I Love The 90s Cardinals #3 - Tripp Cromer

Tripp Cromer. or Homer Cromer, was mainly a fixture on the 1995 Cardinals as the team's shortstop, but also appeared in a few games during the 1993 and 1994 seasons.  I am not sure what the backstory on his nickname, but I am going to assume it is just there simply due to the fact that the words rhyme, or perhaps out of sarcasm.  He managed just 5 in almost 400 plate appearances for the Cardinals over three seasons.  A better question is how in the world did Tripp Cromer even get that many plate appearances with a .226/.261/.325 batting line?

Things couldn't have been that bad.  Could they?  I will flip through some 1995 Cardinals cards, let's discuss.  First card.....

1990s Cardinals team?  Shortstop?  Where is Ozzie?  Batting .199/.282/.244 and just playing 44 games.  Bascially, Ozzie's shoulder had fallen off at this point.  Pretty sure this was his only 1995 highlight.

No problems, because they had Jose Oquendo on that team too.

Only he was terrible too, not because he was injured or anything.  Just terrible.  It was Jose's last year as a player, and with a slash line of .209/.316/.300, it's hard to say that he walking away at 31 was a bad idea.  After all, Jose did go on to have a really good coaching career.  

I know I can speak for 99.9% of all Cardinals fans when I say that we miss Jose Oquendo coaching third base.  He understood that slow runners and outfielders with good arms were a bad combination.  The current coaching staff does not.  

Back to shortstops.  No Ozzie, no Jose Oquendo, so that's when Joe Torre had to turn to Tripp Cromer.  No other choice.  Here's what Joe looked like in 1995.....

and the Tripp Cromer decision, along with a bunch of other choices between bad players and worse players, led to Torre being fired.  It also led to the 1996 Joe Torre....

which seemed to work out fine for fine for him.  As a Cardinals fan, we were just left with a few baseball cards of Tripp Cromer.  A few of my favorites.....

The first Major League Tripp Cromer card in my collection is from the 1994 Topps set.  I always liked the prospect cards in the Topps base sets, this was something different with the pixelated look around the player.  It's like we are looking up Tripp Cromer on Yahoo with a Netscape browser....

The back of the card is kind of cool and has some neat Homer Cromer info......

Looks like he did very little to get promoted all the way up to Triple A.  One partial season above .250, everything else below in the Minors with no power and no speed.  I will admit that he looks like he had a good 1993 with the Louisville Redbirds in Triple A.  I also did not know that D.T. was his brother.  I do not know Burke or Brandon.  D.T. had a bunch of baseball cards in the late 1990s with the A's and the Reds.  

Two more Tripps.  Next up is a cool little insert set from the 1994 Fleer set.  Fleer went with the mega-sets in the mid to late 1990s, which also included some easy to find inserts.  One of them featured prospects.  The only two really good prospects in the set were Chipper Jones and Carlos Delgado, but there are other names in there that you'd recognize too like: Steve Trachsel, Darren Oliver, and Mike Lieberthal.  

Here's what the Tripp Cromer card looks like.....

I like the old circular Cardinals logo in the background.  I like the blue batting practice jersey.  The Cardinals rarely wear any of their blue road hats anymore and the road blue batting practice jerseys have been gone since the late 1990s.  Wrigley also always makes for a cool card background.  Even when there is no ivy, the grandstand is nice too.  

Last one from later in his Cardinals career and has a nice action shot.  

This is from the 1996 Pacific Crown Collection set.  This was from the days when Pacific was the Spanish language card set.  In the Fleer card above, Wrigley does make a more appealing card background, but as a Cardinals fan who grew up with the cookie cutter version of Busch Stadium, it's easy to like this card.   The blue walls, the team logos on the outfield walls, astroturf....is that Mabry standing in the background?  

Here's a wider view of the wall and astroturf in the 1966-2005 version of Busch Stadium from the 1985 playoffs.  

Kind of cool to have the Cardinals logo in the background of the Cromer card.  The National League East teams were in left field and the Western teams were in right.  Overall, just a really nice card.  

Project Durham Bulls #21 - Adam Kennedy

2009 Durham Bulls 

Background-

Kennedy passed through Durham during the middle of career.  He started out with the Cardinals as a first round draft pick out of Cal State Northridge in 1997.  The Cardinals traded him to the Angels during Spring Training in 2000 for Jim Edmonds.  His career highlight came in 2002, while helping the Angels win the World Series, he hit three home runs in a game against the Twins in an American League Championship Game.  

