McCovey Monday #42 - 2002 Upper Deck Padres Hall of Fame

My favorite player of all time is Hall of Famer Willie McCovey.  I have amassed a collection of over 1100 different  McCovey cards since I started collecting him in the late 1980s.  I will show off one of my favorite cards every Monday.  Stretch was one of the most feared hitters of all time and I am excited to show off my collection.

 Slowly but surely I am getting my card room organized.  For the last couple months I have had a medium sized moving box sitting on my floor filled with random items - a couple SLU figures, a box of pins, a couple bobble heads, a few signed baseballs and 2 tubs of oversized and oddball cards.  Most of the oddball sized cards fit somewhere in my collection but I didn't have the pages to store them in binders until recently. Over the rainy weekend I started digging through the box and thought I would share a McCovey oddball that I uncovered today.

 This card measures 5 X 7.  It was produced by Upper Deck and I believe it was a stadium give away in San Diego to commemorate Ozzie Smith's induction into the Hall of Fame.  The Wizard is displayed prominently in the center with a bigger photo with the other 4 former Padres HOFers surrounding him. This is part of my McCovey collection and technically I should pick up another for the Winfield collection.  Ex-Giant Gaylord Perry also makes an appearance as does Rollie Fingers with his famous handlebar mustache.  I love the hat they are all wearing, I wonder how close to each other they played on the Padres.  Ozzie - 1978-81; Gaylord - 1978-79; Dave - 1973-80; Rollie - 1977-80; and Willie - 1974-76.  It looks like all by McCovey played together for a couple of years.  Since this was released, Tony Gwynn, Goose Gossage, Roberto Alomar and Rickey Henderson have been elected to also represent the Padres.

Here is the back of the card. It has a nice SD logo as the backdrop with a write up sharing a bit of information about each of the 5 players featured on the front.

As a Giants fan, it is always preferable to get items from McCovey in his Giants uniform but I am an equal opportunity collector and also like scoring items from his few years away from the Orange and Black.  This collectible is a nice addition to the McCovey binder.