Monday Morning Quarterback #19 Doug Williams 1989 Score

In this ongoing series of posts I am going to feature cards from my fantasy football player collection, specifically the 117 quarterbacks I've had on my team's roster since 1980. I have one selected card for each player in my All-Time Flyers binder. Through the years I've tried to use as many different card varieties as possible while holding on to my preference which is: a card issued in a year I owned the player showing him in the proper team uni in a vertical format. Card availability and my whims have had a big impact on that standard as we will see. 

NFL Info: Doug Williams only played one season at Grambling State University but he finished 4th in the Heisman voting and was drafted by the Tampa Bay Bucs in the first round of the 1978 draft with the 17th pick. In four seasons with the Bucs he led them to three playoff appearances and one NFC title game. The Bucs had never been to the playoffs before Williams arrived. With him they went to the playoffs three times in four years and the 1979 NFC Championship Game. Williams was the lowest paid starting QB in the league (and was paid less that nearly half the NFL's back-ups) and when he was refused a raise he jumped to the USFL for two seasons before returning to the NFL with Washington.

He was signed by Washington coach Joe Gibbs who had been the Bucs offensive coordinator during Williams' time there. He spent 1986 on the bench but stepped in for Doug Schroeder in 1987 and was chosen to start as the Redskins made the playoffs. He took the team to the Super Bowl and threw for 340 yards and four touchdowns against the Broncos in an MVP effort. He was the first black QB to play in a Super Bowl. Injuries hampered him the next two seasons and he was out of the NFL as an active player after that.

Since the he has been involved in the game as a coach at the high school level in Louisianna, as a college head coach at Morehouse State and Grambling and in various capacities in the NFL. This spring he was hired as a personnel executive under general manager Bruce Allen in Washington.

Fantasy Impact: I had Williams on my bench during the 1982 season which a player lockout/strike shortened to eight fantasy weeks. Tommy Kramer started all of my games including the championship game which I lost.

I had him again in 1988 coming off his big season in Washington. He opened the season as my starter but, just as in the NFL, his season produced mixed results. In six starts he had three two touchdown games but in his other three he didn't throw one. I went back to him in the semifinals and he got a score but I lost anyway.

The Card: 1989 Score football is an awesome set. One of my favorite 'modern' football sets. I bought quite a few packs of this one when it was released but a lot of places that carried cards by the pack didn't have it. Pro Set was more available (at least where I looked) and I put that set together. I continued to buy Score football (I have the complete '90 and '91 sets) but my days of buying a lot of hobby packs ended about 1992.

This Score Williams is pretty typical of the set. The blue border is my favorite of the three colors used. Score was never shy about bright and loud designs back then. The pictures were just a bit below the quality of the Pro Set cards but still pretty nice. The Score logo stays out of the way and of course I appreciate the team helmet being used. Different pic on the back and more color, lots more color!

If I have a gripe it's that the picture on the reverse leaves little room for stats and the write-up which is printed in the smallest possible type size.

It's the People You Meet (pt. 2)

A few weeks ago I got an email from Mike M. who has been reading this blog and was a Billy Pierce fan from Illinois. Mike roots for the Sox and attends the Sox' fantasy camps every winter. He had an autographed Pierce card he wanted to send me and was including a 'bonus' card as well.

Mike's cards arrived yesterday and the Pierce is a TMCA/Renata Galasso signed by BP in his always recognizable (to me) hand. It's a nice addition to my collection. It comes from Galasso's 1977 Series One set of 1950s stars. I have a few scattered cards from several different Galasso sets, mostly Orioles, but didn't have this one. I do now and it's signed!

The second card, the signed 1990 UD Kevin Hickey, requires a bit of background. Included in the envelope Mike had a very nice handwritten letter (who takes the time these days!?) explaining how he had met Hickey at several of the Sox' camps. At one he got a clean single up the middle off the lefty who proceeded to whiff him in his next at bat with a wicked curve that broke so far it hit Mike's foot. LOL!

Anyway, I remembered Hickey as a member of the 1989 'Why Not?' Orioles club that finished second in the AL East rebounding from the impossibly awful '88 season. Hickey contributed to that club out of the bullpen with a few wins and saves and an outstanding ERA. His career fell off after that and he was gone as an active player after 1991.

But the true story of Kevin Hickey, who died far too young in 2012, isn't really about his baseball numbers at all. His is a remarkable story of opportunity, despair, redemption and love. If you look at Hickey's record you see that there is a six year gap between his last big league days as a pitcher with the White Sox and his stretch with the Birds. What happened during that gap is only matched in drama by Hickey's tumultuous early life and his discovery as a player for his hometown White Sox (a tryout after being discovered as a softball player). Toss in his post career recovery from homelessness and poverty and his story reads like fiction. But that's not even getting to his work on a major movie and eventually to becoming a wildly popular BP pitcher for the White Sox. So popular, in fact, that the team voted him a full share of the championship winnings in 2005.

If you never read any other link I post on this blog I urge you to click through to this remarkable obit/tribute/remembrance that appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times after his death.

So thanks again, Mike M., for sending the cards my way and for opening my eyes to the both heartbreaking and inspiring story of Kevin Hickey. I hope you are enjoying camp and can get yourself another single up the middle. But lay off the big curve.