Saved From The Trash Heap: Garbage Pail Kids

Christopher C. Wuensch opens his basement doors and delves into his baseball card collection from the 1980s to recap baseball and trading card history...

Baseball players and Garbage Pail Kids.

One has a history of being -- at times -- uncouth, vile and even downright disgusting.

The others are Garbage Pail Kids and they’re equal parts unrefined.

The Topps product was just about the greatest, most salacious thing a young boy growing up in 1985 could wrap his 9-year-old brain around.

Back then, the girls had their Cabbage Patch Kids. The boys had their Garbage Pail Kids. And Topps didn’t have the copyright to use Coleco’s Cabbage Patch Kid likeness.

After the litigation cleared, Topps would go on to create a 1,500-card collection spread out over 15 series from June of 1985 through the end of 1988.

Garbage Pail Kids were actually stickers in baseball card form. They depicted a common first name coupled with a crass adjective and even crasser animation.

Despite the ghoulish-and-oft-times sophomoric-likes of Schizo Fran, Leaky Lindsay and Guillo Tina, Garbage Pail Kids were actually created by Pulitzer Prize-winning animator Art Spiegelman, whose legend is deeply rooted in the history of animation dating back to the 1960s.

The Garbage Pail Kids coincided during an era in the 1980s where baseball cards were riding a wave of popularity. It was the same era where some of the game’s most unsavory, much-maligned stars were getting their start.

A look at how several baseball characters from that same era paralleled the characters of Spiegelman’s Garbage Pail Kids:

BARRY BONDS: There were very few players in Major League history more polarizing than Barry Bonds. The Pirates' and Giants' slugger walked away from baseball in 2007 with the game’s all-time leading home run record and (what many believe to be) a big, ole fat asterisks next to his name — courtesy of rampant steroid allegations.

He clobbered 762 home runs and drew 2,558 walks (688 by intentional pass), all of which are Major League records.

His abrasive-personality, however, left him with many detractors and made him a target for fans, media and even teammates, alike.

When he wasn’t getting under people’s skin, he was getting on base at a rate of .444 percent. Only Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, John McGraw, Billy Hamilton and Lou Gehrig reached base at a higher rate.

He spent 22 years with a bulls-eye on his back, from both his critics and opposing pitchers.

Bonds made for a nice target at the plate. He was hit-by-pitches 106 times during his career — good for 68th all-time.

BOBBY BONILLA: When Bobby Bonilla signed a five-year, $29 million contract with the Mets in 1991 it was considered the biggest free-agent contract in baseball history.

Bonilla never quite lived up to the expectations in Queens, parking 95 dingers and 295 RBIs. He later packed his bags and shipped out to Baltimore, Florida, Los Angeles, (a return trip to the Mets for 60 games), Atlanta and St. Louis before calling it a career in 2001.

He finished with 287 home runs and 1,173 career RBIs.

Bonilla’s claim to history might be the albatross of a contract that New York inked him to after the outfielder left the aforementioned Barry Bonds and Pittsburgh to join the Mets.

The Mets bought out Bonilla’s contract in 2000 and deferred payments through the year 2035. As a result, the Mets pay Bonilla $1,193,248.20 every July for the next 21 years. By 2036, the Mets will gladly bid Bye Bye to Bobby.

MARK GRACE: The only thing more amazing than Mark Grace’s feats on the field might be his exploits off of it. The first baseman is in the top-15 in just about every offensive category in Chicago Cubs history, save for triples — including fifth all-time in hits (2,201) and second in doubles (456).

He rounded out his 16-year-career with three seasons playing for the Arizona Diamondbacks, where he played a pivotal role in the Diamondbacks’ 2001 World Series title. 

Despite a remarkable career (2,445 hits and 511 doubles), the affable Grace might be most famous for his extracurricular work outside of the ballpark. To put it bluntly, it’s never good when the first three Google search options are “Mark Grace…DUI,” “Mark Grace…divorce,” and “Mark Grace…jail.”

His two DUI arrests within 15 months in 2012 landed him a four-month stint in an Arizona jail cell.

EDDIE MURRAY: “Steady” Eddie Murray could be a cantankerous character. He once bristled at this author’s autograph request when I was a 12-year-old ankle-biter chasing Los Angeles Dodger players at the team’s spring training Mecca in Vero Beach in 1989.

Murray doesn’t have the sordid past as some of the aforementioned stars such as Bonds and Grace. But the Hall-of-Famer did have some hall of fame-style mutton-chop facial hair.

The eight-time all-star’s stats are equally impressive. His 1,917 RBI are the most-ever by a switch hitter. The former Oriole, Dodger, Met and Indian is also the all-time leader for sacrifice flies (128) and is one of just four players (Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Rafael Palmeiro) to amass 3,000 hits and 500 home runs.

Murray’s stats are gaudy, but that facial hair…that’s the stuff of legends and not the trash heap.