A New Project

Back in the 1980s, I was a baseball-crazed adolescent and the Cardinals were blazing around the basebaths to three National League pennants and the 1982 World Series championship. Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith is surely the most beloved player of that era among Cardinals fans, but if there is one guy who can (very speedily) give him a run for his money, it just might be Willie McGee. 

Willie played the first 8.5 years of his 19-year career with the Cardinals, before returning in 1996 to play his final four seasons in St. Louis. The wildly popular #51 now serves as a coach for the team. It was as a rookie in 1982 that Willie burst onto the national scene in game three of the World Series when he hit two home runs and made a pair of spectacular catches, including robbing Gorman Thomas of a ninth inning two-run homer. 

Three years later in his MVP season of 1985, Willie had the best year of his career, hitting .353 to win his first of two NL batting titles, stealing 56 bases, and winning both the Silver Slugger and the Gold Glove for NL centerfielders. Even though they fell just three outs short of winning it all, that season remains my favorite baseball season ever, and that year's Cardinals squad will forever be my favorite team.  

All the cards I purchased back in those days were by the pack from the local drug store. In 1985 though, there was one exception. A friend and I both responded to an ad in a card collecting magazine and purchased some of that year's Willie McGee and Dwight Gooden card. I was recently flipping through some old cards I've had in plastic sheets since those days nearly four decades ago (by the way, it feels really crazy to type those words), and I found a plastic sheet full of those Willie McGee cards. That, combined with having recently seen some guys I know from the collecting community on Twitter (see here and here) gave me an idea: I would try to collect as many copies of that card as I could. 

It fits on so many levels: 

• It's a reasonably inexpensive card, considered a common in most areas outside of St. Louis.
• It's a card from my favorite season and evokes all kinds of wonderful memories.
• It may just be the Willie McGee-est card ever, from his MVP season, with his awkward looking (though often effective) swing and the beautiful road blue uniforms pictured. 
• Willie was absolutely one of my favorites as a teenager, and I often chased after him, trying to get him to sign my cards.

Wish me luck. Tell #51 I'm chasing after him once again. And if you have a case of the Willies, you know what to do with them!

With my lovely wife, donning Willie's
#51 on my 51st birthday!