December Card Show Autographs

After skipping November, I returned to the monthly card show in December, and came away with quite a handful of autographs.

Red Schoendienst     Tom Herr
 Bob Tewksbury     Jack Clark     Ron Hunt

That wasn't even the full contingent of players signing at the show. Cecil Cooper was there, despite having no St. Louis connections I'm aware of. Also, hockey player Bob Plager was there. He's well-known locally from his time with the Blues and he continues to work for the team, but I just don't have the room to start a puck collection too.

As for players I did get, Red Schoendienst has been on my want list for quite awhile. I've missed a few of his signings for various reasons, so I blocked out my calendar and bought advance tickets to make sure I made it to this one. Ron Hunt only played for the Cardinals at the very end of his career, but he did play here, so I decided I should have a ball with his autograph. Despite having one of the shorter lines there, his line moved the slowest, because he really wanted to talk to every fan that approached him. I thought that was pretty great, he could have signed and gotten out of there in 30 minutes, but he took his time and actually thanked the autograph seekers. Tom Herr and Jack Clark were Cardinals just before I started watching baseball, and both were part of the 1985 team that nearly won the World Series, and both were also All-Stars earlier that year. Finally, there was Bob Tewksbury, who wasn't dominant during his playing career, but he was probably the ace of the Cardinals staff when I was first getting into baseball, so that was another autograph I was excited to get. My favorite memory of him, though, is when he played for Minnesota in 1998 and lobbed some eephus pitches to Mark McGwire to keep the ball in the park.

Donuts from Johnny's Trading Spot, Part IV

Several weeks ago, I read a post at Johnny's Trading Spot titled Instant mini collections up for grabs. "Up for Grabs" always gets my attention, so I threw my name into the mix. They were supposed to be randomly assigned, but through a lucky draw and one trade, each of the winners wound up with exactly what they originally wanted most. For me, that was cards with batting donuts.

Part I II III

Shouldn't Friday always be Donut Day?

1990 Fleer
#292 Steve Buechele
#301 Pete Incaviglia
#559 Von Hayes
#560 Tom Herr
1990 Topps
#143 Rafael Belliard
#325 Robby Thompson
1990 Topps Traded
#65T Candy Maldonado
#85T Junior Ortiz

I've never heard whether there's any sort of interesting story behind it, but for some reason 1990's Tom Herr was 1987's Tommy Herr.

1987 Donruss
#140 Tommy Herr
#169 Keith Moreland
#183 Terry Pendleton
#485 Bob Brenly
#622 Dave Henderson
1989 Donruss
#309 Rafael Santana
#346 Mickey Hatcher
#355 Gene Larkin
#484 Wallace Johnson

It still fills me with cognitive dissonance that Terry Pendleton was a Cardinal longer than a member of the Atlanta Braves. I started watching baseball in 1992, so I never saw him play for us firsthand, and I didn't find out that he did until years later.

1990 Upper Deck
#86 Neal Heaton
#148 Ernie Whitt
#232 Ron Gant
#240 John Moses
#289 Eddie Williams
#298 Mike Scioscia
#306 Mike Heath
#419 Tim Laudner

1990 Upper Deck was clearly big on the donut photo on the back of the card, favoring action shots for the most part on the front.

1990 Bowman #332 Jerry Browne
1989 Fleer #219 R.J. Reynolds
1989 Fleer #573 Steve Jeltz
1990 Donruss #456 Glenn Braggs
1990 Donruss #798 Chris James
1991 Leaf #36 Spike Owen.

All-Star Winnings, Part 1

Way back in July 2012, I won a contest at Cards On Cards. The premise was to pick the Cardinals player who would have the biggest impact on the game, determined Sabermetrically. I picked the right player, and got a pile of Cardinals for my trouble. They've been sitting in that same pile, haunting me, for quite some time, so now is the time to show them to you.

1983 Topps Stickers
#135-136 Jim Kaat
#189-190 Dane Iorg
#283 Lonnie Smith

I was unaware of these Topps Stickers, but now I really wish I had known about them. Look at those sweet powder blues. There are plenty of Cardinals in the set, too, because there appears to be a World Series subset.

1982 Fleer #118 Tito Landrum
1985 Topps #113 Tom Herr
1984 Fleer #327 Jeff Lahti
1984 Fleer #660 Whitey Herzog (Checklist)
1986 O-Pee-Chee #94 Tom Herr
1986 O-Pee-Chee #171 Tito Landrum

More powder blues, Tito, Whitey, and O-Pee-Chee. This image pretty much sums up why we collect.

1987 Fleer #297 Ricky Horton

Wrapping up the older cards is current Cardinal broadcaster Ricky Horton, who goes by Rick these days. He's been doing that regularly for 10 years now, but he still feels new to me. Anyone but Jack Buck, Joe Buck, Al Hrabosky, and Mike Shannon probably always will.

182 Packs Giveaway, Part VIII

When I claimed the Cardinals - and Mark McGwire and Todd Stottlemyre - in the pack-per-day giveaway held at TribeCards, I had no idea just how many cards I'd wind up with, and how many different players. So that I can tag all of the sets and Cardinal players, I've broken this up into a series of who knows how many posts. Thanks for all the cards, David.
[ I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII ]

This is the last of the giveaway. But, I saved the most interesting for last, 1986 Donruss All-Stars. These cards are giant, about 1.5x as large as regular cards in each dimension. Much like Nachos Grande, I didn't even know about these cards before this break.

1986 Donruss All-Stars
#46 Donnie Moore
#36 Willie McGee

1986 Donruss All-Stars
#2 Tommy Herr
#8 Ozzie Smith
#23 Jack Clark

The cardinals had a good year in the All-Star balloting, which caused me to get 4 giant cards. Ozzie looks like he might be ready to go swing left-handed without an earflap on his helmet. As a kid, I distinctly remember my Dad telling me Ozzie would have been one of the only guys on the team old enough to be grandfathered into not wearing a flap.

1986 Donruss All-Stars Pop-ups
#2 Tommy Herr
#8 Ozzie Smith

I love the look of these cards, but I could never bring myself to perforate and actually stand them up. I'm such a tortured soul. It would appear from the 18-card checklist that only the starting lineups got pop-ups, so again I'm quite luckily to get 2 Cardinals.

1986 Donruss All-Stars
Puzzle Pieces 61, 62, and 62

Finally, it's not glamorous, but not everyone can be, right? Part of the Hank Aaron puzzle, which I think may have only been in this product. Since I have 3 of 63 pieces, I'd happily send this along to anyone trying to complete the puzzle.

Well that's it for the 182 Packs Giveaway. It took a whole lot of sorting, scanning, and cropping, but I got them all up here. And of course, I want to say thanks to David at TribeCards once more.