New Cards From North Of The Border

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.  

Two Years. 56 Starts Later. I'm Happy To Only Have A Card

There are times when you hear the news of your team signing or trading for a player and you just know that it is going to turn out really bad.  As a Cardinals fan I have seen it a few times over the years.  Players like.....

Tino Martinez not being able to hit outside of Yankee Stadium.  Lots of double plays and he always got subbed out at the end of games so that Pujols could play first base. Kerry Robinson, or So Taguchi, would come in and play left field.  I always took it as having Kerry Robinson or Taguchi in the field was worth more than Tino batting.  Let's not forget that he cried a bunch about St. Louis not being New York.  Pretty sure Tony LaRussa was not amused.  Tino was traded to the Devil Rays, Cardinals fans rejoiced.

Wiggy.  First, he went to the light blue Carolina school.  Sure, he ended up transferring.  In many cases I can live with people once they leave Chapel Hill, like Diamond DeShields, but I have a hard time viewing Wiggy as a UNC-Asheville grad.  He signed a two year contract, but only last half a year.  Wiggy managed to play in every tiny, or thin aired stadium, in the years leading up to playing in St. Louis.  Orioles, Rockies, and Phillies. Bandbox, altitude, and bandbox.  Wiggy was eventually released.  Cardinals fans rejoiced.

Actually in the case of Wiggy I was surprised he never showed up in the International League in the role of crafty old guy on a Triple A team.

Which leads to Mike Leake.  During the 2015 Playoffs the Cardinals lost to the Cubs in the first round.  You knew there was going to be some sort of turnover.  David Price?  Nope.  Johnny Cueto?  Never in St. Louis.  I remember the day clearly.  My wife and I had just worked our last day at school before Winter Break.  We loaded up the car with the little man and started driving towards my in-laws house in Northern Michigan.

Little guy was craving some lunch.....

so we stopped at the Wendy's in Princeton, West Virginia.  The backseat was less crowded in those days.  I looked at my phone at the restaurant and I saw the Mike Leake signing all over Twitter and Facebook.  There were a lot of "he's an innings eater, we need Mike Leake" sorts of conversations taking place.  I was hoping that this was going to be one of those deals where it never quite gets finalized and the player just leverages the Cardinals to get paid somewhere else.  Happens all the time, don't laugh non-Cardinals readers.  

The Cardinals actually signed him.  So disappointed to see this.....

With all bad vibes signings/trades I always have to ask myself how far I want to go on finding cards of that player.  There have been other times in where I have had a bad vibe about players and they have turned out to be fine.  Troy Glaus comes to mind.  I was pretty sure he was going to break at some point, but he did have one good season before it happened.

He's got some pretty sweet baseball cards, but I waited to actually watch him play before taking that dive.  This was my favorite.  It's like a signed trash bag or something.....

which is what I imagined the fences at Anaheim Stadium would have been made out of prior to it being renovated.  The remodel happened after Fleer made this card.

So how deep did I go on Mike Leake?  This deep.....

that's it.  The only reason I got this card was because it was really cheap on COMC and I figured I had to get one autograph since he was on the Cardinals.  Luckily after 56 starts all of us Cardinals fans are free of Mike Leake and his incredibly hittable pitches.  I don't even care if they only got back an A Ball player who is hitting .220.  As a Cardinals fan it was hard to be at work and see the Mike Leake trade flash across my phone during my break.  I contemplated having a five minute celebration in the middle of my class, but my students this year are all college basketball people.  Surprise.  I rejoiced internally at the thought of Mike Leake not starting anymore games for the Cardinals.

I Love The 90s Cardinals #1 - Milt Thompson

Why I am making this post?  

I have always tried to do themed posts on Mondays.  I think it started out two or three years ago when I did posts about a recently purchased/traded for card, but I quit doing those since I make those types of posts all of the time.  I still do, they just aren't forced into a theme.  Plus, I borrowed the idea from a group of local Raleigh-Durham collectors on Facebook who would make a similar post on Mondays.  I scratched that idea at some point a year and a half ago and went to the Venerable Old Card posts about cards pre-2000s.  These were fun posts, but the vast majority of them ended up being about Cardinals players from the 1980s and 1990s whom I grew up watching. 

