95 and Counting...

Now up to 95 autographs for Project87. Here's the latest update:

A few months ago, I sent three cards to Ron Cey. He signed two of the three, one of which being the Cubs Leaders card that featured him and Steve Trout. I sent that card to Trout, and didn't hear back from him. Fearing that it might be gone for good, I sent Cey another one of the Cubs Leaders cards as well as the one he didn't sign last time. He signed both of them and returned them quickly, getting them back to me in just nine days!











Just ten days later (74 days after I'd originally sent them), I got these back from Steve Trout! Trout was a solid starter for the Cubs in the mid-80s, after having started his career with the White Sox. His best year was probably 1984 when he went 13-7, 3.41 for the NL East champs. The southpaw finished up his career with a few months with the Yankees and two seasons with the Mariners.











 Mike Fischlin was a solid, versatile defender who managed to have a ten season career despite not having much pop in his bat. His best season was 1982 when he had a .351 OBP in 322 plate appearances for the Indians.










While I still consider myself very much an amateur, my friend, Alex Hyde is a serious autograph collector. Not long ago he contacted me and asked if I still needed Dick Schofield for Project87. Indeed I did. Schofield was going to be signing at a show the next day in St. Louis, and Alex offered to get me his card signed for me.

Schofield had a very respectable 14 year career that spanned much of the 80s and 90s. He played mostly for the Angels, with short stints also with the Blue Jays, the Mets, and the Dodgers.  From 1986-88, he averaged a WAR of 3.3 per season, the two best seasons of his career coming in '86 & '88.

Schofield's father also played 19 years in MLB, including eight with the Cardinals.

I got a lot of six cards from Tom Tessier. They included:

Bobby Meacham was a first round draft pick of the Cardinals who was traded to the Yankees along with fellow prospect Stan Javier as a "make-good" for Bob Sykes, who ended up injured when the Yankees acquired him in October of 1981 in exchange for a young outfield prospect named Willie McGee. Sykes never pitched for the Yankees in 1982, while McGee starred for the World Champion Cardinals. Yankees owner George Steinbrenner threatened legal action so the Cardinals agreed to deal him two of their top prospects. Meacham was a starter for most of the 1984 and 85 seasons, leading the AL in sac bunts each season. He would only last six years in the MLB, but would stay in baseball and ultimately became the 2017 manager of the Blue Jays' AAA affiliate, the Buffalo Bisons of the International League.

Tracy Jones came up with the Reds and played for five teams in his six year career.

Tom Lawless is famous for two things: First he was the only player to ever be traded for Peter Edward Rose, having been sent to the Expos by the Reds when they acquired Rose to become their player-manager. Secondly, Lawless is the possessor of the most ridiculously epic bat flip in MLB history. In 1987 he had only two hits (in 25 at bats) for the Cardinals, but still found himself in the starting lineup of World Series. His fourth inning home run not only broke a 1-1 tie, but represented the only three RBIs he would get all season long. Even though it BARELY cleared the wall, Lawless acted as if it were out of the stadium completely.
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Chris Codiroli spent six of his eight years in MLB with the Oakland A's. In 1985, he led the AL with 37 games started as he went 14-14 with a 4.46 ERA.

Denny Walling spent 18 seasons as a corner infielder/outfielder, 13 of which were spent with the Astros. His best season was 1986 when he hit .312 with a career-high 13 home runs for the NL West champs. At the trade deadline in 1988, he was shipped to the Cardinals in exchange for one of my personal favorites, Bob Forsch, who I've written about elsewhere. Walling would spend the next two seasons in St. Louis before finishing up with a season with the Rangers and a few final at bats for the Astros.



Dane Iorg was a pinch hitter extraordinaire for the Cardinals in my earliest memories (1977-1984), and hit .276 throughout his ten-year career.

