One of the best trades the Cardinals made during the 1980s was picking up Jack Clark from the Giants for Dave LaPoint, David Green, and Jose Uribe before the 1985 season.
Jose Uribe from EBay.
That's not suspicious at all.
The 1985 Topps set had Jack Clark as a Giant.
A few months later the Topps Traded set rolled out, and we got Jack Clark in a Cardinals uniform.
Darrell Porter in the background.
Meanwhile, our friends north of the border in Canada got a really cool combination of these two cards in the O-Pee-Chee Set, or Maple Topps. If you have never seen an O-Pee-Card from the 1980s of a player signed as a free agent or traded in the offseason, it is worth your time to go find a few of these cards.
This is the Jack Clark card.
We get the Topps Traded border with the base set Topps photo. The best part is always the caption "Traded" or "Signed" or "Now With" that was stamped onto the card. These O-Pee-Chee cards are almost better than the Traded cards. Almost.
I wish Topps had not used the stamps on the regular Topps cards. It seemed to make the "Now With" types of stamps a little less special.
Who remembers Doug DeCinces on the Cardinals?
Not very memorable, but if you put a Cardinals frame and design around Doug DeCinces than you've got an interesting baseball card. No, O-Pee-Chee did not give DeCinces the usual treatment.
The Topps Traded sets in the 1980s were great, but you had to wait all the way until the end of the year to get new cards of new players on your teams. If you did not get the Traded sets, then you had to wait all the way until the following year to get the new players in their new uniform. Then there were the O-Pee-Chee cards. You know, the Canadian version of Topps.
They were sort of a halfway point between the traded set and the regular Topps cards. I am not sure when they came out during the year, but they often included traded players, so later than the base Topps set. They also did not show the players in their new uniforms, just merely restyled their Topps card to fit the design of their new team.
I have already covered a bunch of this in a post a few months back with a John Tudor card from the 1985 O-Pee-Chee set. Great card.
I know there are likely some who would put out that John Tudor is wearing a Pirates uniform, but the card clearly says, "Traded To Cardinals 12-12-84" and the logos and word marks also all belong to the Cardinals. This is his first Cardinals card. I feel like I could make a whole post of "Traded To..." posts of Cardinals O-Pee-Chee cards, but for today I am just going to stick with Lonnie Smith.
Here is the card.
Lonnie was a really important player on the 1982 Cardinals. He finished second in the National League MVP voting in 1982 with almost 70 stolen bases, an average over .300, and an on-base percentage just a tad over .380. The team won the World Series, so that's always a good thing.
Prior to playing on the Cardinals, Lonnie played a few years for the Phillies. It was the only team he played for prior to getting traded to the Cardinals. Here is the back of the card.....
The coloring on the back is a little different than the standard Topps card, which were a little darker shade of green. The information is obviously different since it is written in French and English. Also love that Lonnie was a young enough player that you can see all of his Minor League stats, as well as his Major League numbers.
Lonnie played on the Cardinals until the beginning of the 1985 when he was traded to the Royals to make room for Vince Coleman. He was apart of the Pittsburgh cocaine trial along with Keith Hernandez and Joaquin Andujar. That was where the guy who was inside Pirates parrot mascot was selling drugs to players.
Whitey Herzog ditched all the Cardinals players involved with the Pirates drug scandal. Lonnie did get a 1985 O-Pee-Chee card, but it did not have a "Traded" stamp anywhere on the front of the card.
I have been saving the greatest 1980s Cardinals O-Pee-Chee card, might need to post it sooner than later. Anyone have any ideas of player who might have a card like the Lonnie Smith or John Tudor card above?
Way back in 1985 I did not collect any O-Pee-Chee cards. In fact, I think I might have had one or two of them in collection and had no idea what to do with them. As an adult, I love the 1980s O-Pee-Chee cards. Really, how many 1985 Topps sets do I need in my collection? I think there are several copies, probably do not need any more, but these O-Pee-Chee cards keep things interesting.
