Monday Morning Autograph - Jose Cruz Jr.

If you collected baseball cards in the late 1990s, Jose Cruz Jr. was a name you knew. He was one of those "Can't Miss" prospects who was going to be the next great player behind Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez on the Mariners. He hit 12 home runs in roughly 50 games for Mariners before they traded him to the Blue Jays where he continued to hit home runs. Jose Cruz Jr. played right around 100 games his first year and ended the season with 26 dingers.  

The future was bright.  

Unfortunately, the next two seasons were down years. When Jose finally got healthy in 2000, he did manage to hit more than 30 home runs, but also only hit .242. Jose Cruz Jr. actually had a pretty solid career.  He played for 12 seasons, hit 200 home runs and 250 doubles, and collected more than 1,000 hits. Those numbers are not very flashy, so his baseball cards are currently not worth much money, which is fine.  

I still liked Jose Cruz Jr. and have a few of his cards hanging around the collection

Today: 2000 Fleer Showcase FreshINK Jose Cruz Jr. Autograph 

Why Do I Own This Card? 

I pulled it out of a pack of cards in 2000.  

Jose Cruz Jr.'s Team In a Haiku 

Mariners, Blue Jays 

Giants, Rays, D'acks. Bo Sox

Dodgers, Pads, and "Stros 

Back of the Card 

I love the "Authentic Autograph" ribbons on the backs of these old Fleer cards. They remind me of clip art that would be used in a lower elementary school classroom on an award. Thanks for coming to class everyday last quarter, you win first prize........

or an autographed baseball card from Fleer.

I Have Never Written A Post About Chris Richard

Who is the Durham Bulls all-time home run leader? 

My Chris Richard collection started while he was in the Minors with the Cardinals. I was at my local card shop and bought a pack of Royal Rookies. It was an inexpensive per-pack-autograph product that was generally not worth your time or money. You also never know when you buy an autograph of a Minor Leaguer. It's like buying a lottery ticket.  

Here is my Chris Richard lottery ticket.  

Almost 5,000 copies sold for $5 each, but worth $2 on COMC.  

I'd have been better off buying an actual lottery ticket.  

Anyway, this was in 2000 and the Cardinals had Mark McGwire and later Will Clark. Chris Richard was traded to the Orioles for relief pitcher Mike Timlin. I got more Chris Richard cards all from packs. At the time I was not really excited about Chris Richard. He was a first baseman on the Orioles who could only hit 15 home runs in one of the best hitters parks in the league.  

"WHERE ARE THE ICHIRO ROOKIES??????" 

Would have likely been my reaction to pulling a Chris Richard Prospect card in 2001.  

Although, this is his Fleer Tradition card, so more likely.....

"HOW THE HELL DID THEY LEAVE ALBERT PUJOLS OFF THE CHECKLIST FOR THIS GUY?" 

I even got the short-printed, serial numbered Chris Richard cards, like this Fleer Focus.  

Fast forward a few years to 2007 and Chris Richard is a 4A player on the Durham Bulls. 

The 2006 season was a disaster for the Bulls, a rarity in these parts, in large part due to several younger, high-end prospects who go off the rails in every way imaginable. Delmon Young hits an umpire with a bat, BJ Upton thinks Triple A parks are beneath him and gets a DUI drinking with UNC students, and Elijah Dukes literally tries to strangle Ryan Knox while the team is waiting for their bus at a hotel. 

Chris Richard was 30 and going to provide a calming presence to the team. 

The Bulls finish first, Richard hits 14 home runs, and nothing crazy happens while the team is waiting for the bus. Success brought Richard back in 2008, 2009, and 2010.  He hit at least 20 home runs each of the three seasons and ended his Durham Bulls career with 84. A record that is unlikely to be broken soon.  

I have actually willingly collected Chris Richard cards since his stint in Durham.  

Love seeing him as a Durham Bull on baseball cards......

but there are not very many of them. 

Chris Richard still has some nice cards for a guy with a short Major League career.  

My favorite being his 2001 Topps Golden Anniversary Autograph, which is short-printed and a tough find.

The Normally Scheduled Post Has Been Cancelled

Monday post are always about a 1980s Cardinals card.  There are plenty of 1980s Cardinals cards still left to write about. However, while we all have a little extra time at home, I am using my card time to do some sorting, appreciate some of the cards that I have not looked at in a long time, and fill in a few holes in the collection.

