5 Baseball Cards Born at the Winter Meetings

"We have to wait a YEAR to see Lynn Jones in a Royals uniform??"

Baseball’s winter meetings start in Dallas today, which means we might get exciting news about free agent signings, the Classic Era Hall of Fame ballot, big trades, or the price of ballpark Kool-Aid at any moment.

Exciting times.

Reminds me of being a young fan in the 1980s, when there was hardly ever any baseball news between October and March. And even when there was, the local newspaper didn’t mention it for several days.

But the winter meetings were different. The Mariners traded Bryan Clark to the Blue Jays for Barry Bonnell today? Boom! It’s on the evening news.

It was the stuff dreams were made of and left us with visions of sugar plum second basemen dancing around the bag as Christmas approached.

To help you get properly amped up for this year’s festivities, here are five baseball cards that bring back the aroma of winter meetings past — my past, of course, but I think you’ll enjoy (and remember) them, too.

1972 Topps Joe Morgan (#752)

This one predated my fandom by more than a decade and even predated me by a couple of months. But there’s no doubt that the December 1971 trade that sent Joe Morgan, Ed Armbrister, Jack Billingham, and Cesar Geronimo to the Reds in exchange for Tommy Helms, Lee May, and Jimmy Stewart set the course for my baseball future.

Without Morgan, Cincinnati never would have ridden the Big Red Machine into the baseball annals. My dad would have never been able to regale me with tales — from a football fan’s perspective — of Morgan, Pete Rose, and George Foster.

And maybe, if I had still stumbled onto the game and the hobby in 1983 or some point thereafter, I would have taken one of the dark paths so many of my friends did. Paths that led to Wrigley Field or to Busch Stadium or even, inexplicably, to Dodger Stadium.

As for me and The Little General, we knew that baseball heaven stretched out in front of mere mortals on the Riverfront, even if Morgan was in Philadelphia by the time I had my come-to-Cesar moment.

The evidence suggests Topps might have had an inkling about how it would work out, too, seeing as how they included this gorgeous second Morgan card in their ginormous (787 cards!) 1972 set.

1983 Topps Traded Al Holland (#46T)

Morgan spent 1981 and 1982 with the Giants after a one-summer return to Houston in 1980. One of Little Joe’s teammates in San Francisco was reliever Al Holland. The two of them journeyed east together for the 1983 season, traded to the Phillies during the 1982 winter meetings in exchange for C.L. Penigar, Mark Davis, and Mike Krukow.

In Philly, Holland became the team’s new closer, complementing the Wheeze Kids crew that included Pete Rose, Ron Reed, Steve Carlton, Tony Perez, Mike Schmidt, John Denny, Morgan, and a few others. The Phillies fired manager Pat Corrales in the middle of the season and replaced him in the dugout with general manager Paul Owens, who helped them turn around a blah season.

By the end of the summer (early fall, technically), the Phillies were National League East champions and the team I was rooting for in the first October I ever spent glued to the television watching baseball’s postseason.

As for Holland, he was something like the Phils’ fifth-best player by measure of WAR and was nearly flawless in October, appearing in four games between the NLCS and World Series and allowing just two base runners and no hits in 6.2 innings over four appearances. He struck out eight and walked none.

That November, after the Phillies lost the Fall Classic to the Orioles, Holland appeared on his first Philadelphia card, courtesy of the yearly Topps Traded set.

1984 Topps Traded Carmelo Martinez (#75T)

After listening to me pine for the Riverfront for more than a year, and after watching all of my birthday and Christmas wish lists turn into baseball card checklists, my parents took me to my first Reds game on June 23, 1984. It was a magical experience that turned me (and my mom) into a lifetime fan of Dave Parker, Dan Driessen (one of Dad’s favorites from that day), and Carmelo Martinez.

Why Martinez?

Well, because he hit the only home run of the game that night, taking Bob Owchinko deep in the sixth inning. It was a one-out solo shot that put the Padres up 4-1 in a game they eventually won, 5-2.

It was tough to see my team lose, but of course any sour taste was washed clean by the overwhelming experience of witnessing my first-ever big league game. Back in the motel room that night, we watched the local (Cincinnati) news and saw the replay of Martinez’s homer. It was surreal to think that we had just been sitting in those same outfield seats (or relatively nearby, at least) where his trophy ball landed.

None of those memories would have been possible were it not for the trade at the 1983 winter meetings that sent Martinez from the Cubs to the Padres and involved about a hundred other guys among three teams (the Expos were the other one).

That deal, incidentally, came on the same day that Parker signed with the Reds. Both men showed up with their new teams in the 1984 Topps Traded set.

1985 Topps Traded Ozzie Guillen (#43T)

The 1985 Topps Traded set was hard to love, but us die-hard collectors did our best. We squinted our eyes, rationalized the future, and overall just lied to ourselves, ending up convinced this was a set worthy of the legacy established by the 1982 through 1984 sets, as well as the 1985 base sets.

The problem with 1985 Topps Trade was and is a lack of eye-popping rookies.

Sure, there were 20-game winner Tom Browning and fellow ace Teddy Higuera, and a few guys who looked promising — Chris Brown, Steve Jeltz, Mickey Tettleton, etc.

For the most part, though, the popularity of the set hinged on Rookies of the Year Vince Coleman and Ozzie Guillen, neither of whom hit for power. Coleman was exciting but one-dimensional, and Ozzie was a light-hitting middle infielder who was great with the glove.

But cardboard was made for lumber, not leather, as far as collectors were concerned.

After the bumper rookie crops of recent years that included the likes of Ron Kittle, Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, Bret Saberhagen, Eric Davis (1985 base sets), and on and on and on, the end-of-year 1985s were pretty darn boring.

And they might have been even less exciting had the Padres not traded Guillen to the White Sox at the winter meetings in 1984, part of the bounty Chicago received for sending LaMarr Hoyt to San Diego.

1988 Score Rookie & Traded Jose Rijo (#27T)

Baseball is like life in a lot of ways, and if you don’t think that’s so, stick around the game a while longer or watch the details a little closer. Sooner or later, you’ll see the real world reflected from the diamond — or vice versa.

Example? Well, at a high level, in both baseball and life, sometimes devastating blows can lead to new opportunities and a brighter future.

In life, for example, maybe Betty Jean Farbermeister crushes your heart at the junior prom just weeks before Paula Jo Loviedovie moves into town and bats her eyes at you and makes you forget Betty Jean and helps you build a life and a houseful of kids you adore, and you can’t imagine what you ever did before she came along.

In baseball, on the other hand, maybe the Reds trade your hometown hero, Dave Parker, to the A’s at the 1987 winter meetings for a guy whose cards have been cluttering your “could-be-something-but-probably-not” stacks for years.

And then, two-plus years later, with the Reds’ rise to contention seemingly done following Pete Rose’s head-first slide into the 1919 White Sox’ end of the baseball pool, Jose Rijo becomes the staff ace, and Cincinnati goes wire-to-wire to win their only World Series championship since 1976.

You can’t always get what you want, and your heroes abandon you…or you (or your team) abandon your heroes. Sometimes, though, Paula Jo is waiting in the wings to pick up your pieces.

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Enjoy the wheeling and dealing, in whatever form they may take, from the winter meetings this week. Our baseball lives next summer will likely depend on at least some of those moves, to at least some extent.

Thanks for reading.

—Adam