My First Cards

Bob Sykes looks a little lost here. A Cardinal wandering lonely in the fields of hostile territory, wind blown hair, hasn’t shaved in months, and his eyes looking so tired and worn out. I can imagine him saying to the cameraman, “any spare change? These Cubs fans aren’t giving me anything to live on.”

The Cardinals made 2 trips to Wrigley in ’81, meaning this photo is either from late April or September 21-22. It’s possible this photo is from the day Bob blew a save against the Cubs on September 22, but there’s no way to tell. It’s notworthy though, that Bob didn’t pitch any games for St Louis until May 4, so perhaps he wasn’t even on the major league roster in April.

That blown save, was due to a solo shot by Leon Durham and was the only run Bob gave up after September 7, ’81. He finished the season tossing a scoreless 9th in Pittsburgh, finishing off a 4-0 Cardinals victory. That also finished his major league career.

Right after the season, he was traded to the Yankees for a young minor league outfielder named Willie McGee. Willie was a big part of the Cards championship run in ’82 and he had a massively impressive game 3 in that series. Meanwhile, Sykes began ’82 in AA and moved up to AAA where he imploded, posting a 8.03 ERA in 15 appearances.

The back of this card becomes very interesting now that we know he was traded to the Yanks right after the ’81 season. The Yankees pitching trivia tidbit is on here, almost as if Topps wanted to put a connection here to his new team since they didn’t have a photo of him in a Yankees uniform yet. It’s also in a different font face.

Perhaps they had a different trivia note set for the card but changed it sometime later but before printing the card? This makes me wonder if the other cards with this same unusual font face indicate a change in the trivia note before the cards were printed.