Today, I thought I would cover a little long running side project that I have been working on the last few years that I was able to move forward recently.  I dabble in basketball cards.  I post some here and there, and in celebration of the Blues winning the Stanley Cup last June, I posted my 1961 Fleer St. Louis Hawks cards.  The connection being that the city of St. Louis had a team win a championship in the other three sports leagues prior to the Blues winning last season.  Many people forget that the Hawks were in St. Louis, and that they won an NBA Championship while they were there.

I have most of the St. Louis Hawks 1961 Fleer set, I am just working on the last few cards.  In the last weeks I found two of the missing cards that were in my price range, so I added both.

First up, a card of Len Wilkins, or Lenny Wilkins.

I am not sure if this is a rookie card, but he was drafted out of Providence College in 1960.  Seemed like a good player, but I don't know too much about his play on the court.  I just remember him coaching the Cavaliers and Hawks for a really long time.

Love the colors on these cards with the black and white player photos.  Really pops.  Love that Hawks logo too.  Almost looks like a volleyball, or something besides a basketball in the hawks talons.

My second new Hawks card.

I know that many people who collect this set like the base cards much better than the action shot subset.  They are kind of an after thought, but I like this card of Cliff Hagan.  I wish I knew more basketball players from the 1960s, and could figure out everyone who is in this picture.  Jerry West in the background perhaps? Anyway, I know that Hagan was a really good player around this time, multiple All-Star games, and ended up in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

One more Hawks card to find.

A 1980s Card Part 35 - 1982 Fleer Silvio Martinez

I had a really good collection of 1982 Cardinals cards as a kid.  The first team set I ever owned was a 1982 Topps Cardinals set that my father bought me from a flea market in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  I had other 1982 Cardinals beyond that Topps set.  I also had a handful of cards from the Fleer and Donruss sets. 

The 1982 Fleer Cardinals team set had roughly half the card photos taken in Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, with the other half being taken in Dodger Stadium.  Most of the cards are halfway decent.  A pretty good mixture of portrait and action shots.  Then there is Silvio Martinez who card is not halfway decent. 

Silvio's card photo was taken in Dodger Stadium, but it looks more like a bad Olan Mills backdrop of Dodger Stadium.  It's rather blurry in the background, but then so is the picture of Silvio in the foreground. 

This is easily one of the most out of focus portrait style cards around.

Was his hat photoshopped onto his head?  There is something off with this hat and hair on the left side of the card.

Surprisingly, there are quite a few portrait style cards of Silvio Martinez from his four years with the Cardinals.  They are pretty good looking cards.

This is a nice looking card.  I like the shadows on the card, adds a little something to the card.  

Not bad either on the 1980s Topps card.  

It feels like Fleer did not even make an attempt to give us a good Silvio Martinez card in their 1982 set.  It feels similar to pictures I sometimes get when I try to take pictures of my own kids when they are running around on holidays.  This is an adult who is agreeing to sit in front of your camera.  Mind boggling that the quality could be this low.    

Back of the card.  

Silvio was a decent pitcher.  He had a really good year in 1979 with the 15 wins, and an ERA of 3.26.  Most importantly, the Cardinals were able to trade him to the Indians as part of a three team trade which landed them left fielder Lonnie Smith from the Phillies.  

Who ended up being a pretty important player on the 1982 World Series winner.  

Cards I Love Part 28 - 1983 Fleer Jim Smith

We have reached the end of the month.  How did I ever make a blog post per day a few years back?  No idea at this point, but we are down to the last card for February.  The last card for the month is my first card. 

This 1983 Fleer Jim Smith was the first card in my first pack.  The six year old me loved this card.  Look at those creases and rounded corners.  If I ever sell my baseball cards, I am selling them all except this one.  It's still one of my favorites to this day. 

Back to normal blogging stuff tomorrow. 

Cards I Love Part 5- 1989 Fleer Billy Ripken

I spent my last year of elementary school at Carman Trails in Manchester, Missouri.  I only went there for two years during fifth and sixth grades.  Unfortunately, my sixth grade homeroom teacher was not a very interesting.  A little dry.  She liked to talk about herself, grandkids, and how she missed teaching kindergarten.  Her main subject was reading, which she taught by reading to us.  Did I read stuff during sixth grade?  I am not sure.

