In the pantheon of great baseball brothers, one name you don’t hear bandied about much is, “Paciorek.”

I mean, when was the last time the Pacioreks came up in conversation with the DiMaggios or Perrys or Aarons or Ripkens?

Like as not, it’s been a long while.

And there’s a reason for that — the Pacioreks just didn’t make a whole lot of noise in their time in the Majors … but that doesn’t mean they weren’t solid performers, on the whole.

John Paciorek got the ball rolling for the family, playing in one game for the 1963 Houston Colt .45s at age 18 before capping off his career with a few more years in the minors.

By the time John hung them up in 1969, younger brother Tom was a couple years into his minor league climb with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Tom would get the call in 1970, then stick in 1973, eventually picking up 1100+ hits in an 18-year career.

Tom was the standard by which all other Pacioreks would be measured.

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And, just as Tom was rounding the bend on his own Major League career, young Jim Paciorek started his climb through the Milwaukee Brewers farm system after they took him in the eighth round of the 1982 MLB Draft out of the University of Michigan.

It was a slow grind for the corner infielder, but he found himself on the Brewers’ Opening Day roster in 1987, a couple of months shy of his 27th birthday.

He’d stay there through the All-Star break before Milwaukee, fighting for an American League East title, sent him back down to Triple-A Denver. When rosters expanded, though, Paciorek was back in the Bigs as the Brew Crew made their title push.

In the end, Milwaukee came up short, falling to third place behind the Detroit Tigers and Toronto Blue Jays.

And Jim Paciorek finished the season batting .228 with a couple of home runs over 101 at-bats.

As it turned out, that’s the way he finished his career, too.

As it also turned out, older bro Tom wrapped things up in 1987, too, finishing his career with the Texas Rangers.

Since this is a baseball card post, you might have figured there’d be some cardboard tie-in coming up, and you’re right …

See, Jim’s healthy serving of ABs for the Brewers convinced Fleer (though not Topps) that he belonged in their year-end set, so we got a 1987 Fleer Update card of the rookie.

And, of course, grizzled veteran Tom was part of every major set not named “Donruss” in 1987.

So, in the end, we’re graced with 1987 Fleer cards of two-thirds of baseball’s Pacioreks, who began life more than 13 years apart, but who ended their baseball journey in lockstep.

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