I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 23 - Garrett Stephenson

The Cardinals were pretty terrible for the first half of the 1990s, but the team was sold by August Busch III at the end of the 1995 season to the team's current owner Bill DeWitt.  While some of the losing teams at the beginning of the decade were the result of the 1980s roster aging and turnover, it was compounded by the fact that Busch did not really spend any money on the baseball team.

DeWitt immediately started working on improving the roster, spent on free agents, added players through trades, and tried to make the team competitive.  It worked in 1996, the Cardinals came within a game of defeating the Atlanta Braves in the National League Championship Series.  One of the important cogs on that team was left fielder Ron Gant.

Gant hit for power and came up with big hits at big moments for the team.  Gant also did not see eye to eye with Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa.  The two feuded and Gant was shipped away to the Phillies after the 1998 season with Jeff Brantley for Ricky Bottalico and a "marginal major-league prospect"

The Cardinals Minor Leaguer ended up being relief pitcher Cliff Politte and the "Marginal Major-League Prospect" ended up being Garrett Stephenson.  While it seems much more believable at this point, Stephenson was actually unhappy being on the Phillies because his locker was next to Curt Schilling.  

Apparently Schilling was using some different types of motivational techniques to get Stephenson to pitch better.....

From NJ.com sports page.....

In 2004, local Philadelphia writer Glen Macnow expanded on the Schilling/Stephenson relationship in a book he wrote about different hot button issues surrounding the town's sports teams.  A chapter of the book was entitled "Was Curt Schilling a candid athlete or a self-serving jerk?" and goes into details about Schilling idolizing Roger Clemens, his hatred towards teammates he perceived to be "uncaring", and the public "dress-downs" that were often handed to these players.  Apparently Garrett Stephenson checked these boxes.  

So, off to the Cardinals.  

Stephenson pitched for the Cardinals in 1999, and did quite well, yet we do not have a 1990s baseball card of him wearing a Cardinals uniform.  He pitched in a total of 18 games for the 1999 team, started 12 games, and went 6-3 with an ERA just above 4.  That's not actually bad by late 1990s Cardinals standards.  Let's not forget that their rotation in 1999 included Darren Oliver, Jose Jimenez, Kent Merker, and Kent Bottenfield.  

Hard to believe that he didn't get some sort of card for 18 games as a pitcher.  There was even a Traded/Update set in 1999 too.  The most memorable Garrett Stephenson card, for me, from the 1990s was his Topps card from 1998.  

Kind of a really goofy card of Stephenson looking at pitch grips, but he looks really unsure of what is going on with whoever is talking to him.  Maybe he should have had a card made looking at those pitch grips on the back of a wiffle ball box.  

There were no Stephenson cards in 1999.  The pre-1999 selection of Stephenson cards is pretty sparse.  COMC lists 22 different Garrett Stephenson cards from the 1990s, which includes two games cards.  I never count those.  COMC only has 24 different cards for Stephenson after 1999, but some of those are parallels and game cards too.  

So, not many cards to choose from for this post, and for the first time ever I am going to have to post a non-1990s card to cover a player from the 1990s.  A little bit odd too considering that Stephenson won 16 games for the Cardinals in 2000.  The team won the National League Central and advanced to the National League Championship Series against the Mets before they ran out of gas.  

Stephenson blew out his arm in the first round of the playoffs against the Braves.  

He ended up getting some nice cards out of one year really good year.  Not many cards, but they were still nice for that era.  I have two favorites that stand out above the rest of his Cardinals cards.  First up, is an autograph from the cross-product Fleer Autographics set.  

These are always good looking cards.  This is also Stephenson's only autographed card.  It can be hard to find at times.  I owned a copy of this card at some point after it came at in 2001, but traded it, or sold it at some point a few years later.  Sort of a card I regretted losing.  I try to get as many Cardinals autographs as I can, but it's not like Stephenson as a favorite player.  Took awhile to find a new copy of this card when I finally got around to replacing the old one.  

Next card is an interesting one.  

There are tons of these Pacific Private Stock relics cards floating around.  Most are dirt cheap and really easy to find.  Except the patch cards are a little bit tougher to find and most teams only have one player with a patch card.  The Cardinals had a pretty good checklist of relic cards.....

so I am not sure why Stephenson was chosen as the player with the patch relic.  Honestly, this set was long viewed as an effort by Pacific to dump all of their relics, which I believe is true, so I am not sure why they didn't give every player a patch card.  

The McGwire card, which was not supposed to have been made by Pacific, has long been one of the most coveted cards from this set.  I own one......

if only I could find the Sosa card.  

The rest of Stephenson's cards are very ordinary.  Just base cards.  Sometimes.....

which there is nothing wrong with when it's well designed.  Just wish there was a 1990s Cardinals card of him.