Tuffy Rhodes has one really great game for the Cubs: Opening Day, 1994. He hit a home run off of Doc Gooden in each of his first three at bats. It was downhill from there, as he hit just five more homers over the rest of the season and ended up with a .234 average. The Cubs released him barely a month into the 1995 season. He had some great years playing in Japan, and ended up tying Sadaharu Oh's Japanese League single season home run record in 2001.
I always knew of him as Tuffy Rhodes. That's the way Harry Caray referred to him. If Harry said it, so it was. I just assumed that everyone, including the card companies, called him Tuffy.
His 1995 Score card was picked by the RNG as one of Sunday's Five Random Cubs Cards. Score called him Karl.
Turns out that almost everyone else did too.
I've got 25 cards of Rhodes with the Cubs. That's a lot of cards from just a 1½ year Cubs career, but this was the peak of the junk wax era.
These are the only three that show his as Tuffy.
He is Karl on all of the others.
BaseballReference lists him as Tuffy if that makes you any better!
ReplyDeleteMy friend has a son named Karl. I don't think either the father or the son would take kindly to me calling the kid "Tuffy"!
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