We rotated to other classrooms for math, science, and language/writing.  Thirty years later, the thing I remember best was my science teacher reading us "Two Minute Mysteries" to waste time during class, and the time she let us play with Freon in sandwich bags.  As a person who is currently employed as a teacher, I am miffed at how any of these people faired well on their evaluations.

Baseball cards were really fun in sixth grade.  The middle school me had not yet ruined them by putting way too much time into them over school work.  At this point, I was still just opening the packs to find cards of players that I liked, but that would change during this year.  There are a few of these posts that revolve around the sixth grade me.  Things changed in bad ways for awhile after 1989.

When did I first see the Bill Ripken card?

I do not know, but it was all the rage in sixth grade when it came out that spring.  More likely, it was all the rage with sixth graders who collected baseball cards.  Carmen Trails is/was a bunch of middle class white kids in suburban St. Louis, so probably a healthy number.

There was one kid in my sixth grade class who used this card as a bookmark.  I knew that person from fifth grade through my mid/late twenties.  I never heard him talk about baseball.  I never saw him read a book.  Probably a "stick it to the man" type of kid and an adult.  

I am sure that there are plenty of people who will tell you that the Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card is the best card you can own from 1989.  They are probably right.  Those same people were also probably either adults that year, or they were not alive or very young.  As for me, as someone approaching middle school, it was hard to believe that any baseball card could be cooler than one that said "FUCK FACE" on it.  

How did this happen?  It's almost too incredible to believe.  

This was one of the first non-Cardinal, non-players I watched in person, common baseball cards that I really enjoyed.  Bill Ripken was not a very good player, but this card is simply incredible.  Other Bill Ripken cards in my collection were just herded into a box of Orioles commons.  However, the 1989 Fleer Bill Ripken card was an instant classic.  

I was aware that there were variations created where Fleer hid the "FUCK FACE" writing on Ripken's bat, but sixth grader me did not care about black or white scribbles.  Give me the baseball card with the F bomb.  

Later on in life, I spent a little time reconnecting with this card and found a few of the variations.  I am not an expert on the card by any means, but I believe that most of my variations involve black boxes or scribbles.  Those are really easy to find and inexpensive.  

I know this is a different post than the others that I have made during this past week, a little less serious, and far less personal connection to the card.  Still, the Bill Ripken card was a memorable one for many who collected in the late 1980s.  Maybe as a near middle schooler at the time, a card with a curse word on the front stands out more than it should, but I am sure others share enjoyment in owning this card.  

A 1980s Card Part 28 - 1984 Fleer Floyd Rayford

Two days later than normal, but the beginning of the week was busy.  I am going with one of the real cult favorite Cardinal players of the 1980s this week in the person of Floyd Rayford.  He played for the majority of the 1980s, mostly with the Orioles, but he was briefly traded to the Cardinals in 1983 for outfielder Tito Landrum. 

The Orioles were in a pennant run.  Landrum ended up hitting the series clinching home run in the American League Championship Series to beat Tony LaRussa's White Sox. 

'

The Orioles ended up beating the Phillies to win the World Series. 

Rayford ended up getting a few baseball cards in a Cardinals uniform for his 56 games with the team.  All of them, from what I know, are in 1984 sets.  He has one card int he Fleer set, one in the Topps set.  The Topps card is an action shot, the Fleer card....... 

This card accurately portrays Floyd best in my opinion.  You at least get the vibe that he is a short round guy with a lot of hair.  Love the 1980s satin jacket, and if you look closely he is wearing some really sweet batting glove.  

Floyd has a lot of Rochester on the back of his card.  I know he worked there as a coach for awhile too, a legendary player for the die hards of that Minor League team.  Not really an impressive stat line there outside of those seasons at (elevation) El Paso and Salt Lake City.  

So, what happened to Floyd and the Cardinals?  

Oddly enough, Rayford was traded back to the Orioles towards the end of the Spring Training in 1984, which is where he spent the rest of his career.  A few days later the teams made another trade where Landrum ended up back with the Cardinals.  It was not a duplication of the Rayford for Landrum trade, but it sure felt that way.  

This is how they are supposed to look right?  Rayford did not do much once he got back in Baltimore.  Tito Landrum was a platoon player with Andy Van Slyke in right field, ended up playing a significant amount of games for the 1985 National League Championship team.  

