A 1980s Card Part 55 - 1980 Cardinals Future Stars

This 1980 Topps Cardinals Future Stars card has three pretty good baseball players.  There is a recently elected Cardinals Hall of Famer and a long time Major League reliever.  The majority of readers can look at this card, and probably pick out those two players with little trouble.  However, the third player on the card was a success in his own right, even if he did not have a long career in the Majors.  

This post is half baseball card, half where are they now.  

Here is the card.  

Tom (Tommy) Herr is the obvious star of this card as a Cardinals fan.  He played on a World Series winning team with the Cardinals in 1982, and a National League Champion with the Cardinals in 1985.  Herr never won any important awards, although he did make the National League All-Star team in 1985.  He was always a steady player on the WhiteyBall Era Cardinals teams.  This past summer, the Cardinals fans and some sort of panel (I don't know the exact formula breakdown) elected Tommy Herr to be in the team's Hall of Fame.  

While a walk-off grand slam on seat cushion night was a cool moment for the 1980s Cardinals, I am not sure it's a good argument to be in the Cardinals Hall of Fame.  

 

Next player.  

George Frazier had a much bigger impact on baseball than I remembered.  I don't want to spend too much time here, but he played for 10 years in the Majors as a relief pitcher.  I remember him on the 1980s Yankees and Cubs as sort of a middle innings guy.  However, I didn't realize he won a World Series ring against the Cardinals as a member of the Twins in 1987.  

Frazier pitched two scoreless innings against the Cardinals in that World Series.  He also had a 1.17 career ERA against the Cardinals.  Pretty solid.  Frazier went on to work as a Rockies broadcaster for 20 years.  

Which brings me to the last player on the card.  Dave O'Brien did not have much of a Major League career, but he still has a pretty cool story, and he had a big impact on amateur baseball.  As a player at Florida State, he was one of the star players that led the Seminoles to the 1975 College World Series.  

I always like players who were college greats, but maybe not great pros.

Thank you to Bob Perrone and Andrew Brady at NoleFan.Org for the picture of Danny O'Brien.  It's an incredible website and archive of Florida State sports teams.  You can check out their profile of O'Brien here.  

The Cardinals drafted O'Brien in 1976, by the end of the 1978 season he was pitching in the Majors.  His time in the Majors was short, but he ended up finding a spot with the Richmond Braves for a few seasons in the early 1980s, which prolonged his professional career.  

By 1983, he was out of professional baseball, returning to the college game with a coaching job at SIU-Carbondale.  Now, they are a D1 school in the Missouri Valley Conference, but they were a D2 school while O'Brien was there.  The Salukis made the D2 College World Series While he was there, and the program produced 9 MLB Draft Picks, including long-time Major Leaguer Steve Finley.  

He eventually moved on and worked at Michigan State starting in the early 1990s, before moving on to work at the University of Michigan.  Obviously both schools produced Major League talent while he was on staff.  I am not typing up a huge list.  

Not my card, but I always see these Michigan State cards at antique and flea market stores when I go see my in-laws in North Michigan.  Maybe someone will sell me a single Dan O'Brien card.  

Dan O'Brien is now in his mid 60s.  While he has stepped away from his work at the University of Michigan, he has spent the last year or two working in college baseball as a volunteer coach at Eastern Michigan.  While they may not be a powerhouse NCAA team, EMU has produced a few draft picks and Minor League free agents the last few years.

Sorry, no more Van Halen pictures.  

I am glad that I spent the majority of the post on Dan O'Brien. 

A 1980s Card Part 53 - 1987 K-Mart Lou Brock 25th Anniversary

I already used one of these K-Mart cards in a 1980s Card Post, but this is my favorite 1980s Lou Brock baseball card.  Such a great looking card, felt like it would be a good to post after Lou passed away recently.  There are not too many 1980s cards of the Cardinals Hall of Famer, with most being oddballs from TCMA or similar companies.   

Here is the front of the card.  

Great portrait photo on the front of the card.

The palm trees in background, really high probability that this was a Spring Training card from the 1960s. The Cardinals were still wearing button up jerseys.  There are not perfectly white either.  I am going to guess this is from the late 1960s.

Going beyond the 1980 Lou Brock cards, looking through a few stacks of my modern cards of the Cardinals great, this is one of the better overall portrait photos of him out there.  

Card back.  

The little bulleted lists at the top of this card save it from complete disaster.  Feels weird to make a card of a player like Lou Brock and not include stolen bases as one of the stats displayed on the card.  Whatever person designed this card really did a good job with that list to save the card from the stats listed below.  

