Holy Cow! The 1984 7Up Cubs.

Another Cubs set out of a box filled mostly with Cubs cards.  There are plenty of good Cubs cards that I have found in the box, but this has to be the best overall team set.  The 1984 Cubs won a tough NL East finishing ahead of the Mets, their rival Cardinals, and the Phillies.  The baby bears had some good teams in the early 1970s, but spent the latter half of the decade in the bottom half of the division.  Same for the early 1980s.

The 84 Cubs were lead by second baseman Ryne Sandberg.  The team really had a good mix of younger players, like Sandberg, Leon Durham, Steve Trout, Lee Smith, and Bob Dernier, who were mixed in with a solid group of recognizable veterans.  Ron Cey started at third, Larry Bowa at shortstop, Gary Matthews and Keith Moreland holding down the corner outfield spots, and a rotation lead by Rick Sutcliffe and Dennis Eckersley.

The playoffs started off well for the Cubs, but since this is a Cubs friendly post, I am not going to mention anything specific about any games that were played against the Padres in San Diego.  So, here is my Cubs highlight for the 1984 season.  If you have fifteen to twenty minutes, love baseball, the Ryne Sandberg/Willie McGee showdown on the NBC Game of the Week is a classic.  If you do not know 1980s baseball just know that Bruce Sutter was nearly untouchable during the 1984 season with an ERA+ of 227.  That's in the neighborhood of Mariano Rivera.

On to the cards.  The 1984 7Up Cubs cards were a giveaway at Wrigley Field.  The design is very similar to the Thorn Apple Valley cards that I posted earlier in the week.  Not any one great rookie card in this set, but the Sandberg is a pretty popular card and there are a lot of good names that appear in this set.  Without interruption, the 1984 7Up Cubs.....