Red Sox With No Cards: 1992

In this series I take a look at players who played for the Boston Red Sox but, for some reason, never had a Major League card produced of them with the team.

I have decided there is an easier way to do this.  I figured I would go year by year starting in 1991, which was the first year that I started watching the Red Sox.  Maybe some other time I will start to go backwards from there.  Well, there were no players without cards in 1991, so that brings us to just one player in 1992:

TOM BARRETT

The younger brother of longtime Red Sox second-baseman Marty Barrett, Tom also played second base.  He was originally drafted by the Yankees but made his Major League debut with the Phillies and played in 50 games over parts of two seasons.  He did not play in the Majors at all in 1990 and 1991 but re-appeared in 1992 with the Red Sox.  This was two years after Marty made his last appearance in Boston.  Tom made it into just four games without getting a hit in three at-bats.  He did walk twice and scored a run.  He had four assists and three putouts in the field.  Barrett does have a couple of minor league cards with the Red Sox organization but no Major League cards.

1991 Topps #496 Marty Barrett

In this series, I look at my first team set: 1991 Topps. This was the set I started my baseball card collection with.

There were a lot of great photos in the 1991 Topps set.  We have already seen the Dwight Evans (my personal favorite), Roger Clemens, and Wade Boggs.  Well this is another one.  Marty Barrett has a lot of great-looking cards and was an early favorite player of mine to pick up just because of the terrific-looking cards he had.  This 1991 Topps issue is probably my favorite of the bunch.

Barrett's career was coming to a premature end when this card was released.  He injured his knee in 1989 and the injury was misdiagnosed.  Barrett played in just 62 games in 1990 and lost his job as the second-baseman to Jody Reed.  In 1991 he appeared in 12 games for the Padres and that was it.  He successfully sued his doctor which was probably very little consolation to losing his career.

Unknown Heroes Before My Time Pt. 1: Marty Barrett

I started watching the Red Sox in 1991.  Marty Barrett still had cards showing him with the Red Sox that came out in 1991, but he had moved on to the Padres.

Barrett was a slick-fielding, singles-hitting second baseman for the Red Sox for the greater part of the 1980's.  He did not have a lot of power but was a decent table-setter for Boston.  He made his Major League debut in 1982 but did not have a full rookie season with the team until 1984.  He had a decent rookie season, hitting .303/.358/.383.  He would continue to have numbers close to those through 1988.  Of particular interest was Barrett's ability to walk far more often than he struck out.  He was one of the most difficult hitters to strike out.

1986 was possibly Barrett's best season.  He hit .286/.353/.381 with four home runs, 60 RBIs, and 15 stolen bases.  He lead the league in sacrifice hits, as he would for the next two seasons as well, and was among the league leaders in at-bats and several defensive categories.  In addition, Barrett performed very well in the postseason.  He won the ALCS MVP by hitting .367/.406/.433 with eleven hits and five RBIs.  His success continued in the World Series when he collected 13 hits and ended with a line of .433/.514/.500 with four RBIs.  His 24 hits in the postseason were a record at the time.  It certainly was not Marty Barrett's fault that Boston did not win the 1986 World Championship.

Barrett continued to play reasonably well for a middle infielder of that time period through the 1988 season.  He started to have injury problems though in 1989, suffering a knee injury that would plague him the rest of his career.  His career only lasted an additional three seasons, during which time he only played in 160 games.