A 1980s Card Part 52 - 1983 Fleer Jim Kaat

 Jim Kaat was an old middle reliever by the time I started watching baseball.  I do not remember him at all as a player.  If you are not familiar with Kaat as player, he spent most of his career with the Twins, but also played for the White Sox, Phillies, and Yankees.  He ended his career with the Cardinals, pitching as a middle reliever during the early 1980s.  

Kaat won almost 300 games in his career, but is probably best known for his fielding abilities and his 16 Gold Gloves.  He is the Brooks Robinson of the pitcher's mound.  Kaat only managed to strike out 2,400 batters over a 25 year career, you do the math, and is not viewed by many as a great of his era.  

To me, Kaat seem a lot like Don Sutton with less strikeouts.

I best know Jim Kaat as a broadcaster.  He's spent the past few decades working in various locations, so I do know him well from watching baseball over the past few decades.  I actually have a few older cards of him with the Twins and Phillies.  

I think this is my best one.....

While I do not remember Kaat as a player with the Cardinals, his 1983 Fleer card is a pretty neat card.  Definitely one of the better cards within the Cardinals set from that year.  It was one of his last as a player, but also has a little foreshadowing for his future career as a broadcaster. 

Here is the card.  

Was this the first baseball card with an appearance by an ESPN logo?  There are plenty of more recent cards with ESPN signs in the background, but I cannot think of another card before this one.  Kaat has never actually worked for ESPN.  Maybe he has appeared on one of their broadcasts as a guest commentator, but still a good connection to his work in broadcasting on cable sports networks.  Most of his broadcasting career was spent with the Yankees and Twins on their local/regional cable broadcasts. More recently Kaat worked for MLB Network.  

Here is the back of the card. 

Kaat's career actually started in 1959 as a member of the Washington Senators.  He played a long time retiring at the age of 43.  After lingering in the top 3 oldest players for much of the late 1970s and early 1980s, behind Manny Mota and Willie McCovey, he finally claimed the top spot in 1983.  Guess all 25 years did not fit on his card.  Fleer used a standard font size for the stats on these cards regardless of how many years the player had been around. 

A 1980s Card Part 51 - 1985 O-Pee-Chee Jack Clark

One of the best trades the Cardinals made during the 1980s was picking up Jack Clark from the Giants for Dave LaPoint, David Green, and Jose Uribe before the 1985 season.    

Jose Uribe from EBay.  

That's not suspicious at all.  

The 1985 Topps set had Jack Clark as a Giant.  

A few months later the Topps Traded set rolled out, and we got Jack Clark in a Cardinals uniform.  

Darrell Porter in the background.  

Meanwhile, our friends north of the border in Canada got a really cool combination of these two cards in the O-Pee-Chee Set, or Maple Topps.  If you have never seen an O-Pee-Card from the 1980s of a player signed as a free agent or traded in the offseason, it is worth your time to go find a few of these cards.  

This is the Jack Clark card.  

We get the Topps Traded border with the base set Topps photo.  The best part is always the caption "Traded" or "Signed" or "Now With" that was stamped onto the card.  These O-Pee-Chee cards are almost better than the Traded cards.  Almost.  

I wish Topps had not used the stamps on the regular Topps cards.  It seemed to make the "Now With" types of stamps a little less special.  

Who remembers Doug DeCinces on the Cardinals? 

Not very memorable, but if you put a Cardinals frame and design around Doug DeCinces than you've got an interesting baseball card.  No, O-Pee-Chee did not give DeCinces the usual treatment.  

A 1980s Card Part 50 - 1988 Topps Stan Musial

A little bit different 1980s Cardinals post for this week with my feature card being a "Turn Back The Clock" card from the 1988 Topps set.  I actually really liked these cards as a kid.  There was zero chance my parents were going to let me drop a couple hundred dollars for a nice vintage card of a Hall of Fame player from the 1950s or 1960s, but these cards at least gave those players a presence in my collection.  

At least, that's the way I felt at the time.  

Here is the Musial card.  

It's even got a picture of his 1963 Topps card on the front, which is the year the back of the card will talk about when we get there.  

Now, if you have never seen one of these before, you might be a little disappointed looking at the back of the card.  I generally ignored the back as a kid, choosing to focus on the fact that I had a Stan Musial card.  As an adult, I am tremendously disappointed at the back.  The card has Stan Musial on the front, surely the back will be all about Stan Musial, and showcase him as one of the greats of the game.  

