Long before getting stuck at home, I had found another copy of a 2012 Topps Archives Jose Oquendo autograph. For those not familiar with the player, or the cards, here is a little background.
Oquendo played for the Cardinals during the 1980s and 1990s. Whitey Herzog, the Cardinals manager nicknamed him "The Secret Weapon". He played almost every game, but you just did not always know where he was going to play. Players got double switched out of games, and you could almost bet that part of the substitution would be Oquendo playing somewhere else.
Topps decided as a part of their 2012 Archives set to include Jose in their autograph set. They also added a little wrinkle, by making 9 different versions of the card, one for each position. I have a bunch of the cards, but not all of the cards. They are all on a 1988 Topps style card.
One already in the collection......
The late 1980s were the prime years for Jose Oquendo, so I really like that they used this 1988 style card for the autograph set.
My newest card from the set arrived a few weeks back, and has been sitting on desk. I took a little time to catch up on life yesterday, which included a little time cleaning. I took the card out of the envelope, scanned it, and filed it away in its box. Scanning and filing is kind of non-thinking activity at times, my brain flies on automatic.
At some point, I came back and looked at the scan. This card is terrible.
Why is Jose Oquendo all blurry?
Why is the catcher in the background blurred out?
Why did I not notice this before I bought the card?
So, I did a little digging. Maybe there is a reason why the card is made this way.
It's obviously a game at Busch Stadium. Oquendo has a patch on his sleeve. The Cardinals wore sleeves patches three times during Oquendo's career:
The 1992 season, which was the team's 100th Anniversary.
In 1990, in memory of long-time owner Gussie Busch
During the 1987 World Series against the Twins.
The blue catchers gear pointed me towards the 1987 World Series.
Google search "Jose Oquendo" and "1987 World Series" and what turns up?
Clearly the same play. I just don't get the reason behind blurring out the Twins catcher and using a grainy photo of Jose Oquendo. Is Tim Launder not allowed on baseball cards anymore?
This is the center fielder variation of the Jose Oquendo cards. Isn't there a photo somewhere of Oquendo playing the outfield?
This photograph is easily one of the worst I have seen on a baseball card, and I just do not understand why the card has to look this way.
One of my favorite 1980s and 1990s Cardinals players. Jose Oquendo did not make any All-Star games, or win any awards. He was just a fun player to watch. The Cardinals picked him up from the Mets in a trade at the beginning of the 1985 season. I have seen different people put him in the Keith Hernandez trade, but that did not happen.
Hernandez and Oquendo were both starting infielders on the 1984 Mets.
Oquendo was the shortstop, Hernandez was the first baseman.
The trade that brought Jose over from the Mets was really just a swap of light hitting utility infielders. The Cardinals got Oquendo, the Mets got Angel Salazar.
Jose was a bench player in 1986, but got a bigger role during the 1987 season. He was dubbed "The Secret Weapon". He played every single position outside of catcher for the National League Champions. In fact, he started a game at each one of those positions outside of pitcher. A unique player, who also contributed to the team that season on offense.
Easily my favorite Oquendo moment as a Cardinal.
The 1986 Topps Traded card was Oquendo's first appearance in a Cardinals uniform. The building in the background was a part of the Cardinals Spring Training facility and shows up in a ton of 1980s Topps cards.
Back of the card.
Pretty standard card back with the brighter colors on the traded card. Had to find where Grays Harbor was, and when they had a team. They were a Mets team in the Northwest League that allowed Bill Murray to play a game for the team in 1979.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s Cardinals infielder Jose Oquendo was dubbed "The Secret Weapon" by former manager Whitey Herzog. The Cardinals had an everyday player at every position when Oquendo first made the Cardinals in 1986. Oquendo was not one of them, but he still managed to play almost every game. Same with his first full time season in 1987. He was showing up somewhere, just a question of what position, and when in the game.
Jose had some big moments on the field too, which helped cement his legacy as more than just a highly versatile utility player. Sort of a cult hero as a player with Cardinals fans.....
I believe he also once kicked Will Clark in the crotch because he slide into second base late.
Topps made a set of Oquendo autographs within the Topps Archives set a few years back celebrating the fact that Whitey Herzog played him everywhere. I do not have all 9 cards yet, but he has a card for every position.