A 1980s Card Part 22 - 1988 Fleer All-Star Team Jack Clark

I sort of bad mouthed 1988 baseball cards a few weeks back in one of these 1980s Cardinals posts.  I gave a generalization that all the cards from 1988 were bad, which is not completely true.  I will revise my statement:

1988 was not a very good year for the majority of new baseball card products.  

It was also not a very good year for the Cardinals because Jack Clark left the team for the Yankees.  

He was the lone power hitter on the Cardinals during the mid 1980s, and probably really under appreciated as to how good of a player he was during his time with the team.  His numbers with the Cardinals in 1987 were ridiculous, especially given the fact that he basically missed the last month of the season.  

A quick rundown:  

-35 Home Runs 

-106 RBIs

-.459 On Base Percentage 

-.597 Slugging Percentage 

-1.055 POS 

Yes, Andre Dawson was very good and won the MVP in the National League.  I would like to think that if Jack Clark had played the month of September, he would have won the award instead.  So, while Clark was off anchoring the middle of the Yankees lineup, Fleer put out a really nice card of him as a Cardinal as a part of their All-Star Team insert set.  

The 1988 Fleer set is really boring, but this card is not.  I like the contrasting dark and light green stripes, along with the All-Star Team heading up at the top of the card.  The only thing odd here is what they did with Jack Clark's bat.  They couldn't have it go all the way to the edge of the card?  It just sort of disappears, makes the card look slightly odd.  

I also like Clark's wristband and batting gloves.  The little Cardinals logo on both make them look like they were purchased in the gift shop prior to a game.  Tons of kids were probably running around St. Louis with that same sweatband and set of batting gloves.  

Back of the card.  

It just describes all the awesome things I said about Jack Clark up above.  I will be nicer to 1988 the rest of the time I write these 1980s posts.  

A song on my IPod from 1988, I will get the embed code right this week, is The Church's "Under The Milky Way".  Underrated song from the 1980s.  

A 1980s Card Part 12 - 1981 Fleer Bob Forsch

Love the hair style.  Never really associated Bob Forsch with having a perm, but apparently it happened at some point during the 1980 season.  It looks like he changed hairstyles with Tommy Herr for a season.....

The jersey is also really off on this card.  Fleer clearly did not airbrush it or anything, Forsch is actually wearing a jersey that looks like he bought it cheap off of Ebay.  The actual powder blue Cardinals uniforms had a better looking bird on the bat, and also the number on the front of the jersey.

This is more like it.

I am not sure I have ever seen a Cardinals player wear a jersey like that on a card that has not been airbrushed.  

Overall, this card makes me question whether or not Will Ferrell has ever made a baseball movie?  If he did, I am pretty sure that the 1981 Fleer Bob Forsch card could be the mock up for his character. 

It is not hard to get from his basketball movie......

to that picture of Bob Forsch.  

Back of the card.  

Forsch was always a decent pitcher.  He won a bunch of games, lost a bunch of games, did not strike out very many hitters, but somehow always managed to keep the ball in the park and runs off the board.  I like that the 1980s Fleer cards always show the players complete stat line including their time in the Minors, no matter their age.

A 1980s Card Part 9- 1988 Fleer Doug DeCinces

Not really a player you'd put on the Cardinals.  

DeCinces played fifteen years between the Orioles and Angels.  Not a Hall of Famer, but a good everyday third baseman for most of the 1970s and 1980s.  He was an All-Star, won a Silver Slugger, and once had a top five MVP finish in 1982.  

He also appeared in 4 games for the 1987 Cardinals.  

The Cardinals were without Jack Clark and Terry Pendleton for parts of the final two weeks of the 1987 season, and DeCinces had been released by the Angels.  The Cardinals needed a power hitter to bridge them over the playoffs, and DeCinces got signed by the team towards the end of September.  He was not eligible for the Postseason, and the team actually released him in the middle of the National League Championship Series a few weeks after he was first signed.  

The Cardinals used a bunch of different players at third during the Postseason.  

They did alright.  

Not sure how Doug ended up with a Cardinals card with just 9 at bats in a two weeks period of time, with his release coming afterwards.  Seems like an odd choice to put into the set, but here we are with a card to remember his time with the Cardinals. 

Doug went on to plead guilty to insider trading, and paid a bunch of fines with the SEC to avoid time in jail.  He also agreed to work as a cooperating witness in another insider trading case.  That's sweet.  