Well, not so much.  

Let's work our way down the card.  Again, you have the 1963 year at the top, along with the "Twenty Five Years Ago" heading at the top.  

The various facts from the season featured on these cards were always more of odd occurrences variety than actual highlights.  Never any mention of who won the World Series or MVP, someone who reached a career milestone, or things that might have been truly historic that season.  If they made these cards today, they would have things like, "Junior Lake wears wrong Cubs road jersey in a game against the Pirates" 

or "Edwin Jackson has not pitched for all the teams in the league, but he's getting pretty close"  

In 1963, Sandy Koufax won the pitching Triple Crown and Willie Mays hit his 400th home run.  Pete Rose won the Rookie of the Year Award.  Might have been a nice touch to mention some of those highlights, especially since these cards were made when kids were actually still collecting cards.  

The Musial section of the card is roughly the bottom third.  I guess it's decent, but I think it would have been nice to give some of those numbers a little more context.  When he retired he was the National League leader in almost all the counting number stats outside of home runs.  Saying he had 3,630 hits and more than 700 doubles is nice, but giving the ranking makes his place in history stand out a little more.  

While it was nice to say, "Of course I own a Musial card" when this card rolled around, Topps really could have done better with this subset by focusing more on the player shown on the front.  I have some good Cardinals cards the next couple of weeks.  Going with some of the bigger names and more important cards for the last few months of these posts.  

A 1980s Card Part 49 - 1982 Topps Bruce Sutter

The 1982 Topps Cardinals cards were my very first team set.  My parents bought me the cards at a flea market in Pennsylvania at some point either in 1983 or 1984.  I still have all the original cards.  I should have pulled out the Sutter from the set and used it for this post.  You can tell that it was owned by a 6 or 7 year old.  Some might consider the card in "poor condition", but it was well loved for many years.  

I ended up re-collecting the majority of sets from my childhood, including the 1982 set, but still have all the old early 1980s cards hanging out around my card closet. 

The Bruce Sutter card always stood out to me because of that beard.  There were not too many 1980s players who had that much facial hair.  I cannot really think of another off the top of my head? Currently, we have players like Charlie Blackmon and Dallas Keuchel who have large amounts of facial hair, but it feels like this was a little less common look in the 1980s.  Mustaches would be a different story....

Also some bonus points go for Sutter having the powder blue Cardinals uniform on in this card.  I think almost all of the 1982 Cardinals cards have pictures that were taken at Wrigley or Shea Stadium, with a few Spring Training photos mixed into the bunch.  The wall behind Sutter does not offer much of a clue. 

The card back. 

Let's work our way down the card. 

The fact boxes on the back of some of the 1982 Topps cards are puzzling.  One box is about Dan Graham, he played for the Orioles, hitting against the Texas Rangers in 1980.  The other is about the San Diego Padres playing the Cincinnati Reds in 1980.  Sir, this is a Bruce Sutter card.  We get one Bruce Sutter fact under the stat box, but two non-Bruce Sutter facts at the top?  

This card was in the middle of Sutter's career as far as time goes, he played until 1988, but he was not very good after the 1984 season.  His last year or two with the Cubs, first few seasons as a Cardinal were his peak years, with 1984 being his best season.  The thing I notice most about the stat line is the fact that the innings pitched and the games are not identical.  Sutter was a great closer, but often came into the game before the ninth inning. 

I went and looked up a few of the Cardinals closers for the past few seasons.  Last year, Carlos Martinez closed games for the Cardinals.  He pitched in 48 games, and 48 1/3 innings.  In 2018, the Cardinals used Bud Norris, who pitched in fewer innings than the number of games in which he appeared.  I have a hard time believing that we will ever see a closer again who pitches two and three innings at a time again outside of the Postseason.  

Sutter is also a Hall of Famer, and shown as a Cardinal on his plaque.  

I think of all the modern Cardinal Hall of Famers he is probably the player I have written about the least on here.  Maybe a few more Sutter posts in the future.  

A 1980s Card Part 47 - 1986 Topps Traded Tim Conroy

Tim Conroy is the second best part of this card.  He's a supporting actor.

This quick rundown on the former Major League pitcher.  The A's drafted in 1978, and for some reason thought it would be cool to bring an 18 year old up to the Majors straight out of high school.  They did the same thing with Mike Morgan.  Both of them had an ERA above 7 pitching to Major League hitters as fresh out of high school pitchers.  Conroy gets sent to the Minors where he lingers for a few years.  They bring him back up in 1982, he does decently and they use him as a spot starter and long reliever for a few years. 

