TwitterThe Date: October 21, 1987 The Setting: Game 4 of the 1987 World Series, Busch Memorial Stadium, St. Louis, Missouri The Pitcher: Minnesota Twins ace Frank Viola The Batter: St. Louis Cardinals utility man (and… Read more »
Posts by Alex Crisafulli
Ken Burns’ documentary series Baseball rubs some the wrong way. Hearing an endless loop of George Will and Doris Kearns Goodwin droning on about the perfect art and symmetry of baseball or God-knows-what can be… Read more »
Earlier this week on Episode 3 of the Banished to the Pen Podcast, I told host Ryan Sullivan that I probably hadn’t purchased a pack of baseball cards since 1994 (I looked back on some of… Read more »
Writer Alex Crisafulli talks cards with senior staffer Ken Maeda (content to take on a sidekick role here) and host Ryan Sullivan (not yet ecstatic from hearing of Scherzer’s signing). Then the trio talks Cards, as well as Angels, playoff disappointment, and Effectively Wild.
When I was collecting cards, issues of Beckett Baseball Card Monthly had a page listing the address for each team’s stadium. It was easy to not pay this page much mind, but I saw it… Read more »
As first reported last week by Ken Rosenthal and Paul Morosi of Fox Sports, the St. Louis Cardinals are currently exploring options to add depth to their pitching staff. They don’t appear to be aiming low. So far they have been name-dropped in trades for Cole Hamels and David Price and called a potential bidder in the Max Scherzer sweepstakes. James Shields’s name was briefly thrown around as well.
In Part 3 of the Time Capsule: Cards From the ‘80s & ‘90s series we were introduced to Randy McCament’s 1990 Upper Deck baseball card and marveled how wonderful it was when the card manufacturer didn’t seem to care whether their subject knew his picture was being taken.
A lot of St. Louis Cardinal fans, myself included, were a bit surprised when Sierra was selected as the Cardinals’ Minor League Player of the Year last month alongside Marco Gonzales, who was given the same award for pitchers. Surprised because other than hearing his name in passing a few times, I really didn’t know much about him. Unlike Gonzales, who made his debut on June 25th and had an established role with the club during the 2014 postseason, Sierra seemed to have sprung up from nowhere.
I will not be attending the 1990 Spring Training Camp of the team of my choice.
“My first major league baseball game was in April of 1987, in St. Louis, Missouri. I was eight years old. My favorite team calls St. Louis home and on that Saturday night we, the Cardinals, were playing the New York Mets. This was serious business. True, our rival was, and is, the Chicago Cubs, but that wasn’t really the case in 1987. The Cubs were “lovable losers,” they were cute. The Mets were not cute. They were brash, they were reckless, and they had a slugger named ‘Howard Johnson’ which I thought was weird. And more importantly, they were winners.
“The best cards are often when the manufacturer didn’t seem to care whether the player knew his picture was being taken or not. This seemed to afflict the more average players than your all-stars. Honestly, I could make an entire 700-card series of these. “
“Going through old cards you’ll find some just have a knack of jumping out at you for various reasons. ’91 Score had a series of cards called ‘Master Blasters’ which were designated for the sluggers of the day and ‘K-Men’ which, well you get the idea. They were hideous.”
“The Saturday after Thanksgiving I was asked to retrieve the Christmas decorations from storage. To do this I had to maneuver several boxes out of the way, one of which I knew contained my old baseball cards. I also knew if I opened that box, I would fall into a bottomless chasm of Diamond Kings, commons, and ‘Jesse Barfield? I had forgotten about Jesse Barfield!’ moments. Naturally, I dove in.”
