David Francis Dravecky

On November 13, 1989, David Francis Dravecky announced his retirement from Major League Baseball.  I didn't see the announcement but was told about it later.  The reason I didn't see the announcement was that my wife was giving birth to David Francis Richards.  We had one son named Daniel already and when we found out that we were having another we decided to name him David.  Here is where the baseball cards come in.  Donruss back in the day, put full names on the backs of cards.   We were wondering what other people had combined with David for names.  This was my chance to name to a son for a baseball player, I had wanted to name our first Anthony Keith Richards, but my wife doesn't like the name Tony, so that was a no go.  We paged through the notebook and we got to the 87 Donruss and saw David Francis Dravecky.  We had been following the saga of Daves' cancer and broken arms and such and we were very impressed with how he used this painful (emotionally and physically) problem to share his Christian testimony, so we decided to name our second son after Dave Dravecky.  So we have always collected oddball Dave Dravecky items.  Somewhere in my stuff I have a Padres that Dave sent me detailing how he became a Christian.  Once when I was a once younger collector I asked players if they knew where I could get an 8X10 of them to get signed.  Steve Garvey sent me a signed photo from a calendar shoot he did and Dave Dravecky sent me a signed limited edition Christopher Paluso print of himself.  We have met Mr Dravecky once as shown on the commerative cachet cover below.  This was at a book signing here in Portland. This picture was taken around the time David turned 7,  he will turn 20 in November of this year.  I used to make these for my sons for there Birthdays but for some reason I stopped.  This one I made 4 of so that Mr. Dravecky could have one. 

Dave Dravecky played for nine years in the majors, including 6 for the Padres in which he got to the World Series.  He was traded to the Giants in 1987 along with Kevin Mitchell and Craig Lefferts for Craig Comstock, Mark Davis, Mark Grant and Chris Brown.  He pitched in '87, '88 and '89.  I will never forget the sound and the agony of his arm breaking as he pitched against the Expos'.  I remember Will Clark saying that he thought that Dravecky had been shot.  We have corresponded a couple of times and I hope to invite him to Davids' 21st party.

PS.  I dont know why the first part of this is underlined, no matter what I did I couldn't get the underlining to go away.