Herm Winningham

Who: Outfielder Herm Winningham

Team: Cincinnati Reds

Card: 1989 Upper Deck

Acquired: In Person, Redsfest 2009

Comments: Herm may have been the best part of my Redsfest. The guy is flat-out a ham. While waiting in a pretty long line to get an autograph from him, Glenn Braggs and Tracy Jones, he single-handily kept the entire line entertained. He gave folks in line good-natured ribbings, examined random things, asked questions and was generally rowdy and down-right fun. Nice to see guys with some personality.

Speaking of personality, the '89 Upper Deck has an akward one. I believe 1989 was the first year Upper Deck released cards. While the quality did blow away from Topps, Donruss and Fleer were doing at the time, the design has not stood the test of time. The digitally illustrated basepath on the right of the card is pretty cliché and a lot of photos in this set were poor - most suffering to low lighting or akward crops. Photo-wise, Herm actually made out pretty well compared to a lot of other cards I've seen from this set.