Tony Gwynn Jersey And Stamp Card

I'm typically not a fan of the Americana-series cards, because I can do without getting a bunch of dinosaur cards. And the ''celebrities'' you can possibly get are either deceased, are shown in an awful picture, or are just plain nobodies.

And when you get an athlete, he is never shown wearing his major league team's colours, because the card company didn't purchase the rights to show it. Such is the case with this still-fine Tony Gwynn card from Panini's 2010 Donruss Americana Century Collection (card #45, numbered 69/250, part of the Souvenir Stamps sub-set).It contains a piece of jersey ''worn by Gwynn in an official game'', so probably as a member of the San Diego Padres - the only team he played for in his Hall Of Fame 20-year career; it also contains an official U.S. stamp commemorating the sport of baseball. But the picture shows him wearing his hometown Long Beach Polytechnic High School uniform...

As a Montréal Expos fan, I can say Gwynn was one of the few players from opposing teams I truly respected: he never hit below .309 (!!), won 8 batting titles (almost every other year!), struck out only 434 times in his career (!!!) and had an inside-the-park grand slam (!!!!).

His mother was born on August 6th, a day on which he hit his 2000th hit (1993) and - one I saw on TV - his 3000th, in 1999, against the Expos' Dan Smith. He also hit his 1500th against Montréal, off pitcher Steve Frey.