1977 Topps Ted Simmons #470

1977 Topps Ted Simmons #470. I think this is such a cool photo.

The back of Ted Simmons' 1977 Topps card.

With the election of Ted Simmons to the Baseball Hall of Fame this week, I thought I should take a look at my favorite baseball card of his: 1977 Topps #470. I’ve always liked Ted Simmons, partially because he played for my second favorite baseball team: the St. Louis Cardinals. I think his election to the Hall of Fame is long overdue. 

Simmons was overshadowed by Johnny Bench during the beginning of his career, and then by Gary Carter during the latter part of his career. There’s certainly no shame in being upstaged by the two best catchers in baseball history, according to WAR. 

Simmons’ 1977 Topps card is a really cool photo. It shows Simmons in profile, head down, catcher’s mask and hat in one hand, glove on the other. Is Simmons listening to the national anthem before the game starts? Or did the camera just catch him in a moment of contemplation between innings? The photo also shows the National League Centennial patch that all the NL teams wore during the 1976 season, and the pillbox hats that some of the NL teams wore that season. This photo also gives you a good look at Ted Simmons’ awesome hair. Earlier in the 1970’s Simmons had been wearing his hair much longer, leading to his nickname of “Simba,” as it resembled a lion’s mane. 

Simmons was a great hitter during his years with the St. Louis Cardinals, 1968-1980, putting up an OPS+ of 127, and a slash line of .298/.366/.459. Simmons became an everyday player in 1971, and from 1971-1980 he caught an average of 135 games a year. Simmons’ career in St. Louis came to an end when Whitey Herzog took over as manager and general manager in 1980. Herzog loved the catcher he had managed in Kansas City, the bespectacled Darrell Porter, and Herzog just didn’t like Ted Simmons—specifically, his defense. After signing Porter as a free agent after the 1980 season, Herzog wanted to move Simmons to first base, and then move Keith Hernandez to left field. Obviously, Herzog didn’t understand that he had maybe the best-fielding first baseman of all-time on his team. (In a terrible move in June of 1983, the Cardinals traded Hernandez to the Mets for Neil Allen and Rick Ownbey.) Simmons asked to be traded, and so the Cardinals sent Simmons, Rollie Fingers, (who was only a Cardinal for four days) and Pete Vuckovich to the Brewers for David Green, Dave LaPoint, Sixto Lezcano, and Lary Sorensen. The Cardinals had traded two future Hall of Famers, and the 1981 and 1982 AL Cy Young Award winners. Oops. But Lezcano was one of the players the Cardinals sent to the Padres for Ozzie Smith, so it all worked out. The Cardinals and the Brewers ended up facing off in the 1982 World Series. The Cardinals triumphed in 7 games. Fingers was injured and didn’t pitch in the postseason. Simmons slugged two home runs for the Brewers. Darrell Porter was the World Series MVP. 

In addition to being a great catcher, Ted Simmons also seems like a very cool guy. For a baseball player, Simmons was a bit of an iconoclast. In addition to his long hair, Simmons was also a vocal opponent of Richard Nixon’s administration. Simmons might have become baseball’s first free agent, as he started to play the 1972 season without signing his contract. Simmons eventually signed his contract in late July of 1972, thus making the point moot. Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally did the same thing in 1975, pitching for the entire season without contracts, and an arbitrator ruled that they were free agents, thus ending baseball’s reserve clause. Simmons was a collector of antiques and a trustee of the St. Louis Art Museum. In an article from Sports Illustrated from 1978, Simmons is quoted as “authoritatively discussing the evolution of the fireplace in American households.” The whole article is worth reading, as it gives you a glimpse of a very intelligent man. 

As a young man, Simmons had sleepy eyes and long, dark hair, so I think the obvious choice to play him in a 1970’s made-for-TV movie would have been Tony Danza. Okay, so Simmons isn’t Italian, but it would have worked. “The Ted Simmons Story: From Simba to Museum Trustee,” airing next week on NBC.

1987 Fleer Cliff Johnson #231

1987 Fleer Cliff Johnson, card number 231. He looks like a friendly walrus, doesn't he?

Back of Cliff Johnson's 1987 Fleer card.