They are like a hybrid of the regular Topps card and the Topps Traded cards.
I wish I could make some sort of cool graphic where the two cards merge together and form the O-Pee-Chee card. I am not that talented. I imagine it would like that episode of The Simpsons where the Japanese cleaning company is using a likeness of Homer, and he discovers they created it by merging together an image of a light bulb and a fish.
Flip over to the back of the card......
John Tudor's stat line was not interesting until he got to the Cardinals. I like the dual language labels in both French and English. Always fun 1980s cards to collect.
Bryn Smith is pretty emblematic of the Cardinals ventures into the world of free agency during the 1990s. The long time Montreal Expos pitcher signed with the Cardinals in late November of 1989, towards the beginning of the free agent signing period. Salaries were different then, but 3 years and 6 million dollars seems like it was a pretty fair contract at that time for a mid-rotation starter.
O-Pee-Chee was like clockwork with the "Now With....."
I know that 1989 was long before the world of sabermetrics and analytics and the number crunchers that are around the game today, but there was a lot to like about signing Bryn Smith. While he only won 12 and 10 games in 1989 and 1988, Smith was actually coming off his two best seasons as a starting pitcher. There was not WAR and ERA+ back then, but Smith was at 5.1 WAR in 1989 and 125 for ERA+. Those two numbers were just about equal to Greg Maddux's numbers that season.
The point is, the Cardinals signed a good pitcher. Further, playing in a pitchers park like Busch Stadium should have helped his cause, along with having a left side of the infield with Ozzie Smith and Terry Pendleton.
Smith likely was out in Montreal after ripping the city in a Sports Illustrated article that ran in 1989.....
"There are two things that really get to the players. They don't serve ketchup with french fries. They serve gravy. Then when you order a Coke, they don't put ice in it. They don't know how to make iced tea. Ice is hard to come by, and if you ask for it, they tell you in French that you're stupid because you get more Coke without the ice."
so the Cardinals made a good landing spot.
While on paper it seemed like a great idea, just like so many other 1990s Cardinals free agent signings, Smith did not work out very well for the Cardinals.
On to a few baseball more baseball cards. The O-Pee-Chee card was obviously one of the first Bryn Smith cards as a Cardinal, sans uniform. He also had a Topps Traded card. Smith did have a few regular issue cards that did not include a giant "Now With Cardinals" stamp across the picture.
The two best in my opinion were....
his Bowman, which came out of the "Rainbow" set. I bought a bunch of packs of these back in 1990, did not really care for them very much at that time. They have really grown on me over the years. There are a lot of good update type cards in this set with these posed photos from Spring Training. Kind of a good way to give a veteran player their first card with a new team without having collectors wait all the way until the end of the year.
He was also in the regular edition of Leaf. Although, this picture looks like someone snuck up to him to take the photo. Still, the Leaf set is one of the better products that came out in 1990, so it's nice that they snuck Smith into the Cardinals cards.
The 1990 Cardinals were terrible,. Smith had a 9-8 win/loss record, he had an ERA north of 4, and missed a chunk of time at from the end of July to the beginning of September. He only ended up pitching 141 innings on a team that could have used some quality innings. No matter the metric, Smith was a below average player during his first season with the Cardinals.
He had a few traded cards released towards the end of the season. I like the Score Traded card. It's bright orange and has a decent action shot of Bryn Smith.
His 1991 was a little bit better on the field, but still not great. Between 1991 and 1992, Smith had a decent slate of cards. Most interestingly was Topps using nearly identical photos, one on the road and one at home, on his 1991 and 1992 cards.
His 1991.....
which was taken on the road. Leaning towards Shea Stadium.
His 1992........
Astroturf. Blue walls. Early 1990s Busch Stadium.
Two more cards.
A little front and back of a Cardinals team issued card. I have put up a ton of these on recent posts, was thinking about just doing major releases for this week's 1990s Cardinals post, but I like the stove cartoon on the back of his 1992 Cardinals team issue.
