Random Ray - 1990 Topps TV

At some point during the summer of 1990, Topps apparently sold cards via television commercials. My parents did not buy stuff off of television, so it probably did not matter that I never saw an advertisement for the Topps TV team sets. The commercials were only aired in a few select markets, as Topps only produced a set for the Cardinals, Cubs, Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, and the All-Star teams. 

I will not subject you to watch commercials from Topps, but lets just say they were not very appealing. 

Maybe I did see one, but I just do not remember it.  

It's a definite possibility. I am not sure that Topps truly appreciated the strong commercial competition in the St. Louis television market of my younger years. There were some great commercials that could have easily had national appeal.   

My favorites include.....

Dirt Cheap Liquor. They had a chicken in a bathing suit who used catch-phrase, "cheap, cheap, fun, fun" scattered in throughout the commercial. There was also a man in the ads (Fred) who added in lines like, "The more she drinks, the better you look" and "we are the home of the persecuted smoker".

There was also Becky Queen of Carpet and Wanda Princess of Tile. I do not remember the name of the store, but you knew you were going to get some per square foot prices on carpet and tile when these two came flying through the legs of the arch.

I am leaving off others, but the lineup of local St. Louis television commercials in the 1980s and 1990s is really deep and strong. 

Back to baseball cards.  

I found the 1990 Topps TV cards later in life and they are really nice cards for the time. They had a glossy finish and the checklist for the different team sets included the full Major League roster, along with a healthy number of prospects, and also the coaching staff.  The prospect and coach cards were a rarity for the time.  

Ray Lankford has a few 1990 cards, but he also made his Major League debut in late August just before the team traded away Willie McGee to the A's. He was likely on the 40-man roster throughout the season, so it is not all that surprising he snuck into a few different products. Willie McGee also appears in the set, so it is likely that Ray Lankford was originally included in the set as a prospect. In fact, many of the post-Whiteyball starters are included as prosepcts, scattered throughout with pictures from Spring Training. 

Beyond Lankford, the other young Cardinals players in the Topps TV set include Bernard Gilkey, Geronimo Pena, Todd Zeile, and Ken Hill. 

Here is the front of the Lankford card.  

I do not have a copy of the 1990 Cardinals media guide, but I bet you an Imos Pizza that Ray Lankford's entry has a cropped version of this photograph. This feels like a photo that was taken in 10 seconds while he was walking out to workout in Spring Training.  

Back of the card. 

Repeating the photo, but using it as the background behind the player stats is not working for me here. I would say that we should get a different picture than the front of the card, but I bet Topps did not have one for some of the younger players. 

The card number is also really strange. If they had put the 53 outside the yellow box it would look better, or they could have dropped the Topps logo and the phrase "in a series of 66" and been fine too. Not the best results for Topps, but they had a solid plan.  

I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 40 - Ernie Camacho

I actually ran across an article last month about Ernie Camacho last month on Twitter and decided he would be sort of a cool player to feature on an upcoming 1990s Cardinals post.  He only pitched 6 games for the team in 1990, but if you collected baseball cards during the 1980s, there is a good chance that you will at least remember the face.  No matter the year, he always had those same silver rimmed glasses and 1980s mustache. 

Ernie seems like a good guy.  His career was not long, he did not earn a ton of money, but he has managed to be a pretty productive person outside of baseball.  He has spent time working as a maintenance man at a school district in his hometown of Salinas, California, raises money for Alzheimer's disease, and has an educational foundation which helps run baseball camps and gives out scholarships for kids to help pay for college.  

Which brings me to Ernie Camacho the baseball player.  He was drafted by the A's in 1976 and was in Oakland by the end of the 1980 season.  He was traded around his first few seasons in the Majors going from the A's to the Pirates, the Pirates to the White Sox, was released by the White Sox and signed by the Brewers, who then traded him to the Indians in June of 1983.  If you are doing the math that's 5 teams between the end of 1980 and the middle of 1983.  

Cleveland stashed him away in Triple A for the majority of 1983, but he was given the closers job in 1984.  Camacho led the Indians with 23 saves and posted a 170 ERA+ and 3.5 WAR as a relief pitcher.  How good is that?  The 3.5 WAR are in line with a lot of Mariano Rivera's seasons and it would have been good enough to be one of Trevor Hoffman's better seasons too.  