My two main collecting interest at this point in my life are Durham Bulls and Cardinals cards.  I have been making some themed Durham Bulls posts for awhile now, I figured it would be fun to make a series of posts about some Cardinals cards.  More specifically I am going to go with the Cardinals players from the 1990s.  I know it was a really rough decade for the team, but those years in my life were the end of middle school through my college graduation.  I cannot even tell you how many Cardinals game I went to during that time, but it was a large number.  Excited to share out a few cards of the players I grew up watching, at least until I run out of players.  

For the first post I am going to kind of combine the whole Durham Bulls thing with the 1990s Cardinals.  There aren't too many players who have appeared for both teams, but this guy is one of them.  
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Milt Thompson was sort of the prototypical 1990s Cardinals player.  He had spent a few years with the Braves and Phillies before the Cardinals traded Steve Lake for him.  I'm not sure the Cardinals had intended to use him as starter since they also had Willie McGee, Vince Coleman, and Tom Brunansky.  However, Willie McGee ended up only playing 58 games in 1989 which meant that Milt Thompson ended up with almost 600 plate appearances.

The 1990 Cardinals were just terrible, not Milt's fault at all, but he ended up getting a little more than 450 plate appearances that summer.  The team had gone cheap around this time when Gussie Busch died and his son August IV took over.  So, they traded away Tom Brunansky in April and Willie McGee towards the end of the summer.

Willie McGee gave us Cardinals fans a batting title that year, which was something.  Except McGee was playing in Oakland when we won it.  Still kind of an odd little moment in baseball history.  Eddie Murray was leading the NL in batting when McGee got traded and then went cold at the end of the season.

I am pretty sure that Milt would have made the 600 number on plate appearances if he had not found the bench for chunks of time during August and September.  Remember cheap.  The Cardinals had three young outfielders, all making the Major League minimum, start games at the end of the season.  Cheap yes, but the trio of Ray Lankford, Bernard Gilkey, and Felix Jose were at least talented.

I always post Ray Lankford cards, so you get Bernard.  Plus Bernard was an all around talent since he was in Men In Black for all of 30 seconds getting hit in the head with a baseball.

Back to Milt.  He actually became a bat off the bench his last two years with the Cardinals.  Pretty sure that was supposed to be his original role on the team when they traded for him.  Maybe not, I was in seventh grade when this happened. What do I know?  He was basically between 200 and 300 plate appearances during those years.

Milt left after 1992 just in time to rejoin the Phillies in 1993.  Again, bat off the bench, but he helped that team a lot.  Like this.....

He also batted .294 in the World Series that year against the Blue Jays.  He hit a home run in Game 3 off of Duane Ward and ended the Series with 6 RBIs.  Not his fault that Joe Carter walked off Mitch Williams.  

A Milt Thompson card, or two, for my post.  I am going to go with my most recent card of him first.  You might be thinking, "Who knows their most recent Milt Thompson card?" Well, at some point back in April I made some posts about finishing off my 1990 Upper Deck set.  I was successful, at finishing the set, but opening 1990s wax (foil since it was Upper Deck) means lots of doubles.  In my doubles pile....

Typical Upper Deck from the time.  Nice picture on the front of the card, kind of looks like it was taken in Wrigley Field prior to a game.  The red pullovers were the Cardinals batting practice jerseys during the 1980s and 1990s.  The background looks like it's the ivy wall with the brick top.  Can't see the basket, but the back of the card confirms what the front of the card hints at in terms of location....

with the brick wall behind him in the picture.  

Surprisingly, Milt actually had some nice cards with the Cardinals.  At least I think so, especially a pair of his 1991 Topps issued cards.  His base Topps card, great photography that year, has a cool action shot of him ducking on inside pitch during a Spring Training game.....

Crooked scan, apologies.  His Stadium Club card from that same year also had an action shot of him.  On this card he's running in to catch a fly ball in Wrigley.  The ivy always makes for a nice background on baseball cards.  I approve of card photos there.  

Overall, Milt was a much better player for the Cardinals than I remembered.  He also played for the team during a real point in the franchise's history.  His final Cardinals line, in a little more than 500 games, was .274/.334/.387 with 20 home runs, 21 triples, and 67 doubles.  Milt also stole 86 bases and ended three of his four seasons with an OPS+ over 100 (average player is 100) with marks of 107 in 1989, 127 in 1991, and 116 in 1992.  His 1990 was a little rough with an OPS+ of 71, or a little bit lower than Jason Heyward. 

A random 1990 song from my Ipod.  

