Rick Cerone 1990 Fleer

On March 6, 2018 I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

On Facebook, I wrote: A few weeks ago the BCB sent another card. This is of former Red Sox catcher, Rick Cerone. 

Cerone was a backstop who bounced around — he was on eight different teams. You might remember him from his years as a Yankee — he wore pinstripes three different times. By the time he came to Boston, he was nearing the end of his career. 

2019 Notes: Cerone was a member of (in order) the Indians, Blue Jays, Yankees, Braves, Brewers, Yankees (again), Red Sox, Yankees (one more time), Mets and Expos. For some reason I think it's funny thinking of Rick Cerone trying to navigate the streets of Montreal as very funny. I'm sure he's an erudite and sophisticated dude in real life, but he always looked like a doofus Staten Island longshoreman. "Yeah, hey Frenchy, how the fuck do I get to the fucking Olympic Stadium?I gotta fucking game today, asshole. Fucking speak American, fucko. Jesus fucking Christ, this place sucks. Can't even get good gabbagool here. Fughadaboutit."

He probably never said that, but a boy can dream!

Cerone didn’t hit much but by the end of the 80s, the Sox were kinda screwed when it came to catchers. John Marzano (RIP) never panned out, Rich German forgot how to hit and you’d never find a more text book case of nepotism than Marc Sullivan. 

2019:  you guys, I am really quite bitter towards Marc Sullivan. 

So when a dude gets released by your rival, can hit .240 and plays okay defense, I suppose in this case, you have to sign him. That pretty pathetic production would, unfortunately, help that team. So the Sox did just that. 

Like I said, Cerone didn’t make much of an impression on the field, but he did make an impact off. In a Cleveland (or Detroit, I forget which one exactly) hotel lobby Cerone and Dwight Evans got into a fistfight. I don’t recall why or who won, but fighting Dewey? Seriously? Go back to the Yankees, you jackass. 

And guess what, he did just that in 1990 after the Sox signed Tony Pena in the offseason -- who took his number six (since retired for Johnny Pesky).

2019: I don't believe in those "embedded rivals from another team" stories. They're dumb and they're lazy and they're just not true. People used to say it about former Sox and Yankees reliever Ramiro Mendoza all the time. And I know that it was supposed to be fun, but I think after awhile people began to believe it. "Cashman let Mendoza go so that he could sign with the Red Sox and ruin the team from within. How else can you explain why he sucks so bad?"

So went the logic in the summer of 2004. 

It's not remotely true. Professional athletes are Hessians who play for any team that will pay them and allow them the most playing time. Once you sign your professional contract, those feelings are out the door*.

* It's why when people use "evidence" like, "Here's a picture of player X wearing a Yankees jersey when he was a kid, I just know that he's coming to the Bronx!" Yeah, lots of kids wore Yankees gear when they were kids. If the Houston Astros offered a penny more, they'd be an Astro. No one is going to turn down money because they really, really liked a team when they were 12-years-old. I'm sure that kid used to love Dunkeroos too.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that while there's a lot of lip service, for the most part, athletes see themselves as ballplayers rather than a Ranger or a Laker or a Giant. Yes, there are some very rare exceptions (Tom Brady, Derek Jeter to name a few) but that's just how it goes. No matter what we want to believe, players just don't have the same emotional connection to the team they play for that we as fans do. They just don't. 

Like everything in life, there are exceptions. 

Rick Cerone never looked the part of a Red Sox. With that black mustache and cocky demeanor. he looked as if he just arrived off a commuter boat from Staten Island. He always looked annoyed that he was in a uniform without pinstripes. And while I don't think that many players particularly care which city they find themselves in, Cerone really seemed to. He was born in Newark, NJ, went to Seton Hall and played for the Yankees three different times and the Mets once. He was the team's catcher after Thurman Munson wrecked his plane and even after he retired, settled close to Manhattan, worked for the WPIX and eventually founded the minor league Newark Bears. 

As a Red Sox, he didn't do much. He platooned with Gedman in 1988 and according to Wikipedia, never got into a game in that season's ALCS. That really must have pissed him off -- I know that I'd be mad. He ended up playing for 18 seasons, made it to the World Series once (a 1981 loss to the Dodgers) and spent a bulk of his career with his favorite team. 