The earliest card I have of Conroy in my collection is a 1984 Topps card. 

He also appeared on the A's team card.  Name a better duo on the 1983 A's. 

I can think of about 5, but they put the batting average leader and ERA leader for the 1983 season on the team card for the 1984 Topps set.  Take that Carney Lansford. 

Enter the 1985 offseason. 

The Cardinals trade Joaquin Andujar to the A's for Tim Conroy and Mike Heath.  Andujar was coming off a 21 win season, so the trade looked a little lopsided at the time.  After reading a write up of the trade, I am guessing that Joaquin Andujar going ballistic on Don Denkinger in Game 7 of the 1985 World Series might have been the final straw for him in St. Louis.  Not sure that Whitey Herzog was a big fan of baggage.  See Keith Hernandez.  

Conroy pitched part of two seasons in St. Louis.  Injuries wrecked his career in 1987, but his most significant contribution to the Cardinals was his 1986 Topps Traded baseball card.  Here is the front of the card.  

As a kid, I have to admit that there were very few Cardinals cards with pictures inside of Busch Stadium.  Just looking at the 1986 Topps cards, every single picture was either taken at Spring Training or in Shea Stadium.  All of them. 

There were years that someone squeezed in a shot or two from Busch Stadium, but not many.  I like this Conroy card because the photo was not only taken at Busch, but you kind of get the whole feel for the stadium in the mid 1980s.  He's not standing against a wall, or sitting in the dugout where you just get a little piece of the stadium. 

There is astroturf.  The high blue walls in the outfield. The National League logos on the walls.  The concourse ramps.  The right field video board.  The discolored seats in the outfield that might have been red at some point.  I have tried to figure out what is on the videoboard. 

My guess?

Before the games they used to have the Cardinals team stats, the individual team leaders, and the National League leaders.  Those were displayed as a list.  At some point, usually while the players were stretching, the organist would play a couple of different songs including "Meet Me In St. Louis" with the words displayed on the scoreboard.  The clock says 7:14.  I am guessing this is from a 7:35 start, and that's what is on the scoreboard. 

There are videos of the former longtime Cardinals organist on YouTube, but no "Meet Me In St. Louis", so here is "Here Comes The King" instead. 

If the photographer had taken another step back you probably would have gotten the arches at the top of the stadium, which might have made it a perfect.  I am being picky.  This is a great card. 

Back to Conroy for a second. 

Here is the back of the 1986 Topps Traded card.  The stats are not great, but I did not know Pepper Martin was born on a leap year day.  Tim Conroy and I also share a birthday, but nearly two decades apart in age. 

A 1980s Card Part 46 - 1981 Fleer Bobby Bonds

Bobby Bonds had a great career with the Giants.  He played in a few All-Star Games, won a few Gold Gloves.  He bounced around with several different teams before getting traded to the Cardinals during December of 1979.  Bonds had been a good player with the Indians the prior season.  He hit 25 home runs, drove in 85, and had 34 stolen bases. 

His time with the Cardinals ended up being forgettable, but still got a few cards to remember his lone season in St. Louis.  I feel like this Bobby Bonds card fits in well with the John Smoltz Cardinals cards in my collection. 

Bonds was a part-time player with the Cardinals during the 1980 season, splitting time with Leon Durham.  I am not sure if that was the original plan, or if the Cardinals started splitting the time once the season got under way.  Bonds hit just 5 home runs, his averaged hovered around .200, and the Cardinals only gave him roughly 250 at bats for the season.  Quite a drop off from his usual numbers. 

Here is the 1981 Fleer card. 

The most obvious selling point for this Bobby Bonds card is that it shows his uniform number, which was 00 with the Cardinals.  He did not even wear the number the entire season according to Baseball Reference, at some point he switched to 26.  Bonds was the first Cardinals player to wear 00.  It was also worn by Omar Olivares in 1993. 

Interestingly enough, Olivares wore 26 as a uniform number for several seasons, and then switched to 00.  None of the other Bobby Bonds cards with the Cardinals show his uniform number.  Here is the back of the 1981 Fleer card.  

Love that these old Fleer sets put Minor League numbers on the back of card of their cards for players that have been around for 15 years.  You can see all of the great numbers Bonds posted throughout his career on the back of this card.  I like owning a Bobby Bonds card in a Cardinals uniform, but I like to ignore the stat line on the back of the card. 

