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 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.  

My Favorite Mail-In Cards Part 1

Another update for my on-going project with the 1980s Topps Glossy Mail sets.  I have set a goal of completing this project at some point during February, so still another month and a half left to track down a few more cards.  I explained the project and gave the original quantities needed for each set here, the update on the 1983 set is posted here, and the 1989 set is here. 

Today, I am going to post the 1986 set, which I finished off over the holidays.  I was out of town and had my mail held.  Had a blast opening up a few different packages from different collectors who helped me put together the final 18 cards that I needed for this set.  You are appreciated.  

There are 60 cards in this set, this is the first third. Have not quite decided if I am going to put the other two-thirds into a post, or do thirds straight across the board.  All of the cards in this set will be up at some point.   This was the first year that Topps used a larger checklist, so some of these cards are prospects from that year.  Let's get into the set, I will explain why I love these cards more than the other glossy mail-in sets.  

Scans are groups of three and remarkably straight.  

Not sure what happened to the Fernando end of the scan.  Did I open the scanner too soon?  It's possible.  There is little difference design wise between this set and the previous sets, or the ones that followed.  First, I love the photography with these cards.  So many little things in here.  Fernando doing that thing he did with his eyes before he threw the ball.  

This was not quite the end of Reggie's career, but this felt like a good possible farewell card, until Topps also put him in the 1987 Glossy Mail-In set.  It's the 1986 Jeter hat tip gif....

but about 25 years earlier. Reggie was around for a few years when I first started collecting, but I am not sure I gave him much thought.  Just an old guy on the Angels.  

Oddibe McDowell was a prospect in this set.  His 1985 Topps Olympic Team card is the first thing that comes to mind when I see him, but this is a nice card too.  Never panned out into anything spectacular, but he played in the Majors for seven years.  That's something.  

Balboni.  Meh.  

Rickey Henderson on the Yankees.  Meh.  Don't get me wrong, I really like Rickey Henderson, just never really got into his Yankees years.   

Jack Clark is something, especially to the 1986 version of me.  I started collecting cards in 1983 and my favorite team was the Cardinals, not the best year for the Cardinals.  Things weren't much better in 1984, but the 1985 Cardinals were the first time that I got to collect current Cardinals players who were on a good team.  

In the end, the first base umpire came up a little short, but still a great season for the Cardinals.  So many great memories of the different players.    

Jack Clark was a favorite and this was the best Jack Clark card in my collection at the time.  He was not a Cardinal for long, but this was one of the best home runs in the history of the team.  

Two minute video, but a minute and half of it is Jack Clark running around the bases really really slowly.  

McGee was another favorite Cardinals player.  Not sure McGee really had a specific great moment in 1985, but he won the National League batting title and won the N.L. MVP.  Solid outfielder for a long time.  

Parrish was a nice player, but I did not really get to see him much until later in his career.  He had that cool catcher's mitt with the orange padding.  

Hernandez was not well liked in St. Louis at this point.  Things have kind of cooled off in recent years with Hernandez becoming eligible of the Cardinals Hall of Fame, and he speaks nicely about the team and his time there.  

Probably not enough time, or space to rehash the reasons the Cardinals dumped him, but you can go look up the Pittsburgh Drug Trials.  You get the idea.  

Nice group of cards here with two Hall of Famers and Dave Parker.  Miss those Expos cards.  Ripken is Ripken, nice player, but I really do not have an opinion on him one way or another. 

I really like the Parker card.  Wrigley Field always makes a nice background, feel like I type that once a month, but this is also how I best remember Parker, with the Reds.  He's not a Hall of Famer, but he's close.  I was pretty young during his Pirate years, still had some great seasons in Cincinnati.  

Three Hall of Famers in this group.  Last year for Carew, not quite the end for Schmidt, but still one of his last few years.  Brett was in his prime at this point.  

Last group of cards, which includes my favorite card in the set.  

First off, Pasqua was a pretty promising prospect for the Yankees.  He played 60 games in 1985 and hit 9 home runs, also a local player from New Jersey. 

Hesketh was probably more than a prospect in this set.  He pitched most of 1985 in Montreal ending the year with a 10-5 record, 2.49 ERA, and a 3.3 WAR.  His season, and in many ways career ended when he was involved in a collision at home plate against the Dodgers.  