Project Durham Bulls #20 - Ben Zobrist

2006-2008 Durham Bulls 

Background- 

Zobrist started off his professional career with the Astros after they selected him in the 6th round of the 2004 Amateur Draft out of Dallas Baptist University.  After two years in the Astros organization he was traded to the Rays in exchange for Aubrey Huff.  Zobrist was very much the same type of player offensively in the Minors as he is in the Majors.  He had a little bit of pop in his bat, but his main offensive skill was getting on base.  During his first two go arounds in Durham, 2006 and 2007, he managed to draw more walks than strikeouts over almost 80 games.  His OBP for the Bulls was above .400 during each of the 3 seasons that he played in Durham.  Zobrist is probably best known as a player who can show up anywhere on the field, but that skill did not show up until he reached the Majors for good in 2008.  The Astros played him exclusively at shortstop, while the Rays Minor League teams used him at second, short, and third.  However, the majority of his time with the Rays Minor League teams was still spent at short.  So much that I could say about Zobrist, I will keep it short and simple.  He has appeared at every position in the Majors except pitcher.  He's played more than 100 career games at second, short, and the two corner outfield spots.  Zobrist has now been in the Majors for 12 seasons, made three All-Star games, won two World Series rings, and a World Series MVP.  He has a solid .263/.356/.428 slash line with more than 150 home runs and 300 doubles.  

 Card-

I actually already had a copy of this card that I picked up way back in 2007 from one of my favorite card shops in St. Louis.  I had seen Zobrist on the 2006 Durham Bulls, so I knew of him at the time.  I went home for Thanksgiving with my then girlfriend, now wife, and I took her to the card shop.  She was a great sport about the whole baseball card shop thing.  Anyway, the guy who ran the store always used to open a pack out of the boxes that he was using to sell single packs.  Sitting there in the open pack of the Topps 52 box was a Zobrist autograph.  I asked the guy about the card, he had no idea who Zobrist was, and I ended up getting the card for a few dollars.  Always liked this card a lot, saw a cheap one the other week.  Thought it would look nice is this space.  

The Archives of Jimmy Ballgame

I started this blog in the spring of 2012, which was well after one of my favorite Cardinals, centerfielder Jim Edmonds, had walked away from baseball.  I feel like I miss out on posting his cards since he does not really pop up in current products and I do not pick up too many of his cards anymore.  My Jim Edmonds card collection is not anything close to my Ray Lankford cards, but I have definitely spent a lot of time and money on assembling some nice cards of Jimmy Ballgame.

Initially I did not really touch his stuff with the Angels when he was first traded to the Cardinals during Spring Training in 2000.  I picked up my first Cardinals card of Edmonds out of the second series of 2000 Upper Deck and it was on from there.  Here is that first Cardinals Edmonds card......

So many good Edmonds cards over the years, I did eventually loop back and work on the Angels cards.  If I had to say that there are holes in my Edmonds collection it would definitely fall into those early years with the Angels.  Not sure that there were too many tough cards of Edmonds made during that time, but it just takes time to find them all.

My best early Edmonds card has to be this cool Minor League card I found earlier in the spring from his time in the Texas League with the Midland Angels.  Really sweet card.

With work to be done with some of the Angels years, I was happy to get a little bit of a respite to pursue a Jimmy Ballgame card that was issued this year in Topps Archives.  The best part is the fact that he is pictured in a Cardinals uniform on the card and the design in from one of his prime years with the Cardinals.

Here is a look at the card.....

Love the 2001 Topps card design and that was a pretty good year for Edmonds on the field.  It's also nice to see him back as a signer in a card set.  Edmonds has a really nice and very distinct autograph.  I am pretty sure Edmonds has not signed anything since 2004 or thereabouts.

Where Have You Gone Aledmys Diaz?

Not even a year ago I was in my local card shop buying a box of Topps Update.  I had actually thought about skipping the purchase in favor of just buying the base set and using the savings to buy an autograph of Cardinals shortstop Aledmys Diaz.  How often do you walk into a card shop, think about the most ideal pull you could make out of a box, and then pull it off?  Next to never.

Yet, it happened to me last year.  

I love this card and I was so incredibly happy to pull this autograph out of a pack.  However, I have done almost nothing with any Aledmys cards this year.  Topps and Panini are still making Aledmys Diaz cards, it's just that he's disappeared.  First, Aledmys was in St. Louis and didn't really look anything like the guy who was one of the best rookies in all of baseball last year.  

