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.