Weekend Countdown: Top 10 Bowman Cardinals Cards

It's Bowman season.  People spending hundreds of dollars for cards of players in the Florida State League.  Here are the rules for this week:

• Bowman cards include the old Bowman cards too, not just the ones from the 1990s and 2000s

• There are only Bowman cards in this post.  Not Bowman Chrome, Heritage, Draft, or even autographs.  

• The cards in the list have to show the player in a Cardinals uniform. The Scott Rolen Bowman rookie is a sweet card, but he's in a Phillies uniform.  

• These are my favorite Bowman cards based on baseball cards, not playing career.  

Count it down.  

10. 1994 Bowman Dmitri Young 

Bowman was a prospect heavy set at this point, and Dmitri Young was the prospect of all Cardinals prospects back in the day.  I guess if I touched the Oscar Taveras card, he probably surpassed the hype of Dmitri Young.  Maybe.  

9. 2012 Bowman Carlos Martinez 

Carlos was a big deal as a Minor Leaguer, but also a perfect example of how out of hand people get with the Bowman comparisons.  I believe that Pedro Martinez was the name that was frequently thrown around when C-Mart was coming up through the Minors.  He's not Pedro Martinez, just a really good pitcher.  Who spent more than $100 on a Carlos Martinez Bowman card?  (I know people did).  

8. 1951 Bowman Marty Marion 

Remember when I used to get the Bowman Draft sets and pick on all the airbrushing?  This Marty Marion card is from a great set, but the picture on my copy has always bothered me.  It looks grainy and pixelated, sort of like a Bowman Draft card.  I know cleaner copies have better pictures, but I got this dirt cheap at a card show complete with staple holes at the top.  Still love the card.  

7. 2009 Bowman David Freese 

If we put David Freese's first Bowman card on a different design, I would probably rank it higher, but I really am not a fan of the 2009 Bowman set.  The giant box with the facsimile signature on it is way too big.  

6. 1990 Bowman Ray Lankford 

Personal bias, plus the rainbow borders on these look sweet.  

5 . 2004 Bowman Yadier Molina 

Flies under the radar a bit as a good Bowman card.  Obviously a card that may not touch some of the other cards on the list in terms of style, but Yadi turned out to be a good player.  What 70 something number do you think he is wearing in this picture?  Got to be Spring Training.  

4. 1951 Bowman Enos Slaughter 

Love the picture on the card, even if it is crinkled on my copy.  The dark background looks good, sort of like an Olan Mills photo.  

3. 1955 Bowman Tommy Alston 

Alston was the first African-American player on the Cardinals.  Always felt like this was sort of an iconic Cardinals card.  The 1955 Bowman set has always been distinct with the television design, like that Alston got a baseball card right away too.  Also a North Carolina guy from Greensboro.  

2. 2001 Bowman Albert Pujols 

The best modern Bowman Cardinals card, and the best right handed player in the history of the team.  

1. 1948 Bowman Stan Musial 

The best vintage Bowman Cardinals card, and the best left handed player in the history of the team.  

I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 50- 1992 Pacifc Cardinals 100th Anniversary Set

I am actually going to split this 1992 Cardinals 100th Anniversary set and make it two different posts.  Just a little primer.  The Cardinals issued a set of cards with Pacific that were sold at area McDonald's restaurants during that summer.  I believe the packs might have been a dollar, roughly in line with the cost of Upper Deck at the time, and can still be found around today.  The entire set is only 55 cards with a definite slant towards the modern players.

Just flipping through the cards is a little like the scene in The Wizard of Oz after the house lands in Oz and Dorthy walks out the front door into a world of color.

The first twenty cards are black and white.  The twenty-first card is Red Schoendienst, every card after with the exception of Enos Slaughter is in color.  Not sure why Pacific did not find a color photograph of Slaughter, or just move his card up in the set.  Small things.  

This is the front design of the card.  

and the back of the card.....

I like how the stats are split between the Cardinals and their career numbers.  Gives you a good idea about how much they actually played with the team.  There are players in the set who are truly great players from their time with the Cardinals, like Musial who played his entire career with the Cardinals.  Other players are in for short term contributions to really good teams.  

For example.....

 

Grover Cleveland Alexander appears in the set, but he only played on the Cardinals during the last four years of his career.  He spent 9 years with the Cubs and 8 years with the Phillies.  During his 8 years with the Phillies he won 190 games.  Do the math.  He won 30 games three years in row. No, he didn't start every other game, more like a four man rotation.  

Alexander's Cardinal heroics took place in the 1926 World Series where he helped the team win its first World Series title against a heavily favored Yankees team.  He led the Cardinals get back to the World Series again in 1928, although the Yankees got the better of things that year and took home the pennant.  