Bill James wrote of Cliff Johnson in the 2001 edition of his Historical Baseball Abstract that if someone would have made Johnson a DH/first baseman from the very beginning of his career, he would have hit 500 home runs. That might be stretching it, but James’ estimation says something about Johnson’s prodigious power. 

The first Cliff Johnson baseball card I remember getting was his 1975 Topps card. Unbeknownst to me, it was his rookie card. I found it, as I found so many of the baseball cards from my childhood, rooting through the 1970’s commons at Shinder’s. If you didn’t grow up in the Twin Cities, let me explain Shinder’s to you. It was a store that sold newspapers, magazines, comic books, baseball cards, and other collectibles. (And they had an “adult” section in the back of the store!) Shinder’s had several locations throughout the Twin Cities, but the one I frequented most was the Richfield location off of 70^th Street and France Avenue. (Technically off of Hazelton Road, but 70^th was the other cross street.) I spent many, many hours there as a youngster in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. My Dad could at least buy tobacco for his pipe there, but I’m pretty sure it drove my Mom batty to wait as I examined the huge stack of cards and tried to remember if I already had a 1977 Bob Forsch or not. 

I liked the bright colors of the 1975 Topps set, and I was always partial to crazy uniforms, which means there are a fair amount of Houston Astros cards from the 1970’s and 1980’s in my collection. So, I purchased Cliff Johnson’s 1975 card, for 10 cents or however much it was, and took it home with me. Eventually I wanted to transfer Cliff’s card from the plastic sleeve it was in to a sleeve in a binder. Shinder’s put tape over the top of the sleeves their cards came in, which I would cut off with a scissors. Usually no problem, but there wasn’t much room in this sleeve between the top of the card and the tape, so I tried to cut the side of the sleeve. Big mistake. I ended up trimming the side of Cliff’s card pretty badly. (I’m happy I didn’t know it was his rookie card at the time!) Oops. 

So that was my introduction to Cliff Johnson, and he gradually became a familiar presence to me in the commons box at Shinder’s. Johnson also played just long enough to make it into all three of the 1987 baseball card sets. As anyone who grew up in the 1980’s will tell you, 1987 was the year that baseball cards achieved perfection, with the iconic Topps woodgrains, the awesome blue Fleers, and the Donruss that had baseballs in the middle of the card borders. (I’m being perhaps a little sarcastic about the perfection of 1987 baseball cards, but for a lot of folks in my generation, these sets were the ones that really started us on our collecting adventures.) 

Johnson’s 1987 Fleer card is a pretty great one. I really enjoy the 1980’s cards where you get a triple dose of the team logo-on the hat, the jersey, and the card itself. I love that Blue Jays logo, and I’m happy they’ve gone back to a very similar variation of it, after ditching it for much of the decade of the 2000’s. It’s just a classic, perfect logo. It tells you all the information you need to know: there’s a Blue Jay, they play baseball, and the maple leaf tells you they’re Canadian. 

Cliff Johnson was one of those players who took a long time to find his way in baseball. It wasn’t his fault; it was more like teams couldn’t figure out what to do with him. Johnson only exceeded 400 plate appearances in four of his seasons in the majors, and the first time wasn’t until 1980, his age 32 season. He still put up four seasons of 20+ home runs and ended up with 196 longballs for his career.

When Johnson was with the New York Yankees in 1979, he famously got into a locker room fight with closer Goose Gossage. Gossage ended up with a sprained thumb and missed almost three months of the season. Not surprisingly, Johnson was traded to the Cleveland Indians before Gossage came back from his injury. 

The 1987 Fleers offered some interesting information on the back of the cards. Hitters were classified as “dead pull hitters,” whatever that was, “singles hitters,” “spray hitters,” which we all knew was just another term for “singles hitters,” and “power hitters.” Cliff Johnson was a power hitter. You had to respect that, since power hitter was clearly the best of the four categories Fleer had delineated. With his mustache and grin on this card, Johnson looked like a friendly walrus. On the cards where he’s not smiling, he looks like a grumpy walrus, and not someone you’d like to get into a locker room tussle with. He’s also listed as 6’4” on his baseball cards, another good reason to stay away from the walrus if he looks grumpy. 

