I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 50- 1992 Pacifc Cardinals 100th Anniversary Set

I am actually going to split this 1992 Cardinals 100th Anniversary set and make it two different posts.  Just a little primer.  The Cardinals issued a set of cards with Pacific that were sold at area McDonald's restaurants during that summer.  I believe the packs might have been a dollar, roughly in line with the cost of Upper Deck at the time, and can still be found around today.  The entire set is only 55 cards with a definite slant towards the modern players.

Just flipping through the cards is a little like the scene in The Wizard of Oz after the house lands in Oz and Dorthy walks out the front door into a world of color.

The first twenty cards are black and white.  The twenty-first card is Red Schoendienst, every card after with the exception of Enos Slaughter is in color.  Not sure why Pacific did not find a color photograph of Slaughter, or just move his card up in the set.  Small things.  

This is the front design of the card.  

and the back of the card.....

I like how the stats are split between the Cardinals and their career numbers.  Gives you a good idea about how much they actually played with the team.  There are players in the set who are truly great players from their time with the Cardinals, like Musial who played his entire career with the Cardinals.  Other players are in for short term contributions to really good teams.  

For example.....

 

Grover Cleveland Alexander appears in the set, but he only played on the Cardinals during the last four years of his career.  He spent 9 years with the Cubs and 8 years with the Phillies.  During his 8 years with the Phillies he won 190 games.  Do the math.  He won 30 games three years in row. No, he didn't start every other game, more like a four man rotation.  

Alexander's Cardinal heroics took place in the 1926 World Series where he helped the team win its first World Series title against a heavily favored Yankees team.  He led the Cardinals get back to the World Series again in 1928, although the Yankees got the better of things that year and took home the pennant.  

I wasn't around for the 1926 World Series, but his pitching must have been pretty impressive since it's half of his Hall of Fame plaque.  

I guess all of that is a good reason to give him a card in this set too.  

So, I am going to file the Alexander and Bottomley cards as background on the set and post a few other cards from the black and white section of the Cardinals 100th Anniversary set.  Next week, a few of the modern players.  

First, I am going with Dizzy Dean.  He was the pitching star of the Gashouse Gang teams in the 1930s, which won the 1934 World Series against the Tigers.  Dean is in the Hall of Fame, his number is retired by the Cardinals, and won the 1934 National League MVP.  He seems like he should be a big deal, but his career was actually really short.  In all, he pitched in 12 different season, but only six of them were full seasons.  

Still better than Jack Morris.  

He ended up going into broadcasting.  He was on the air for awhile, but he butchered the English language while speaking.  Poet Ogden Nash once included Dean in a poem about his favorite baseball players and gave a nod to his poor grammar:

From "Line-Up For Yesterday"

D is for Dean

The grammatical Diz,

When they asked, Who's the tops?

Said correctly, I is

Next.  

Hornsby was the first superstar player for the Cardinals.  He led the National League in batting seven different times and took home the 1925 MVP Award.  He played on the 1926 Cardinals team which captured the franchise's first World Series pennant.  It just so happened that he also was the manager of the 1926 Cardinals.  

I am almost certain that the picture on this card is some sort of arranged photo.  It's at least really odd that he is catching a baseball in front of another baseball game in the background if it's not a staged photgraph.  I am not sure about the photo stylings of the 1920s and 1930s though. 

The Big Cat played his first few season with the Cardinals, but ended up on the Giants and Yankees after returning home from World War 2.  When I was a kid my parents bought us a VCR when we moved to St. Louis, somewhere in the 1984 or 1985 range.  One of the movies we owned was a history of the Cardinals, which briefly mentioned Mize as the holder of the Cardinals single season home run record with 43.  Seemed pretty important and stuck out in my mind, because in the mid 1980s it was unimaginable that any Cardinals player was ever going to hit that many again.  

Interestingly, he's still in the top 10, sixth, on the single season home run leaders for the franchise.  The five seasons that have past his 43 home runs all belong to either Mark McGwire or Albert Pujols.  

Big Mac passed the Big Cat in July of 1998 to break the franchise record.  

McGwire's 1998 season is now obviously the new record.  Doubtful that anyone breaks it.  

I like this card because of the picture.  Choking up quite a bit there.  Huggins played in the aughts and teens for the Cardinals and Reds.  Love the Cardinals logo on the sleeve of his jersey too.  Jon Hamm, actor and Cardinals fan, frequently gets on television while wearing Cardinals hats.  This older Cardinals logo frequently appears.....

Much more important as a manager.  He worked as the Cardinals skipper for a few seasons before moving on to the Yankees where he won three pennants and coached some guys named Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth.  

Two more.  

Another Gashouse Gang player.  He spent most of his career with the Giants, but ended up on the Cardinals at the end of his career as a player/manager.  Later, he became a member of the Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee where he elected a bunch of his friends to the Hall of Fame.  Bill James has written a few different pieces on the damage that Frisch did to the Hall.  Many of the friends do not belong.  For example, Chick Hafey long time Cardinals and Reds outfielder was put into the Hall by the Veterans Committee under Frisch, but his WAR and Peak7 WAR are in line with Greg Vaughn and B.J. Surhoff.  

Last one.  

Marty Marion was a defensive whiz in the 1940s.  He played on three different World Series teams with the Cardinals in 1942, 1944, and 1946.  He actually won the 1944 National League MVP in 1944.  His offensive numbers were not that great, not to mention that Stan Musial hit .347 that season.  Kind of cool that a defense first player won an MVP award.  Sure people today would flip out.  If there had been Gold Gloves in the 1940s, he likely would have had a few.  

Looking at the stadium in the background, this has to be a Spring Training photo.  Maybe the 1940s version of photo day.  More of these cards next week.