A good movie from 1988.  Bettlejuice.  Bettlejuice.  

Bettlejuice.  

Championship Grand Slam

It was quite a week for me as a St. Louis sports fan.  I never thought that I would actually ever get to see the Blues win the Stanley Cup.  They have had their fair share of good players and teams, but they always seem to come up short.  Welp, not this year. 

The Stanley Cup makes St. Louis just the eighth city in the U.S. to win a championship in all four major sports leagues.  

The Cardinals have obviously won several with the last one coming in 2011.  

The Rams won the Super Bowl in 2000 on "The Tackle" 

St. Louis had the Hawks for awhile, and they managed to beat the Boston Celtics in the 1959 Finals behind Bob Pettit.  The team eventually left for Atlanta in the late 1960s.  Always seems to be the forgotten title that St. Louis has won.  

Are there are actually Hawks fans?  Were there any Hawks fans when they played in St. Louis?  The answers to these questions are cloudy, but the Hawks have been sort of a fun side project of mine for awhile.  There are three primary sets of basketball cards where you can find St. Louis Hawks cards including a Busch Beer set, the 1957 Topps set, and the 1961 Fleer set.  

I have dabbled over the years, and never spent a serious amount of time, nor money on this set.  Not to give away how many Hawks cards I have from the three sets, I am going to celebrate the Championship Grand Slam by sharing out my 1961 Fleer cards. 

Best St. Louis Hawks player?  I vote yes.  

Hagan was also a Hall of Famer.  

Another Hall of Famer.  

I actually did not know anything about Si Green until I got this card.  In 1956 the Hawks drafted Bill Russell with their 1st Round pick and traded him to the Celtics for Cliff Hagen and Ed Macauley.  The player picked in front of Russell was Si Green.  He ended up scoring right around 10 points per game during his NBA career.  Looks like he was a good reserve off the bench.  

I will have to share a few more another day.  

Weekend Countdown: Top 10 Albert Pujols Rookie Cards

It's hard to believe that it has been 18 years since Albert Pujols started his career with the Cardinals.  I went to the Cardinals home opener in 2001, but the team started the season on the road, so this was not his first game in the Majors.  First time I saw him, he hit a home run. 

I need to find the ticket stub. 

Nowadays, it seems like Albert is on the highlights every few weeks for passing up some Hall of Famer in an important category, or he is reaching some sort of plateau number.  I know on a day to day basis Albert is not the same player, but it's still amazing to see him pass up some of the all-time greats.  I think my favorite most recent milestone was his 3,000th hit last year against the Mariners.  

A few years back when he first signed with the Angels, I narrowed down my collection of his cards a bit.  A little bit of a knee jerk reaction to him being signed away from the Cardinals, but I have added a few cards back over the last year or two.  I would really like to spend some more time showing off my Albert cards at some point.  I started writing in this space in 2012, the year he left St. Louis, so naturally I have not written much about him.  I have thought about loop back and doing a few posts.   

Let me start out by showing off a few cards today.   

Here are this week's rules.  

• I am only using Pujols rookie cards, no other years outside of 2001

• I am only using rookie cards in my collection.  There might be Pujols rookie cards that are considered better than the ones on the list, but I do not own them.  

• The cards are in order of how I view them, which has a large sentimental factor, don't bother me about where I put his Bowman autograph.  

Go team.  

10. 2001 Donruss The Rookies - This was a mail in card that I got out of a box.  I lost the redemption coupon for awhile, but luckily I found it.  I like that he is a third baseman on this card, and not a utility player.  If you have never heard the story of Pujols making the Cardinals in 2001, it's out there somewhere.  Short version. The Cardinals signed Bobby Bonilla to be a utility player off the bench, he got injured at the end of Spring Training, and so Pujols made the team.  Third was his natural position at this point, although LaRussa did play him all over the place.  

9. 2001 Fleer Platinum - I always liked this set, which was to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 1981 Fleer set, but there is something unappealing about this photo.  It's like Pujols had to get a picture taken by someone, and is trying really hard to seem happy to be there.  Reminds me of school picture day.  Not as a kid, but now as an adult.  The photographers don't distinguish the teachers from the kids, "Say school lunch!!!".  No, and I'd rather go hungry.  

