Tony Bernazard: The All-Star Who Never Was
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There are cards from my youth which are burned into my brain.
I can name the player by seeing even a sliver of the photo.
All the childhood sorting, resorting, binder page flipping, and trading permanently embedded the names of hundreds of players from the junk wax era into my memory.
But every once in a while I stumble across a card or player I only have a vague recollection of. Tony Bernazard is one of those players.
While sorting a recent collection I purchaed, I found a stack of 1987 Topps All-Star cards and the Tony Bernazard All-Star Card #607 stood out to me. I recognize the card, but I can’t remember one time in my life ever hearing Tony’s name referenced. I don’t remember a highlight clip of him. I can’t remember him being mentioned in any statistical groupings, and I sure couldn’t remember him being an member of the 1986 All-Star team.
I fired up the Google machine, did a search, and low and behold, I didn’t remember him being on the 1986 All-Star team because he wasn’t on the team. In fact, he was never on any MLB All-Star team in the course of his 10 year MLB career!
For some reason, Topps made the executive decision to make him an All-Star in the 1987 set.
The Playing Days
We might as well spend a few minutes learning about Tony’s career.
1984 Fleer Tony Bernazard #606
The Puerto Rican born infielder made his MLB debut in 1979 with the Montreal Expos. In 1984, he had an 0-44 stretch at the plate which tied a major league record of number of at bats without a hit for non-pitchers. He ended up improving his performance in 1985 and while he didn’t make the All-Star Team in 1986, he did have the best year of his career. He batted .301 with 17 homers that season for the Indians.
After a mediocre 1987 season which was split between the Indians and the A’s, he went to Japan where he played three seasons for the Nankai/Fukuoka Daiei Hawks. He had a good enough performance from 1988-1990 to earn a spot on the Detroit Tigers roster to start the 1991 season. However, after starting the first six games 2-12 from the plate, his career was over.
In his 10 year MLB career, he played in 1,071 games and hit .262 with 75 home runs.
Post Playing Days
Bernazard spent several years working in front office roles for the New York Mets. An odd incident in the 2009 season saw Tony reportedly take off his shirt and challenge some Mets minor leaguers to a fight. After some additional incidents that season, Bernazard was fired on July 27, 2009.
Wrapping it up
Random screw ups on cards are fun to me. Why did Topps include Tony in their All-Star subset in 1987? We may never know what they were thinking, but we do know this wasn’t the first time this happened. According to this post from the WaxPackGods blog, there were 11 cards in the 1980s where Topps incorrectly granted All-Star status to a player.