Football has the backup quarterback.
The headset, shirt tucked into their pants, sometimes a clipboard. This #13 character surely became an accountant or something......
Basketball teams always have a few guys on the end of the bench wearing warm-ups. You are not getting in the game when you're scrimmage jersey is a different color than James Worthy....
Who is number 10? I hope he is a grad student, or assistant coach playing along in practice. These freshman will be lucky to ever see playing time.
Hockey has the backup goalie.
No helmet, goofy turtleneck, sometimes a baseball hat that can be found in the team store. Doubtful that this guy ever did anything either.
Baseball has the backup catcher.
No actual catchers gear, some towels and cool wristbands, and it looks like he worked hard stretching. All just to sit on the bench behind Mike Matheny.
Back in 1993 the Cardinals had Tom Pagnozzi as their everyday catcher. He was a Gold Glove caliber catcher, just did not always hit. The Cardinals ran through all sorts of backups for Pags over the years, I think Hector was supposed to bring some pop off the bench. In 1991, while playing with the Cubs, Hector his 13 home runs in just under half of a season.
1992 wasn't so good, so the Cardinals were rolling the dice a bit to bring him in for the 1993 season. Let's sum up the Hector Villanueva year with the Cardinals with a picture and a few numbers.
Hector definitely has that old school catcher's physique, but even if he were in the best shape of his life, he would not have hit/on-based his weight as a Cardinal. Considering the Hector Villanueva era in St. Louis lasted exactly 17 games, 55 at-bats, I am not sure how much we could have honestly asked of Hector.
There were so few Hector Villanueva at-bats that there were only actually two widely distributed baseball cards of the backup catcher. For whatever reason, I only have one of them. So, here is my 1990s Cardinals Hector Villanueva card.....
and there is nothing shabby about this card. The 1993 Upper Deck set had some cool base cards with great photography. Everything that a collector from the 1990s could expect out of one of their sets. The Cardinals don't wear solid red jerseys during the regular season outside of BP, so this has to be from a Spring Training game. The back of the card.....
and the back of the card shows Hector hustling out of the batters box. It didn't last long, but it is cool to have one card of a cool backup catcher like Hector Villanueva in a Cardinals uniform.
A few of my "backups" are probably hoping they can stick around as long as Hector. Any faces you recognize?
A song from 1993 on my IPod.......
No comments:
Post a Comment