I think that I have mentioned my love for the Cardinals Smokey Bear giveaway sets on these 1980s Cardinals posts before. They were the baseball card set giveaway during the mid to late 1980s. I know that I have done a few of these before, just not from the 1988 set. I like all the Smokey Bear sets, but this is my absolute favorite. There are some great photographs in the set, plenty of action shots, and the simple design really works for me.
John Tudor had a really good 1988, so I thought I would use his card from this set. Plus, I like this action shot of him pitching.
He started out 1988 with the Cardinals, only managed to win 6 games, but that was more about a lack of run support than the quality of his pitching. The Cardinals did not have a great offense in 1988, in part because they decided to sign Bob Horner to play first base. He did not hit. So, the Cardinals traded John Tudor to the Dodgers for Pedro Guerrero.
How did Tudor's year turn out?
He started Game 3 of the World Series, and the Dodgers closed out the A's in 5 games. Shout out to the A's for playing the Golden Girls theme in the background when the Dodgers win. It starts at 0:23 on the video.
Pedro had some good years with the Cardinals, and managed to get a Smokey Bear Cardinals card the following year. So, that was a good thing.
If you collect Cardinals cards, and do not own some of these Smokey Bear cards, the sets and the singles are both pretty cheap to buy on places like Ebay. The 1988 is seriously incredible. As I said before, so many great pictures. Just picking out a random card to scan as an example......
Discount retailer Ames teamed up with Topps in 1989 to offer a small set of cards featuring players who had reached 20 home runs and 20 steals in a season. No doubt a likely follow up to the Jose Canseco 40/40 season that took place in 1988. We were still five years away from Carlos Martinez hitting a home run off the top of Jose's head.....
People were still taking him seriously at this point.
There are plenty of not so surprising names in this small box set like Andre Dawson, Kirby Puckett, Eric Davis, Dale Murphy, and plenty of others. I was actually a little surprised that Pedro Guerrero ever stole 20 bases. I remember him being a good player on the Dodgers, but not really a base runner.
My greatest Pedro Guerrero memory on the Dodgers is him throwing his glove, he was playing left field, when Jack Clark hit his home run at the end of Game 6 in the 1985 National League Championship Series.
Yes, after checking the stat sheet, also the back of the card, I can tell you that Pedro Guerrero did steal bases at one point during his career. Obviously prior to being traded to the Cardinals.
Here is the front of the card.
It's a decent design for something that was sold exclusively at a discount retailer. I don't love the Ames logo going across the bottom, sort of the weak point of the card design here, but I understand why it is there.
The back of the card confirms that Pedro once had wheels.
I like that they highlighted the years he went 20/20 and the little factoid down at the bottom of the card. I feel like this card could use a baseball card cartoon in the worst way, but those were out of fashion in the late 1980s. Good little set if you are looking for something fun with some good names from the 1980s.
First off, this post has more 1986 Topps Glossy Mail-In cards, but I am only going to mention Vince Coleman once. I'm done. Let's look at some cards.
First off, I skipped a few cards during my first post. I was trying to show the set off in numerical order, but I missed this grouping of cards.....
with Darryl Strawberry, Ron Guidry, and Chris Brown. Probably distracted by writing about a Cardinals player and I skipped right over this scan.
Guidry was towards the end of his career, but his 1985 was great. He led the American League with 22 wins and finished second in Cy Young voting. Strawberry was not really high on my list in 1986, Cardinals and Mets had a pretty good rivalry at that time, but this is a nice card. I like the polyester uniform and the action shot. Nice card.
Chris Brown was a prospect in the set. Interestingly, he and Strawberry, along with Eric Davis, all came from the same part of Los Angeles, and grew up playing baseball together. Not sure if Topps put these cards together intentionally. Brown's baseball career never panned out and he ended up driving trucks in Iraq. When he returned from Iraq he died from burns as a result of a house fire. Bizarre incident.
The Hershiser card is a second year card. I often associate the peak of his career as being in 1988 with the Cy Young Award and the World Series title, but 1985 was not far behind. The 19-3 record with a 2.03 ERA clearly got buried behind Gooden and Tudor that season.
Gary Carter was a catcher. Again, not a huge fan of the Mets, but he was a really good player.