He didn't make the All-Star Game and did not receive a single Cy Young vote that year.  Kind of a shame.  

Camacho had some arm injuries which limited in 1985, bounced back for another 20 save season in 1986, but was never the same after that season.  He pitched in Cleveland until the end of the 1987 season, joined the Astros in 1988, the Giants in 1989 and start of the 1990 season, and finally the Cardinals.  In all of the stops, he never pitched more than a few games with each of the teams.  

Clearly, that 1984 season bought him several other chances to play.  

The Cardinals signed Ernie Camacho on July 2nd, 1990.  The Cardinals were in last place at that point in the season and manager Whitey Herzog had already quit his job.  He was placed with the Triple A Louisville Redbirds for a stint before they team called him up with expanded rosters in September.  

September of 1990 was a brutal month for the Cardinals.  The team went 10-18 and they effectively had parted ways with several of the 1980s Whiteyball Era players who were on the roster, but did not leave the bench for long stretches of time.  Terry Pendleton had 6 at bats after the first week of September and Vince Coleman played in one game after the second week of September.  Camacho appeared in 6 games from mid-September through early October.  He gave up runs in four of the six appearances, but also did not figure in the decision for any of the games.  

His last Major League game pitched was the final game of the 1990 season for the Cardinals.  In fact, he closed out the game, which was a 9-2 loss to the Expos.  The Cardinals were actually winning the game 2-1 in the 7th inning when the Expos batted around on Ken Hill and Ken Dayley, scoring 7 runs.  The final Expo run came in the 8th inning on a home run off of Camacho by catcher Nelson Santovenia.  In better news, the last pitch that Camacho threw in a Major League uniform struck out Hall of Famer Tim Raines.  

Camacho also managed to squeeze a baseball card out of his 6 appearances with the Cardinals.  

This card is airbrushed, not originally a Cardinals picture.  Amazing sometimes the details that people miss while they are trying to change baseball cards.  Sure, the shoulders look really goofy, which is the first thing that tells you that the card might be airbrushed, but check out his shoes.  Those black and orange cleats in the background are pretty sloppy.  Make the Nike swoosh white and it would be passable, maybe it is hard to black shoes airbrushed into red shoes.  I will say that the astroturf and blue wall actually make the card look like the photo was taken in Busch Stadium.  Maybe that is airbrushed too, maybe it's not.   

Back of the card.  

and the stats on the back.  Not the prettiest card style wise.  I have posted a few other cards from this set in past 1990s sets.  It comes from the 1990 Topps TV set, which was an order by phone set that Topps put out.  The design is very 1990s, but the checklist is pretty solid.  It has all of the regular players you would expect to see, but it also has a good number of minor league players and players who just passed through town for a short time.  

I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 31 - Terry Francona

It's hard to believe, I know, but Terry Francona was on the Cardinals during the 1990s as a player.  This post has nothing to do with coaching, or managing until the very end.  There is even a baseball card to prove that he was a Cardinal.  

During his playing career, Terry Francona was a first baseman/outfielder for several different teams, probably best remembered as an Expo.  He made his debut with Montreal mid way through 1981, and the team thought enough of him as a player that they shifted Tim Raines to second base.  During the first part of the 1982 season he was batting .321, but his season ended when he tore up his knee catching a fly ball on the warning track at Busch Stadium.

Not his only connection to the Cardinals as a player.  

As a kid who collected baseball cards in the 1980s, Terry Francona appeared in sets all the time.  Back in the day even fourth outfield, utility types still got baseball cards.  They still do today, but just not as often.  After tearing up his knee, Francona spent most of the next decade sitting on the bench, pinch hitting, giving players a breather from time to time.  

After the Expos dumped him in 1985, he bounced around to a bunch of different teams.  There was a year in Chicago.....

a season as a Red, another with the Indians, before he reached the Brewers.  A cursory glance at his baseball card stats show that the 1989 season in Milwaukee, appears to be his last.  He actually also showed up for a few games with the Brewers in 1990 before he was released.  

