I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 23 - Garrett Stephenson

The Cardinals were pretty terrible for the first half of the 1990s, but the team was sold by August Busch III at the end of the 1995 season to the team's current owner Bill DeWitt.  While some of the losing teams at the beginning of the decade were the result of the 1980s roster aging and turnover, it was compounded by the fact that Busch did not really spend any money on the baseball team.

DeWitt immediately started working on improving the roster, spent on free agents, added players through trades, and tried to make the team competitive.  It worked in 1996, the Cardinals came within a game of defeating the Atlanta Braves in the National League Championship Series.  One of the important cogs on that team was left fielder Ron Gant.

Gant hit for power and came up with big hits at big moments for the team.  Gant also did not see eye to eye with Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa.  The two feuded and Gant was shipped away to the Phillies after the 1998 season with Jeff Brantley for Ricky Bottalico and a "marginal major-league prospect"

The Cardinals Minor Leaguer ended up being relief pitcher Cliff Politte and the "Marginal Major-League Prospect" ended up being Garrett Stephenson.  While it seems much more believable at this point, Stephenson was actually unhappy being on the Phillies because his locker was next to Curt Schilling.  

Apparently Schilling was using some different types of motivational techniques to get Stephenson to pitch better.....

From NJ.com sports page.....

In 2004, local Philadelphia writer Glen Macnow expanded on the Schilling/Stephenson relationship in a book he wrote about different hot button issues surrounding the town's sports teams.  A chapter of the book was entitled "Was Curt Schilling a candid athlete or a self-serving jerk?" and goes into details about Schilling idolizing Roger Clemens, his hatred towards teammates he perceived to be "uncaring", and the public "dress-downs" that were often handed to these players.  Apparently Garrett Stephenson checked these boxes.  

So, off to the Cardinals.  

Stephenson pitched for the Cardinals in 1999, and did quite well, yet we do not have a 1990s baseball card of him wearing a Cardinals uniform.  He pitched in a total of 18 games for the 1999 team, started 12 games, and went 6-3 with an ERA just above 4.  That's not actually bad by late 1990s Cardinals standards.  Let's not forget that their rotation in 1999 included Darren Oliver, Jose Jimenez, Kent Merker, and Kent Bottenfield.  

Hard to believe that he didn't get some sort of card for 18 games as a pitcher.  There was even a Traded/Update set in 1999 too.  The most memorable Garrett Stephenson card, for me, from the 1990s was his Topps card from 1998.  

Kind of a really goofy card of Stephenson looking at pitch grips, but he looks really unsure of what is going on with whoever is talking to him.  Maybe he should have had a card made looking at those pitch grips on the back of a wiffle ball box.  

There were no Stephenson cards in 1999.  The pre-1999 selection of Stephenson cards is pretty sparse.  COMC lists 22 different Garrett Stephenson cards from the 1990s, which includes two games cards.  I never count those.  COMC only has 24 different cards for Stephenson after 1999, but some of those are parallels and game cards too.  

So, not many cards to choose from for this post, and for the first time ever I am going to have to post a non-1990s card to cover a player from the 1990s.  A little bit odd too considering that Stephenson won 16 games for the Cardinals in 2000.  The team won the National League Central and advanced to the National League Championship Series against the Mets before they ran out of gas.  

Stephenson blew out his arm in the first round of the playoffs against the Braves.  

He ended up getting some nice cards out of one year really good year.  Not many cards, but they were still nice for that era.  I have two favorites that stand out above the rest of his Cardinals cards.  First up, is an autograph from the cross-product Fleer Autographics set.  

These are always good looking cards.  This is also Stephenson's only autographed card.  It can be hard to find at times.  I owned a copy of this card at some point after it came at in 2001, but traded it, or sold it at some point a few years later.  Sort of a card I regretted losing.  I try to get as many Cardinals autographs as I can, but it's not like Stephenson as a favorite player.  Took awhile to find a new copy of this card when I finally got around to replacing the old one.  

Next card is an interesting one.  

There are tons of these Pacific Private Stock relics cards floating around.  Most are dirt cheap and really easy to find.  Except the patch cards are a little bit tougher to find and most teams only have one player with a patch card.  The Cardinals had a pretty good checklist of relic cards.....

so I am not sure why Stephenson was chosen as the player with the patch relic.  Honestly, this set was long viewed as an effort by Pacific to dump all of their relics, which I believe is true, so I am not sure why they didn't give every player a patch card.  

The McGwire card, which was not supposed to have been made by Pacific, has long been one of the most coveted cards from this set.  I own one......

if only I could find the Sosa card.  

The rest of Stephenson's cards are very ordinary.  Just base cards.  Sometimes.....

which there is nothing wrong with when it's well designed.  Just wish there was a 1990s Cardinals card of him.  