He won the ALCS MVP that year.  Kennedy played with the Angels until 2006 when he returned to the Cardinals.  It didn't go well.  He played the 2007 and 2008 seasons in St. Louis and spent the entire time in Tony LaRussa's dog house.  The Cardinals cut him loose after the 2008 season and Kennedy ended up with the Rays who assigned him to Durham.  He last 23 games in Durham and posted a .280/.366/.439 slash line.  The A's rescued him from the Minors when they traded for him early in May of 2009.  He spent the rest of the season with the A's and actually had a decent season.  He played 3 more seasons after 2009 spending a single season with the Nationals, Mariners, and Dodgers before retiring in 2012.

Card-
I actually have a fair number of Kennedy autographs since he was a member of the Cardinals.  I am not even sure he signed much of anything after 2001 outside of a card in the 2004 UD Etchings set.  I know I have never made a post about that set, but if I did it would not be kind.  So, I was really left with trying to find a late 1990s or early 2000s card of the long time Major League second baseman.  I had thought long and hard about picking up a 2001 Topps Finest card for this post, after all those were really his best years, but the conditions of the cards were less than ideal.  If you've never checked out the autographs from that set, they fade very easily.  So, that left me to track down a Cardinals autograph that I did not own.  So, here we are with a 2000 Skybox Autographics.  It's a giant cross product 90s autograph set, but the design is nice and there were no such things as sticker autographs at this point, so.....

Panini's Imaginary Cat Story

Back to basketball tonight and Cat Barber cards.  They have been a little bit on the high side for the past year and half since he left college after his junior season at NC State.  While he was in Raleigh he became one of the best point guards in the ACC.  His main weapon on the basketball court is his extraordinary quickness.  Some would say he's shifty.  If you are unfamiliar with Cat here's a quick look....

I have already picked up one of his cards earlier this summer....

Based strictly on appearance I could understand why some of the sellers on Ebay are looking to get a little bit of money out of these cards, but at this point Cat was a really good all-conference college player who is going to end up having a nice long career playing basketball over in Europe.  I keep a close eye on things over on Ebay, and every once in awhile one of these cards ends up in an auction and they sell for $5 or less.  Sounds like a better price for someone I really liked watching while they were in college.  


Luckily, I was able to recently pick up another Cat Barber autograph.  Who wouldn't want a card that is just simply signed "Cat"?  Plus it features him in an NC State uniform and has a white, red, and black jersey swatch I would guess comes from a home jersey.

I love the design of this Immaculate Collection cards.  I know that Panini also makes college baseball cards with similar designs.  I have a few of guys like Trea Turner and Carlos Rodon, but I did not pull them out for comparison.  The signature is on-card too, which is just the icing on the cake for this card.  Well, that was until I turned the card over to the back......

and we get some suggestion about how Anthony Barber gained his "Cat" nickname due to his agility and quickness on the basketball court.  Please.  It takes about a thirty second internet search to find half a dozen stories explaining the origins of Anthony's "Cat" nickname.....

Apparently the story revolves around a 4 year old Cat Barber's love of Oatmeal Cream Pies, not basketball quickness.  

A box of Little Debbie's has more of a place on the back of these cards than whatever drivel Panini wrote.  From ACC Media Day in 2015:

"When I was little, I used to climb on a lot of stuff to get into cabinets for snacks and stuff,'' Barber said. One day, he was going after some oatmeal cream pies located in a cabinet over the stove. He stepped on the stove, burning his foot.

"My mom was like 'Stop climbing around like a little cat','' he said. "My sister started calling me that and it blew up.''

And there you have it, nothing to do with basketball.  Even Cat's Wikipedia biography has the nickname origins correct.  When you're more inaccurate than Wikipedia, well....I am sure that the back of the Cat Barber card wasn't a huge priority for whatever employee writes the little blurbs on the backs of the cards, but it would be nice to at least make them somewhat accurate.  

Interestingly enough, Cat does have a basketball nickname he picked up from his time at NC State which he uses in his Instagram user name.....

Honest.  Former NC State coach Mark Gottfried explains the origins of that nickname.....

“There’s nothing fake or phony about Cat.  He is who he is. What you get every day is the real Cat.”

Honestly, this is still a very nice looking card even if Panini is unwilling to put in a little leg work to find some interesting facts out about a Cat.   For example, he hates being called Anthony.  He also hates made up stories....

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/sports/college/acc/nc-state/article46449005.html#storylink=cpy

I Love The 90s Cardinals #2- Placido Polanco

Skipping to the other end of the decade for my second 1990s Cardinals post to write up one of my favorite players from that era.  The late 1990s were not kind to the Cardinals after the 1996 trip to the National League Championship Series.  The pitching thinned out and the team had a hard time cracking the top half of the league.  Still, a lineup featuring Mark McGwire always made things entertaining.

McGwire was the most popular Cardinals player on the field for good reason at this point for good reason.  Home runs.

