In 1989 Perry spent half the year on the Disabled List and was shipped off to the Royals at the end of the season for Charlie Liebrandt. He spent one season on the Royals. Not his finest year by any means. The Cardinals signed him at the end of the 1990 season as a player off the bench behind Pedro Guerrero. His first year in St. Louis was not great, but he ended up spending four more years on the Cardinals before he retired in 1995.
So, five years on the Cardinals. What did Gerald Perry do? He came off the bench and he hit. A lot. In 1993, Perry set the Cardinals team record for pinch hits in a season with 25. He also hit .337 that season with a .440 on base percentage. He posted similar numbers in 1994 with a .325 average and .435 on base percentage.
I know there are not a ton of players who come off the bench nowadays and work over pitchers. Gerald Perry did not have a ton of power, but he could hit the ball if you gave him a chance, and was more than willing to take a base if you weren't go to throw him anything good. Sort of a lost in art in baseball today. By the time Perry's career ended in 1995 he held the Cardinals all-time record for pinch hits with 70.
This picture reminds me that I miss the Cardinals blue batting practice jerseys.
Gerald Perry has a few baseball cards as a Cardinal. More than you'd expect from someone who was a bat off the bench. However, he also played on some teams that were short on talent, so I wonder if he didn't get a few extra cards to fill out the Cardinals portion of the sets. Collectors know Gerald Perry. Stan Royer and Tracy Woodson? Not so much.
I will share two. One local St. Louis card and one major brand issue. Let's start with the major brand issue which is out of the 1992 Topps set. There was some great photography in this set. Perry's card is pretty cool.
For the first decade I collected baseball cards they were almost all vertical. The early 1990s introduced me to the horizontal card. Gerald Perry looks like he should be on the WhiteyBall Era Cardinals in this picture. Where is the first baseman holding him on? Is this some sort of gigantic Vince Coleman, two feet on the astroturf, lead off of first base? Probably not, but I still love the picture.
Next up is the Cardinals giveaway set from 1993. The Cardinals actually had two different baseball card promotions in 1993 that were giveaways at Busch Stadium. They had a small notebook that came with a partial Donruss set at one game and a blue bordered set sponsored by the St. Louis Police on another night.
The Donruss cards were just regular Donruss cards. That's not interesting outside of Ozzie Canseco being a Cardinal in that set. The Police card is a lot better.
This is actually one of my favorite Cardinals team issued sets. Some of the design elements of the card are actually a hot mess, but there is something really appealing about the blue border. It's not even the same color blue that the Cardinals wear, but I like it. Sort of a Duke blue, if I am going to draw from a local source....
So here is the mess on this card's design. Again, I love it though. Where did the font at the top of the card come from? It's not the Cardinals font, but it is also different from the font at the bottom of the card. I'm not saying that the card designer needed the Cardinals script at the top of the card....
but matching fonts are nice. The other item on the front of the card that is questionable is the "Slugger Bird" logo on the bottom left. The Cardinals used this logo in 1957, the only year they did not wear the birds on the bat on their uniform, and kept it around for most of the 60s, 70s, and 80s as a secondary logo. The Cardinals went back to button up uniforms in 1992, the team's 100th Anniversary, and they ditched the slugger bird logo on their uniforms and batting practice jerseys.
Again, I love this baseball card.
and a random 1993 song off of my IPod.
No comments:
Post a Comment