I learned something with this last card. I am well versed with Seaver's time with the Mets and Reds, but I also know that I have a bunch of White Sox and Red Sox cards from the time I collected in the 1980s. Always assumed that those final years were his way to hanging around the game. It turns out that Seaver still had some good years though. Picked up his 300th win as a White Sox....
with Richard Nixon in attendance. Not as good as his years with the Mets and Reds, but not exactly a slouch.
I actually had all three of these cards when I started this project, but ended up replacing all three of them. Some soft corners from the younger version of me. Although, after doing a little cleaning this past weekend, I actually found another copy of the Pedro Guerrero card. Guessing I might have replaced it while he was on the Cardinals, or at some point afterwards.
Fisher was a good young pitcher for the Yankees, had a very good 1985 out of the bullpen. He was actually a member of the 1982 Durham Bulls. He was traded to the Pirates for Rick Rhoden and was given a chance to start, but injuries derailed his career. Fisher appeared in only 35 games between 1989 and 1992. Gibson and Fisk's inclusion is the set is pretty obvious, both very good players at this point.
The Tommy Herr was the only Cardinals card that I needed for this entire project. I remember these were sold in groups, but I do not seem to have the break down of these cards. Obviously I did not get these, I was also missing the Murray and Mattingly. I used to base the portions of the sets I got on the Cardinals players in each grouping. If there were enough Cardinals in the set, and they were spread out, then someone got skipped. Sorry, Tommy.
Murray is a Hall of Famer, but the Mattingly card would have been a great one to own around this time. I do not think that Mattingly should be in the Hall, but his first five or six seasons were excellent. If he had played at that level for a few more years, he would be in.
Easy to pick out a favorite card in this set. That Quisenberry card looks great with the front view of that submarine deliver. I like that the baseball is a blur in front of Quiz. I do not specific collect Quisenberry cards, but he was on the Cardinals for a few years at the end of his career. His cards usually at least catch my eye. There are a few other 1980s Quisenberry cards with a similar view, but this is the best of them.
Last set of cards for this post......
This is a hard group to end on. Who do I like in this group? I like the brown Padres jersey on the Steve Garvey card. That's all I got. The rest of the set next week.
Topps has been pumping up a new product the first two weeks of the baseball season called Topps Now. The cards can only be bought online, for $9.99, and collectors only have 24 hours to purchase the cards. Player selection for the cards is based on actual performance in games. Seems like kind of a cool idea, but I am having a hard time moving past the whole $9.99 thing for a single card.
Seriously, they have had players that I have been interested in collecting, but $9.99? Jamie Garcia had a card the other day, I thought it would be cool, but $9.99. Today, there is a card of Melvin, formerly B.J. from the Durham Bulls, Upton. Sigh. $9.99.
Which brings me to my old card of the week. If you have read my last two posts since I have returned to blogging I have told countless tales of sorting out old sets. Somewhere someone is rolling their eyes thinking "not another card sorting story", but that's exactly what you are going to get right now.
My wife spent a few hours last week helping me sort out some of my early and mid 1980s sets. Every time I would pull a set of Topps cards from one of the years, she would start sorting, and stop when she came across a card she thought did not fit. Almost every stop involved the same type of card from my childhood. Anyone remember these?
If only I had a wax wrapper from my childhood at the moment. Back in the olden days, before the internet, Topps had offers on the back of their wax wrappers which offered a pack of 5 All-Star cards for a bunch of wrappers and a five dollar check from your mom. Much better deal to get a Pedro Guerrero, Jim Rice, and few others for $5 than a Melvin Upton for $9.99. My brother and I always ended up with a bunch of these at the end of the summer. If they had cost $9.99 for a single card my mother would have never sent the check in for me. I never put together a full set of them as a kid, but as an adult I finished off the 1985 mail-ins.
A look at the back of the card....
Most of my non-1985 cards are a pretty random bunch of cards. For some reason I do not have any Cardinals, but I have players like Pedro Guerrero who ended up spending time on the Cardinals. Out of all the mail-in cards I found the past week this card has to be my favorite. Given the wear on the corners of the cards I am guessing the seven year old me liked this card too.
Anyway, I might have to make one of these old mail in sets a project for sometime in the future. I can probably buy the whole mail in set for less money than the $9.99 for the Topps Now cards. Anyone else doing the Topps Now cards?
