Whiteyball, Moneyball, and Matt Adams.

Topps Archives came out a few weeks back.  

The base cards that are in Archives, I don't actually collect them, but I do appreciate the autographs.  

I bought a few. 

First up, the White Rat.  

I was surprised to see his name appear on the checklist and even more surprised that his signature is still this nice at 90 years old. I am half his age, I get paid to write in front of people, and my signature is not this nice.  

I like the black and white photo on the left side of the card.  That's pretty sweet with the satin jacket and sunglasses.  

While we are here, Topps did a really good job with the back of this card. Nice run down on Herzog's career as the Cardinals manager. Definitely better than the standard "CONGRATULATIONS!" 

Although, there is nothing here about Garry Templeton giving the crowd at Busch Stadium the double bird and getting traded to the Padres for Ozzie Smith. That was a definite highlight.  

Very nice addition to collection.  

Next up is Carlos Pena. He is the Rays, or Devil Rays, all-time home run leader. 

I am not sure what has happened to his autograph over the years, but it has really gone down hill.  

You can't play him at first tonight, because he's been traded to Detroit. Carlos Pena had a .346 on-base percentage, but where are the Scott Hatteberg cards?  

I think Scott Hatteberg was actually in Topps Archives in the past year or two.  I'm killing this blog post with reference to baseball movies that aren't Bull Durham.  

Last up is Cardinals rookie Juan Yepez.  

I have high hopes for Yepez in the coming years for the Cardinals. 

The guy can hit.

I also like that he made the Majors after being traded to the Cardinals from the Braves for Matt Adams. At the time of the trade, Yepez was in A-Ball and not considered much of a prospect. Five years later, Yepez is playing in the Majors and Matt Adams is doing something that's not playing baseball.  

 

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.  

Friday Five: Five Coolest Baseball Games I Have Seen In Person

It's been a long time since I have made one of these Friday Five posts.  I should make this a regular thing again.  I know there were several regular readers who used to really like these, so to reward your patience I am going to double the normal five and go with ten for this week.  Really, I came up with five games, then had an honorable mention or two.  That quickly ballooned into another five games.  The Friday Ten just sounds terrible though.  Here's the list.


10.  July 22, 1986 San Francisco Giants vs. St. Louis Cardinals 

A lot of Cardinals fans will tell you that the Gold Standard for baseball brawls was the Cardinals and Reds from 2010 with Brandon Phillips and Yadier Molina.  Maybe an older fan will tell you it's the time Will Clark tried to take out Jose Oquendo and it ended up in a huge fight between the two and Ozzie Smith.  They're all wrong.   I went to a baseball game once for my mother's birthday and this happened.....

The video quality is not great, but this whole thing was basically set off by Whitey Herzog and Roger Craig, the two managers of the teams.  You know it's good when the St. Louis Police get involved, Mike Heath has to restrain Vince Coleman by carrying him off the field, and fans throwing beer at Chris Brown.  It appears that Tito Landrum might have been some sort of peace maker throughout.

9. April 14, 2006 Toledo Mud Hens vs. Durham Bulls 

My first Opening Day in Durham had a pretty memorable finish.  The Bulls were losing for the entire game including a 4-1 deficit entering the ninth inning.  Good old Lee Gardner pitched the ninth inning for the Mud Hens, but walked Shawn Riggans, Brent Butler, and Darnell McDonald to load the bases for the Devil Rays top infield prospect B.J. Upton.  As I remember it, there was not much doubt that the ball was over the fence.  A great way to start off my first full season of Durham Bulls baseball.  Here is the box score.

I don't remember Ryan Ludwick being on the Mud Hens that season.  See, these posts are already doing me some good.  I saw a Cardinals player and I don't even remember it.  

