Friday Five: My Top 5 Oakland Athletics

Yesterday, I watched the end of the Oakland A's game. It was their last home game in Oakland.

The Moneyball music hits different on this one. 💚🥺 pic.twitter.com/ucOBSBgH78

— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) September 26, 2024

I don't want to get too bogged down in the backstory of what has happened to the A's during the past year, so I will let this Jeff Passan tweet do the talking.....

The Oakland A’s were killed by greed. Do not allow the people responsible for this to spin it any other way. John Fisher did not have to move this team. Major League Baseball and its owners did not need to be complicit in it. This was a choice. A wrong one. History will sneer.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) September 26, 2024

As a St. Louis native, I know the disappointment of seeing a professional sports franchise move away.  

I wanted to share my favorite 5 Oakland A's players for today's Friday Five post. 

Here is my list:

Honorable Mention: Tim Hudson 

One of my favorite non-Cardinal pitchers to watch of the past 20 years. I love the movie Moneyball, but if I had to change something about the movie, I would want more time spent on the Big 3, Mark Mulder, Barry Zito, and Tim Hudson. The three made the A's rotation far above-average and allowed them to tinker with the offense by focusing on on-base percentage. Without Hudson's quality pitching, the team would not have been a contender, yet he's barely mentioned in the film. The book gives more time to the pitchers, but still probably undersells Hudson, Mulder, and Zito too. Anyway, long-time favorite player who has a Hall of Fame argument too, but I will save that for another post.  

5. Stephen Vogt 

Before Stephen Vogt was the manager of the Cleveland Guardians, he was a fan-favorite with the Oakland A's. The catcher seemingly came out of nowhere to make back-to-back All Star Games for the American League roughly a decade ago. Before he seemingly came out of nowhere, he was actually on the Durham Bulls stuck behind Jose Molina and Jose Lobaton who were catching for the Rays. Vogt was also a fan-favorite in Durham. He was a player who did a little bit of everything on the field, while his personality made it easy to like. There have been several other Durham Bulls players who have made appearances with the Oakland A's over the years, but Vogt is easily my favorite.  

4. Jose Canseco

Jose Canseco is one of my favorite baseball villains/goofballs, but before he was blacklisted from the game for ratting out all sorts of steroid users, he was a really great baseball player. We now have a 50-50 player, along with half a dozen players who have gone 40-40 in a season, but I remember when Canseco first accomplished the feat back when I was in elementary school. He was the best of the power-speed players from the late 1980s. Throw in some tape measure home runs and a hilarious Twitter account and Jose has cracked my top 5 Oakland A's players......

3. Gene Tenace 

I have learned a lot about various baseball players through my years of collecting with Tenace being at the top of the list. When I first ran into Gene Tenace, I was a little kid collecting baseball cards and he was the back-up catcher on the early 1980s Cardinals teams. Years later, I would learn about Tenace's run as the Oakland A's catcher during the early 1970s helping the team win three World Series titles. In fact, Tenace was the World Series MVP in the 1972 Fall Classic against the Reds. I love myself some Gene Tenace baseball cards and have a deep appreciation for his contributions to the A's 1970s dynasty.  

2. Mark McGwire 

I liked Mark McGwire while he was on the A's, he's not just here because he was on the Cardinals for a few years. Such a fun player to watch, who doesn't like long home runs? I will let a video clip do the talking for Big Mac.  

1. Rickey Henderson 

I am going to give you a story about one of my Rickey Henderson rookie cards rather than talk about Rickey Henderson the player. Rickey would be a little sad, but I am hoping my readers will be entertained.  As a kid, I used to love stolen bases, mainly because of Vince Coleman and Willie McGee, but Rickey Henderson was cool too. Anyway, my parents have some people over to our house for dinner. I cannot remember the reason why exactly, but the people had kids who had baseball cards in their car. It was 1985 and my best card was a Dwight Gooden rookie card. This particular evening, I am hell-bent on trading my Dwight Gooden rookie card, which my older brother thought was a terrible idea. At the time, he was right. Forty years later, I was right. The best card I could get in return for my Dwight Gooden rookie card was a Rickey Henderson rookie card. I like Rickey, I made the trade and still have the card to this day.  

Rickey was the greatest Oakland A's player. 

It's Been A Minute

One of my favorite phrases in life.  

So much has happened over the past month and a half. Unfortunately, most of it involves me working, which nobody really wants to hear about. I am just going to skip ahead to the part where I talk about baseball cards and pretend that I still do this on a regular basis.  