By the time the 1987 baseball cards were released, Cliff Johnson’s career had come to an end. He was granted free agency after the 1986 season ended, but no one signed him. I wonder if he might have been a victim of the collusion scandal of the mid 1980’s that saw owners conspiring to keep free agent signings to a minimum. Of course, it might have simply been that Johnson was a 39-year-old DH/pinch hitter, and no one was interested in signing him for 1987. As a power hitter who walked frequently, Cliff Johnson would fit well in baseball in 2019. Hopefully teams now would know where to play him.

1973 Topps Mark Belanger #253

Mark Belanger's 1973 Topps card.

The back of Mark Belanger's 1973 Topps card, #253. Belanger would add 6 more Gold Gloves before his career was over.

Mark Belanger was the ultimate “good field, no hit” shortstop. Belanger played for the Baltimore Orioles from 1965 until 1981, and one season for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1982, winning 8 Gold Gloves and accumulating a career batting average of just .228. I’m too young to have seen Belanger play, but because I collected baseball cards from the 1970’s and 1980’s, he was a player I was aware of. I can’t really tell you why I was aware of Mark Belanger when I was a little kid, but my head was full of random details about old baseball players. Sure, I knew superstars from the 1970’s like Reggie Jackson, Willie Stargell, and Jim Palmer, but I also knew random 70’s players like Billy North, John Milner, Mike Lum, and Kurt Bevacqua. I’m sure part of the reason I liked Mark Belanger was because we have the same first name, and he has a cool-sounding last name. What little information I could glean from my early 1980’s Topps cards of Mark Belanger told me two things:

1. He had played for the Orioles for a really long time

2. He was not a very good hitter

But hitting statistics only told part of Mark Belanger’s story, and for him it was definitely the less interesting part of his story. Sabermetric fielding stats paint a picture of Belanger as one of the finest defensive shortstops ever. Baseball-Reference ranks Belanger second all-time in defensive WAR, just ahead of his longtime infield mate, third baseman Brooks Robinson. In a statistic called Total Zone Runs, which I’m not smart enough to attempt to explain, Belanger ranks as the second best defensive shortstop since 1953, behind Ozzie Smith. Belanger’s 8 Gold Gloves at shortstop still rank as the fourth most at the position. 

Belanger’s 1973 Topps card is the only baseball card showing him in the field, doing what he did best. So I thought it would be the perfect card for this post. It looks like he’s just finished throwing the ball to first after covering second base, presumably finishing up a double play. This card is a better way to remember Belanger, rather than the many baseball cards that show him posing with a bat.

 

I wrote a little about Belanger in my review of Jeff Katz’s book Split Season: 1981. Katz’s book focused on Belanger because he was one of the union player representatives who were most involved in the ongoing negotiations between the players and the owners. It made me more intrigued about Belanger, and in my recent internet sleuthing, I discovered that a documentary about Belanger premiered in 2018. Titled simply Belanger, the film was directed by Dominic Dastoli. Running 70 minutes, the film explores the story of Belanger’s life. It begins with Belanger’s boyhood in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he played baseball on a farm field. Belanger achieved high school stardom on both the baseball and basketball fields, and he was courted by college basketball coaches, as well as major league baseball teams. Belanger signed with the Baltimore Orioles just after he graduated from high school in 1962. 

Belanger’s path to the major leagues was blocked by the Orioles’ excellent shortstop, future Hall of Famer Luis Aparicio. Belanger earned September call-ups in 1965 and 1966, but he was not on the roster for the Orioles’ upset of the Dodgers in the 1966 World Series. Once Aparicio was traded to the Chicago White Sox after the 1967 season, Belanger became the Orioles’ regular shortstop.

Belanger hit for the highest batting average of his career in 1969, when he hit .287, well above the American League’s cumulative batting average of .246. In the film, Boog Powell attributes Belanger’s success with the bat that season to Charley Lau, the Orioles’ hitting coach. Unfortunately, the Orioles let Lau go after the 1969 season. 

