Finishing 76-86 and finishing in 4th place made it official that this Cardinals team was long past it's glory years of the mid to late 60's. Gone were the gritty stars who made the Cardinal machine go. Work horses like Tim McCarver and Curt Flood were traded to far away outposts like Philadelphia. Newcomers like the enigmatic Dick "Don't call me Richie" Allen (.279-34-101) and Joe Torre (.325-21-100) put up great numbers, but they didn't posses that championship pedigree. Lou Brock stole his customary 51 bases and hit .304, but on a 2nd division team his exploits went un-noticed. Other hold overs like Dal Maxvill (.201) and Mike Shannon (.213) were in their primes in name only. Both were around 30, but played like they were closer to 40. Joe Hague was the surprise guy off the bench hitting .271 with 14 homers. The Cardinal brass thought he showed a lot of promise as a first basemen, so they traded Allen after 1 season in the Gateway city.
the pitching staff started and stopped with Bob Gibson who at the age of 34 won 23 games and collected his second Cy Young award. Lefty Steve Carlton posted a 10-19 record with a 3.73 ERA and gave no visible signs that he was going to be a future HOF'er. Mike Torrez (8-10, 4.22) and Jerry Reuss (7-8, 4.10) were youngsters who would not hit their potentials until the middle of the decade while they were wearing uniforms of other clubls. The pen was a mess. No one had more that 8 saves (Chuck Taylor). Frank Linzy was supposed to be the go to guy like he was in San Fran, but he didn't have much left in the tank. An interesting collection of young future stars graced the roster of this team in addition to the three young hurlers in the rotation. A 20 year old "Mad Hungarian" Al Hrabosky got into 16 games. Another 20 year old, Ted Simmons caught 82 games, but batted just .243. His star would be rising so fast that Torre would eventually move to first to make room for him. 22 year old Jose Cruz would hit .353 in 22 AB's. He would go on to have an All-Star career in Houston.
Manager "Bike" Mike Roberts is one of the charter members of KOD. Mike has piloted the Cardinals for all but 2 seasons. In the inaugural KOD he managed the 1962 LA Dodgers to the NL pennant and he took a break from the Cards in KOD8 to manage the 1993 Colorado Rockies. Mike chose this team, not for it's winning potential, but because it was "a non-descript team of my youth that I followed regularly". Mike has his work cut out for him on those 3 days in between Gibson starts.
the pitching staff started and stopped with Bob Gibson who at the age of 34 won 23 games and collected his second Cy Young award. Lefty Steve Carlton posted a 10-19 record with a 3.73 ERA and gave no visible signs that he was going to be a future HOF'er. Mike Torrez (8-10, 4.22) and Jerry Reuss (7-8, 4.10) were youngsters who would not hit their potentials until the middle of the decade while they were wearing uniforms of other clubls. The pen was a mess. No one had more that 8 saves (Chuck Taylor). Frank Linzy was supposed to be the go to guy like he was in San Fran, but he didn't have much left in the tank. An interesting collection of young future stars graced the roster of this team in addition to the three young hurlers in the rotation. A 20 year old "Mad Hungarian" Al Hrabosky got into 16 games. Another 20 year old, Ted Simmons caught 82 games, but batted just .243. His star would be rising so fast that Torre would eventually move to first to make room for him. 22 year old Jose Cruz would hit .353 in 22 AB's. He would go on to have an All-Star career in Houston.
Manager "Bike" Mike Roberts is one of the charter members of KOD. Mike has piloted the Cardinals for all but 2 seasons. In the inaugural KOD he managed the 1962 LA Dodgers to the NL pennant and he took a break from the Cards in KOD8 to manage the 1993 Colorado Rockies. Mike chose this team, not for it's winning potential, but because it was "a non-descript team of my youth that I followed regularly". Mike has his work cut out for him on those 3 days in between Gibson starts.
To round out this set we had to create 32 additional cards. I use the word "we" because this team set was truly a collaborative effort. Most of the card photos came from Jeff's 1970 set, where he used the 1961 Topps template. A few of the photos that Jeff had were B&W. I couldn't find any color shots to supplement what he had, so I began colorizing 6 or 7 of them. The template for 1970 was created by our very own Robert Chisholm. Robert then took the photos that Jeff collected + the photos I colorized and plugged them into his 1970 template for the finished product.
Cards look great !
ReplyDeletegreat looking cards,,,,,, how about a tribute roger maris 1970 cards ......?
ReplyDeletetotally great cards. would like to see some other teams for 1970. look forward to more blogs.
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