Random Ray - 1990 CMC

Ray Lankford started the 1990 season in Triple A with the Louisville Redbirds.  The team was talented and featured several players who would go on to be starters with the Cardinals during the 1990s.  Lankford played center field with Bernard Gilkey playing left.  The two middle infielders were Luis Alicea and Geronimo Pena.  The rotation included Rheal Cormier, Omar Oliveras, and Ken Hill.  Five of the seven, minus Alicea and Cormier, would debut with the Cardinals before the end of the 1990 season.  

The Redbirds finished as the fourth best team in the American Association, in large part due to the fact that the aforementioned players were largely on the Cardinals by the end of the season.  All of the late season Cardinals call-ups made an appearance in the CMC Louisville Redbirds team set, including Ray Lankford.  

Lankford was called up at the end of August a week before the team traded Willie McGee to the A's and was starting centerfielder for the last month of the season.  

The design is not the best and photos are all taken from the stock photo team shoot.  Every single card in this set features a picture of the Louisville players standing in front of the scoreboard wearing the same off-white home jersey.  There is a second set of Louisville Redbird cards from 1990, Pro Cards, that has a picture Ray standing in the same spot, but wearing a red batting practice jersey. 

I can't say that I can really blame CMC for using the team stock photos. They made sets for a lot of the Minor League teams in the late 1980s and 1990s.  Were they really going to go around to all the Minor League teams and get photos of the players?  Most current Minor League team sets have better photography because card companies contract with local photographers to mix in some action shots.  The next time you run across a recent Minor League card look at the back.  Guarantee you there is a photo credit.  

 

The back is simple with Ray's previous Minor League stats.  Check out that photo in the top corner.  As I was saying above, stock photo.  

Not my favorite Lankford card by any stretch, but it's hard to be critical of Minor League cards from the mid 1990s and earlier.  Plenty of limitations and reasons why these sets turned out the way they did.  Just neat to be able to see pictures of players before they reached the Major Leagues.  

A Venerable Old Card Part 48

I am basing a post off another episode of the Wax Ecstatic podcast.  It's one of my favorite ways to entertain myself while I am out running or walking at night, or driving to work in the morning.  I know a bunch of other bloggers have giving the podcast a shout out in posts, or follow along with its Twitter feed.  If you haven't checked out Wax Ecstatic yet click on the links and give it a chance.

This week's episode of the podcast talked about Minor League cards which are near and dear to me.  Most of the Minor League cards that I have talked about over the years have focused team issued sets.  This podcast episode spent a lot of time talking about some of the Minor League card issues that were available nationwide in the early 1990s.

One of the sets that got a little love in the podcast was the 1991 Line Drive Minor League set which is one of my favorite Minor League sets.  I have actually picked these cards in more recent years just for fun since the boxes are out there for next to nothing.  As a 1990s baseball fan there are so many great names in these sets.  One of my favorites in the Line Drive set is former Cardinals outfielder, also a former NFL defensive back with the Atlanta Falcons, Brian Jordan.  

Jordan played for the Cardinals during some lean years in the early 1990s.  The Cardinals actually paid him at some point not to play football anymore and he quickly became one of my favorites.  Not Ray Lankford favorite, but easily top two or three players after Ray.  I have a few really nice Jordan cards floating around the collection, but I really enjoyed finding a Louisville Cardinals card of him.  I have a bunch of 1980s Cardinals Minor League sets, but I mainly bought those for the Lankford cards.  I didn't really do anything with Cardinals Minor League cards again until the late 1990s when the team drafted J.D. Drew.  

Best part about the Jordan Louisville Cardinals card is the fact that I actually got to watch Jordan play for the Louisville Cardinals one summer on a family vacation.  I cannot remember where we were actually going for vacation, maybe D.C.?, but we stopped for the night in Louisville and checked out a Redbirds game.  

There were a couple Louisville Redbirds on the roster who ended up with the Cardinals, but Jordan was easily the best player on this roster.  Jordan became a full time player for the Cardinals in 1995 and had his best years during the 1996 and 1998 seasons.  If you look at his career stats, 1998 was his career best year, but it was hard to ignore his contributions to the 1996 team which came within a game of the World Series.  

Best memory of that year was his series clinching home run off of Trevor Hoffman in Game 3 of the National League Division Series which ended up being the series clinching hit....

He also had a huge home run in Game 4 of the NLCS that year against the Braves.  Greg McMichael had a rough game between a Dmitri Young triple (seriously) and this Jordan home run.   

Even if the card isn't fancy, nor shiny, it still brings back some good memories of one of my favorite 1990s Cardinals players.