De Wayne Buice

De Wayne Allison Buice (born August 20, 1957 in Lynwood, California) is a former Major League Baseball relief pitcher. Buice played two seasons for the California Angels and half a season for the Toronto Blue Jays. He officially announced his retirement and played in his final game on June 27, 1989, but he continued to make appearances in the minor leagues into the 2000s, exclusively for teams he had an ownership stake in.

Buice is one of six pitchers in the Angels' 44-year history to strike out at least 100 batters in a season without starting a game (109 in 1987). The others are Mark Clear (105, 1980), Bryan Harvey (101, 1991), Troy Percival (100, 1996), Scot Shields (109, 2004) and Francisco Rodríguez (123, 2004).

Buice finished with a career record of 9 wins versus 11 losses, 20 saves, 157 strikeouts and a 4.23 earned run average over a 2½-year MLB career.

Buice was one of the original managing partners of the Upper Deck trading cards company, and he held that position from 1988 to 2000. Buice was in downtown Yorba Linda, California one evening in November 1987 looking for a particular Chinese restaurant in the area, and after wandering around the neighborhood without much luck, he went into a baseball card shop called "The Upper Deck" to ask the person working there if s/he knew the whereabouts of the restaurant.

The owner of the store was working that night, and he recognized Buice as an Angels player. On the spot, the owner offered him a 12% ownership stake in his baseball card company he was trying to start, if Buice would get him in touch with MLBPA. The company he started was called Upper Deck. Buice entered into a four year contract with the company. After the strike in 1994/95 was resolved, Upper Deck gave Buice six more years of ownership in the form of a contract extension. While working for Upper Deck between 1988 and 2000, Buice earned $15 million, far more than his short MLB career brought him.

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* [http://www.upperdeck.com/ The Upper Deck Company]