Jose Canseco Game Used Home Run Bat … In a Card!

Donruss was ahead of the curve on this one. In 2003, their Timeless Treasures offering featured not just a game-used bat piece; the piece of bat came from a home run bat … home run #311, to be precise – complete with a picture of the actual bat on the back! This is a first for Jose, if I recall.

 

I had this card in my collection years and years ago, but never thought of its significance. Recently, I got it back from my buddy Jon D. and didn’t even know he was the one who had my exact copy all this time!

 

I decided to do a deep dive, and found the game he hit the home run in on Youtube – the fun thing is, early on in the game, you can see him using a black bat. After his home run, the commentators mentioned about how he switched bats.

The game itself is so much fun – Ken Griffey Jr. is in the outfield for the Mariners, and Roger Clemens is on the mound for the Red Sox. And yes, of course, our guy Jose hits a bomb using the bat from which this bat relic is from. Watching Jose hit a bomb, and the supporting cast characters of Griffey, Clemens and more really took me back to my childhood, and makes this card mean so much more to me now 🙂 

This card is tough to find (though I believe one is actually online now – for the first time in years!), but even if you can’t find the card shown here with his signature #/25, you can find the #/100 copies with a bat piece from the same home run bat. The following year, they had the same offering.

So yeah, the Topps debut patches are cool, but let’s be honest – we can’t get cooler than a Jose Canseco card with a piece of his home run bat.