I still have the time to purchase baseball cards, just not write about the baseball cards. I have narrowed this post down to 4 cards. There are some large stacks of cards sitting around my house at the moment and it's not because my wife repainted and refurnished my baseball card room in a day while I was at work.  

The stacks of cards are out of the frame, but I am actually going to make a post about the state and condition of my card room at the moment assuming I don't disappear for another six weeks.  

As I was saying, picking out just 4 cards was a bit of an accomplishment.  

The first three are all from the 2021 Topps Chrome Anniversary set.  Two former Durham Bulls players and a backup catcher for the Cardinals.  

First, former Durham Bulls player Greg Luzinski.  Great power hitter and a great signature too.  

Next up is Cardinals backup catcher Gene Tenace. Earlier in his career he was not a backup for the Oakland A's. Tenace was the 1972 World Series MVP. I do not have a Padres autograph of Tenace, but he was also a starting catcher in San Diego.  In 1980, Gene Tenace hit .222, but walked 30 more times than he struck out and had an on-base percentage of .399. 

Amazing. 

Last up on the Topps Chrome cards is former Durham Bulls player and current Minnesota Twins manager, Rocco Baldelli.  The green Rays jerseys were horrible.  

Last card is a Paul Goldschmidt autograph.  

He's been on the Cardinals a few years now, but I rarely buy any of his cards and I never post them when I do. Nothing too special, just usually cool looking parallels or base cards from when he played with the Diamondbacks. Nothing this nice.  

These Guys Are Actually Good?

I started collecting baseball cards in the early 1980s when I was in early elementary school. Some of my initial impressions of players from those cards lingered for a long time in my world.  At some point in late high school or early college, I realized that a lot of the "washed up, old guys" from those early 1980s sets were actually good players during the 1970s.  There were even a few lingering from the 1960s.  

As a baseball card collector, I have ended up circling back to collect cards of a few of these players.  This past week, I managed to snag two autographs from the 2021 Topps Archives set of players who appeared in 1983 card sets.  That was my first year opening packs and these two players seemed way past their prime. The six-year old version of me did not fully appreciate their skills for very likely superficial reasons.  

First up, Cardinals back-up catcher Gene Tenace.  

He was the Cardinals back-up catcher during the early 1980s.  Gene Tenace was a .230 hitter and managed a grand total of 12 home runs in the 2 seasons he played for the Cardinals.  Not exactly someone to be excited about pulling from a pack of cards.  I kind of ignored those 1970s seasons while he was playing for the A's.  

Some years later, I learned about the Gene Tenace from the 1970s.  He regularly hit 20 home runs a year?  Gene Tenace won the 1972 World Series MVP by hitting 4 home runs in a 7 game series against the Reds?  You're sure that wasn't Reggie Jackson?  

It turns out that before he was an old guy and the back-up catcher for the Cardinals, Gene Tenace was a good player.  It's true.  All of it.  There are other things that I really appreciate about his career beyond winning a World Series MVP and being a back-up catcher on the Cardinals. 

+Gene Tenace regularly walked more than he struck out.  

+Gene Tenace 1060 career hits and 984 career walks. 

+Baseball Reference has him rated as the 13th best catcher of all-time ahead of Roy Campanella, Buster Posey, and Yadier Molina. 

+Amongst modern catchers, Tenace has the second highest OPS (on-base percentage and slugging percentage) amongst modern catchers.  He's ahead of Johnny Bench, but behind Mike Piazza.  

He was a really good player.  Here is my latest Gene Tenace card.  

I am still waiting for Topps to make a card of him as a back-up catcher for the Cardinals.  

Next player.  

Those polyester White Sox softball uniforms were not kind to Greg Luzinski. "The Bull" was still a good player with the White Sox, but he was definitely a player ignored while I was collecting in the 1980s.  I think Luzinski was my first run-in with a professional athlete who did not look the part.  I first started to appreciate Greg Luzinski when I moved to North Carolina roughly 15 years ago and started reading up on the Durham Bulls.  

He was a member of the 1969 Raleigh-Durham Phillies, which was a renamed version of the Durham Bulls.  It was a really dumb idea to rename the team briefly, but it was not as bad as the team splitting half of its games between Durham and Raleigh.  Despite a lot of bad off-the-field decisions by the Phillies, the team absolutely bludgeoned the rest of the Carolina League.  It's arguable one of the better teams in the history of the franchise.  

The team led the league in almost every team offensive category and almost every team pitching category.  Many of the players on the team also were league leaders in individual categories. Luzinksi was an 18 year-old fresh out of high school and hit 31 home runs and drove in 92 runs.  

