1992 DONRUSS ELITE HOWARD JOHNSON
Howard Johnson was once elite.
And no, I’m not talking about the orange-roofed motor-lodge chain that paid me to wash their dishes, lo those many years ago.
The elite HoJo was our own number 20, obtained in late 1984 in exchange for thoroughly serviceable right-hander Walt Terrell. (Side note: Johnson actually wore number 44 for a week in 1991, in an effort to mojo his way out of an extended slump. Messrs Aaron, McCovey, and Jackson were no doubt amused.)
Johnson joined the 30/30 club in 1987, and finished 10th in the MVP balloting that season.
And yet, by the spring of 1989, a proposed trade centering around Johnson hung in the air. His production had dropped off a bit in 1988, and there were concerns about the health of his shoulder, so the Mets pushed the Mariners to make the following deal: Johnson, Sid Fernandez, Kevin Tapani, and David West for Mark Langston, Jay Buhner, and Jim Bowie.
Of course this trade didn’t happen, but in the final accounting, such a deal might have tipped in the Mets favor, largely on the strength of some monster mid-’90s numbers from Buhner and the few more good years that Langston had in his quicksilver left arm.
But this would have denied Mets fans two additional stellar years of Johnson, both of which saw him finish 5th in the MVP race.
He more than earned his place on this rare-for-its-time 1992 Donruss Elite insert, serial numbered out of 10,000.
For what it’s worth, probably half of those 10,000 cards still reside in unopened $10 wax boxes, just waiting to be pulled at approximate odds of 1 Johnson per 550 boxes…
What a monster deal that would have been!
Can we turn around and deal Langston for Randy Johnson, too? I think I’d like that.
That was the short lived HoJo to CF experiment iirc.(1992)
I once wrote a letter to Nintendo urging them to make a video game called, “Howard Johnson’s 30/30 Club”. True story.