If looks could strike you out… then the piercing look in Nolan Ryan’s eyes here would certainly do it. Steve McCatty looks moody, a bit sad, & deep in thought. Their caps spell “Has”.

Both hurlers faced fierce competition for the ERA titles in 1981. Seriously, just look at the back of this card. Every single pitcher that qualified for the top 10 in each league, were all below 3.00. That hasn’t happened again in the 30 years since.

Future Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan led the way among them all, with a super slim 1.69 ERA, which still stands as the 2nd best post-1968 ERA. This was the first time Nolan led the league in the category.

Now wait you say – “the Astrodome was an extremely good park for pitchers!” and you’d be right. It was especially good to Nolan in the strike-shortened 1981 season, helpin’ him to home ERA of just 1.11. Despite that though, he still had an awesome 2.14 ERA on the road, so he still would’ve won the NL ERA title if he pitched only on the road.

Yeah, that’s how hot he was.

So at first, Baltimore’s Sammy Stewart won the title. A couple days later, it was still being reported that McCatty came in 2nd. After a review of the rules, the Scoring Committee then stripped Sammy and gave the title to Steve because the rule actually removed part of an inning from Sammy and added part of an inning to Steve.

As if that wasn’t insane enough, it makes the situation crazier when you find out that a similar “by the rule” situation happened twice before, decades earlier. What happened then? Well they did the smart thing — “they ignored the rule, and did what common sense told them was right“.

So Steve McCatty appears on this card when he didn’t really have the lowest ERA in the AL among qualified pitchers. Fortunately you won’t see this insanity anymore. Retrosheet, Baseball-Reference, Fangraphs, or MLB.com each accurately show Sammy and Steve’s real ERA for 1981.

This is Dickie Thon— former Angels prospect, now future Astros star — in his first baseball card for Houston. In the background, we can see the back of Mets coach Rube Walker, who’d go with Joe Torre to Atlanta in ’82 and save the Braves season with his underwear. Yeah, you read that right.

Anyway, Dickie, had just been traded to the Astros a few days before ’81 started, after playing for coach Art Howe (Houston’s 3rd baseman) in the Puerto Rican winter league a few months earlier.

He played a limited role on the team that season, but still improved from the year before. In ’82 he got more playing time and was moved from 2B to SS, and began providing a sneak peek of the future by doin’ things like scorin’ the 1st Houston run for Nolan Ryan’s 200th victory, a 21-game hitting streak (Jul 28 – Aug 13), slammin’ a 3-run double to beat the Braves, leading the NL in triples, stealing at an 82% success rate, and posting a 110 OPS+.

Then in ’83, he became a bonafide star—smacking 20 HR’s, driving in 79 RBI’s, stealing 34 bases, increasing his OBP, and his fielding was comparable to Dave Concepcion. This earned Dickie a trip to the All-Star game and plenty of MVP votes. This may not seem like big numbers nowadays, but in those days, shortstops just didn’t do that very often. Right along with Cal Ripken, Robin Yount, and Alan Trammell, was Dickie Thon, as the upcoming crop of shortstops with a bat.

Unfortunately, just 6 games into 1984, Dickie was hit in the eye with a Mike Torrez fastball and it broke some bones near the eye. By the time he was able to play again (a year later), he just couldn’t quite see pitches well enough to hit like he used to.

The rising star, was suddenly barely more than a replacement level player for the next few years and just an average starter after that. Eventually people would forget how good Dickie Thon was, and just remember the ball he took to the eye. I can still see him lying there, hoping he’d get up.

Robin Yount and Cal Ripken Jr went on to become members of the Hall of Fame, and Alan Trammell is known as one of the best non-Cooperstown shortstops ever (tho he might still get in via the Veterans committee one day).

And this card…this card still has that prospect smile on a sunny day. This card reminds us to play like there’s no game tomorrow.

He struck out 11 Dodgers, walking just 3, and posting a game score of 95. At the end of the game, he also had a 17 1/3 inning scoreless streak running due to blanking the Giants for the final 8 innings of his previous start. He’d run that up to 24 innings before allowing a run in the 7th inning of his next start, which was his last appearance of the season. The Ryan Express was rolling at the end of ’81!