Belanger became an integral part of the Orioles’ lineup during their three consecutive trips to World Series, from 1969-1971. These Oriole teams are often mentioned in discussions of the greatest baseball teams ever, as they averaged 106 wins a year. The Orioles lost to the “Miracle Mets” in 1969, and were defeated by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1971, but they beat the Cincinnati Reds in 1970. Belanger batted just .105 in the 1970 World Series, but he and Brooks Robinson combined to make the left side of the infield impenetrable. 

Belanger features interviews with several of Belanger’s teammates, like Jim Palmer, Rick Dempsey, and Davey Johnson. Brooks Robinson is seen once at the very beginning of the film, and I wish we had heard more from Robinson, as he and Belanger were one of the finest fielding third base and shortstop duos ever. Johnson says of Belanger in the film, “Everything he did was meticulous.” This extended from his fielding work at shortstop to his post-playing days working for the players’ union. Johnson also informs us that Belanger never wore a protective cup when he played! That’s a sign of the confidence Belanger must have had in his own fielding prowess. (Belanger not wearing a cup is confirmed by Tony Kubek in George F. Will’s book about baseball, Men at Work.) Rick Dempsey says that he never saw a ground ball go between Belanger’s legs. Even allowing for old baseball player exaggeration, that’s a pretty remarkable statement to make. 

Fortunately, Belanger features enough footage of “the Blade” in action for the viewer to get a sense of how excellent Belanger was in the field. Every motion of Belanger’s was graceful, whether he was ranging left or right, and his powerful and accurate throwing arm fired bullets to first base. One of the plays that I was most impressed by was a catch Belanger made in the 1979 World Series. Willie Stargell hit a pop fly, and Belanger caught it in left field—he’s out at normal left field depth, calling off the left fielder to make the catch.

As a kid, I had a book that was called You Are the Manager, or something like that. You’d read about a situation confronting a manager, and then see if the manager did what you thought they should have done. One of the situations in the book was “Who do you play at shortstop for the Orioles in the 1979 World Series?” The choices were slick-fielding but poor hitting Mark Belanger, or poor fielding but good hitting Kiko Garcia. As a kid, I probably went with Garcia because of his bat. Now, I’d stick with Belanger and his stellar defense. Kiko Garcia wasn’t actually that great a hitter—in 1979 he hit .247, with 5 home runs. Granted, Belanger hit .167 with zero home runs, but still, it’s not like Garcia was a .300 hitter or a power threat. 

At the very end of the 1981 season, Belanger started to lose playing time to a hotshot young shortstop the Orioles had just called up. His name was Cal Ripken Jr., and he would revolutionize the position of shortstop. There had been good-hitting shortstops before, but very few had combined hitting and fielding excellence the way Ripken did. There’s certainly no shame in losing your job to someone as talented as Cal Ripken Jr. Belanger was a free agent after the 1981 season, and the Orioles made it clear they had no interest in bringing him back. Belanger had also publicly criticized manager Earl Weaver in September, which may have helped to sow the seeds for his departure. The Orioles might also have been sick of having two players who were highly involved in the players’ union, as they also traded outspoken union representative Doug DeCinces during the 1981-82 off-season. 

Belanger ended up signing a one-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He played sparingly, starting just 12 games for the Dodgers in 1982. He retired at the end of the season. 

Belanger features interviews with family members, and the film presents us with a picture of the man he was off the field as well. When Curt Flood was challenging baseball’s reserve clause, Belanger was one of the few active players to publicly support his case. Belanger’s interest in the players’ union led to him becoming a union representative, and after his retirement, the first former player hired by the players’ union. As Expos pitcher Steve Rogers says in the film, “He spent his life defending.”

Mark Belanger was tall, (6’2”) thin, (175 pounds) and darkly handsome. (He looks better on film—his baseball cards don’t really do him justice.) He was a devoted father to his two sons, and he took his work seriously, whether it was fielding ground balls or protecting the rights of his fellow baseball players. Unfortunately, Belanger was also a longtime smoker who died from lung cancer at age 54 in 1998. In a sad footnote to the film, Belanger’s son Rob, who speaks eloquently throughout the film about his Dad, died of prostate cancer in 2016 at the age of 47. 

The older I get, the more fascinated I am by baseball players like Mark Belanger. He wasn’t a Hall of Famer, and he only made one All-Star team, but he still made an impact on the sport. Belanger does an excellent job of telling his story.