Zero-Year Cards, Part 17

1995 Collector's Choice #433 Jack Morris (Reds)

Even if this wasn't a zero-year card, I'd still love it.

All those blurred faces make for a tremendous backdrop for Morris's pitching windup. Looks like he's about to throw the split-finger fastball, his deadly pitch.

I'd be willing to bet that Jack Morris will get into the Hall of Fame in 2013. To think that a possible future Hall-of-Famer's final big-league card was found in a Collector's Choice set is odd.

Before I got this card, I had no clue that Jack Morris was ever affiliated with the Cincinnati Reds organization. He suited up for the Reds in spring training in '95, but didn't make the team and retired shortly after.

The story of how I came to own this card is fairly interesting.

My roommate at college last year noticed that I collected baseball cards. They always seemed to be scattered about the dorm in some way, shape, or form. He said he had some "old" cards that he thought might be worth something and brought them for me to check out a few days later.

This is a common tale for sports card collectors, as I'm sure many of us have had to deliver the bad news to a friend or family member at some point in time. I had to tell him, sadly, that these weren't worth much of anything. However, he did have a couple of cards I was interested in.

I asked him if he'd mind if I took a couple cards out of the stack for my collection. He said sure, he didn't have any ties to them. I thanked him profusely.

That's how I ended up with this card. It was one of the very few highlights of a dreary semester.

As a side note: A week or so later, my roommate said that his dad had a small box full of cards from the '30s and '40s. Apparently, his dad was a collector at one point as well.

Now those I would've liked to see in person. I've only held a select few pre-1950's cards in my hands and those would have been fun to see.

But for now, I'll settle for one of my favorite zero-year cards.