Truth be told, Oquendo stopped showing up all over the field after the 1988 season when the Cardinals traded Tommy Herr to the Twins. The last five or six years of his career was spent primarily as a second baseman, or occasionally giving the Ozzie Smith a day off at shortstop.
This year the Cardinals have a player on the roster who is playing a similar role as Oquendo during the late 80s. So far this season, Yairo Munoz has played more than 20 games at four different positions. He has appeared most often as a shortstop, but has also appeared frequently as a second baseman, third baseman, and outfielder.
There are Cardinals fans that have dubbed him the Secret Weapon 2.0. I like the nickname, although software references usually are lame.
While his versatility is similar to Oquendo, he is a much better offensive player. Munoz has just over 250 at bats on the season which has yielded 8 home runs, 16 doubles, a batting average that has been hovering around .290 all year, an on-base percentage over .350, and .790 OPS. That OPS is third on the team behind Matt Carpenter and Jose Martinez.
I picked up one Munoz card way back in January after the Cardinals picked up Munoz in the Stephen Piscotty trade with Oakland.
I have been waiting all year for some Munoz cards with the Cardinals. He's generally been ignored by Topps, Panini, and Leaf. Topps made one of those Topps Now cards of him and he also has a card in the Memphis Redbirds set. That's been it until the last month. He now has a Heritage High Numbers card and Panini made an autograph of him.
I went for the autograph.
It's based on the 1990s Donruss Crusade cards. Not sure this card does that set justice, but I have seen much worse out of Panini, so I am going to live with what is likely a solid effort out of someone in their design department.
Back of the card.
I like that the picture on the back has the Wrigley field bricks as a backdrop. Made me kind of wonder if the front of the card would have been better off without all of the Crusade monikers, they really did not come that close, and gone with some borderless card with the full photo. Wrigley in the background of course.
I had made a run on some Daniel Robertson cards a few years back in anticipation of his arrival with the Durham Bulls. The A's traded the middle infielder to the Rays for Yunel Escobar and Ben Zobrist. At the time, Robertson had just completed A Ball in the A's organization and was considered a top 100 prospect across the board by MLB.com, Baseball America, and Baseball Prospectus. While he was in A Ball Robertson hit .310/.402/.471 with 15 home runs, 37 doubles, and drove in 60 runs. Sounds worthy of some notoriety, especially given that he was just 20 at the time.
I went out and started putting together a little collection of Robertson cards. He had several in various different Bowman products while he was in Oakland. My two favorite Robertson cards at that time were his 2015 Bowman Inception card.....
because I really like looks of this set. I am not sure about that face he is making on the card, but it's still a well designed set with nice card stock. I also own a copy of his Bowman Chrome rookie card....
which is not quite as nice to look at as the Inception card, but these always seem like good cards to hang on to when you are doing a little prospecting.
Three years later Robertson has spent a season with the Durham Bulls in 2016 and played most of the 2017 season in Tampa on the Rays roster. He's been through all of those hoops players jump through when they get to the Majors...first game, first hit, first home run...
and all of this time I have been fairly quiet about Robertson baseball cards. They are out there, it's not like he's disappeared from sets. It's more about the fact that Robertson has gone from being a Top 100 prospect who was traded for a player like Ben Zobrist, to a player who is on the Rays roster just because he is versatile.
Daniel Robertson is a utility player. His .200 batting average and 5 career home runs suggest that this is likely going to be his role as long as he is employed as a Major League baseball player. That's not always a bad thing, every team needs these types of players and they can be fun players to collect.
I have several utility types that have been favorite players to collect at different points of my times. Since I am a Cardinals fan who grew up in the 1980s/1990s you should probably be able to guess my original utility player without reading any further, because every 1980s Cardinals fan loves Jose Oquendo.....
who was dubbed "The Secret Weapon" by former Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog. If you watched the Cardinals in the late 1980s, you knew Jose Oquendo was showing up at some point, you just did not always know where and when he was getting into the game. He had some big moments for the team too, like his Game 7 home run against the Giants in the 1987 National League Championship Series.....
was the probably the most memorable. Topps made a complete set of Oquendo cards in their Archives set a few years back with him playing each of the nine different positions. Some of the pictures do not really fit, the card above is a first base card even though he's either playing short or second, but it was still a really nice collection of cards to assemble.