7.  July 16, 2006 Columbus Clipper vs. Durham Bulls 

This was the first no-hitter that I ever attended, but I did not stay for the whole game.  This is what happens when you go out to a game with a bunch of people that you work with and they say, "let's walk across the street and eat garlic fries and drink beer".  The garlic fries at the restaurant across the street from the Durham Bulls Athletic Park are excellent, but I deeply regret my decision.  Hammel ended up pitching into the ninth inning, but was at 125 pitches when manager John Tamargo pulled him out the game.  I didn't see it.  

Requisite picture of Jason Hammel pitching in Triple A.  

In the end Juan Salas came in and got the last two outs of the game.  The Clippers actually ended up scoring a run at the end of the game because Wes Bankston and Delmon Young committed errors on the same play, a ball hit by Carlos Pena, which was followed up by a wild pitch by Salas.  Always had this terrible feeling that I would not see another no-hitter ever and that this was the dumbest time to ever leave a game early...it worked out okay though. Read on.

6. October 5, 1985 Chicago Cubs vs. St. Louis Cardinals 

I moved to St. Louis at some point in the summer of 1984.  I know I went to a baseball game or two that summer and I know I went to a few during the 1985 season too.  The best game out of my first two years living in St. Louis was the second to last game of the year between the Cardinals and Cubs.    The Cardinals and Mets were in a heated pennant race, with no wild cards at that time, which meant you had to win your division.  This was the game where the Cardinals clinched the National League East by beating the Cubs 7-1.

Ozzie made this great play, Cesar Cedeno hit a home run, and John Tudor pitched great.  Definitely one of my better memories watching baseball as a kid in St. Louis.  

5. (tie)  September 5, 1998 Cincinnati Reds vs. St. Louis Cardinals 

I went to this game for a friend's birthday.  Drove home from college and watched the game.  It was McGwire and it was 1998.   I was actually sitting in left field for this game, but I was over about three sections towards center field and up about twenty rows from where the ball landed.  

The whole home run chase thing has lost some of its luster over time due to the steroid stuff, Bonds breaking the record again a few years later, etc.  It was something that was really important to baseball in St. Louis at the time it happened though.  If you could ask the 21 year old version of me about this game when it happened, or maybe a month after, it would have been higher than 5.  Same with the next one.  

5. (tie) September 7, 1998 Chicago Cubs vs. St. Louis Cardinals 

Same kind of stuff as the previous moment.  I thought this one was a little bit better, still going with a tie though, since it came against the Cubs.  Sosa was there and the Cubs were high fiving McGwire running around the bases.  Something always great about a Cubs and Cardinals game.  This one was the best I have seen of that rivalry.  

4. July 1, 2015 USA Baseball National College Team vs. Cuban National Baseball Team 

This was the second no-hitter I watched in the span of a year and the third one overall.  If you keep reading I promise you there is another one.  The summer time version of the USA Baseball National Team is made up of college players.  In this case the no-hitter was thrown by three pitchers from the SEC: Tanner Houck from Missouri, A.J. Puk from Florida, and Ryan Hendrix from Texas A&M.  All three are now in the Minors.  The final out....

This was a cool game to watch because it was a bunch of college kids taking on Cuban players who are in a professional league back home.  If you have never been to a USA Baseball game in Cary, NC the crowd tends to have more scouts than fans.  It's why there isn't a ton of noise at the end of the game when Hendrix gets the final out.  The one ding against this game is the fact that two of the Cuban players, both started the game, defected after the game.  Don't get me wrong, the three pitchers are great, but I have often wondered how much the Cubans were into the game.  

3.  April 26, 2014 Scranton Railriders vs. Durham Bulls 

The second no-hitter I saw, but the first one that I watched in its entirety.  I went to this game because my brother was in town for something work related.  We sat behind the Scranton dugout and watched Luis Sojo coach third base for the Yankees Triple A team.  I think I first noticed that Montgomery had a no-hitter going sometime in the fifth.  

Montgomery pitched into the ninth inning, but was pulled out of the game by the Rays.  Brad Boxberger finished the no-hitter off with a ground out and a strikeout.  Montgomery actually just missed a perfect game, walking just one batter, which happened to be former Bulls player Russ Canzler.  

