A Venerable Old Card Part 45

I have spent a lot of time on late 1980s and early 1990s cards recently.  I have a few upcoming posts with even more cards from this era coming up over the next week or two.  So much fun to look through and find cool players from some of the different sets from this era.  This week my baseball card sorting time was partially spent flipping through some 1991 Fleer Ultra cards.

Ultra was one of those "premium" sets from that era, so there were many cards that were fun to look at, but one card stood out to me.  Not a Cardinal at the time, but shortly after this card was made Mark Whiten earned a permanent spot in Cardinals folklore.

The Ultra set featured his rookie card with the Blue Jays......

It's a little weird to see Mark on the Jays since he really only spent a pair of partial seasons with the team before he was traded to the Indians.  My first memories of Whiten came with the Indians in the early 1990s.  The Tribe had an outfield of Whiten, Kenny Lofton, and Albert Belle.  Pretty impressive trio of young players.  The Indians ended up flipping him around to the Cardinals for pitcher Mark Clark.

The four home run game was one of the few bright spots for the early 1990s Cardinals.  Whiten is still remembered far and wide by Cardinals fans for this one single game.  The rest of his time in St. Louis was spent looking for consistent performance on offense.  Whiten was a defensive whiz which kept him in the starting in the starting lineup for the Cardinals and kept him around in the league after the Birds shipped him off to the Red Sox where he became a fourth outfielder.  

One of the "premium" features of the Fleer Ultra cards was the picture set up on the back of the card....

The picture of Whiten on the back of the card was very typical of what Whiten looked like at the plate.  Standing flat footed, not very much movement, but he somehow seemed to generate a lot of power when he made contact.  

Great card, cool player, good memories.  More 1990s cards later this week.