A 1980s Card Part 45 - 1984 Riley's Louisville Redbirds Vince Coleman

I have done 44 of these posts, and I have not touched a single Minor League card before this post.  I figured it was time to search through the Minor League card box and find a good 1980s Cardinals player before they got the Majors.  The Coleman card in today's post is a favorite. 

I have a few 1980s Cardinals players on Minor League cards, probably not a really deep part of my collection though.  I actually think my favorite Minor League card of a 1980s Cardinals player in my collection is not even with a Cardinals affiliate.  I am sharing it anyway really quick.  I picked this up at a card show for a $1 a few years back.  This is a 1976 Phoenix Giants Jack Clark card.

Love the little motto and logo at the bottom of the card.  That alone made me want to buy the card. 

Back to Vince Coleman.

There are a few different Vince Coleman Minor League cards, but this Riley's Louisville Redbirds card is a pretty easy to find, and generally inexpensive.  I am not sure if these were a giveaway, or if they were sold as a set at the team store.  Either way, they are plentiful, and these sets ran throughout the 1980s. 

The Riley's cards all have similar designs, regardless of year, and most of the position players have action photos of them batting with this weird red thing in the background.  Not the most attractive stadium, so I get the tight crop on the photos.  I went to a Louisville Redbirds game once in middle school.  It was an odd stadium that doubled as the football field for the University of Louisville.  It had a baseball grandstand, but football seating in the outfield.  

This is the best picture I could find.  

Looks a little bit like the old Blue Jays stadium before they moved into the SkyDome. 

The back of the card has a small dissertation about Vince Coleman, but it's actually pretty good information.  Sometimes wordy Minor League cards can stray into all sorts of useless information.  I like that I can now tell people Vince Coleman's college major. 

Tangent about a fact on the back of the card, and something cool I found last week.  

All Cardinals All The Time commented on my post last week about Coleman's athletic prowess in college, which is also talked about here on the back of this card.  Coleman played baseball at Florida A&M, but was also the kicker on their football team.  I did a little digging to see if he was any good.  Not really any consensus, but that probably does not really matter.  What does matter is that in 1979, the Miami Hurricanes had a really bad week against Florida A&M, and got upset by the score of 16-13.  

The deciding play in the game was a late fourth quarter Florida A&M field goal.  Who kicked the field goal?  

Vince Coleman.  

I love that he runs at the football straight on.  

The other thing that pops out for me on the back of this card is his 1983 stolen base numbers at Macon, which would have been an A Ball team.  Coleman stole 145 bases in just 113 games.  That's an insane amount of stolen bases.  

Second week with a Coleman card, I will pick someone different next week.  

A 1980s Card Part 44 - 1989 Foot Locker Slam Fest Vince Coleman

Foot Locker was a quality place to buy shoes back in the 1980s.  We had one in the mall near my house growing up.  First thing you remember about Foot Locker stores in the 1980s and 1990s?  They always had that scoreboard and basketball hoop above the checkout counter.

Makes me happy that this one is showing UNC with a loss.  Thank you internet.

This week's 1980s card comes from a Foot Locker promotion they did with college basketball in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  I am not sure if they gave out these cards in set form, or if they were given away as single cards in the store with a purchase.  However they did it, there were Foot Locker Slam Fest sets in 1989, 1991, and 1992. Vince Coleman is the only baseball player who appeared in the 1989 set.

This is the card.

Slam Fest was more than just a set of cards with athletes holding basketballs.  There were Slam Fest episodes aired during the halftime of nationally broadcast college basketball games on NBC, with athletes from various sports participating in a slam dunk contest.  While the cards only ran three years, the Foot Locker Slam Fest episodes ran into the mid 1990s.  

This is a short video clip from an episode with Barry Bonds and others.

I looked hard for a video of Vince Coleman participating in the Foot Locker Slam Fest, but could not find one anywhere.  He was a pretty good athlete, had to be decent to participate. Plenty of other baseball players appear in the 1990s sets.  None of these cards are very expensive.  I picked up this Coleman in a dime box at a card show years ago.  

Here is the back of the card.  

The light blue print is not the easiest to read, but the front of the card more than makes up for anything that is printed on the back of the card.  Overall, a solid oddball card.  Not everyday that you run across a card featuring a player who can steal 100 bases, and dunk a basketball on national television.

A 1980s Card Part 43 - 1980 Topps Mike Phillips

These Monday posts are supposed to span the entire decade of Cardinals cards, but I have not done very much with the 1980 Topps set yet.  The Cardinals cards are almost all portraits, there are almost no action shots in the entire team set.  It's not that I have a problem with portrait style cards.  They are fine.  It's just that they are not even interesting portrait photos.  They are bland and vanilla.

