Here’s
a nice “not so missing” card to add to the collection, my 1978 slab for
21-year Major League pitcher Rick Honeycutt, who started off his Big
League tenure with 10 appearances in 1977:
Honeycutt went 0-1 for the new Seattle mariner team in the Summer of
1977, posting a 4.34 earned run average over 29 innings as a
23-year-old, with three starts.
He would go on to pitch through the 1997 season, 21 years as both a
starter and a reliever, almost evenly split between the first half and
second half of his career respectively.
In 1983 he led the American League with a 2.42 ERA while with the Texas
Rangers in a season that saw him finish with the Los Angeles Dodgers in a
year that saw him post a career high 16 wins combined.
By the time he retired, he finished with a record of 109-143, with a
3.72 ERA over 797 appearances and 2160 innings of work, with 11 shutouts
and 38 saves along the way.