The Quest For Jamie Moyer

I have a mission, and it starts with Jamie Moyer. Yes, that's right, Jamie Moyer, the quintessential soft-tossing lefty. He's 45 years old and still going strong, with numbers that are probably better than 2 or 3 of the starters in the rotation of your favorite team. It seems like he's led several lives throughout his career. He came up as a stuggling Cub of the 80s, was out of the big leagues by 1992, only to be reborn as an all-star and two-time 20-game winner in the early 2000s. He's now a rock-solid member of the Phillies rotation.

Jamie Moyer was also a Cardinal at one point, as evidenced by the blurry, Beckett-pilfered 1991 Bowman card photo above. I would have been in high school at the time and in the prime of my card-collecting days, but until sometime last season I had no recollection of him ever being on the team. I also did not have any cards of him in Cardinals uniform, which is the most important thing of all. From a look at Beckett's checklist, it appears he is only depicted in a Cards' uni in the 1991 Stadium Club set as well as the aforementioned Bowman of the same year. There also appears to be a 1991 O-Pee-Chee "Now With Cardinals" card where they took the same card as Topps, as per usual, and most likely added his new team status as a footnote in the corner somewhere on the front. I also need to own this card. He also appears to have made it into the 1991 Lousiville Redbirds team set. He would be released by the end of the year, having spent a good portion of it in AAA, not to return to the majors (for good) until 1993.

Moyer also was the starting pitcher for Seattle in the first Cardinals game I ever attended, a 10-0 trouncing of the Redbirds at Safeco Field. It would be notable for being So Taguchi's major league debut and not much else. But he isn't really the mission here. What I really am looking for is to accumulate as many unique Cardinals baseball cards as cheaply as possible. But it's best to start small and break things down into small, attainable goals, isn't it?