As a baseball card collector, 1999 was sort of a golden year to be a Cardinals collector.  There was the huge enormous glut of McGwire cards.  They were everywhere.  So much shine and gloss.  Too many expensive cards.  Looking back on it now it's fun to go to card shows now to pick up his cards that were $10 and $15 inserts twenty years ago from the dollar card bins.  

Loved the Gold Label cards from the late 1990s.  Probably one of my favorite products of that era, the rehash job Topps has done doesn't compare to the original.  

The Cardinals had some pretty popular players around the baseball card hobby beyond Big Mac.  Two of the more highly sought after prospects around the hobby at the time were J.D. Drew and Rick Ankiel.  Drew's first cards actually came out in 1998, loved his Fleer Update card, but the craze spilled over into 1999.  He had a terrible year, baseball card collectors still were all over him.

I stopped going out of my way for J.D. Drew cards at some point in the middle of the summer.  I moved on to being an Ankiel collector.  Seemed like a solid pitching prospect.  He had a bunch of Minor League stuff throughout the summer in products like Best and Just Minors.  His first "real" card was his Fleer Update.  

I am 99.9% certain that I ended up with a copy of this card the first day that the Fleer Update set was available for sale.  There were some other young players beyond Drew and Ankiel that were worthy of my time back then.  I dabbled in Fernando Tatis and Edgar Renteria cards.  Of course there were always Ray Lankford cards.  

My favorite Lankford card from 1999 was his Essential Credentials card out the Skybox EX-Century product.  Tough card to find at the time.  

I haven't seen a copy of this card in forever.  Happy that I have it in my collection.  It's one of my favorite Lankford cards.  

There were plenty of scrubby players that filled the rest of the roster, I will get to them at some point in the near future.  For now, I want to focus in on the young players on the Cardinals roster.  There was one other really popular Cardinals player with a rookie card that year, rookie second baseman Joe McEwing.  Super Joe really deserves his own post.  

Which brings me to Placido Polanco.  Not sure anyone really cared about his cards at the time he came up with the Cardinals at the end of 1998, he didn't really hit.  He reappeared in 1999 and did a little bit better, but if you've ever spent anytime watching Tony LaRussa teams you know that he likes the utility players.  Can't have a LaRussa roster until you have a light hitting infielder who can play everywhere.  

Sort of think it's Tony giving himself a chance long after he finished playing....

The Cardinals had McEwing play great for a half a year, they dumped him for Jesse Orosco.  Polanco stayed on the Cardinals.  The Cardinals had Adam Kennedy, who was a highly thought of 1st round draft pick, they dumped him for Jim Edmonds.  Polanco stayed on the Cardinals. 

During his time on the Cardinals, LaRussa played Placido at every single infield spot which is probably a huge reason he stuck around as long as he did.  He also eventually started to hit, but that was more in the 2000s, this is a 1990s post.   

What about the baseball cards?  Placido Polanco actually first showed up on a baseball card in 1998 in the Leaf Stars set.  I don't actually own a copy of that card.  I know it is surprising.  One day I will fix this problem.  He did have a few 1999 cards, but it's not like he popped up in a ton of sets.  There was one in the Sports Illustrated set, pictured above with J.D. Drew.  That was a nice looking set, but my favorite 1999 Polanco card was probably his Pacific base card.  

It's a really simple card, but I like that it's got a frameless action shot of Placido.  The little rookie diamond on the bottom is a little bit busy, but the rest of the card is quality.  He has another Pacific card in the Crown Collection set which is an action shot from, going out on a limb, the same at bat.  I will put that card up in a minute.  Meanwhile, here is the back of the Pacific base....

I am not saying that this is somehow a great looking card back, but Pacific always had a nice blurb about the players.  I'm surprised that Polanco stole 19 bases in a season.  Not really a fast player, so kind of interesting fact. 

Last card.  Here is the Crown Collection card.  Again, same at-bat as the Pacific base card.  

I really do like this card, it's one of those really simple card products that has some good photography.  However, I think it might be a little overly simple, especially for Pacific.  Come on, I went die-cut cards and foil.  Serial numbers too.  

I have a lot of favorite Cardinals.  I feel like I probably put that in half of my posts every month, and with Placido it was a short run with the Cardinals, but he was an enjoyable player to watch.  I'm glad that the Cardinals got Rolen, was a little bummed out that they included Polanco in the deal, but you have to give something up to get something back.  

Always kind of enjoyed the few years that he played with the Tigers.  My father in-law and brother in-law are both big Tigers fans and I felt like Polanco gave us a common player to root for back in the day.  Even if he beat the Cardinals every once in awhile....

We all know that the Cardinals got along just fine in the end.  

and a song from 1999 on my IPod.  

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.