I have posted a bunch of Luzinski cards here over the years.  Been a fan for awhile.  

Love the 1960 Topps design on this card and Luzinski has a great signature.  

Overall, I am happy to add these two cards to my collection and I am glad that I learned a little bit more about these two players who were "old and washed up" when I first started collecting cards.  

We Don't See Each Other Much Anymore

It is really hard to find a direction with blogging when you do not do it on a regular basis.  I used to have regular posts with themes and everything.  There were Monday posts about 1980s Cardinals players.  I still get to those sometimes.  Those ones with the early 1990s Skybox basketball cards that were made by a tobacco company in Durham.  More recently, I had posts rating baseball card sets, and a bunch of Durham Bulls projects.  

I do not write enough to make those posts anymore.  

My desk is covered, to the annoyance of my wife, with a large stack of baseball cards that I do not have the time or energy to write about at the moment.  I know that I have taken a break from my blog before, but I am not going to do that at the moment.  I still enjoy coming here, but I am going to give up on having the sort of order or established schedule that I have had in the past.  

The pandemic has stressed people in many different ways.  For me, I have gone from being a teacher who relied heavily on low social interaction and building rapport with my students.  There was some screen time, but it was limited.  Now, I am sitting in front of a computer from 9:45 until 4:00 everyday.  That does not include prep time or grading.  After sitting in front of a screen for 8 hours hours at work, I find it hard to get back in front of computer when I get home.  

I know I have touched on this topic several times over the past few months.  Some of you are probably tired of reading about it.  From this point forward, until I feel better about my quantity of screen time, I am just posting cards that catch my eye.  They are going to be random.  

Today, I am posting three new cards and two cards in my collection that I am thinking about selling for a small fortune.  There is also a plug for a podcast.  

First up is a Bob Gibson card that was recently released as part of Topps Living Set, or the set that never ever ends.  This is a great card.  

Might be one of my favorite cards that I have added to my collection this year.  I have a bunch of new Gibson cards this year with him being one of the twenty players in the Project 2020 set.  This is better than every single one of those cards.  I still love them, just not as much as this card.  

Anyone watching the World Series?  

This card has a connection.  Not really a good one for me as a Cardinals fan.  I am not sure how I feel about it's recent arrival after watching the first two rounds of the playoffs and the first four games of the World Series.  This is one of those coin cards from Topps Heritage Minors.  

Love that the nickel is upside down.  

Liberatore is a Top 50 prospect with every publication that puts out a set of rankings.  The Cardinals picked him up from the Rays last year in exchange for two outfielders.  One was Jose Martinez.  Yes, he can hit, but he does not really have a defensive position.  Strictly a DH.  

Here is the back of the card.  

Always like that you can see the back of the coin on these cards.  So, I was telling a story about the Cardinals trading for Matthew Libertore.  I think he's going to be a solid pitcher at a minimum.  Maybe possibly a front line starter.  Pitching is never really the problem for the Cardinals though.  They can't hit.  So, the other player they gave up for Liberatore was Randy Arozarena.  

The Cardinals likely would have found a way to screw up his swing, or they would give him the same role as Lane Thomas and let him pinch hit once a week.  I have never posted any Randy Arozarena cards on here, but there are several floating around in my collection.  He was a really inexpensive Cardinals autograph about two months ago.  

Not anymore.  Here are two that I scanned the other week.  

Love the top Stadium Club card with him sliding into second base in Wrigley Field.  That's a quality baseball card.  These are selling for a small fortune on Ebay at the moment.  Thinking of maybe putting one of these up.  

Last card.  

I have written about Gene Tenace several times on my blog.  

My one sentence summation: 

As a child Gene Tenace was the backup catcher on the Cardinals, so I naturally thought he was a complete bum until I got older and learned more about him.  

This is from the Upper Deck Timeless Teams set that was released in 2005.  Solid product with a lot of good on-card autographs.  This is my second Tenace autograph out of the set.  The other one is a different card from the 1973 A's team.  

Back of the card.  

I was looking at some Tenace cards last month after listening to the Beyond Batting Average Podcast, which had an episode about underrated baseball players from the 1970s.  Some good names on there, even if they left Rusty Staub off the list.  Tenace is one of those players who has really been helped out by some of the advanced statistics.  I am not going to rehash the argument, but there is one to be made for someone who has a .241 career batting average. Both hosts, Mark and Andy, who have a really cool baseball card related accounts if you are on the Twitter.    

