A David Bote Baseball Card You've Probably Never Seen

A few months ago there was chatter on Twitter about David Bote baseball cards. Bote, a Chicago Cubs infielder, made his way through the farm system very quietly to outside observers. He was never a top-30 organizational prospect, just one of those bodies that takes a roster spot.

Before long he was in Triple-A with the Iowa Cubs, and then on April 21, 2018 Bote made his Major League Baseball debut and went 1-for-3 against the Colorado Rockies. Later in the season he hit some game-winning home runs, including a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth inning on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball against the Washington Nationals.

But he had no baseball cards. Before 2018, Bote literally had no mainstream baseball cards. Only team-issue minor league cards (or so I thought). His first appearance came in 2018 Bowman and all of a sudden he was an autograph subject for the retail-only product. Good call, Topps.

So a few months ago there was debate on Bote's checklist...a short one. David Miller commented that I was wrong and there were other cards before Bowman besides the minor league team set cards. He was wrong, I thought.

Well, there is a 2017 Topps Pro Debut card that features Bote in the "Promo Night Uniforms" subset. Bote does not get any name credit on the card, though.

David insisted, and until he flashed a picture I didn't believe him.

Here I am eating crow. Would you look at that! David Bote appears on a JUCO World Series card from 2013 when he was a member of Neosho County Community College. Here's the back.

And there's even a parallel with a gold border.

The crow tastes pretty good, and now these two cards are in the One Million Cubs Project collection. Thanks so much, David. It never felt so good to be wrong!