He actually signed with the Cardinals after the Brewers released him a few weeks into the 1990 season, but he never actually appeared in a game with the Major League team.  For whatever reason, it did not stop Topps from making one 1990 card with Francona in a Cardinals uniform.  His entire 1990 season was spent with the Louisville Redbirds after the Cardinals signed him.  He was never added to the 40 man roster, managing only a .263 average with the Triple A team.  Not surprisingly, Francona does have a Redbirds card......

I do not actually own a copy of the Francona card with Louisville, so I am borrowing one.  I will put it back when I am done.  

Again, I really have no idea why he got a Topps card that year, but here is the card.....

It's from the 1990 Topps TV set.  Before last week, I only had single cards from the set.  I actually finally got around to getting the entire sealed product, which Topps sold through ads on television.  Hence the set name Topps TV.  Why didn't I get the whole set before last week?  I am 100% certain that my parents would not let me buy stuff off of a TV ad in 1990. 

I am leaving my complete set sealed, but the checklist is on the outside of the box.  Pretty incredible list of players.  I am not sure that the current rules by which the card manufacturers play would permit them to make a set with almost 70 players in Major League uniforms.  I do not remember all of the rules that Topps has to follow with Minor Leaguers, but I know that they exist.  

The back of the Francona card.....

which ends at 1989 with the Brewers.  His 86 games in 1990 with Louisville were the end of his playing career, but he would end up latching with the White Sox as a minor league manager.  He worked his way up through their system, coached Michael Jordan while he was in Double A, and then ended up in the Majors as a third base coach for Tigers in 1996.  Francona managed the Phillies from 1997 through 2000, did a little coach for a few teams, before landing a gig with the Boston Red Sox.  

Heard he had a pretty good run.  

Francona has two World Series rings.  As a Cardinals fan, not touching the other one.  

I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 8- Whitey Herzog

It will take a few of these posts to show the pattern, but 1990 was a real turning point for the Cardinals franchise.  Not in a good way.  The 1980s Cardinals were headlined by players like Ozzie Smith, Vince Coleman, and Willie McGee.  The players on the team possessed some sort of combination of speed and defense.  They mixed in other position players like Jack Clark, Tom Herr, and Terry Pendleton to add a little pop to the line up.  The pitchers generally pitched to contact and let the fielders take care of the outs.  

Doubtful that you'd see anything like this in today's baseball.  

The leader of the Cardinals throughout the 1980s was Whitey Herzog.  All tolled the Cardinals won a World Series in 1982 and National League Championships in 1985 and 1987.  The last Cardinals team of the 1980s finished in third place in 1989 behind the Cubs and Expos.  The team entered 1990 with several important players approaching free agency.  

There were four really important ones: Pendleton, McGee, Coleman, and John Tudor.  

The season was a complete disaster.  Willie McGee won the National League batting title.  Vince Coleman led the National League in stolen bases and broke the consecutive successful steals record.  That was about the only good.  

After 80 games the Cardinals were 33-47 and Whitey Herzog quit as the manager of the Cardinals.  The team ultimately ended up with Joe Torre as the manager and the roster was turned over to young players like Todd Zeile, Ray Lankford, and Geronimo Pena.  

There aren't a ton of manager cards, but throw in the fact that Herzog quit in the middle of the season and there are only two 1990s mainstream Whitey Herzog baseball cards.  He showed in things like the 1993 Cardinals Pacific 100th Anniversary Set, but that might be about it.  Not so many cards to share this week.  

First up is his base 1990 Topps card.  

Certainly not the most flattering card of the White Rat.  What is going on here?  Is he yawning?  Is he yelling at someone?  Is he looking at Terry Pendleton's .277 on base percentage?  Perhaps if the good people at Topps had known this was going to be his last base card they would have done a little bit better job.  Maybe. 

His other 1990 card is actually nice.  

This is a 1990 Topps TV card.  I have seen them around here and there.  They were originally sold through television ads in 1990.  Apparently my parents let me buy baseball cards at the Manchester, Missouri Dierbergs and the Ben Franklin in Webster Groves, but no cards off of television.  There were 6 different sets.  One of them was an All-Star set and the other five were team sets: Mets, Yankees, Cubs, Red Sox, and Cardinals.  

The best part about the team sets were the fact that they were giant.  The coaching staff got cards, 24 man roster got cards, and there were also a ton of minor leaguers in the set as well.  By far my favorite of the two Herzog cards from 1990.  

A song from 1990 on my IPod.