I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 51- 1992 Pacific Cardinals 100th Anniversary Set Part 2

I posted cards from the first half of this set last week.  The set is generally sequential, so the majority of players in last week's post were from the Cardinals 1920s through the 1950s.  For this week's post, I am moving forward to the modern portion of the set starting with the 1960s players.  Similar to the first half of the set, there are plenty of Hall of Fame players in here along with a few others who were solid long term contributors.

Also a few odd choices.  One I sort of get, the other is puzzling.   Let's go weird first.

The Cardinals won nothing during the 1970s.  One of their biggest problems was trading away young talented players.  Steve Carlton for Rick Wise.  Pretty terrible trade, but the Cardinals turned around and traded Rick Wise to the Red Sox for their young All-Star power hitting outfielder Reggie Smith. He played two and a half years in St. Louis, made the National League All-Star team twice, but he got off to a slow start in 1976 and was traded to the Dodgers for a few Dodger Dogs.

Short term player, no playoffs, and no World Series rings.  I would have gone Jack Clark here.  He helped the Cardinals win the National League twice and had one of the franchise's all-time great Postseason home runs against the Dodgers in the 1985 NLCS.  I guess we weren't far enough removed from the Jack Clark exit when this set was made.....

Dick Allen would have been another good short term player for the modern part of the set.  He was involved in the Curt Flood trade, that ultimately lead to players getting free agency rights, as the big piece coming in return for the Cardinals outfielder and McCarver.

The other short term Cardinal in the second half of the set was Lee Smith.  He makes a little more sense than Reggie Smith.

Lee Smith was traded to the Cardinals in early May of 1990.  By the time this set rolled around he had only been on the team for a year and half.  Not very long for an all-time greats type of product.   Smith had set the National League single season save record the previous season.  While I harp on the end of Lee Smith's time with the Cardinals, he was still one of the game's most dominating relief pitchers when he first joined the team.

Smith was also nearing the all-time saves record at this point in his career.  Given how he had pitched during the first year plus of his time in St. Louis, there was little reason to think he was not going to reach the mark in a Cardinals uniform.  A little more understandable than Reggie Smith, but claiming him as an all-time great Cardinal is a stretch.

A few Hall of Famers, a few players who should be in the Hall of Fame.

Gibby.  Hall of Famer.  I love the picture on this card.  You could just look at the pose and tell its Bob Gibson.  That fall of towards first base, I would recognize it anywhere.  

There are a lot of staged photographs in the set, but very few portrait style cards.  In the modern section of the set this Brock card, along with Bake McBride, are the only two cards done in this style.  Very nice looking card.  A young Lou Brock picture too.  The majority of the cards have pictures that seem like they were taken during the prime of the players career.  

Quality action shot on the Ozzie Smith card.  He looks like he is barely jumping on this card.

I do love that the Expos player is a pitcher wearing a jacket to run the bases, you don't see many pitchers do this anymore.  Felt like it was commonplace while I was growing up watching baseball.  Ozzie is also an important card in this due to the fact that he was still playing at this point.  An actual Cardinal though, not just a good player who happened to be on the team like Lee Smith.  He lost a little bit of his shine defensively, his last Gold Glove was in 1992, but he actually was a pretty good hitter later in his career.

Two almost Hall of Famers.

Most of the Cardinals players who have their numbers retired by the team are in the baseball Hall of Fame.  Boyer is the one exception.  Although, he is probably a lot closer to that honor than most people realize.  The best years of Boyer look really similar to that of players like Scott Rolen and Adrian Beltre.  He often hit somewhere between 25 and 30 home runs, drove in 90 to 100 runs, and hit in the .290s/low .300s.  Boyer was the 1964 National League MVP and hit a grand slam in the sixth game of the World Series to help the Cardinals defeat the Yankees.  

The problem with Boyer's career is the end.  He had a rather meteoric decline and bounced around between the Mets, White Sox, and Dodgers.  

Great looking card too.  Love the posed shot of him fielding a ground ball.  

Last card.  

While I can say that Boyer has an argument to be in the Hall, I also understand there is an argument against him.  Simmons has an even better argument and there is not much to refute the fact that he should be in the Hall of Fame.  Arguments like, "He was not on a good team until the end of his career" are weak sauce.  Think of the best offensive catchers, look at Simmons counting numbers, and he's right there with the group of Piaza, Bench, Fisk, and Berra.  By the way, Piazza has less World Series at bats as Simmons with the same number of rings.  

I like this card with the powder blue road uniform and Simmons hitting.  Definitely an offensive player, he had some great numbers at the dish for some 1970s Cardinals teams that were very forgettable.  

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.