I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 20 - Mike Morgan

Mike Morgan had a fairly interesting career, its just that the two years on the Cardinals were really not all that interesting.  So, let's start out with this:  He played 22 years and almost lost 200 games.  He has the 58th most losses in Major League history.  Most of the players who are ahead of him on the list are either really old, or they were given enough starts to be able to lose that many games.  Greg Maddux and Nolan Ryan are way up there, but both of them are north of 300 wins too.  

He basically a replacement level player for his career, ERA+ of 97, he just has a ton of losses.

The A's drafted Mike Morgan out of high school in 1978.  They also brought him straight up to the Majors a week later.   Literally straight to the Majors.  One day he's pitching a bunch of 16, 17, and 18 year olds in Nevada, the next he was pitching against the Orioles.  

The A's eventually did send Morgan down to the Minors to work on his craft.  It also began is journey  around the Major and Minor Leagues.  He earned the nickname "The Nomad" during the early parts of his career.  From Baseball Reference..... 

That's 12 teams in 22 seasons.  Five of those were with the Chicago Cubs, which narrows it down to 11 teams in 17 years.  He also spent 3 with the Dodgers and 3 with the Diamondbacks.  Take all of those out and you've got 9 teams in 11 seasons.  

Morgan came to the Cardinals in 1995 in exchange for fan base scape goat Todd Zeile, who also went on to be traded what seems like a dozen times in his career.  Pretty sure that's what's going on in this baseball cards...

Morgan pitched for the Cardinals during the last months of the 1995 season and was resigned by the team for 1996.   He had a decent run in St. Louis after coming over from the Cubbies.  He started 17 games, won 5 of them, and had an ERA of 3.88.  Not bad for a pitcher on a last place team.  Morgan did not have a lot of playing time during the 1996 season.  The team retooled when LaRussa took over the manager and the ownership changed over too.  

Morgan was released in August of 1996 and joined the Reds in early September.  So where does that leave us as far as Morgan baseball cards with the Cardinals?  

Actually, in pretty good shape.  

Easily the best card of his time in St. Louis was his appearance in the monolithic per pack autograph 1996 Leaf Signature Series set.  Very nice card of the pitcher.  

I have posted a ton of cards from this set over the years, but never really touched on the Cardinals set as a whole.  That should be a 1990s Cardinals post at some point.  Morgan is one of many players in it who appear as a Cardinal, but you'd probably not associate them with the team.  Mike Gallego, Mark Sweeney, and Rick Honeycutt also would fall into that category off the top of my head.  

My favorite non-autographed card of Mike Morgan has to be his 1996 Stadium Club.  That home Cardinals uniform really pops on the background of this card.  Look at that astroturf.  The 1995 season was the last season that the Cardinals had the fake stuff.  I believe that's John Mabry behind Morgan at first base.  

Last two cards.  Same game, I think, but different angles on the pictures.  Different card companies too.  On the left is his 1996 Fleer card, the right is his 1996 Upper Deck.  Since Morgan only pitched part of a season with the Cardinals in 1995, it was not too difficult to find a game that these two pictures from 1996 baseball cards came from.  That's always a positive when you can trace a card to a specific game.  

Grey road uniform, orange seats.  I am going to go with his August 15th start against the Giants.  Morgan did not pitch terribly, gave up 3 runs in 6 innings, but most of the damage was done by Deion Sanders.  I can accept big plays from Deion in a football game, but not a baseball game.  

A triple, a double, two runs.  No bueno.  

After leaving the Cardinals, Morgan still stuck around and played for the Reds, Twins, back to the Cubs, Rangers, and he ended his career with the Diamondbacks.  He two notable moments at the end of his career.  

First, he gave up Mark McGwire's 61st home run during the 1998 season.  Morgan was pitching with the Cubs at the time.....

Morgan also ended his career with the Diamondbacks in the early 2000s.  Doesn't sound all that exciting, but he did get to pitch in the 2001 World Series and he got a ring.  Morgan ended the Series with 4.2 innings pitched, a 0.00 ERA, and only allowed 1 hit.  

Nice end to a career for a player like Mike Morgan.  

A song off my iPod from 1995.