From the August 24th, 1985 Washington Post:  

In the second inning with Montreal leading, 1-0, U.L. Washington singled and Hesketh walked. Tim Raines hit a double to shallow center off the glove of Candy Maldonado. Washington scored and Hesketh tried to score all the way from first. But catcher Mike Scioscia blocked the plate and Hesketh tripped over Scioscia's foot, landing hard on his left leg. He was carried off the field on a stretcher and taken to a hospital where it was determined that he fractured his left shin bone. Hesketh, a rookie left-hander, is 10-5.

Hesketh ended up playing almost a decade in the Majors with the Expos, Braves, and Red Sox, but never came close to repeating the success he had in 1985.  All of which brings me to the last card for this post, which belongs to Vince Coleman.  

I have written several different times in my blog space about my 9 year old self loving the 1986 Vince Coleman cards.  His 1986 Topps cards is my all-time personal favorite Vince Coleman card.  A major highlight of my collecting during the 1980s.  

The 1986 Topps Glossy Send-In cards represented my second best Vince Coleman card.  At least according to the nine year old version of me.  The Glossy Coleman card was part of the 42 cards that I started out with when I starting working on this project, but after looking over my copy of the card, I decided that it had received a little too much love.  So, I actually found 19 cards to close out this portion of my project with an upgraded Coleman card without rounded corners and finger prints on the glossy finish.  

In case you thought Vince Coleman was just some failed Mets free agent....

he was a pretty spectacular weapon for the Whitey Herzog era Cardinals who did a lot of running.  He put a lot of pressure on defenses.  If you have five minutes and enjoy great base running, there is a video of him creating his own run with nobody else on the National League putting the ball into play during the 1988 All-Star game.  

Set Update. Shall We?

Roughly a month ago, I posted a project that I was going to work on into the beginning of 2019 that was actually several different small sets, rather than one larger set.  The cards all come from the Topps Glossy Send Ins from the 1980s.  Although, the 1990 set is also included.  Most of the sets are more than 50% done.  Two are over 90%, which will be easy to finish.  However, they are not the first sets to get crossed off my list.

All forty cards from the 1983 set are sitting here on my desk.  I had to find 9 cards to finish this part of the project.  Shall we look at some cards?  Some are a little crooked, but I am tired after spending the day out with the little guy.  A little something about my favorite card in each of the groups of cards....

You'd think I would go with the Cardinals player, but I am going to go with Mookie Wilson.  He was one of the players missing when I started last month, I was honestly surprised that he was in set.  Mookie was always a good supporting player on the 1980s Mets teams, but never the star.  He was never an All-Star, little really stands out from the early years of his career outside of the fact that he stole 50 bases in both 1982 and 1983.

Plus, there really is a Cardinals connection here.

One of these people won a World Series with the Cardinals.  Mookie never played for the Cardinals.  

I like the Terry Kennedy card strictly based on the fact that there is a yellow and brown Padres uniform.  The other three players in this grouping are pretty big stars from this era.  The Schmidt card feels distorted to me.   Winfield and Young, do not have a ton of interest in my world.  Let's talk about Terry Kennedy.

Terry Kennedy was on the Cardinals for a very short time at the beginning of his career and was traded the Padres in exchange for Rollie Fingers and Gene Tenace.  Rollie Fingers never played a game for the Cardinals though.  Kennedy had a pretty solid career.

Love the card with Fernando Valenzuela wearing the batting helmet.  He seems like the kind of pitcher who would have a batting average under .100.  He had that screwball that gave people fits, but I would not classify him as an athletic type.   However, I learned something in making this post.  Fernando could actually hit.  During his career he won two Silver Slugger Awards and had a total of 10 career home runs.  Surprised, but good for Fernando.

Uh.  Pete Rose.  Not his best day.  This is supposed to be a Phillies card, but so much about this card looks like those Leaf cards that came out about five or six years ago where all of the logos were all blanked out.  He had been a Phillies a few years at this point, you would think that Topps could do better than a generic looking baseball equipment windbreaker.  

The end of Pete Rose's career was not really all that pretty.  Bad commercials.  He had a .286 slugging percentage in 1983, so there is that too.  Ivan DeJesus was the next lowest slugging percentage on the 1983 Phillies, but it was 50 points higher than Pete.  

I miss having Expos cards.  The Nationals are not quite the same.  Truth be told, I am not a huge fan of the players in this group, so that is about all I am typing for these four players.  I guess Carlton Fisk was alright as a White Sox.  