8. 2001 Fleer Tradition - Always liked the Fleer base sets from the late 1990s and early 2000s.  I actually think this is one of the worst designs they had, it's still above average.  This was only sold in the factory set, which I did not want to buy, so I picked this one up at a local card shop in St. Louis.  Maybe the only low end Pujols rookie that I did not pull out of a pack.  

7. 2001 Upper Deck - Pulled this out of a pack back in the day.  Love the action shot of him hitting the ball.  The looks like it's in Coors, which is where the Cardinals started out the 2001 season, got to figure it likely from one of his first games.  

6. 2001 Bowman Autograph - It has always bother me that Bowman used the same Pujols picture on tons of cards in 2001.  I think it just felt that way.  It's a Spring Training photo, but you think they could have gotten a more updated picture at some point for their later products.  Considering where Pujols was at his career entering Spring Training in 2001, not supposed to make the roster, I suppose it's nice the Cardinals gave him a decent uniform number.  He could be wearing 72 or 89.  This autograph is terrible for Pujols. 

5. 2001 Topps Traded- Really nice card.  I always liked this update set.  There are some cool parallels where they played with the card stock, chrome parallels, etc.  It's well done.  Good clean card of Pujols.  

4. 2001 Topps Gallery - I liked this brand during the 1990s and early 2000s.  Of course, it's not nearly as good anymore.  The art was a lot better back in the day.  Love this Spring Training picture.  I would love to know if the Cardinals actually have a Coke machine on their Spring Training field, or if that's some sort of artist's addition?  I also miss the birds on the bat hats.  The Cardinals do not wear them enough.  

3. 2001 Bowman's Best- Pretty random choice here, but I have always liked this set.  Yes, it's really modern.  Yes, this is a batting practice photo.  Just something about the photo with Pujols following through on a swing.  Good looking picture.  

2. 2001 Fleer Premium - This was the first Pujols card that I pulled out of a pack.  It was actually a redemption card.  Always been in my top 2, ever since 2001.

1. 2001 Bowman Heritage - Just a great looking card.  It's been my favorite since it came out.  

Weekend Countdown: Top 10 Fernando Tatis Cardinals Cards

This past week was the twentieth anniversary of Fernando Tatis hitting two grand slams in one inning.  It does not feel like it has been that long, but here we are.....

Tatis has also gotten a few mentions recently too with the play of his son Fernando Tatis Jr..  Kid is off to a really good start.  

Here are this week's rules:

• This post is only of cards of Fernando Tatis on the Cardinals both in picture and in label.  No "now with Expos" or "now with Cardinals" cards.

• My actual favorite Fernando Tatis card is his 1998 Skybox EX Essential Credentials card. 

• The ten cards are ranked in order of how much I love them.  

10.  1999 Fleer Tradition - I like the St. Louis Stars uniform on the card. 

9. 1998 Fleer Update - I like the St. Louis Stars uniform on the card.  This is also the first card that Fernando Tatis had in a Cardinals uniform.  In fact, this is the only 1998 Cardinals card of Fernando Tatis.  There were not many update sets that year, no Topps or Upper Deck.  This was it.  Picture looks familiar.  

8. 2001 Topps - One of his last Cardinals cards.  Always liked this picture with the dark background and the white home Cardinals uniform.  Also like that the card is landscape.  

7. 1999 SP Signature Autograph - This was a good set for Cardinals autographs.  Love Fernando's signature.  You can clearly read the "F. Tatis", but it has a really unique.  

6. 2001 Fleer Autographics - One of Fernando's last autographs as a Cardinal.  I had a ton of these cards, always sort of liked these.  

5. 2016 Bowman - Remember when Fernando Tatis Jr. was a White Sox prospect.  Hard to believe that the Padres got him for James Shields.  

4. 2016 Topps Archives - The first year I collected was 1983.  Big fan of the design.  I am not sure how exactly it is connected to Fernando, but this is a great card.  

3. 2000 Fleer Tradition - Great looking card.  Complete rip off of the 1954 Topps set.  

2.  2000 Pacific Revolution - My favorite Cardinals autograph of Fernando.  I like the green background on this card.  Nice look.  

1. 2001 Topps Heritage - Glad that Topps found a way to squeeze Fernando into this set.  This had been released after he was traded to the Expos, obviously could have easily not been a Cardinal here.  Also has to be about his final Cardinals card.