Pitchers and Catchers Report: PLAY BALL!!

[redbirdjazzz]

Cardinal related #22 great:

Emmitt Smith

FTFY

[bronx_bird]

I wondered who the hell Steve Braun was. To my surprise, he played for the Cardinals for five years.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/playe ... st01.shtml

To my greater surprise, his bases-loaded walk drove in the winning run in Game 2 of the 1982 World Series.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes ... 0130.shtml

And to my further surprise, he drove in the last insurance run in the 6-3 Game 7 victory.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes ... 0200.shtml

So. Steve Braun.

Braunie was one of our top pinch-hitters of the Herzog era. He'd been a semi-regular with the Twins before we got him, and I think spent some time with KC as well, which may be why Whitey wanted him. Capable of playing OF and 3B but didn't take the field all that much (unless Dane Iorg and Gene Tenace, our other top pinch-hitters of the 1982 team).

I'm surprised people don't remember him. The forgotten man on the 1982 Cards was undoubtedly Julio Gonzalez, the former Astro.

or Kelly Paris. Called up in September, didn't play in postseason, and traded before Opening Day in '83. Always notice his sig on my '82 championship pennant though.

[Molly]

[Jmodene]

I wondered who the hell Steve Braun was. To my surprise, he played for the Cardinals for five years.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/playe ... st01.shtml

To my greater surprise, his bases-loaded walk drove in the winning run in Game 2 of the 1982 World Series.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes ... 0130.shtml

And to my further surprise, he drove in the last insurance run in the 6-3 Game 7 victory.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes ... 0200.shtml

So. Steve Braun.

Braunie was one of our top pinch-hitters of the Herzog era. He'd been a semi-regular with the Twins before we got him, and I think spent some time with KC as well, which may be why Whitey wanted him. Capable of playing OF and 3B but didn't take the field all that much (unless Dane Iorg and Gene Tenace, our other top pinch-hitters of the 1982 team).

I'm surprised people don't remember him. The forgotten man on the 1982 Cards was undoubtedly Julio Gonzalez, the former Astro.

or Kelly Paris. Called up in September, didn't play in postseason, and traded before Opening Day in '83. Always notice his sig on my '82 championship pennant though.

I remember the Paris trade, because we dealt him to the Reds in order to keep Rule 5 draftee Kurt Kepshire, who finally got called up in 1984 or 1985.

Gonzalez still qualifies as the forgotten man of the 1982 Cardinals, though, because he was with us the entire season - hardly ever played - and didn't play at all in the postseason. Neither did Steve Mura or John Martin, although at least they got some significant time in the regular season - Martin started the season in the rotation before ultimately being replaced by Dave LaPoint, and Mura was in the rotation all the way through mid-September, when Herzog stopped using him because he was having trouble throwing strikes. Mura did, however, win 12 games for us that year. We lost him in the compensation draft to the White Sox, I think, the following winter; this was when a team losing a FA was compensated with a non-protected player instead just a draft choice; that only lasted a few years - the union got rid of it during the 1985 one-day strike.

[JoeMcKim]

Allen Craig

Jason LaRue

Kip Wells

Jason Marquis

Tino Martinez

Craig Paquette

Shawon Dunston

Tito Landrum

Bake McBride

Curt Flood









Non STL Cardinals related pic:

[Pooleydog]

These pictures are really cool.I look forward to seeing them everyday.
Thanks JoeMcKim!

[JoeMcKim]

Tomorrow I'm guessing will be pretty much just Lou Brock day.

It's hard to find any pics of Cardinals from the 1950's or earlier since they didn't have numbers on the front of their jerseys back then and they had more posing type of pictures instead of action pictures which don't show off the back of their jerseys.

Maybe I'll throw in a Barry Sanders pic or something like that.

[Jmodene]

Tomorrow I'm guessing will be pretty much just Lou Brock day.

It's hard to find any pics of Cardinals from the 1950's or earlier since they didn't have numbers on the front of their jerseys back then and they had more posing type of pictures instead of action pictures which don't show off the back of their jerseys.

Maybe I'll throw in a Barry Sanders pic or something like that.

Well, a quick look shows that Gary Kolb wore #20 in 1963 for the Cards. Kolb is the guy we traded to Milwaukee just before the start of the 1964 season for Bob Uecker. That trade went down on April 9; we got Brock two months and six days later and Lou probably was assigned #20 specifically because it was one of the few available numbers; numbers 1-5 and 7-8 were presumably assigned to coaches (Schoendienst's #2 and Benson's #8 are the only ones I specifically can remember; didn't Keane wear #5?) and #6 was Stan's. #9 was the lowest player uni number that year and other than 20, the next number not shown on the team chart is #38, followed by #42 and #46.

While we're on the subject of numbers, I see where somebody named Dean Stone wore #45 for the Cards in 1959 (Von McDaniel and Bill Wight wore it in 1958); Bob Gibson wore #58 that season and wasn't assigned #45 until 1960 - and oddly enough was assigned that number only because he had started the season wearing #31 and had to give it up on May 20, when the Cards signed Curt Simmons and gave *him* #31.

Edit: Looking at my copy of "October 1964" I see where Keane did indeed wear #5. Howie Pollett, the pitching coach, wore #4 and Joe Schultz wore #3. I've already mentioned Red's #2 and Vern Benson's #8. But I don't see who wore #1 or #7 for us in 1964. Who else was on the staff that year? They didn't have a dozen coaches on a team back then, like they do now - no bullpen coach, for instance, but I don't know who the batting coach was that year or if we even had one.

[JoeMcKim]

In a way I don't really like the fact that coaches and managers get jersey numbers, why waste a good jersey number from a player being able to use it so a manager can have a number? If they let coaches & Managers have jersey numbers make them wear numbers in the 70's, 80's and 90's.

It's really stupid how the Marlins retired #5 for Carl Barger, a team president a guy who never wore a jersey number. At least when the Cardinals retired #85 that's not a number a player would ever have worn anyways.

[Vidor]

Managers and coaches wearing uniforms is the dumbest thing about baseball.