In that 24 inning scoreless streak, Nolan Ryan only gave up 9 hits, 2 walks, and struck out 14 batters. The teams he beat in this stretch were some of the best. The Giants were the worst, having a 48-49 record. The Dodgers had gone 60-41 ’til he no hit them. The Reds, 65-39. Ryan didn’t just beat weak teams, he was killing the best the National League had to offer him.

The next game he pitched, was game 1 of the NLDS against — The Dodgers. Unfortunately for Dodger fans, Nolan was still steaming along, as he held Los Angeles scoreless into the 7th inning, beating them 3-1. This time he struck out 7, allowed just 2 hits, with Steve Garvey drawing the only walk. Garvey also smacked a solo shot off him, for the Dodgers only run. Still, the Dodgers had no answer to the Ryan Express ’til the deciding game 5 of that series.

Going back to the no-hitter though, ’cause that’s what this card is all about, Nolan is still the only pitcher to have thrown at least 5 of them. Nobody since ’81 has thrown more than 2. What’s funny is that Nolan is also one of those pitchers who’s thrown 2 no-no’s since then. In fact, here’s each of Nolan Ryan’s 7 career no hitters—

1. May 15, 1973: @ Royals (12 K, 3 BB)
2. Jul 15, 1973: @ Tigers (17 K, 4 BB)
3. Sep 28, 1974: vs Twins (15 K, 8 BB)
4. Jun 1, 1975: vs Orioles (9 K, 4 BB)
5. Sep 26, 1981: vs Dodgers (11 K, 3 BB)
6. Jun 11, 1990: @ A’s (14 K, 2 BB)
7. May 1, 1991: vs Blue Jays (16 K, 2 BB)

To put this in perspective, besides Ryan, only 4 pitchers have ever thrown more than 2 no-hitters and none of them have thrown more than 4. Koufax threw 4, while Cy Young, Bob Feller, and Larry Corcoran threw 3 each. That’s a small list, and none of them are close to 7. That’s incredible.

Note: This is one of the few cards in the set that doesn’t seem randomly ordered, as it is card #5 & it’s about a 5th career no-hitter.

He was originally a Tigers prospect who just wasn’t working out for Detroit. So after 4 years with the Tiggers, they outright released him on March 27, 1978. They really should’ve tried to trade him though, ’cause the Astros were obviously interested as Houston signed Vern as a free agent the very next day.

Once he was pitching in the National League, his ERA dropped almost 4 runs from the previous season. In fact, from 1978-1981, Vern had a 121 ERA+. Things looked rosey as he ruhled over NL batters. The Astros were yearly contenders for the NL West crown at the time too. They won the division in ’80 and made the playoffs again in ’81.

1982 would be different though, for both the Astros and Vern Ruhle. The Astros started the season on a bad note when their star pitcher Nolan Ryan lost a 14-3 game. A few days later when Vern took the mound, he was pulled after allowing 5 runs in just 3 innings. Vern was rocked again for 5 more runs in 5 2/3 IP in his next start.

His best stretch of the season was from April 27 – June 27 when he posted a sparkling 1.92 ERA over 12 appearances. The rest of his season after that, he went 4-8 with a 4.78 ERA. For the season, he went 9-13 with a 3.93 ERA, while his team couldn’t even win half their games.

Unfortunately this season was the start of the downside of his career. This means we can neatly divide his career into 4-5 season sections where he was a different pitcher in each one—

What I find even more fascinating here though, is that for 3 of those last 5 seasons, he was still pitching a lot of games in the Astrodome. I think everybody knows the the Astrodome was a great pitchers park. So what happened?

His home/road split shows that he just suddenly couldn’t pitch anywhere anymore. A near 4.00 ERA in the Astrodome is awful worse than a 4.00 ERA on the road. Besides that, I find it fascinating that his first few years in Houston, his ERA was actually lower on the road.

After his playing career finished, he went on to become a pitching coach until he lost his battle with cancer in January 2007. Goodnight Vern.

Random Vern Ruhle career facts and stats—

• A nice candid shot of Vern as a Tiger in ’75
• Posted a 1.97 ERA in save situations (59 1/3 IP)
• …and went 57-73, 3.90 ERA, as a starter.
• Gary Carter slugged .826 & smacked 4 HR’s against Vern
• …but Keith Hernandez only slugged .150 against him.

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.