TTM: Making Up for Lost Time

Over the last couple weeks, I've recounted the tale of the trip I took with my friend Eric Hendrickson some twenty-five years ago. In order to have my daily posts about that trip uninterrupted, I've refrained from any updates on the autograph collecting front. So as I get things caught up today, we have a couple weeks worth of TTM autographs to share:

 



Some of my earliest sports memories are those of watching the Mizzou Tigers play football in the late 1970s, with exciting quarterback Phil Bradley throwing the ball to Kellen Winslow, handing off to James Wilder, and running the ball himself. Nevertheless, it was baseball that Bradley would go on to play as a professionally, putting up a career .286 batting average in a career that included one all star season (1985: .300/26 HR/88 RBIs).

Another of the cards I was excited to get back was that of Vance Law. The son of former Cy Young Award winner, Vern Law, Vance follows the 1985 Cardinals Twitter account I run (@HeckOfAYear). It was thrill to see the first time Law "liked" one of my tweets recounting the 1985 Cardinals season day-by-day, and it was a thrill once again when I not only received his 1987 Topps card back in the mail, with a note written on the envelope commending the Twitter account!

Another player whose cards I was especially excited to get back was Sid Bream. I've written about him before, and he was one of my favorite non-Cardinals in the late 80s and early 90s. He had his bes years with the Pirates, but is most well-known for his time with the Braves, specifically when he scored the NL Pennant-winning run in 1992.

 

Frank Tanana won 240 games throughout his 21-year career. A three time all star, Tanana accumulated a career WAR of 57.9, which is higher than that of Whitey Ford and many other Hall of Fame pitchers. A native of Detroit, he spent eight seasons with the Tigers.

Greg Gross hit .287 over a 17-year career. He now puts to use those skills as hitting coach for Diamondbacks' AAA affiliate, the Reno Aces, a post he has held for five seasons. He previously had two stints as hitting coach for the Phillies.

His 143 pinch-hits ranks fifth all-time in MLB history, and at one time he was only seven short of Manny Mota's then record total of 150 pinch hits.

Gary Pettis was a speedy center fielder who won five Gold Gloves and stole 354 bases during his eleven-year MLB career. What I'll always remember about Pettis though is the fact that he had his 16-year-old brother Lynn pose for his 1985 Topps baseball card! If I were pursuing the 1985 set, I'm not sure who I'd send it to to get it signed, Gary or Lynn. Maybe both of them?

Without question, one of the favorite Cardinals of my youth was Bob Forsch. I had four different cards he signed for me when I was a kid, not to mention a 1986 pocket schedule.

Forsch is the only Cardinal to throw two no-hitters, and is (with Ken Forsch) part of the only brother pairing to each throw a no-no. A member of the Cardinals Hall of Fame, he started Game 1 of the NLCS & World Series for a World champion (1982) and is 3rd all-time in wins by a Cardinal. He even started perhaps the most memorable game I ever attended.

I don't think he really enjoyed signing autographs, but I also don't think I ever saw him turn someone down. One Saturday afternoon, after he had starred in the  NBC Game of the Week, I witnessed him signing for nearly a half hour as his family waited for him.

Sadly, Mr. Forsch passed away a few years ago, so I had to purchase this card. I was more than happy to do so though, as his 15 years with the Cardinals comprised the bulk of my youth and given the fact that my memories of him are so fond.

Finally, what a joy it has been to have carried on a running correspondence with NFL Hall of Famer, Raymond Berry. I finally purchased an 8x10 of this great wide receiver and even finer gentleman, and sent it to him. Not surprisingly, he quickly returned it personalized and signed.

Go Crazy, Folks! Go Crazy!

My ticket stub from 10/14/85

Today is the 30th anniversary of one of my most cherished adolescent memories, and yet it is a day of somewhat mixed emotions. Mixed emotions on the one hand because the Cardinals were eliminated from the MLB postseason yesterday, and (to make matters worse) they were eliminated by the Cubs. It's about the worst way possible for a Cardinals season to end.

