My First Cards

Just a few days before the 1982 season began, on March 28, David Wayne Roberts was traded from the Astros to the Phillies for a minor leaguer named Steve Dunnegan. His career was only a shadow of what was expected when it began.

In this photo, Dave Roberts looks very focused, very deep in thought, very intense, like he’s determined to reach some goal or maybe feeling sad and dissapointed. Whatever’s on his mind we can only guess, but I suspect he’s reflecting on his past and hoping to recapture his potential.

Whatever he’s thinking there, Dave Roberts has an interesting & unique story behind those eyes. It started on June 7, ten years earlier, the day of the Amateur draft. The San Diego Padres picked Dave as the first overall selection. Instead of slipping him into their minor league system, they immediately brought him to San Diego, and by immediately, I mean the same day of the draft. So he played as a Padre the same day he was drafted. Which is the beginning of an unusual series of events peppering his career.

The Padres nearly had two Dave Roberts on the team in 1972. San Diego had pulled a pitcher named Dave Roberts from the Pirates organization in the 1968 expansion draft, but traded him to Houston before the ’72 season (12/3/1971). Even though it would’ve been very unusual to have two players on the same roster with the same name, this trade set up an even more unusual event. On June 27, 1972 in the bottom of the first inning in San Diego, just three weeks after our Dave Wayne Roberts debuted in the major leagues, he came up to bat against the other Dave Roberts. So Dave Roberts was pitching to… Dave Roberts, for the first time.

The first plate appearance turned into a double play, the second was a lineout, but the third time was a charm. With a runner on 1st, Dave Roberts slapped a single to centerfield off Dave Roberts. They’d go on to face each other 24 times in their careers, with Dave Roberts only batting .174 against the pitcher with the same name.

If we go back to 1973 for a moment, he was having a pretty good season, hitting 21 home runs and looking like the future star that a #1 pick should become. One has to think that his success was on the mind of the Padres brass when the Padres drafted future Hall of Famer Dave Winfield in ’73. The Padres were desperate to win, and in the days before free agency, they certainly had to be happy about young players developing quickly. So Dave Roberts career influenced Dave Winfield’s, in a small but important way.

He had another interesting quirk to his career too. It occurred in his final major league game on September 18, 1982. It may not have seemed unusual when he struck out in a home game against the Pirates for his last career plate appearance, but it really was. Why? Because back on June 7, 1972, he struck out in his very first career plate appearance…in a home game against the same team, the Pittsburgh Pirates. Talk about symmetry.

Is it just me, or does it also seem odd that both of those Dave Roberts would start as Padres and later be traded to the Astros? What are the chances of that? Even more unusual, is that there was another Dave Roberts, who played in Houston in the 1960′s. Yet another Dave Roberts played in San Diego in 2005-2006, but he never got to be an Astro. It’s enough to make you wonder if the Padres or Astros are trying to collect all the Dave Roberts they can possibly collect.