown.

I mainly got three sorts of responses, all delightful in their own way:

Response 1: “How could you leave out Aaron Judge … Bobby Witt Jr. … Justin Verlander … Max Scherzer” and various other American Leaguers? I promise, we’ll get to the American Leaguers.

Response 2: Brilliant Reader Pepper Hastings responded to say that three cents a word was all that Beckett could afford to pay me back in 1986. Pepper was, in fact, the editor at Beckett who gave me that first gig! So great to hear from you!

Response 3 (far and away the biggest response): “You HAVE to tell us who you picked back in 1986.”

So … OK, I don’t normally write on Thursdays, but just for you, I’m going to go back to April 1986, and this crumpled Beckett Baseball Card Monthly with my pal and Brilliant Reader George Brett on the cover, and see how I did with the active National Leaguers way back then.*

*Weirdly, the American League prediction magazine — which obviously features our guy George — has National Leaguer Dwight Gooden on the cover. I guess they weren’t building their entire baseball card price guide magazine around my Hall of Fame predictions.

This is the sort of thing we do in The Clubhouse. And as a double-bonus, I’ll give you some of the Beckett baseball card prices from their price guide! So here we go, let’s head below the line and see how 19-year-old me did.