Jose had some nice years, but he was truly a light hitting infielder. Still a fun player to collect and very popular with Cardinals fans.
As far as the Durham Bulls go, I do have a pretty good collection of Ben Zobrist cards, but I think he is in a different category of "utility" player then the other players I am using in this post. He does play all over the place, but when you're making multiple All-Star teams and winning taking home World Series MVP Awards, you are probably your own category of utility player.
Prior to blogging, my interest had started to wain a bit by the time I had starting writing in this space, I did collect Sean Rodriguez cards. He played for the Rays for a few years after being traded there from the Angels in exchange for Scott Kazmir. The time with the Rays included a stop over or two in Durham.
I even saw him hit the Bull, win steak, with a home run a few years ago.....
Sean Rodriguez does not have a ton of cards for a current day player, which includes a very limited number of appearances as an autograph signer. Not that they are expensive when you find them....
or anything that would make him difficult to collect.
Which brings me back to Robertson. For whatever reason, there are companies that are still making nice baseball cards of the former Durham Bulls middle infielder. I guess I could look into collecting a Cardinals utility player, but it appears that there are not many Greg Garcia baseball cards....
and I really do not like him anyway. He's like the second coming of Daniel Descalso, which is not a very lovable player, nor fun to collect. I actually enjoy watching Daniel Robertson play for the Rays.....
and I am going to go ahead and pick up a few of his cards this year. So far the past two months, I have added two of his cards and spent a grand total of $5. $3 of the $5 was for shipping the cards.
Here's what I picked up.
This card is actually from last year's Topps Update set. It seems that I skipped over that product. Not sure about all of the stuff that is going on around the border of the card, but since I bascially paid a dollar for this card I am just going to focus on the fact that it is autographed and has a picture of Daniel Robertson. Sterile card design be damned.
Again, I am focused on the autograph and the fact that Robertson is on the card. I do not even know where to start with that Promising Pros script up at the top of the card. Looks like some sort of 1980s television graphic.....
of some kind. The word "Promising" makes me lean more game show.
Anyway, more Robertson cards to come as the summer goes along regardless of whether he is hitting .220, or not. So far, five games into the season, he's actually hitting .250 with 5 walks in 13 plate appearances. Hopefully the rash of walks won't push his cards up too high.
Topps did a cool thing a few years back with the Archives autograph of former Cardinals player Jose Oquendo. If you are not familiar with Jose, he played for the Cardinals for the better part of a decade starting in the 1986. The Cardinals manager at the time, Whitey Herzog, frequently used Oquendo as a starter. However, you never quite knew where he was going to turn up on the field earning him the nickname "The Secret Weapon".
During his first season as a starter with the Cardinals during the 1987 season, Oquendo played 37 games in right field, 32 games at second base, 23 games at shortstop, but also appeared in games as a third baseman, left fielder, center fielder, first baseman, and he also pitched an inning. In 1988 Oquendo appeared at all nine position including catcher which brings me to my latest card from the 2012 Archives set. Here is a look at the front of the card.....
I like that Topps used the 1988 design for Oquendo's card considering what they did with the Oquendo autographs. There is a nice action shot of Oquendo on the front. If you search Oquendo's 2012 Archives autograph on a site like Ebay or COMC you will see that there are many different pictures on the card fronts....
The difference with the Oquendo cards takes place on the back of the cards. Specifically on the top right hand corner of the card where the player position is listed.....
My latest card has Oquendo's position listed as a 1B. I have picked up a few of these cards over the last few years, not all, but several. It's a pretty cool idea by Topps to make different Oquendo cards for all of the different positions during the 1988 season. That's all of them. I wish the pictures on the fronts of the cards matched the player position on the back of the card. I would love to be able to collect the entire set of Oquendo Archives autographs, but they are not that cheap, given you are collecting Jose Oquendo cards. Plus, there are a few that rarely pop up.
I have a few things that I am going to work on catching up on with blogging this week. There are times when things come in the mail and I just do not get around to scanning, or taking pictures, of the item. A few weeks, or in this case, months later I remember that I have not put an item up on my blog. I have had the last two weeks off of school and spent a little bit of time working on putting a new shelf up in my baseball card room. I keep autographed balls and bobbleheads on my shelves. This set of shelves was more a necessity than plans for future purchases. After sanding and painting I hung the shelf up and started taking the bobbles out of the boxes. First up was this one.....