2. September 27, 1998 Montreal Expos vs. St. Louis Cardinals 

A younger version of me would have put this at number one all day long.  I still love Mark McGwire as a player, still love what the home run race in 1998 did for baseball, and still remember the excitement this generated.  As previously stated though, it's luster has been somewhat diminished.  

Still a pretty awesome moment to witness.  I consider myself a pretty fortunate to have seen as many baseball games as I have in my life, not many people have seen something like this before.  

1.  September 15, 1991 New York Mets vs. St. Louis Cardinals 

I went to tons of Cardinals games while I was in high school with my father on Sunday afternoons.  The Cardinals were not good for most of my teen years, but they had a few good players and a few bright spots along the way.  Probably the best player on those teams was center fielder Ray Lankford. He's really an under appreciated player in the history of the team who is in the all-time top 10 in dozens of offensive categories.  Yet, he's not in the team's Hall of Fame likely because he's the only player on those top 10 lists who spent the majority of his career playing on bad teams.  Ted Simmons might fit that too. 

The best moment I had watching Lankford came early in his career against the Mets when he hit for the cycle.  It was a great moment at the time, but I think it has become a little bit better with time just for the fact that I am pretty doubtful I will see another player hit for a cycle again.  It could happen, but the odds are heavily against it.  

Here is the box score from Baseball-Reference.  

While I am really into collecting Ray Lankford cards, I also have several non-baseball card items of his too.  Probably my favorite item is my scorecard from that game.  I wrote in pencil, so I try not to take it out to often.  

While this is my best baseball moment, I am always open to further suggestions if someone wanted to hit four home runs in a game I attend, or pitch a perfect game.  I will have to revisit this post in a few years and see if it has changed at all.  

2013 Topps Allen & Ginter Henry Rollins Autograph

I do not do many non-baseball autographs and I cannot think of a single non-sport autograph in my entire collection.  I have pulled a few things out of different products over the years.  I got a Tina Carrere and Jesse Ventura autographs a few years ago out of a Donruss product while they were printing the fans of the game cards.  However, I quickly sold both cards and moved the money onto other cards.

Topps released its fantastic Allen & Ginter product this week which is always full of non-sport autographs.  The product is one of my annual pack busting experiences, but I have never pulled a non-sport autograph out of a Ginter pack.  In fact, I usually hope to just avoid the non-sport autographs all together and land my nice baseball related autograph.

Well, my streak of all baseball autographs out of Ginter ended this year when I was opening my box and landed an autograph of musician/spoken word artist/actor Henry Rollins.

2013 Topps Allen & Ginter Henry Rollins Autograph 

If you are not familiar with the work of Henry Rollins there is much to share, so I would point you in the direction of my favorite Rollins Band disc, but you also can't go wrong with his work in Black Flag.  I am not a consumer of spoken word material, so I am not going to tell you it's great, but people seem to enjoy it.  

Rollins has also appeared in several television series and movies.  I think the first movie I remember him being in was the mid 90s Al Pacino/Robert Diniro movie Heat.  Really, there is a lot the guy has done during his career.  Back to the card.

The one intriguing feature of this card that caught my eye was the signature.  Usually Topps provides signers with pens to sign their autographs which Rollins obviously did not use.  I am going with a Blue Bic pen on this card.  Pens on cards are a rarity.  In fact, after pulling this card I went back through my autographs, all 4,000, and tried to find another card signed with an ink pen.

I found no certified autographs in pen, but.....

I did find three cards that I did own, non-certified, that were signed in pen.  Whitey Herzog I got at an event in St. Louis and he was not putting down his pen.  Everyone got an autograph signed in pen.  In retrospect I should have brought a baseball to the event.  The Lenny Harris was from my brief period of TTM signatures.  The Donruss card is a pretty bad signature, but I have always really liked the Upper Deck.

The Rollins autograph is a really good signature in spite of the fact that Henry used a Bic pen.  Have not quite decided if he's going to stay in my collection or not, but I will enjoy the card while it's sitting here.