A Pair From The Best Columbian

There have been only twenty players from the South American county to have appeared in a Major League game.  Of the position players, there are only five with more than one thousand plate appearances.  If you ranked those five players by total plate appearances the third, fourth, and fifth ranked players would be Jackie Gutierrez, the Orioles and Red Sox infielder from the 1980s, Donovan Solano, and Jolbert Cabrera.  The other two are players have a little more name recognition and notoriety....

They actually played opposite of each other in the 2004 World Series.  The second greatest player from Columbia......

and the greatest......

which is not really a fair representation of Renteria's Postseason career.  He had several clutch moments including a series walk off hit in Game 7 of the 1997 World Series.....

as well as a Series clinching hit in Game 5 of the 2010 Series for the Giants.  Edgar appeared for the Cardinals in eight different Postseason playoff series, but he never managed to end up on the winning side of a World Series with the team.

Besides being one of the best Columbian baseball players, it's not a stretch to say that he's one of the better shortstops in the history of the Cardinals franchise.  He's not Ozzie Smith, not Marty Marion, but he's probably in the running for one the spots after those two players.

So, I was happy to see Edgar pop back up on Topps cards last summer.  I know that is not a completely unusual thing to have retired players on new card releases these days, I was a little surprised at Edgar's appearance.  He was really a pretty quiet person during his playing days, never really spoke out things, did not give a ton of interviews, and really seemed to keep to himself.  I am not going to complain though.  I recently had a chance to pick up two really nice autographs of the former Cardinals shortstop.

The first card is from last year's Topps Archives Signature set.  Edgar also signed for the Topps Archives product last year, though he is pictured as a Marlin on that card.  I still picked one up shortly after the set was released.  Since Archives Signature is a buyback product, with all sorts of different older cards from throughout the different players' careers, I decided to be a little picky about the card I ended up with of Edgar.  His autographs in this set are really affordable, so I figure that I could sit back and be patient.  

I feel like I did well by waiting awhile.  This 2002 Topps Heritage card is a lot better addition than a League Leader card from a base Topps set, or a card from the second half of his career which was spent wondering the league with the Tigers, Braves, Reds, and others after he left the Cardinals.  

Last card this morning.  

The scan really does not do this card justice.  It's very modern in design, but has a little less luster posted here.  This is from the Tribute set, it's one of those products I do not actually open myself, but more than willing to trade or buy people's singles.  The card is on a thick card stock and the front of the card has a nice finish.  The line in the scan just above Renteria's signature appears to be random from this view, but actually offers a really great contrast, in person, between the half of the card with Edgar's picture and the signature area.  

A very nice card, easily the best Renteria card in my collection.  

Big Cat's Lost Year

I did not touch any packs of Topps Archives Signature this year, but I do have a few cards from the set that I have picked up over the past month or two since the product first hit the shelves of my local card shop.  There were some interesting selections in the set as far as Cardinals cards go since most of them are probably better known for wearing some other uniform.  Take it a step further, their Cardinals years were not very kind.

There are four of them, and I do not have them all yet, but I am getting close.  I am going to start off tonight with my favorite out of the bunch...

The Big Cat.

Galarraga only spent one season on the Cardinals and broke his hand on a hit by pitch in one of the first games of the season.  He never quite recovered and had one of the worst seasons of his career.  The Cardinals let him go, the Rockies signed him, and the rest is history.

Obviously the majority of Galarraga cards in the set are Expos and Rockies cards, but Topps always manages to squeeze into Archives Signatures those brief stops during a player's career that's fans my not always remember well.  I am not sure how many people remember Big Cat on the Cardinals, and even though it was not his best year, I have always liked Galarraga and am happy to own this card.

A Venerable Old Card Part 29

Last year I picked up a "pack" or box of Topps Archives Signature while I was at a card show in Raleigh.  I pulled an Andruw Jones autograph that just happened to be a 1/1.  Sounds pretty cool, but it was not a card of Braves Andruw Jones.  Nope, it was the worst version of Andruw Jones you could possibly imagine:

Dodgers Andruw Jones.  

