Baseball is a funny sport. The "boys of summer" play out nearly half their season in the spring and play its most crucial games in the fall. Spring training mostly happens in the winter. We're only two weeks away from Winter Training games... can you believe it?
Who is this week's victim, and why do we care? Chris Speier had a long, successful run as a major leaguer, completing 19 seasons where he primarily played SS. He was a high draft choice, selected second overall in something called the secondary January draft. (I don't know what that means, either.) He's also the father of former reliever Justin Speier.
Why is this a thing? Speier was actually a Cardinal for much of the 1984 season, though I have no memory or photographic evidence of this (time to Google away!). The Redbirds traded him late in the season to the Twins in exchange for a Player To Be Named Later, which turned out to be Jay Pettibone. Pettibone never played for the Cardinals or anyone else after that trade. Apparently just a few dozen plate appearances were not enough to capture Speier in a Twin Cities cap, so the rush to airbrush was on.
Airbrushed Fridays is a regular, weekly feature as the name seems to imply. If you know of a card with an altered photograph that you'd like to see featured, please contact me. You probably won't win anything other than a hyperlink and some empty yellowing top loaders from the early '90s, but you never know!
There used to be a draft in January. The January draft seems to have mostly include Juco types. And there also used to be a secondary draft (in both June and January). The secondary draft (as best as I understand it) involved players who had previously been drafted and ended up back in the draft. Speier was drafted in June of 1968 from High School but went on to Junior College. He was then drafted again in Jan 1970.
ReplyDelete