My most memorable Ray Knight moments all came while he was on the Mets.  He was somehow one of the "good guys" on those teams, which developed a bad reputation around players like Keith Hernandez, Dwight Gooden, and Strawberry.  

Ray Knight was a punk.  

None of those "bad" Mets players ever tried the garbage that Ray Knight pulled in the above video.

  

I like the Richie Zisk card in the group.  Not a Hall of Famer, but he had some great years for the Pirates, Rangers, and Mariners.  His last season as a Major Leaguer was in 1983.  He was only 34 at the time, but it was one of the few really below average years he had as a Major Leaguer.  Not sure what happened to him at the end of his career.  Maybe he was hurt, or maybe he just ran out of gas.  I like the Mariners uniform in this picture.  Good still shot of him at Yankee Stadium.  

Love the Dave Stieb card with the powder blue jersey.  Serious thought, now that the Hall of Fame bar has been drastically lowered by letting Jack Morris into the Hall of Fame, how long will it be until we get Dave Stieb into Cooperstown?  His numbers are better than Jack Morris, except he did not pitch in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series.  Dave Stieb also did not sexually harass a reporter.  

Bill Madlock won 4 batting titles by the way.  That's half the number of times that Nolan Ryan led the league in walks.  

Jack Clark.  Quite a look there.  The hat has sort of a wave going across the front of the brim and he has obviously never asked his barber to touch up his eyebrows.  He was on the Cardinals for a few years in the mid 1980s and had some great years.  

Love the Rickey Henderson picture in this group of cards.  He was always a great base stealer, but this was a period during his career where he was putting up huge numbers.  In 1982 he had set the single season record with 130 steals, and followed that up with 108 in 1983.  Highest two year stolen base total in the history of the game.  He still had a few more stolen base titles left in his legs at this point, but 1983 was the last season he cross 100 in his career.  

This is the last group of cards in this set and is a fabulous cross section of early 1980s coolness.  Rupert Jones with the yellow, brown and orange Padres jersey.  Eddie Murray is wearing a jacket underneath his uniform.  Bruce Sutter is wearing a powder blue road uniform with a rather unkempt looking beard.  Reggie Jackson is wearing metal rim sunglasses, not some fancy Oakley plastic types. 

This look would eventually land Reggie a memorable movie role next to Leslie Nielson and Ricardo Montalban.  

We have reached the end of this glossy set, but hopefully I can knock a few more of these Topps Glossy Send In sets out before the end of the year.  I will even try to make the scans a lot straighter.  

Current Cardinal, Former Cardinal, Bay Area Teams.

Just two random baseball cards for this evening.  Just clearing a few things off of my desk.  The Cardinals have had a quiet offseason compared to what the fan base was really hoping to see this winter.  The trade for Marcell Ozuna was nice, but seems to be the only splashy move the team is going to make in an effort to catch the Cubs.

The team also traded Stephen Piscotty, but that was because the outfield is really crowded and he has some things going on off the field that would be better dealt playing close to home with the A's.

Hope he does well with the A's next season.  

In the meantime, the trade gave me two new players to track down.  One of the players is Max Schrock, who is from Raleigh, and the other is Yairo Munoz.  I will do something with Schrock at some point, but Munoz actaully has some really nice cards floating around.  I picked up my first, a Bowman autograph, recently in a trade from a fellow collector.  

Munoz made it all the way up to Triple A last year with the A's and showed a little more pop in his bat than in he did in previous seasons in the lower Minors.  He had 13 home runs, 26 doubles, 4 triples, 68 RBIs, and 22 steals.  Not a great walk rate, but he's still just 22.  Really inexpensive card, good one to hold on to for awhile.  Let's hope he shows up at Busch Stadium sometime in the near future.  

Last card for tonight is a childhood favorite that I picked up in the same trade.  Just an interesting card that was sitting in someone's photo album.  Did not have to give up too much in trade for this Jack Clark autograph......

Always liked these Upper Deck Trilogy cards which were put out in 2005.  It's actually a sticker autograph, boo, but you can barely tell it's a sticker autograph when you scan the card.  Yes!  When you look at it in person it's clearly a sticker autograph.  Did I mention that this card didn't cost me very much in trade?  It lessened my Cubs cards if nothing else.  