I know a few Dodgers fan and I feel pretty safe in saying that Andruw Jones is a four letter word to most of them.  So, in spite all of the great things this card has going for it:

• It's an autographed card of Andruw Jones
• It's an Allen & Ginter card
• It's a 1/1
• Have I ever mentioned that Andruw Jones has a very nice signature?

Throw out all of those positives.  The correct answer for teams that Andruw Jones can have a card for are: Braves, Yankees, and maybe the White Sox.  Although the White Sox one feels like a bit of a stretch too.  Which brings me to this week's card.....

I went looking to see what Cardinals cards were available in the Archives Signature set after it hit the card shops a week or two back.  After scouring the trade groups on Facebook and the auctions on Ebay I have are Dennis Eckersley, Eric Davis, Andres Galarraga, and Mark Mulder.  

If you are not a Cardinals fan that sounds like a decent list of names.  If you are a Cardinals fan and remember the contributions of those players you probably feel a little bit let down.  This is actually the second year in a row that Cardinals fans have had a list like this to choose from in this product.    

A quick run down:

• Eric Davis- I love Eric Davis, but he was at the end of his career as a Cardinal and was only a part time player at that point.  1999 was a bad year, 2000 was really good with a .303/.389/.429 slash line.  Still, he had a lot of other good years that Topps could have used that would probably be a bigger draw to collectors.  As a Cardinals fan, I have a bunch of Eric Davis autographs.  They are all Reds cards and I am cool with that.  
• Eck - He was also at the end of his career.  The two years he spent in St. Louis were his worst as a relief pitcher and he was upset at the fans towards the end of his time since they booed him for blowing saves.  
• Mark Mulder - He won a World Series ring with the team in 2006 by sitting on the bench after his shoulder fell off.  Not his fault, but the Cardinals traded for him and he never made a serious contribution to the team winning.  
• Andres Galarraga - The Big Cat was brought over to be a power hitter for the Cardinals post Whiteyball era.  Manager Joe Torre and hitting coach Don Baylor supposedly knew what had caused him to regress in his later years as an Expo and were going to turn him around.  He broke his hand in the third game of the season, played poorly during the first half of the season, but well enough for Don Baylor to take him to Denver when the Rockies hired him as their manager.  

Every team has players like these.  Good names with good careers, but for whatever reason they never worked out in that place.  As a Bulls fan, Rays fans will shake their head with approval over this name being in this category, I often think of Hideki Matsui.  

After some contemplation I have decided that it would actually be pretty cool to own a few more Cardinals cards of one of these players.  I am pretty sure that all four of them have appeared in this space at different points over the last few years, but more than likely they were cards of them wearing the uniform you'd most likely associate them with: Eck and Mulder with the A's, Davis as a Red, and Galarraga as an Expo and Rockie.  

I have to say though, I have always really liked Andres Galarraga and have a pretty nice run of his cards in my collection.  In fact, one of my favorite 1990s autographs is his Stadium Co-Signers card with Larry Walker.....

two former Cardinals with really nice signatures.  This is just an awesome card.  There are other cool Galarraga cards around my boxes of cards outside of this one, but almost none of the cards I own of Galarraga feature the Big Cat with the birds on the bat.  

I know he has about a dozen Cardinals cards in all.  The first card of his that I ran across when I started writing this post was this cool 1992 Bowman card.  

I am not sure what is going on with the wind breaker, but I am sure if his arms weren't going across his body there is probably a Cardinals logo or something there somewhere.  Those pants are weird considering the team had abandoned the polyester uniforms at the end of them 1991 season in favor of the button up unis.  Pretty much the same thing they wear now.   Since there is a batting cage in the background perhaps Andres wore some old pants around the ballpark pre-game.  

Not sure that Galarraga in a Cardinals uniform is as cool as say Piazza in a Marlins uniform, but I am going to track them all down.  Some of the standard sets that I collected every year in the 1990s like the Topps base set are already somewhere in my collection, but there are several other Galarraga Cardinals cards that were in other sets that I did not touch.  I need an autograph too.    

So, here's to a few more Andres Galarraga cards in a Cardinals uniform