Card thoughts: Because this picture is taken in the dark with a green background, it's making the blues look all messed up.
The player/manager: With Frey, there is no major league career to speak of.
After toiling in the minors for the Cardinals, Dodgers, Prates and Braves
systems. Frey never got a shot at the majors until he was hired by the famed
Earl Weaver to be on his coaching staff in the 70s.
Frey was a manager who always performed spectacularly for a
team when first hired (both the Royals and Cubs went to the playoffs in his
first year of managing them) before their records tailed off. After coaxing 97
wins out of the Royals in 1980, Frey’s 1981 edition fell flat on his face, and
he was fired before the end of the season in favor of #199 Dick
Howser. After two years of exile as a coach for the lowly Mets, Frey replaced
the mercurial Lee Elia as the Cubs manager. He led the team to the post season
for the first time in nearly 40 years and was named Manager of the Year. But he
mishandled the pitching staff in the playoffs, and the Cubs didn’t make it to
the World Series, despite being up 2-0 in a five game series.
Injuries bedeviled the Cubs in 1985 when their entire
rotation went down at once due to
injury (either it was a freakish coincidence or Frey was also mishandling his
pitchers during the previous regular season as well). Frey was finally fired by
the Cubs during the 1987 season, replaced by non-entity Jim Essian.
Frey spent one year as a color commentator for the Cubs on
the radio, and them moved into the front offices as GM, replacing the man who
had hired him, Dallas Green. There, he made a bunch of terrible deals. A
terrifically poor evaluator of talent, he traded Keith Moreland for a washed up
Goose Gossage; believed that Lee Smith was going downhill (he saved about 200
more games after the trade) and got back busts #181 Al Nipper
and #210
Calvin Schiraldi; signed Dave Smith, Danny Jackson, and George Bell to
lucrative free agent contracts long after they were in their primes; and even in
the good trade he made (Rafael Palmeiro and Jamie Moyer for Mitch Williams), he
ended up choosing two future stars to send, rather than some non-entities.
Rear guard: There's no real glaring omissions on the position player side. However, one of these three pitchers should have been issued a card: Jay Baller, Steve Engel, or Ron Meridith. Meridith got a Donruss and Fleer card.
This date in baseball history: The Senators steal 8 bases off of the Indians in the first inning of a game in 1915, establishing a record.
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