A 1980s Card Part 25- 1981 Topps Traded Gene Tenace

I have written a little bit about Gene Tenace before on my blog.  He was a Cardinals player that I discovered later on in life, and did not fully appreciate while I was collecting as a kid.  Tenace was the backup catcher for team when I first started watching baseball and collecting cards, so he was not high on my list.  At some point around college, or maybe right after, I learned all about Gene Tenace on the A's.

I believe that I found this rather rough copy of his 1973 Topps card in a dime box at a card shop in the south part of St. Louis County.  His career numbers did not look great at this point, but the little write up about his World Series MVP caught my eye.

I did a little more digging after this card.  Pretty impressive player.  He's never going to be in the Hall of Fame, but he is definitely in the Hall of Very Good Players.  The first Gene Tenace card I ever bought after I realized he was a good player?  

His 1981 Topps Traded card.  

Like almost all the other Cardinals cards in the 1981 Topps Traded set, the Tenace card shows him wearing the powder blue road uniform in a picture that was likely taken during Spring Training.  Love that his draw strings are hanging out the top of his pants.  Quite the fashion statement.

Here is the back of the card.

Look at those walks.  He was the forerunner of the Moneyball A's teams.  Tenace played with the Cardinals for two seasons before he ended his career with the Pirates in 1983.  These numbers are really close to his final career totals, which Jay Jaffe has as the 13th best catcher all-time.

I know pretty hard to believe.  If you do not have any Gene Tenace cards in your collection, he's somebody you should check out.

Some good tunes from 1981.....

Thought You Were A Bum, But Maybe Not...

There were many cards that I liked when I first started out collecting.  One of the highlights of my early collection was a team set of 1982 Topps cards that my parents bought me at the Gettysburg, Pennsylvania Flea Market.  We went there sometimes on Sunday afternoons and I got to pick out a few cards for my collection.  Cardinals were the priority and nothing could top a team set from a World Championship team featuring some of my favorite players like Ozzie Smith, George Hendrick, and Tito Landrum.  There were other players in the set too, some more important than others.  Bob Forsch was not my favorite starter, but he was a solid player and a long-time Cardinal.  Keith Hernandez was not much of favorite either, but I understand that he was an important player on the 82 team.  No Hernandez, no World Series.

Then there were the dregs.  John Stuper.  Not a fan, but I also think he was my dad's least favorite player as a kid.  Steve Braun.  Not cool.  Steve Mura, Julio Gonzalez, Jim Kaat.  No, no, and no.  Of course, the ultimate dreg in many team sets is the back-up catcher.  The Cardinals had Gene Tenace playing behind Darrell Porter on the 1982 team.  As the backup catcher, Tenace was reduced to a low level in my six year old.  He never really moved past that point over the last thirty years.  Ever.  Here's a look at my 1982 Topps Gene Tenace card...

1982 Topps Gene Tenace 

The card is definitely well-loved, or maybe just not very valued.  Probably a little bit of both.  The card has been ignored for much of its time in my collection, but my opinion of Gene Tenace has changed greatly over the last few weeks.

I recently completed a few trades trying to put together a 2013 Bowman Draft set and pick up a few autographs.  I have traded for a few lots, bought a few cheap cards off of Ebay, and I am getting pretty close to putting the set together.  Maybe a complete set post next week.  A little late, but better late than never.  Anyway, in one of the trades I managed to end up with a throw in autograph of Gene Tenace.

2005 Upper Deck Legends Gene Tenace Autograph 

When I first saw the card I was a little bit surprised to see Gene Tenace on a piece of cardboard.  This guy has a certified autograph?  Surprised.  Then I went and spent a few minutes on Baseball Reference and I shocked to read a little bit about Gene Tenace.  Let's just started with this: JAWS rates Gene Tenace as the 13th best catcher ever ahead of Jorge Posada, Roy Campenella, and Javy Lopez.  Just behind Joe Mauer.  

Read a little further and ignore the pit stains on his shirt above and you will see that Tenace also:

+A 136 OPS+ which ranks 6th all-time for catchers ahead of Johnny Bench and Yogi Berra

+A career On-Base Percentage of .388 which ranks 9th all-time amongst catchers, again ahead of Johnny Bench and Yogi Berra

+Hit more than 20 home runs five times during his fifteen year career

+Had six seasons with more than 100 walks including leading the league twice in walks

+Most surprisingly Tenace is the all-time leader in walks amongst catchers

Mr. Tenace has a pretty impressive resume to say the least and I am truly sorry that I missed out on this player for the past thirty years.  I am going to have to go out and find a few more good Tenace cards to even out missing on thirty years of cards from a good player.