I wasn't around for the 1926 World Series, but his pitching must have been pretty impressive since it's half of his Hall of Fame plaque.  

I guess all of that is a good reason to give him a card in this set too.  

So, I am going to file the Alexander and Bottomley cards as background on the set and post a few other cards from the black and white section of the Cardinals 100th Anniversary set.  Next week, a few of the modern players.  

First, I am going with Dizzy Dean.  He was the pitching star of the Gashouse Gang teams in the 1930s, which won the 1934 World Series against the Tigers.  Dean is in the Hall of Fame, his number is retired by the Cardinals, and won the 1934 National League MVP.  He seems like he should be a big deal, but his career was actually really short.  In all, he pitched in 12 different season, but only six of them were full seasons.  

Still better than Jack Morris.  

He ended up going into broadcasting.  He was on the air for awhile, but he butchered the English language while speaking.  Poet Ogden Nash once included Dean in a poem about his favorite baseball players and gave a nod to his poor grammar:

From "Line-Up For Yesterday"

D is for Dean

The grammatical Diz,

When they asked, Who's the tops?

Said correctly, I is

Next.  

Hornsby was the first superstar player for the Cardinals.  He led the National League in batting seven different times and took home the 1925 MVP Award.  He played on the 1926 Cardinals team which captured the franchise's first World Series pennant.  It just so happened that he also was the manager of the 1926 Cardinals.  

I am almost certain that the picture on this card is some sort of arranged photo.  It's at least really odd that he is catching a baseball in front of another baseball game in the background if it's not a staged photgraph.  I am not sure about the photo stylings of the 1920s and 1930s though. 

The Big Cat played his first few season with the Cardinals, but ended up on the Giants and Yankees after returning home from World War 2.  When I was a kid my parents bought us a VCR when we moved to St. Louis, somewhere in the 1984 or 1985 range.  One of the movies we owned was a history of the Cardinals, which briefly mentioned Mize as the holder of the Cardinals single season home run record with 43.  Seemed pretty important and stuck out in my mind, because in the mid 1980s it was unimaginable that any Cardinals player was ever going to hit that many again.  

Interestingly, he's still in the top 10, sixth, on the single season home run leaders for the franchise.  The five seasons that have past his 43 home runs all belong to either Mark McGwire or Albert Pujols.  

Big Mac passed the Big Cat in July of 1998 to break the franchise record.  

McGwire's 1998 season is now obviously the new record.  Doubtful that anyone breaks it.  

I like this card because of the picture.  Choking up quite a bit there.  Huggins played in the aughts and teens for the Cardinals and Reds.  Love the Cardinals logo on the sleeve of his jersey too.  Jon Hamm, actor and Cardinals fan, frequently gets on television while wearing Cardinals hats.  This older Cardinals logo frequently appears.....

Much more important as a manager.  He worked as the Cardinals skipper for a few seasons before moving on to the Yankees where he won three pennants and coached some guys named Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth.  

Two more.  

Another Gashouse Gang player.  He spent most of his career with the Giants, but ended up on the Cardinals at the end of his career as a player/manager.  Later, he became a member of the Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee where he elected a bunch of his friends to the Hall of Fame.  Bill James has written a few different pieces on the damage that Frisch did to the Hall.  Many of the friends do not belong.  For example, Chick Hafey long time Cardinals and Reds outfielder was put into the Hall by the Veterans Committee under Frisch, but his WAR and Peak7 WAR are in line with Greg Vaughn and B.J. Surhoff.  

Last one.  

Marty Marion was a defensive whiz in the 1940s.  He played on three different World Series teams with the Cardinals in 1942, 1944, and 1946.  He actually won the 1944 National League MVP in 1944.  His offensive numbers were not that great, not to mention that Stan Musial hit .347 that season.  Kind of cool that a defense first player won an MVP award.  Sure people today would flip out.  If there had been Gold Gloves in the 1940s, he likely would have had a few.  

Looking at the stadium in the background, this has to be a Spring Training photo.  Maybe the 1940s version of photo day.  More of these cards next week.  

Friday Five: Top 5 Cardinals Shortstops

5.  Rogers Hornsby

Hornsby appeared on the second base list too and most Cardinals fans associate Rajah with that position, but he actually started his Cardinals career as a shortstop appearing in games there in 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, and 1919.  He was the team's primary shortstop during the 1917 and 1918 seasons.  Overall he played almost 400 career games, almost all of them early in his career at short.  Hornsby's first few seasons in the bigs were not his best years, but they certainly make him apart of this list.  In 1917 he hit .327/.385/.484 with a National League leading OPS+ of 169.  Hornsby also lead the NL with 19 triples that season.  The following season, in 1918, Hornsby had one of his worst offensive seasons of his career when he only hit .281/.349/.416 with 5 homers, 11 triples, 19 doubles, and an OPS+ of only 137.  That OPS+ number would have been the team high on the 2014 Cardinals.  Hornsby spent only 37 games at short in 1919 and would never play the position with any regularity beyond that year.  While his stay at shortstop was brief, Hornsby certainly made his mark while playing the position.