Since Mike Matheny and John Mabry can't actually fix any young players on the Cardinals, Aledmys disappeared completely from the Cardinals.  It's happened before with Randal Grichuk and Stephen Piscotty.  Usually the second they get away from John Mabry the young Cardinals learn how to hit again.  However, Aledmys has disappeared in Memphis too.  He's been out homered by Wilfredo Tovar, although he does have a slightly better OBP with a .306 mark.  Still pretty terrible.  

Aledmys disappearing from the baseball field has actually helped out my collection of Aledmys baseball cards.  Before, last fall, his cards were at least $30 or so.  Now they are $5 on Buy It Now on Ebay.  I'm a little hesitant to even pay that much because I have gotten his cards for less than that just bidding on auctions.  

Not going to weight down a post with too many Aledmys cards, but I have two cards that I have enjoyed more than the others.  Both were steals, compared to last year's prices, not this year's prices....

First up.....

an Allen & Ginter card.  I always love a good Allen & Ginter card.  I especially loved the framed cards out of this set.  I'd always like to have nice autographs, but I will be autographs from the dollar bin if it's on a framed Ginter card.  

Last one.  

Really cool picture on this Stadium Club card which came from the video clip above.  Always a really big fan of these cards too.  On-card autograph, everything about this card is quality.  

Fightin' Archives

Long ago I often tried to put together team sets of Cardinals cards from those per pack autograph sets.  I think it probably started with the 1999 SP Signature set which had a Musial autograph and also featured the hot rookie prospect of the day, J.D. Drew........

with those two crossed off the list, I was left with tracking down Fernando Tatis and the memorable Chris Haas.  Not much of challenge.  

I went on collecting Cardinals autographs like this for a long time, but at some point I started to loop back around and pick up the players' autographs who ended up on the Cardinals.  I kind of think it was probably some point around 2005 or 2006 when I was really into players like Scott Rolen and Jim Edmonds.  Initially it didn't really seem like it was that hard of a challenge.  Aaron Miles, David Eckstein, Juan Encarnacion.....

They all seemed to be fairly inexpensive and easy to track down.  Then I started digging deep.  Have you ever seen a 1999 SP Signature Ron Gant?  I have seen one too, they are expensive.  They also don't pop up that often.  Do I have one?  Nope.  There are other sets where I have expanded out my collection to include players who were not in a Cardinals uniform on their card, but appeared with the team at some point during their career.  

One of my longer running efforts has been tracking down the former Cardinals players in the 2001 Topps Archives set.  Like always, some were easy to find, but others have been really hard.  

Earlier this summer I finally managed to track down a George Hendrick card from the Archives set.  I had been looking for a copy of that card for several years now, but could never find one at a price that I really wanted to pay.  It took time, but it was worth the wait.....

While I was crossing George off of my Cardinals list I also spotted a card that had inadvertently been crossed off my list of cards needed from the 2001 Archives set.  As I recall I had found this particular card at one point, bought it and crossed it off my list, and then was stiffed by the Ebay seller.  I had to double check to make sure it hadn't ended up in one of my autograph boxes in the wrong spot, but after that was ruled out, I went back and looked for another copy of the Curt Simmons autograph.

I found one.  

Now, of course I would always prefer to find cards of a former Cardinals in a uniform with the birds on the bat.  Not always possible though.  In Simmons case, there are actually Cardinals certified autographs of him, but this is a great looking card.  I know the P on his hat looks goofy and out of proportion, but everything else about this card is outstanding.  

You've got the 1951 Topps design, the cool old fashion Phillies uniform (hat doesn't bother me that much, and that cool painted/art card look that appeared on many early 1950s Topps cards.  I am not sure how many times Topps has reprinted different players 1951 Topps cards, but I like that in the 2001 Archives set they used the actual same design, but just left the facsimile signature out of the box in favor of the autograph.  

Most of all I like the Fightin' Phils logo down at the top of the player name plate.  I know that there are people who think that some of the older logos look ridiculous, but I wish teams would bring them back every once in awhile.  Sure the Fightin' Phils logo looks like it might have been designed by a high school kid....

Which brings me to Simmons and the Cardinals.  He was traded over the Cardinals during the 1960 season and had some very good seasons with the Cardinals culminating in helping the 1964 team comeback to overtake the Phillies and defeat the Yankees in the World Series.  Pretty nice player on a very nice piece of cardboard.