The Cardinals gave away this bobble last September. Oquendo currently works as the Cardinals third base coach where he has worked since 1999. Jose also spent the vast majority of his playing career with the Cardinals and was dubbed "The Secret Weapon". Basically he was always in the line up, but 1980s Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog played him all over the place. Hence the shin guards on the bobble.
This is a pretty easy bobble to find on Ebay and not very expensive either. There are dozens of them for sale for around $20, but if you are patient it's not hard to win the bidding on one for less. I like looks of this bobble and love that they put the catchers stuff on him....
The back base of the bobble has the "Secret Weapon" nickname in black, kind of hard to see, and pictures Jose in his trademark number 11 jersey. Here's a look at the sides of the Jose Oquendo bobble...
Overall this is a really cool bobblehead to add to the collection. While Oquendo was not the best player on the 1980s/1990s Cardinals teams he was a unique talent and had some great moments wearing the birds on the bat. Probably my favorite of all, when it comes to Jose, is his Game 7 three run home run against the Giants in the 1987 National League Championship Series which put the Cardinals in the World Series against the Twins.
We are down to our last few days of 2012 and I have had a great time this year venturing into the world of blogging and sharing my baseball card collection with those who care to read about the different cards in my collection or that I add to my collection through trades or purchases. I thought it would be fun to make a reflective post back over the past year and share some of the highlights of collecting year. If I had more resources and time perhaps I could create a little statue mold of the bull sign and mail them to the people that traded or sold me the cards in this post. Some would, of course, end up with the different brand managers at Topps. Maybe next year.
Best Set: Topps Five Star
2012 Topps Five Star Evan Longoria Auto/Quad Jersey Book
In my opinion this was a pretty easy choice. Topps put out about a dozen baseball products this year and I really liked several of the products for different reasons, but found many positives with the Five Star product. First, the cards are very well designed, limited in quantity, and feature on-card autographs. I did really well with this product by not opening the packs and instead strictly relying on trading and buying single cards on the secondary market. I am sure that there are many people that have opened boxes of this product and had great fun in doing so, but I would probably end up with a few Vida Blue autographs, or Luis Tiant's, if I actually touched a pack myself. No disrespect to Luis Tiant or Vida Blue intended. So, for half a pack's worth of trade value I was able to pick up an Evan Longoria autograph/book last week.
2012 Topps Five Star Terry Pendleton
I was also really happy with the actual signers that Topps featured in the set. As a Cardinals fan, I was able to add several nice Allen Craig and Jon Jay autographs to my collection early in the year with a few of the early Topps releases. However, the pair were featured over and over again in sets throughout the year. Five Star throw out some new names that collectors could target and add to their collections. I really enjoyed tracking down this Terry Pendleton autograph two weeks ago. While, he might be best remembered as a Brave, he spent the beginning portions of his career in St. Louis and he also has a limited quantity of autographs on the market.
Best Set Runner Up: Topps Archives
I will keep this one a little bit simpler. I really enjoyed the card designs, especially the 1984 designed cards. One of my favorite sets as a kid and I still love them almost thirty years later. Topps did a spectacular job of copying every last detail into the design of the Archives cards. Of course, Topps also used designs from the 1971 and 1980 Topps sets too in producing this year's Archives release.
2012 Topps Archives Allen Craig
The autographs in the set were also really cool. There were many different players from different eras, and of differing star level featured in the set. More on that later too.
2012 Topps Archives Jose Oquendo Autograph
Favorite Autographs of 2012
I am actually going to go with a list here. I am also not going to limit this list to cards issued in 2012, but will open it up to any autographed card that I added to my collection during the past year.
Pretty easy list to explain. Mike Trout received a lot of attention this summer from collectors, and while I did not go out and try to find a Mike Trout card, I ended up adding one to my collection anyway. The card has grown on me throughout the summer and hope that he can repeat his success again next year. The Koufax card was just a nice addition and I do not own much in the way of Koufax stuff. There also isn't a ton of it out there. The last three cards were much more intentional additions. The Magic Johnson/Jordan Swagerty error autograph is a card that I have looked for the past few years, the Miguel Cabrera autograph was my favorite Cabrera autograph I added this year (I add a lot of Cabrera cards this year), and the Lankford autograph was a welcome addition to my already existing collection of Lankford cards.
