“Finally,” Arizona Diamondbacks reliever Ryan Thompson thought when saw his first big league baseball card this year.
Not all major leaguers get honored with a baseball card of their own, and seeing his picture on a Topps card for the first time rekindled Thompson’s interest in collecting.
Thompson, however, found a way to do so while paying tribute to the coaches and training staff he worked with every day.
At Thompson’s locker in the home clubhouse at Chase Field, the veteran right-hander hung up baseball cards of everyone from manager Torey Lovullo to the training staff to a little league card of a bat boy. All of them were signed.
“ I kind of re-fell in love with cards this year,” Thompson told Arizona Sports during locker room cleanout last week. “After six years in the major leagues, I finally got my first card. So, I started to get into cards, and as I’m collecting, it’s fun to pull a teammate’s card and get them to sign it.
“I just thought of it where it’s like, we’re always doing that with the players but not with the staff members. So I started like Googling some of these staff members’ cards and just finding the funniest images of some of these guys. Thirty years ago for some of them.”
Hitting coach Joe Mather is catching a baseball for the Cubs on a 2012 Topps. Assistant hitting coach Damion Easley is fielding a ball for the California Angels on a 1993 Fleer Ultra rookie card. Bench coach Jeff Banister is catching on a 1989 Star Harrisburg Senators card. First baseman Dave McKay, of course, is sporting a giant mustache in a classic look for the early 1980s Oakland A’s.
Among Thompson’s favorites is a Lovullo 1994 Topps card while the future skipper played for the Angels.
Lovullo wore a catcher’s mask and a mitt in the photo, but he never caught a single inning in the major leagues. Lovullo spent most of his time at second base, so why is his baseball card showing him catching?
“When I bought the card, I just thought he used to be a catcher,” Thompson said. “This picture was taken because he was like the backup third catcher on the bench and he had to go warm up a pitcher in between innings. So he threw on this mask real quick to go warm up the pitcher and then they snapped his photo and they turned it into his card as if he was a catcher. So this card’s pretty funny to me.”
Thompson said the toughest cards to track down were minor league cards of training staff, particularly lead trainer Ryan DiPanfilo, but he found them, too. It cost him $20 bucks, but it was worth it.
The next project is to assemble signed cards of everyone he played with in 2025 and get them signed. He had most of them by the end of the season, with only a few rookies left to find.
Perhaps it will become an annual tradition.
