A maddening discovery on Mad Dog's birthday

I apologize in advance for all the blurry images on this post. There's only so much you can do when the entire post is about Sportflics cards.

Today is Bill Madlock's birthday. Always a favorite of mine, I think of Mad Dog as a Pirate first, then a Cub, then a Dodger (he also played for the Giants and Tigers). Madlock's career with the Dodgers was relatively short, just the 1986 season and parts of 1985 and 1987, and he was much more successful with the Pirates and Cubs, what with all the World Series and batting titles with those two clubs.

That's why I've always thought it odd that Madlock should be depicted in the 10-card 1992 Kellogg's All-Star set as a Dodger.

But there he is -- as ghostly as the image is -- as a Dodger.

The other nine players in this set -- Willie Stargell (Pirates), Tony Perez (Reds), Jim Palmer (Orioles), Rod Carew (Angels), Tom Seaver (Mets), Phil Niekro (Braves), Jim Rice (Red Sox), Dan Quisenberry (Royals) and Mike Schmidt (Phillies) -- are all shown with the teams for which they are primarily associated (Carew as a Twin is the only real argument).

But no matter. Madlock as a Dodger meant I had another Madlock Dodger card to collect and there's nothing wrong with that.

I've received this card several times in card packages over the years. Probably 6 or 7 times, I'd guess. And that's why when this card arrived with a bunch of others from Angus of Dawg Day Cards a couple of weeks ago, I didn't even flinch. Off to the dupes pile it went.

Fortunately, Angus sent a few other '92 Kellogg's Sportflics cards along with the Madlock, which I didn't already own and therefore put them in the stack to be cataloged and filed. It was then that I noticed something different about them.

It took me turning the cards over to notice it, but see if you can see it from the image I showed on the original post:

If you look at the words and not the blurry photos, you notice that three of the cards say "Frosted Flakes" on them and one says "Corn Flakes".

OK, now take a look at a couple of the Madlocks side-by-side:

The one on the left was given to me by Angus. The one on the right is one of the many dupes. You can see the difference in the flakes, frosted on the left and corn on the right.

I got me some kind of variation!

Only it's not a variation as I first realized when I was looking at the backs of the other three non-Dodgers.

The Niekro and Quisenberry cards -- the ones that say "Frosted Flakes" on the front -- have French on them. The Palmer, which says "Corn Flakes" on the front -- has English type.

Angus had sent me some Canadian Kellogg's cards!

Now, I'm sure plenty of collectors are familiar with the fact that there was a Canadian version of this set and have been since 1992. But I'm slow to discover lots of card things that happened in the '90s and this is another example.

I went to my Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards CD and, sure enough, there was a Canadian entry under '92 Kellogg's.

The Canadian cards were found in Frosted Flakes, while the American cards were found in Corn Flakes.

The Canadian cards are priced slightly higher than the American version. Also, you'll note that the Canadian cards do not have a card number on the back (if you look at the Niekro, Palmer and Quisenberry above, only the Palmer shows a card number just above the statistics line on the far right).

The American cards are listed up top for comparison.

I am actually delighted to discover that this is a different version of the Madlock Kellogg's All-Star card. And it's pretty cool that I figured all of this out on Madlock's birthday.

But it was kind of a pain in the butt. To confirm that I didn't own any Frosted Flakes Madlocks already, I had to dig through the giant box of Dodger dupes to unearth the Madlock dupes. And there were cards falling all over the place to a frustrating degree.

But all is cleaned up now, and I can't wait to file my Madlock Frosted Flakes card in my Dodger binders next to the Madlock Corn Flakes card.

Happy birthday, Mad Dog.