In a flurry of eBay bidding awhile back, I ended up with a small pile of 1976 Cardinals cards. My pre-1979 Cardinals collection is severely lacking, so I knew I probably needed every single card in the lot. If anyone has any old vintage junk that they don't want, let me know. I can send you some shiny new stuff that's probably not worth the "cardboard" it's printed on, or maybe some old random things. Who knows?Don Kessinger's card has to go into the Airbrush Hall of Fame. I've thought about doing an airbrushed card of the week type of feature here, but I know I don't have nearly the pool of great cards to choose from like others probably do (because of the pre-1979 thing that I mentioned.) Kessinger was a former All-Star who was near the end of his career when he came to the Cardinals. You'd think that the Cubs would have never dealt with the Cards again after the whole Brock-for-Broglio deal, but this ended up being a fairly insignificant trade.
If you look at John Denny's career stat line, it's a wonder he didn't get a lot more respect. He played on some pretty sub-par late '70s Cardinals teams, though, and he didn't have the longevity of guys like Greg Maddux and Jamie Moyer.
Bob Forsch is the lone player here from my era. He was around until the late '80s - even later if you're 1989 Score, a set where he was included as a Cardinal even though he had moved onto Houston.
I almost titled this post "I Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson".
Being in the Seattle Mariners' local market, I only knew of Ron Fairly as an M's team broadcaster. I had no idea he ever played for the Cards. I really need more vintage cards.
I'm not sure what more I can add to this photo. Baseball-Reference.com doesn't think he exists, and he has no Wikipedia entry (not that that means anything really.)After further review, this is actually Eric Rasmussen. He apparently changed his name. I just lost 10 minutes of my life.
You could've asked me, I would've told Rasmussen changed his name. It would've saved ya 9 minutes.
ReplyDelete(I did a "Spirit of '76" post, too. Featured a bunch of Astros in their wacky unis at the top).
Haha... I should have stuck with the original title. I remember that post, but for some reason forgot that title.
ReplyDeleteI grew up following those horrible 1970's Cardinals. I got started on Bob Gibson and Lou Brock and ended up with Mike Tyson, Silvio Martinez and Tony Scott.
ReplyDeleteThe radio guys made a big deal of Harry changing his name to Eric. Didn't make him a better pitcher, though.
You can be glad you didn't have to suffer through the 70's (kind of like older fans can tell me I can be glad I didn't have to suffer through the 50's).