Prior to playing professional baseball, J.D. was one of the greatest college baseball players ever. He won awards, he won championships, he set records that still stand today. Having listened to a few Florida State fans talk about his playing days in Tallahassee, I am not sure that I can sum up his college career, do it justice, and not make it a stand alone blog post. I leave you with this.....
Maybe some day Panini will get off their duff and make a card of J.D. in his college uniform. Seems like a shame that he does not have a card in his college uniform. I know a few Florida State people who would be more than interested in getting a copy of the card.
Drew entered the 1997 MLB Draft considered one of the best players at the top of the draft. His agent Scott Boras told teams that Drew would not sign for a dime less than $10 million dollars. The Phillies selected Drew second overall and then offered him $2.6 million dollars to sign. He refused the offer and spent the summer playing for the St. Paul Saints in the Northern Independent League. He re-entered the 1998 MLB Draft and was selected by the Cardinals with the fifth overall pick. They paid him $7 million dollars and he signed.
The incident made him less than popular with Phillies fans throughout his time in the Majors.
I think there were some battery and beer bottle throwing incidents along the way too, but I try to keep things PG around these parts.
It took Drew part of a summer to advance all the way through the Cardinals Minor League system. He made his debut with the team on September 8, 1998. It was the same night that Mark McGwire hit his 62nd home run of the season, breaking the single season home run record.
As a Ray Lankford fan, it should be pointed out that this game was won by the Cardinals, who sealed the victory after the Cubs pitched around Mark McGwire and then gave up back to back home runs to Ray Lankford (3 run) and Ron Gant (solo).
By the end of the 1998 season, had played in 14 games and made 41 plate appearances. He made the most of it, hitting .417/.463/.972 with 5 home runs, and 13 RBIs. Not a bad little line for a two week cup of coffee.
The baseball card world was already a little Cardinal crazy with Mark McGwire at that time. The arrival of J.D. Drew sort of sent some people over the edge. He was not quite Mickey Mantle, but the way that some people went after his baseball cards, you'd swear he was a slam dunk Hall of Famer. Yes, people literally walked around comparing him to Mickey Mantle. His first cards started popping up in the fall of 1998.
My favorite was his 1998 Fleer Update card.
This was a really simply designed card, but I really liked the edge to edge picture. The card back also has also full color photo.
You could only get the card by buying the complete Update set, which was not horribly expensive in the grand scheme of things, but finding one could be a challenge. Maybe, I just went to college in the middle of nowhere with a really terrible card shop. Drew also had cards in Leaf Stars & Rookie, Donruss Signature, and a whole bunch of different Minor League products.
Drew's cards are obviously really easy, and inexpensive, at this point. I know that those other two cards are also considered rookie cards, but the Fleer Update is the best of the bunch. As a Cardinals collector, this card is borderline iconic as a modern must have card from that era.
His 1999 cards were also really popular for much of that calendar year despite the fact that it was literally the worst full season of his Major League career. In many circles, the expectations for Drew were still through the roof. It was one of those moments in my collecting career where I had serious doubts that a certain segment of the baseball card collecting population actually watch the games and follow the sport.
I am going to narrow the bloat of cards from 1999 down to my two favorites.
First up.
One of his first 1999 cards was in the Pacific Private Stock set. This actually came out really early in the card calendar. Since the Topps base set used to come out right after Thanksgiving in the late 1990s, this might have even been out before the end of 1998. Regardless, it was a favorite set of mine from that year, I miss the Pacific brand, and one of the earliest Drew cards I remember owning. If you do not own any of these cards, they are not hard to find in boxes and packs, the quality of the cards is excellent. Nice stock, although they stick together in the packs now after they have been in there for 20 years.
Last.
I think this came out later in the summer and people were crazy about it while J.D. Drew was batting .240. It took me several years to actually get a copy of this card. I refused to pay whatever ridiculous price this cost back in 1999. The other autographed card in this set, Gabe Kapler, was even pretty pricey. I should have gone back and found an old Beckett and scanned the price listings for this set.
As for the rest of J.D. Drew's career, I am not sure that he is ever going to receive the due that he probably deserves. He's not a Hall of Famer, but he still had a very good career. The Cardinals ended up trading to the Braves at the end of the 2003 season. The trade netted the team Jason Marquis and Ray King, who were both contributors on the 2004 National League Championship team, but the real prize was Double A pitcher Adam Wainwright.
The Braves got one really good year of Drew, while the Cardinals got a few Cy Young worthy seasons out of Wainwright and a World Series winner in 2006. Drew eventually ended up in Boston after the Red Sox finally helped him cash in with a large contract. He got 5 years and 70 million dollars out of Boston, not sure that Sox fans really loved Drew, but he hit .360 in the American League Championship Series that year against the Indians, and .300 against the Rockies in the World Series.
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