I'm back today with the final PCPC player of the series, Brewers RHP Mike Ignasiak. A Michigan native, Mike went in the 8th round in '88 to the Brewers, and it was in Milwaukee that he played his whole career, in 1991 and then 1993-95. He was pretty much a reliever over the course of his 79 games, but he did finish with a nice 10-4 record! He also spent at least some time in the minors every year from the point he signed until retirement in 1995, and interestingly enough he never left the Brewers organization.
Ignasiak appeared on 15 cards between 1992 and 1995, and as he's included in the Promptly Completed PC feature, I can now show off all of them. Besides his '94 Topps base card I already owned due to having the complete set, I picked up the following 14 cards courtesy of COMC, Justcommons, and Sportlots:
1992 Bowman RC
At least he's not a high-schooler appearing in early-90s-style street clothes, right? Mike's RC is definitely one of the lesser-known from a set more famous for guys like Piazza and Mo Rivera.
1992 Score RC
We have "scary pitcher face" so how about "shadowy pitcher face"? This prospect card is a bit awkward with about 1/4 of the background being an ugly purple and the rest being blurry, all with Mike being superimposed over the whole thing.
1992 Topps Debut '91
As I've said before, these Topps Debut sets are kind of fun. I looked up Mike's first Major League game, an August 22, 1991 matchup against the Blue Jays (remember the Brewers in the A.L.?!). As it turns out, he picked up a win after Milwaukee starter Don August went just 3.2 innings. Mike faced nine batters in 2.1 innings, striking out one and allowing a two-run homer to Toronto catcher Greg Myers. However, the Brew Crew stormed back to the lead with five seventh-inning runs, the bullpen closed things out safely, and Mike had a win in his Major League debut!
1993 Fleer Final Edition
"Hey Mike--go sit up on top of that bench-like thing that has you staring into the sun. Ready? Who cares! *click*"
1994 Fleer
Horizontal pitching action shots are great, but I'm not sure why Fleer cropped this photo so oddly, leaving off half of his right leg in favor of...empty space?
1994 Stadium Club, First Day Issue, Golden Rainbow, and Members Only Parallel
Four-card rainbow! I've had this set come up a few times recently with other players, and I think I've been pretty consistent in preferring the cool "1st Day Issue" stamp to the other parallels. The "label maker" set probably isn't in my top five designs the set's done, but it's still a pretty good one.
1994 Topps Gold
Topps presents: "determined pitcher face", now with special gold foil! As I mentioned, I already had the base version because I own the '94 Topps set, and that's true of a nice number of PC guys now, so I'm really glad I picked it up!
1994 Ultra
According to baseball-reference Mike didn't pitch enough innings to exceed rookie status until the 1994 season, so the "Rookie" label here is accurate. And this card just happens to feature one of my favorite Ultra designs.
1995 Stadium Club, Members Only Parallel, and Super Team World Series
And finally we come to the card that pretty much started this shopping spree. As I stated two months ago, seeing Ignasiak's hilarious photo on a Dime Box Nick post reminded me that he was a Wolverine whose print run I wanted to look into. A bit more research led to me chasing the five collections in this series and the rest is history! Not a bad way to close out your cardboard career when you're a journeyman reliever with limited MLB exposure.
That's all she wrote for this series, but I still have some Larkins and eBay scores to show off and plenty of other stuff to get to, so watch for those in April.
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