Sunday, February 22, 2009

Young Superstars #27 - Wally Joyner


Though he played for a number of teams during his career, when I think Wally Joyner, I think California Angels. Between two stints in Anaheim, Joyner spent time in Kansas City, San Deigo and Atlanta.

In 1986, Joyner was the first rookie to be voted into the All Star game by fans and that year he tied for the win with Darryl Strawberry in the Home Run Derby. He and Strawberry both hit an amazing four home runs.

Though he remained consistent through his sixteen year career, Joyner was never really a superstar caliber player. Honestly, as closely as I've followed the Braves for the past 20 years, I'd forgotten about his year in Atlanta. He spent most of the year as a backup at first for Andres Galarraga, but did start in 32 games and was used as a DH for some interleague games. If Galarraga hadn't been able to come back in 2000 (he missed the entire 1999 season with cancer) Joyner most likely would have been the starter.

Several years after his retirement, Joyner told ESPN The Magazine that he had used steroids for a brief time during his days with the Padres. He had appearantly talked with Ken Caminiti (who we'll see pretty soon) about how to get steroids, though he claims he only took several of the pills. He was mentioned in the 2007 Mitchell Report.

This is another card where the fans are so blurry that they look painted. Aside from that, and I may have mentioned this before, I really like the old Angels cap logo. I wish they'd make things easier on all of us and just call themselves the California Angels again.

Wally Joyner's career statistics

2 comments:

LanceBurnitz said...

Wally World was one of my favorite players to watch in the late 90's. I was able to watch him homer in my first Pirates game in 98 (I think).

RWH said...

I also like the hat, but I preferred when the Halo became a bit thicker. As for the name, I can't think of a single Angel fan that doesn't cringe hearing the current team name said out loud.