Henke was at the end of his career and wanted to play one more season. The Jefferson City, Missouri native ended signing with the Cardinals so he could be close to home. His signing would work out well for the Cardinals. Danny Jackson, Ken Hill, and Scott Cooper would all be disastrous signings of varying degrees.
Before signing with the Cardinals, Henke was best known as the closer for the Blue Jays from the 1980s through the early 1990s. He helped the Blue Jays win the 1992 World Series against the Braves.
Henke also played for the Rangers. Briefly at the beginning of his career before he was claimed by the Blue Jays, and after the 1992 season when he left the Blue Jays as a free agent. He had only 15 saves in 1994, due to time spent on the disabled list, but had 40 during the 1993 season.
First, Henke picked up an important milestone in his career while playing his final season with the Cardinals. He became the 7th player to reach 300 saves, there are 20 something now, and finished 1995 in 5th place all-time.
I like that Bobby Cox is sitting in the dugout smiling at him at the end of video. Cox managed the Blue Jays when Henke first joined the team in the mid 1980s. No doubt he saw a few of the 300 plus saves.
Henke finished 1995 with 36 saves, a 1.82 ERA, and was awarded the Rolaids Relief Man of the Year. Pretty hard to do on a team that finished 20 games under .500. After achieving one of his best seasons as Major Leaguer, Henke still decided to retire at the end of 1995. He told Post Dispatch baseball writer Rick Hummel, "I've always admired guys who have gone out at the top of their game. Sometimes you have to look at what's the most important thing in life. I'd like to see my kids grow up"
Let's get to some cards. All of Henke's cards as a Cardinal are either from 1995 or 1996. I am going to go my my favorite five cards.
I love this card. The head shot with the stadium in the background could be it's own card design, but this is not actually a consistent theme in the 1995 Pinnacle set. I am not taking time to flip through the entire set, but a quick glance around COMC led me to believe that this is the only card designed like this in the set. Very nice card.
I like this 1996 Fleer card showing Henke with the weird arm angle. Henke was the prototypical back end reliever who is really tall, threw really hard, and tried to blow a lot of batters away with really hard fastballs. What Henke good though was that he had elements of finesse. He dropped down side arm and had some nasty breaking pitches including a forkball.
There are not a lot of Tom Henke cards from sets with nice finishes. He played for some great Blue Jays teams, but I am not sure that you can really say that there was much that was really high end from that era. He is in the 1993 Finest set. This 1995 Flair card is one of his nicer Cardinals cards. I like the headshot combined with the action shot in the background. Gives a little different picture of Henke pitching from the Fleer card above.
Always like the cards with Busch Stadium in the background. I also like the full picture of Henke's uniform in this picture. I am pretty sure that Henke and Eckersley, who replaced Henke as the team's closer, were the last two Cardinals players who wore the old style stirrups and socks, and did not wear their uniform baggy.
Same shoes too.
Last card.
I love this card in the 1996 Topps set. It is up there with the Pinnacle card at the top, more symbolic. It was Henke's last Topps card, and I would like to think that someone at Topps made this card on purpose. Kind of fitting to have a picture of Henke going through the line at the end of a game leaving the field as his last baseball card.
No comments:
Post a Comment