Project Durham Bulls #29 - Alex Sanchez

1999 & 2000 Durham Bulls 

Background-

Sanchez was born and grew up in Cuba.  At the age of 18 he, and a few other friends, tried to take a raft to Florida.  He was detained by the Coast Guard at Guantanamo Bay for roughly a year and half before he was allowed entry into the U.S..  Eventually Sanchez enrolled in Miami-Dade Community College and was drafted by the Devil Rays in the 5th round of the 1996 MLB Draft.  

Alex Sanchez reached Triple A Durham for a few games in 1999.  He returned to Durham in 2000 and appeared in 107 games and almost 500 plate appearances.  I'm not sure that many people have a grasp on who Alex Sanchez was as a player since he had a very limited Major League career, during which he became the first ever Major League player to be suspended for failing a drug test.  Positive steroid test, but not a power hitter.  

His most notable accomplishment as a Durham Bulls player was setting the team's single season stolen record as a Triple A team.  Former Braves outfielder stole 100 while the Bulls were a Single A team in the Carolina League.  

In all, Sanchez appeared in just over 400 Major League games appearing for the Brewers, Tigers, Rays, and Giants.  His slash line isn't half bad at .296/.330/.372, if you do not look at slugging percentage.  Sanchez had two fairly big years with stolen bases.  In 2002, he ended the year fifth in the National League stealing 37 bases for the Brewers.  The following season Sanchez had a total of 52 steals while playing for the Brewers and Tigers.  44 of those steals came in Detroit, landing him second in the American League behind another former Durham Bull, Carl Crawford.  

Card- 

The Fleer Autographics cards were a different kind of mega-autograph set.  Most of the large autograph sets from the late 1990s and early 2000s were of the per pack variety.  Autographics were a cross product set for Fleer.  I am not sure how many different sets had Autographics cards, but I would guess they were in most of the major releases that year.  

There are some really solid names in the set, plenty of Hall of Famers, and a few other players who never quite made it anywhere.  I would hate to say that Sanchez did not go anywhere.  He made the Majors, which is a great accomplishment for a guy who tried to get into the country on a raft and spent more than a year in a prison.  

Overall, these are just a nice looking, well designed set of cards, that were put out by Fleer with no sticker autographs.  Again, throw in the strong checklist, and these are fun cards to collect.  

A Venerable Old Card Part 34

This week is more of a two-for of two Cardinals players who were traded for each other.  Angels fans avert your eyes.....

The 1999 Cardinals have a pretty good case for being one of the worst team's that the franchise has fielded over the past twenty years.  The team has had exactly three losing seasons during that stretch, but the 1999 team was especially brutal.  While the team's offense featured Mark McGwire (176 OPS+), Fernando Tatis (139), and Ray Lankford (118) the pitching staff for the club was brutal.  

Kent Merker, Darren Oliver, Jose Jiminez, and Garrett Stepehenson made up four fifths of the rotation, but there were spot starts from Juan Acevedo, Lance Painter, and Larry Luebbers.  Ouch.  The bright spot was veteran Kent Bottenfield who spent the first few years of his career with the Expos, Rockies, and Cubs.  

In 1999, he won 18 games and made the National League All-Star team.  

At the end of the year the Cardinals rightfully blew up the team.  Kent Bottenfield survived the off-season and made it to the team's spring training along side several new players.  The team signed Mike Matheny away from the Blue Jays, Andy Benes away from the Diamondbacks, they traded for Fernando Vina, Pat Hentgen, Dave Veres, and Darryl Kile.  Plus they brought up some young players from the Minors like Rick Ankiel and Placido Polanco.  

The team looked good on paper and returning ace Kent Bottenfield got a Fleer Autographics card that spring too.  He's got a great signature.....

Always loved the Autographics cards from the late 1990s/early 2000s.  All on card signatures and there are a ton of players who signed for the set.  Probably not as good of a checklist as the Donruss Signature sets, or Leaf Signature set, but still very nice.  

In late March of 2000 at the end of Spring Training, Kent Bottenfield and his great looking signature got shipped off to the Angels for Jim Edmonds.  Well, the Angels also got Adam Kennedy in the trade too, but it was a bit lopsided in favor of the Cardinals.  Bottenfield went on to pitch in 29 games in 2000, but that included 8 starts with the Phillies after the Halos traded him for Ron Gant.  

Edmonds went on to win a bunch of Gold Gloves and managed to get the Cardinals into two World Series during his time in St. Louis.  While they lost the 2004 Series, Edmonds was a huge part of the 2006 Series win against the Tigers.  

It didn't take long for Edmonds to get his first Cardinals card of 2000 which appeared in the second series of the Upper Deck set.  I have always liked this card for several reasons......

First, I like that Upper Deck did not use an airbrushed photo for the card.  At this point, I am pretty sure that UD either pushed the players card back to a later series, or they left them in their old uniform, but put the logo of their new team on the card.  Clearly a Spring Training picture after Edmonds got traded.  I also like that they have a picture of Edmonds in his batting stance.  Most people remember Jimmy Ballgame for his fielding exploits, but I always liked his stance....

It was a fun few years collecting cards of Edmonds and I still try to pick up some cool ones when I run across them.