Last Cardinals card. Well, sort of Cardinals card.
Smith left the Cardinals after the 1992 season and signed with the expansion Rockies. His last card, as far as I can tell, with a picture of him in a Cardinals uniform is his 1993 Fleer. During his final season with the Cardinals, Smith only appeared in 13 games, with just one start. He missed almost the entire season. Yet, the Rockies signed him and gave him a starting slot. In fact, he started their first home opener.....
Smith ended up winning this game. He pitched seven shutout innings. However, by June his ERA was over 8 and the Rockies ended up releasing him at the beginning of the month. He did get a few Rockies cards though....
He has done some coaching both in the Minors and college levels since his retirement.
Canada has contributed greatly to the world of sports cards over the years. Where would we be without hockey cards.....
or football cards from a league with a 55 yard line and field goal posts in the front of the end zone? (Go Redhawks! Beat Kansas)
or baseball cards with the players position written on the front in both French and English?
I shutter to think of a world without all of these great contributions that our fine neighbors to the north have made to my favorite hobby. The Canadians have also had a pretty good run of producing some fairly nice baseball players. The Cardinals have even had a few over the years, most of them not as good as Fergie Jenkins or Joey Votto, but still good.
Who remembers Stubby Clapp?
He's actually turned into a really nice Minor League Manager for the Cardinals currently working for their Triple A team in Memphis.
John "Axman" Axford? Probably a better memory for Brewers fans, but I actually have a card of him playing for the Canadian National Baseball team......
He's been making some pretty funny tweets recently about being an unemployed baseball player. Then there is Larry Walker who is easily the best Canadian born player to have ever worn the Birds on the Bat.
Walker played for the Cardinals the last year and a half of his career. Not sure people always remember him ending his career in St. Louis, definitely a very memorable career with the Expos and Rockies, still a nice player during that time for the Cardinals.
His power dropped off and he was much more of a role player behind stars like Pujols, Edmonds, Rolen, and Chris Carpenter.
It's been awhile since the Cardinals have had a Canadian on the roster, but there is a pretty talented outfielder in Triple A right now who has a pretty good shot at getting to St. Louis in the near future.
Meet Tyler O'Neill.
The Cardinals actually traded for him this summer. He was originally drafted by the Mariners out of high school back in 2013, but was traded over to St. Louis in exchange for Marco Gonzales. Over the last three years in the Mariners system his home runs totals have been 32 in 2015, 24 in 2016, and 29 this summer. Almost every major baseball publication who ranks prospects puts him within the Top 50 in all of the Minor Leagues.
Seemed like the type of player you'd buy a baseball card of, file it away in a box for a few years, and then revisit it at some point in the future. So, I set out to find one. Maybe two.
Here's the first one I found.
For a Top 50 prospect, who hits a lot of home runs, his cards aren't too expensive. I mean, they aren't giving them away on Ebay, but it's realistic to set a $5-$10 budget and walk away with something fairly nice. I ended up with this Bowman's Best autograph which made me very happy. There is a nice finish on this card and the signature is on-card, always a plus.
The only thing I don't like about this particular set of Bowman's Best, 2016, is the honeycomb design in the background of the card. Sort of reminds me of the alternate Georgia Tech football helmets.
Now the really nice autograph. I have always loved this set, every year it has been released, and was happy to have another player with a Cardinals connection in this set.
This is also a 2016 card, but the year doesn't really matter with the Inception brand. Topps always does a really nice job with the cards. It's one of the few sets with a dark background that still looks good with a signature on the front. The autograph of O'Neill is consistent between the two cards, but this is easily my favorite of the two. If he were to not remain on the Cardinals, they do have a ton of outfielders between their Major League and Triple A rosters, I would still keep this card. The scan doesn't even really do the nice card stock used justice.
Hopefully I can look back at this card in a few years and O'Neill will already be amongst the best Canadians to ever play for the Cardinals. Not sure that's a very high bar considering that would mean being better than Stubby Clapp and John Axford.
