I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 58 - Fernando Tatis

The Cardinals picked up third baseman Fernando Tatis from the Rangers in July of 1998 in exchange for shortstop Royce Clayton and pitcher Todd Stottlemyre.  The team was not in contention and the Tatis was seen as a possible replacement for the aging Gary Gaetti, who was not playing well, and ended up getting released by the team later on in the summer.  Fernando Tatis ended up playing 55 games for the Cardinals during the second half of the year and had a .287/.367/.505 line with 8 home runs, 16 doubles, and 26 RBIs.  

Tatis had one Cardinals card during the fall of 1998.....  

which appeared in the Fleer Update set.  Actually a nice card showing him wearing a St. Louis Stars throwback jersey the team wore during for a game that summer.  Tatis had some sweet dyed blonde hair when he first got traded to St. Louis, but it would not show up on any cards until the 1999 releases.  

Many of his Topps cards had the blonde hair.  I really like the picture that Topps used on his base and Chrome cards.  Always nice to get a shot of a player interacting with the crowd.  Some of the other Topps products used recycled pictures, but that seemed to be common across the board with Tatis during the summer of 1999.  

For example, this is his 1999 Fleer card......

Looks familiar.  

Tatis's most notable on the field accomplishment took place in 1999, which probably helped push him into a few more baseball card products.  His feat was rather unique....

Tatis also started showing up in autograph sets as a Cardinal during the summer of 1999.  He had always been a good signer as a Ranger, which also continued during his time in St. Louis.  I am pretty sure that his first autograph as a Cardinal showed up in the 1999 SP Signature set.  

He also appeared in the Skybox Autographic set.  While in subsequent years the Autographics set was cross product, in 1999 all of these cards were in the Skybox Premium product.  

Actually a nice product for Cardinals collectors with several different players appearing in this set with autographs including J.D. Drew, Ray Lankford, and Joe McEwing.  McEwing was pretty hot at the time, not so much now.  

Tatis had a great year on the field during 1999 beyond the two grand slams in one inning.  He hit .297/.404/.553 with 34 home runs, 31 doubles, and 107 RBIs.  Tatis also had 21 stolen bases.  Pretty solid effort.  

Fernando had some pretty good cards in 2000.  My favorite base card was his 2000 Fleer.  One of my favorite sets of the year.  Love this design which is basically the same as the 1954 Topps set.  The whole retro set idea is pretty popular these days, would like to think that this set along with some of the Upper Deck Vintage cards might have started that trend.  

Fernando also had a few autographs during the summer of 2000.  Two of my favorites....

are his Topps autograph.  He also had a nice autograph in the Pacific Revolution set.....

although he's in about a dozen other autograph sets from that summer.  Plenty of choices.  Unfortunately, Tatis had some injury problems during the summer of 2000 and had trouble duplicating his performance from 1999.  He was traded in the offseason to the Expos for pitching help in the way of Dustin Hermanson and Steve Kline.  

One of his final cards in a Cardinals uniform appeared in the iconic 2001 Topps Heritage set.  

Tatis went on to play three years with the Expos before he disappeared for awhile.  He tried a comeback with the Devil Rays, but did not make the team out of Spring Training.  In 2006, he ended up making the Orioles where he appeared for a handful of games.  Eventually, he would end up making the Mets in 2008.  Tatis would play three years in New York before retiring for good.  

He still shows up in baseball card sets, especially as an autograph signer.  Two years ago, he appeared in the Topps Archives set as a Cardinal.  Very nice card, had to pick one of them up....

While he was only on the Cardinals for a short time, he is still a pretty popular player with Cardinals fans who were around to watch the team during the 1990s.  Amazing what hitting two Grand Slams in an inning will do for a player.  

The Coolness of Pacific Autographs

Over the past few years of blogging I have heaped plenty of love on Pacific Trading Cards.  If you collected baseball cards in the 90s it was hard not to love the flashy and innovative card producer.  Over the last three years I have written pieces about die their die cuts cards:

I have done pieces about how cool their checklists were:

and those other cool cards that were just special to Pacific like the dugout net card:

However, I amazed to find that I had never done a write up on any Pacific autographs.  I was shocked.  Back in the day I really loved Pacific autographs and had dozens of them in my collection.  They are still there, but they are just 15-16 years old now.  The Pacific autographs have aged great and look better than many of the autographs that companies like Topps and Panini are cranking out now.  What made them great?  Let me show off an old card from the autograph box:

This card is just awesome.  On card signature, die cut, cool design, and a great player.  This was the world of Pacific autographs back in the day.  There are numerous sets that Pacific cracked out in the late 90s and early 2000s that gave us cool cards like this Sheffield autograph out of the 2000 Pacific Omega set and again, this card is cool than 3/4 of the new autographs that are floating around on the market from new releases.

I also really like the Crowne Royale autographs which were also a 2000 calendar year release:

Again, this card has all of the same appealing characteristics of the Sheffield card above: on card signature, die cut, cool design, and really cool player.  Not to say that all Pacific autographs are All-Star caliber or die cuts, but there is a lot of love here in the making of this card.

The best part of collecting Pacific autographs is the fact that there are still tons of them floating around on Ebay and COMC and they are all pretty affordable.  Ebay currently has more than 200 Pacific autographs up on their site and COMC has almost 50.  There are some great looking cards in the lot ranging from an on-card Chipper Jones autograph for just over $30 to autographs of late 90s prospect legend Travis "Gookie" Dawkins for around $2.

I recently landed a brand new Pacific autograph as a throw in for a trade I completed on Facebook.  I love throw-ins, but found this card really cool......

Not a die cut, but this was a really cool and innovative set for the time from the Pacific Revolution set.  The card actually features a piece of game used ball (slightly blah), but they are signed by a Major League player.  It's not quite the Upper Deck Sweet Spot set, but it came out about a year and a half before the popular Upper Deck product first hit the shelves during the summer of 2001.  Loads of great names in this set too from Greg Maddux, Barry Bonds, and ARod to players like Shane Reynolds.  While this autograph was a throw-in, and might be one of the worst autographs in the set, the card features a guy who won 35 games in the two years leading up to the release of this product.

I probably should sit down and do a bigger post on Pacific autographs, but this should give you a good idea about the basics.  If you're an autograph collector and looking for a good, fun, collecting challenge, putting together one of these Pacific sets would be a lot of fun.