Apart from that though, and more pointedly, there is a tinge of melancholy attached to this beloved memory because it's the memory of an event shared with my late father. Dad didn't get too worked up about much; he was a pretty stoic guy. But on this day three decades ago, he definitely got excited. You could even say that he went crazy.

It was far more common for me in those days to go to games with my mom. Among my earliest childhood memories is going with her to Sunday afternoon games with promotional giveaways (bat day, pennant day, hat day, etc.). We would head down to the stadium after church, brown-bag lunch in hand, and wait in line for seats in the left field bleachers to be as close as possible to her favorite player (and subsequently mine), Lou Brock.

On this overcast Monday though, it was my dad who pulled me out of middle school and took me to the fifth game of the 1985 National League Championship Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. The series stood tied at two games apiece and whoever won the day's contest would achieve the enviable position of being just one win shy of reaching the World Series.

The Cardinals scored two runs in the first off perennial all-star, Fernando Valenzuela, only to squander a number of other opportunities throughout the next seven innings. The Dodgers broke through in the fourth against one of my childhood favorites, Bob Forsch, when four-time batting champ Bill Madlock hit a two-run homer to tie the game.

The score remained 2-2 into the ninth inning. After Jeff Lahti retired the Dodgers in order, Willie McGee led off the bottom half of the inning with a pop out to 3rd. Then Ozzie Smith, all 150 pounds of him, stepped to the plate. NBC's television broadcast flashed a graphic stating that in 3,009 left-handed at bats over the course of his career, the switch-hitting Wizard of Oz had NEVER hit a home run. Then, with a 1-2 count and Dodgers closer Tom Niedenfuer on the mound, the rest, as they say, is history:

From our upper deck perspective high above the right field wall, we couldn't tell at first if the ball had cleared the fence. Our initial clue was the joyful reaction of the relievers in the Cardinals' bullpen, which was located in the right field corner. For an instant, I feared their exuberance (as well as that of 53,000 others) was misplaced when Dodgers right fielder Mike Marshall threw the ball in to shortstop Mariano Duncan, who looked as if he was going to tag Ozzie out. We quickly realized though that Ozzie's shot had caromed off of one of the concrete pillars above the wall and was indeed a game-winning homer.

As we stood there, clapping, yelling, cheering, chanting Ozzie's name, it occurred to me that in my 14 years of life, I had never seen my father so excited. I had truly experienced something special, something I would never forget.

It would not be until later that evening that we would hear Jack Buck's soon-to-be-famous call of the home run. Even so, three decades later, the text tone on my phone is Mr. Buck's voice beckoning, "Go crazy, folks! Go crazy!"

Autographed 1986 Pocket Schedule

Here is a pocket schedule from the 1986 season.  Note that season's theme of "Catch Us If You Can."  The Cardinals were coming of a 1985 season in which they had won the National League Pennant, largely by running, running and running.  They stole an amazing 314 bases (132 more than any other team in baseball that season).  Jack Clark was the team's one "big bat," hitting 22 home runs.  That figure accounted for more than 25% of the team's total.

The autographs on the schedule are from the following players:

• Clint Hurdle - 1986 was his only year with the Cardinals.  He would later manage the 2007 Colorado Rockies to an improbable National League pennant.
• Bob Forsch - One of my favorites as a kid, he is the only Cardinal pitcher to throw two no-hitters.  He was an all-around nice guy, seemingly never willing to say "no" to young autograph seekers. 
• Andy Van Slyke - Just before the 1987 season, Van Slyke would be traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Tony Pena.  He would help lead them to NL East crowns in 1991-1993, which were also their last three winning seasons.  On a personal note, after he retired, Van Slyke and I actually attended the same church for a while.
• Tom Herr - Another Christian (note the "John 3:16" beneath his autograph), Herr accomplished the amazing feat of getting 110 RBIs in 1985 despite hitting only 8 home runs.

I get especially nostalgic when I look at the ticket prices on the schedule.  Bleachers were $3, General Admission was $4, Reserved Seats were $7 and Box Seats $9.50.  Every seat in the park was less than $10.  Those were the days!