The Mike Phillips card is the standout picture amongst the Cardinals in this set.

I am not sure what happened on this play, but pretty cool picture of Mike Phillips with Gary Maddox in the background.  Phillips did not play many games for the Cardinals in 1979, so I checked out the box scores of their home games against the Phillies.  There was only one game the utility infielder played against the Phillies, but nothing there that would explain Mike Phillips jumping over Gary Maddox.  Likely from a different season.

Phillips was a utility player during the 1970s and 1980s, and spent a few years playing for the Cardinals.  This 1980 Topps card is easily his best card.  His other Topps cards are all portraits.

His batting gloves are interesting on his 1981 Topps.  At least I think he is wearing batting gloves.

His 1978 Topps card....

probably begs for comment on that airbrush job on his hat.  I will pass for today.  

His 1979 Topps card.  

More interesting than the 1978.  The bricks in the background make me think this photo was likely in Wrigley.  Always a good backdrop for a baseball card.  

Now that I have given you the complete run down on all the different Topps Mike Phillips cards, let's go back to the one from the top of the post.  

With the white borders on the card and white background on the blogpost, it's hard to see how far off the centering on this card is from side to side.  It's top and bottom when you turn it sideways to look at the card.  Probably got this for next to nothing at a card show.  

Phillips main value as a player was the fact that he could play anywhere on the infield.  The card lists Phillips as a second baseman and third baseman, but he actually played more games at shortstop.  Clearly not much of a hitter, but he did manage to hit for the cycle during his time as a Met.

A good song from the 1980s on my IPod.  The Police.

Sting would be another person who's a hero. The music he's created over the years, I don't really listen to it, but the fact that he's making it, I respect that. I care desperately about what I do. Do I know what product I'm selling? No. Do I know what I'm doing today? No. But I'm here, and I'm gonna give it my best shot.

-Hansel from Zoolander 

A 1980s Card Part 42 - 1986 Donruss Rookies Mike LaValliere

I really like the player photos on the front of the Baseball Reference home page.  I look at them a few times a week, give myself a minute or two, and try to figure out as many of the faces as I can.  This was one from April.  I did pretty well on this one.

There are players on here that are just really easy to pick out.  Tom Henke is the Blue Jay in the top left.  J.D. Drew is the Braves player on the far right in the top row.  Usually, the older players give me fits, but there are some pretty easy ones in this group.  Ty Cobb is on the bottom row. 

There are some faces that just stick with you.  I am sure that many of you who read the title of this post, can already picture Mike LaValliere in your mind before I even post a picture of a card.

Short stocky catcher with a mustache, right?

I am going to mix in an action shot here.  Looks like he has a beard in this picture, but I found it flipping through my cards and really liked this one.  I had to include it.  You can still picture LaValliere's face in your mind.  

Here it is....

There you go.  That is Mike LaValliere.  I could pick him out anywhere.

Except his Cardinals cards, where he does not have a mustache, and he does not look like the same person.  Here is his 1986 Donruss Rookies card without his trademark mustache.

I actually ran across this card the other day.  My nine year old has been reading a lot of baseball books during our Corona vacation.  He's even flipped through some of my cards at times.  He gets to this card, holds it covering the name, and asks me how to say the player's name.  I had no idea who was even in the picture.  

None.  

I actually thought that it might be Tom Nieto at first, who was another catcher in the mid 1980s, but when I saw the name I was surprised.  I flipped through a few more 1986 and 1987 Cardinals cards, and the results were surprising.  I remember LaValliere on the Cardinals, I just always picture him the same way.  See the Pirates photo above.   

He looks like he just graduated from junior high on this card, but no mustache.  This was 1986 though, his first year with baseball cards, so I went to find a 1987.  

Still no mustache.

Flip ahead a year after the Cardinals traded him to the Pirates, and magically on his 1988 baseball cards he looks like the Mike LaValliere everyone knows and loves.  

I flipped back through a bunch of my 1986 Cardinals cards a second time just to see if there was anyone else I could not recognize.  I knew them all, even Randy Hunt.  

Back of the 1986 Donruss card.  

I also did not know that Mike LaValliere played briefly for the Phillies.  

Who knew?  

Mike turned out to be a pretty good player for the Pirates and White Sox.  He won a Gold Glove, and played on a bunch of playoff teams during the first half of the 1990s.