I would bet that if you asked 12-year-old Rick Cerone what he wanted out of his life, I bet the answer would be, "I want to fucking play catcher for the fucking New York fucking Yankees." Well, congratulations young Rick, you got your wish. 

Pat Mahomes 1992 Upper Deck and Tony Pena 1990 Fleer

On December 12, 2017 I received these cards from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

On Facebook, I wrote: last week the Baseball Card Bandit brought a bit of summer to the Northeast as he warmed my mailbox with these two cards. 

Both feature men who would eventually play with the Red Sox. 

Pat Mahomes was supposed to be a good prospect when he came up with the Twins. He never reached his potential and settled into a long career as a situational righty in a bunch of bullpens. 

2019 Notes: Today you might know Pat Mahomes as the father of Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes. Pat's son has had a bit more success in his chosen field than his dad, he was named the 2018 NFL MVP and led the Chiefs to the AFC title game. Did they win? They played the Patriots, so of course they did not. But Mahomes was a breath of fresh air in a very stale football league, slinging the ball all over the place and running up a lot of impressive passing stats. 

I didn't have a lot to say about the elder Mahomes because he didn't leave much of a mark in Boston, but I just looked at his baseball-reference page and man, he was not good. For a guy that played 11 seasons in the big leagues, Mahomes got hit hard and often. His career ERA is 5.47, his WHIP is 1.59 and he walked a bunch of people and didn't strike out anyone. 

The cool thing is that even though he wasn't a great ballplayer, it's obvious that his son thought that he was something special. After one of his big games last season the younger Mahomes stepped to the podium for his post game press conference in his dad's Mets jersey. That's all a father really needs.

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Tony Pena was a marquee free agent signing and was supposed to bring stability to the Sox catching position. Defensively, he did well. Offensively? Well, Tony Pena was offensive. The thing about Pena was that his defensive was so respected, I don’t recall too many people being angry that he couldn’t hit. 

2019: Red Sox fans were sold on two things about Tony Pena: his defense (he had a cannon arm -- when he was younger and instead of the normal catcher's squat, Pena sat with his right leg behind him and with his front leg extended) and that he wasn't Rich Gedman or Marc Sullivan or Rick Cerone. The latter was great news to anyone who watched these guys try to catch for three seasons. 

While fans in Boston never saw the sit-down style of catching that Pena made popular it Pittsburgh and St. Louis, he still knew how to call a game and was a favorite of many Boston hurlers. 

2019: See above for that sit-down style. 

After Boston he had a stop in Cleveland where, ironically, his bat is what sunk the Sox. Pena teed off on a Zane Smith extra inning flat “fastball” for a Game One winning homer. The surprise of who beat them submarined the Sox and they meekly bowed out of the 1995 playoffs. 

2019: That 1995 Cleveland Indians team was a wagon*, there was no way in hell that the Sox were going to beat them. But to lose to a home run by Tony Pena? Ugh. That was a killer. I remember that game like it was yesterday, I was sitting in my favorite corner on the couch in my on-campus apartment at Merrimack watching the game by myself in the living room. As soon as Pena hit that shot, it seemed like the entire apartment groaned at the same time -- it was that loud and that unexpected. The 1995 ALDS was the only time that the Red Sox or Patriots made the playoffs while I was in school**. It seems like a really long time ago -- because it was. 

That’s life in the big city, kids.

* That 1995 Indians team had: Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez, Albert Belle (who got jobbed out of the 1995 MVP), Kenny Lofton, Eddie Murray, Omar Vizquel, Sandy Alomar, Dave Winfield, Carlos Baerga, Brian Giles, Jeromy Burnitz in their lineup. That's three Hall of Famers, three dudes who could be in the HoF and a bunch of All-Stars. They were unbelievable to watch at bat. Their pitching was okay with Orel Hershiser and Dennis Martinez, but they just didn't have that number one pitcher. 

** The Celts and Bruins made the playoffs a few times during the early 90s, but they were usually beaten in the first round. I remember the Hornets-Celts first round matchup in 1993 when Alonzo Mourning hit a game -- and series -- winner with no time left. That was a tough one.