A 1980s Card Part 52 - 1983 Fleer Jim Kaat

 Jim Kaat was an old middle reliever by the time I started watching baseball.  I do not remember him at all as a player.  If you are not familiar with Kaat as player, he spent most of his career with the Twins, but also played for the White Sox, Phillies, and Yankees.  He ended his career with the Cardinals, pitching as a middle reliever during the early 1980s.  

Kaat won almost 300 games in his career, but is probably best known for his fielding abilities and his 16 Gold Gloves.  He is the Brooks Robinson of the pitcher's mound.  Kaat only managed to strike out 2,400 batters over a 25 year career, you do the math, and is not viewed by many as a great of his era.  

To me, Kaat seem a lot like Don Sutton with less strikeouts.

I best know Jim Kaat as a broadcaster.  He's spent the past few decades working in various locations, so I do know him well from watching baseball over the past few decades.  I actually have a few older cards of him with the Twins and Phillies.  

I think this is my best one.....

While I do not remember Kaat as a player with the Cardinals, his 1983 Fleer card is a pretty neat card.  Definitely one of the better cards within the Cardinals set from that year.  It was one of his last as a player, but also has a little foreshadowing for his future career as a broadcaster. 

Here is the card.  

Was this the first baseball card with an appearance by an ESPN logo?  There are plenty of more recent cards with ESPN signs in the background, but I cannot think of another card before this one.  Kaat has never actually worked for ESPN.  Maybe he has appeared on one of their broadcasts as a guest commentator, but still a good connection to his work in broadcasting on cable sports networks.  Most of his broadcasting career was spent with the Yankees and Twins on their local/regional cable broadcasts. More recently Kaat worked for MLB Network.  

Here is the back of the card. 

Kaat's career actually started in 1959 as a member of the Washington Senators.  He played a long time retiring at the age of 43.  After lingering in the top 3 oldest players for much of the late 1970s and early 1980s, behind Manny Mota and Willie McCovey, he finally claimed the top spot in 1983.  Guess all 25 years did not fit on his card.  Fleer used a standard font size for the stats on these cards regardless of how many years the player had been around.