This is actually my second Clark autograph out of this set.  I also have the version with the relic pieces on the bottom.  Tiny, tiny relics.  

This was several scanners ago thankfully.  This version of Clark's autograph is signed on card, which means it will probably remain my favorite Giants card of Jack Clark.  Overall, a pretty nice pair of cards for my Cardinals collection.  

Snarky Clark

I share my cards in this space and it has come down to this card for this evening.  I was waiting for a night when my dander was up a little bit to talk about Jack Clark: He's an ass. 

This analysis really comes from two different incidents during Clark's career as a baseball player and now as a radio host outside of St. Louis.  Let's starting with him as a player.  The Cardinals traded for Jack Clark before the 1985 season to be the token power hitter in the middle of Whitey Herzog's track team.  Clark played for the Cardinals for three seasons, but turned down the team's generous contract offer after the 1987 season to sign with the Yankees.  St. Louis fans were not happy, but the bumpy road was just beginning for Clark.  After leaving St. Louis he:

-signed with the Yankees, but demanded a trade to avoid playing for Lou Pinella

-was traded to the Padres and picked fights with Tony Gwynn, called out his manager, and basically called Padres fans the dumbest fans in all of baseball

-signed with the Red Sox after calling the American League boring.  In the words of Jack: "I hate that damn League" 

-as his career was winding down he declared bankruptcy in 1992 because he was paying on 18 different cars at once

The there was the radio incident.  Clark was working at a radio station in St. Louis with Kevin Slaten (also a piece of work-Google him) when he decided to talk a little bit about Albert Pujols, who had just signed with the Angels.  Clark said of Pujols "I know for a fact he was using PEDs."  Albert sued the radio station.  Albert sued Jack Clark.  Then Clark walked it back down and retracted his statement to avoid losing whatever money he still has left in life.  

So, after reading the beginning of my blog post, you might wonder why I would buy a Jack Clark autograph?  Let's look at the card first:

It's a 2013 Topps Archives card featuring Clark as a Cardinal, so obviously there is the whole Cardinals autograph thing going on here.  For as big of an idiot as Clark has been over the course of his playing career, and after his playing career, he really did make some great memories for Cardinals fans during his brief three year stay in the Lou.  Probably the best moment was when he was he hit the series clinching home run against the Dodgers in the 1985 National League Championship Series.  

So, while I am not really a fan of Jack Clark the person, Jack Clark the baseball player was a pretty good player.  He just should have put his foot in his mouth a few more times in his life. 

2005 Upper Deck Trilogy Signature Materials Jack Clark Bat/Jersey/Autograph

I am a huge fan of the 80s Cardinals, but can find collecting the majority of the players on the team a little bit tricky.  There are plenty of Ozzie Smith cards to go around, but there were few other star players on a team that made three World Series appearances during the decade.  Every once in awhile a new autograph of one of the key players turns up, like my Terry Pendleton autograph last week, but that is a rare occurrence.

2005 Upper Deck Trilogy Jack Clark Bat/Jersey/Autograph

Often when I do find good players from the 1980s Cardinals teams they aren't pictured in a Cardinals uniform.  Players like Terry Pendleton, Jose Oquendo, Andy Van Slyke, Keith Hernandez, Vince Coleman, and Willie McGee all have autographed cards in a Cardinals uniform their signatures are often more commonly found on another team.  Some players like George Hendrick and Tony Pena played important roles on 80s Cardinals teams, but don't appear in a Cardinals uniform on a certified autograph.  

Jack Clark played on the Cardinals for three seasons between 1985 and 1987.  He was the only real home run threat on the team those years and performed well during the 1985 and 1987 seasons.  Clark was injured for much of the 1986 season.  His most important moment as a Cardinal came during the 1985 National League Championship Series when he hit this series clinching home run against the Dodgers.  

Clark left the Cardinals for the Yankees after the 1987 season and did not leave on great terms.  He's moved back into the St. Louis area after his playing career and mended the fences around town.  I enjoy picking up Clark cards and am often on the look out for them regardless of what uniform he's wearing on the card.  I really liked the looks of this card and was actually trying to scout out a Tim Raines version of this card when I stumbled upon this for dirt cheap.  I couldn't pass up an on-card autograph of the former Cardinals slugger.  It's hard to tell from the scan, but the background behind Clark is actually translucent.  Really cool card.