I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 36 - Joe Torre

There is a really good chance that you remember Joe Torre's second managerial position during the 1990s better than his first gig.  Between 1996 and 1999, Torre managed the Yankees to three different World Series titles, which occured in 1996, 1998, and 1999.  Between the middle of the 1990 season, and the middle of the 1995 season, Joe Torre once got the Cardinals to finish second.  That happened in 1991 when they finished a mere 14 games behind the Pirates.

Torre did not take half a season off, from the middle of 1995 until the start of the 1996, and magically learn how to manage a baseball team.  He was not actually half bad with the Cardinals, especially considering that the team's ownership, August Busch III, was cheap.  Just only so much you can do with Bryn Smith taking up a spot in your starting rotation.  

For example, in 1993 the Cardinals were actually 16 games above .500 at the All-Star break, within five games of the eventual division winning Phillies team.  Most teams would take that sort of success as a sign to improve their roster and push for the postseason.  The 1990s Cardinals?  Not so much.  Lee Smith was broken and there were several other suspect arms in front of him in the bullpen, which was one of the major shortcomings of the 1993 team.  Rather than trading for a quality relief pitcher, the Cardinals picked up Todd Burns from the A's. 

Burns appeared in 24 games for the Cardinals and gave up 21 runs.  The most brutal stat I could find was that he struck out only 10 batters in those 24 games, but managed to give up 8 home runs.  Don't know if I have ever seen a 1:1 ratio on home runs, but Burns almost pulled it off.  Burns did not even make it to the end of the season, the team released him in September, and even went as far as trading off Lee Smith.  

Not Torre's fault.  

I am not a Yankees fan by any stretch of the imagination, but it was nice to see Torre go somewhere and do well after getting shafted by the Cardinals ownership.  I hear all the arguments about the Yankees having high payrolls and good talent, that it would not actually be hard to get those sorts of teams deep into the playoffs.  However, after watching the Cardinals the last five years, with Mike Matheny managing, or mangling, some really good teams, it's to hard to brush off the manager as completely irrelevant.   

Here are my three favorite Joe Torre cards with the Cardinals, while he was the manager.  If there were player cards in this post, there would be a Kellogg's card.  Since he won an MVP Award with the Cardinals though, I will still post the cereal card as a bonus.....

Those are sideburns.  Why won't any cereal companies put cards into boxes anymore?  Now back to the manager cards.  

I really like these Studio cards, also liked that they put some of the managers in the set.  The Topps base set was always a slam dunk for having the team managers, but the other card brands that started to pop up at this time in the early 1990s were hit and miss on these cards.  The black and white photographs on the Studio cards were always nice with the color reddish colored frames on the 1991 set.  Torre actually appeared in the Preview cards of the set.  Tony LaRussa is in the regular set, if you are into Cardinals managers and the whatnot.  

Another 1991 card, this one is from the Topps set.  Something has always seemed off on this card.  I have never quite decided whether Topps airbrushed in Torre, or the background with the other players and coaches are on some sort of Olan Mills photo studio backdrop.  Just something off about the card.  There are only two Topps solo base cards of Torre as the Cardinals manager, the other is in the 1992 set, but this is my favorite of the two.  

Last card.  

 Generally, I hate these dual managers cards.  They make the managers seem like an afterthought.  This one is actually really cool though.  Torre and Piniella are two of the more recognizable managers from the 1990s, so it's nice that they are on the same card together.  While Lou is not a Hall of Famer, both have won at least one World Series, feel like everyone always forgets that Piniella was with the Reds who won in 1990, both won Manager of the Year multiple times.  For what it's worth, Lou actually won the award three times to Torre's two times.