Rick Burleson

December 9th, 2009 @ 03:54am

Coming into 1982, Rick Burleson had the ’79 gold glove to his credit, just appeared in his 4th All-Star game, and just won his first silver slugger award.

Even as early as his first season, he was a budding star, getting some votes for Rookie Of The Year that included a 1st place vote. He did about as well in that vote as George Brett.

Then on April 17, 1982 in a game against the Twins, Burleson was injured and didn’t play again ’til June 30 the next year.

To me, the expression on his face in the card sums up the shock of his career being derailed without warning.

After ’82, Rick only played 40 games until 1986, when he won the AL Comeback Player of the Year Award. That was his last good year though, as he played only one more year and was out of the majors. Eventually, he became a pretty good minor league manager.

Back to ’81 for a moment. In May, Rick pulled off a 15 game hitting streak, batting .375 during it.

It was the 7th best hitting streak that season. This no doubt played a big part in him getting to the All-Star game.

Speaking of the All-Star game, Rick makes a cameo on the Tony Armas card, which was photographed in Cleveland sometime before the All-Star game got started.