4. Marty Marion

Marion played shortstop for 13 years in the Majors, all of them were as a Cardinal.  During those 13 years the man dubbed "The Octopus" would help the Cardinals win the 1942, 1944, and 1946 World Series pennants mainly through his contributions as a defensive whiz in the middle infield.  His final offensive numbers were .263/.323/.345 with only 36 career home runs.  His defensive numbers are much more impressive.  Between 1941 and 1949 he finished either 1st or 2nd in the National League in dWAR.  His worst career dWAR occurred in 1950 when he only finished 6th.  Overall he his 16th all-time in the stats ranking.  Although he is behind several shortstops in career dWAR Marion had a much shorter career than almost all of them.  For example, Omar Vizquel has a career dWAR of 28.5, compared to 25.0 for Marion, but played 11 more seasons.  Marion lead the National League shortstops several times in both putouts and assists and ranks just inside the top 50 for putouts all-time and just outside the top 50 for assists.

3.  Garry Templeton

Templeton was the Cardinals everyday shortstop from the middle of the 1976 season through the end of the 1981 season when he was traded by Cardinals General Manager Whitey Herzog to the San Diego Padres for Ozzie Smith.  At the time of the trade, most baseball folks and Cardinals fans thought that Herzog was just dumping Templeton off the team.  Yes, the Mother's Day thing....While Garry was a Cardinal he was a very good shortstop making 2 National League All-Star teams, leading the league in triples three times, and in hits in 1979.  Templeton, a switch hitter, posted a .305/.325/.418 line during his six seasons for the Cardinals.  His 1979 season was probably his best year when he went .314/.331/.458 with 9 home runs, 19 triples, 32 doubles, 26 steals, and again lead the National League in hits with 211.  Templeton became the first switch hitter in baseball history to collect 200 hits with at least 100 hits from each side of the plate.  Willie Wilson match the feat in 1980 for the Royals.  People might have called him Garry Tempertantrum in St Louis, but he could hit.

2.  Edgar Renteria 

Edgar had a few big moments during his career that helped teams win World Series trophies.  Unfortunately none of those moments happened while playing for the Cardinals.  Still Edgar's best year's were probably spent in St. Louis.  The Cardinals traded for the 22 year old shortstop following the 1998 season.  Renter would spend six years playing shortstop for the Cardinals before leaving to play for the Red Sox in 2005.  During his six years in St. Louis Edgar posted a .290/.347/420 mark with 71 home runs, 207 doubles, and 148 stolen bases.  As a 90s Cardinals guy it's really easy to over look Edgar's contributions to the team, but with second base serving as a revolving door for the last decade, Renteria solidified the middle infield for some good Cardinals playoff teams.  His best year as a Cardinal was 2003 when he hit .330/.394/.480 with 13 home runs, 47 doubles, 34 steals, and won both a Gold Glove and a Silver Slugger.  It's hard to get the final out of the 2004 World Series out of my head sometimes, but Edgar was a really good player and the Cardinals got almost all of his prime years.

1.  Ozzie Smith 

One of the real no brainers on these lists that I have been making the past couple of weeks.  the Cardinals traded for Ozzie Smith after the 1981 season and he immediately helped the team win the 1982 World Series against the Brewers.  During his 15 year career in St. Louis The Wizard of Oz helped the team to two other National League pennants and was also part of the 1996 team which made it to the National League Championship Series against the Braves.  In many ways Ozzie's career reminds me a lot of Yadier Molina.  Both players started their careers as defense first impact players.  Both players became offensively skilled players later in their careers.  Ozzie had a .231/.295/.278 line for the Padres during his four years in San Diego.  His first few seasons in St. Louis were slightly better, but starting in the mid 80s Ozzie started to crank up his production.  He ended his career with almost 2500 hits, 400 doubles, and 580 stolen bases.  The Wizard also won 13 Gold Gloves and is the career leader in all sorts of defensive statistics.  dWAR, assists, and Total Run Zone just to name a few.  He left as the career leader in double plays turned too, but Omar Vizquel and his five extra seasons passed Ozzie by at some point.  JAWS rates Ozzie Smith as the 8th best shortstop of all-time just behind Ernie Banks, but ahead of Alan Trammell, Derek Jeter, and Barry Larkin.  We can't have a post about Ozzie's awesomeness without a video of a diving catch, or this...