My First Cards

If you asked someone to name any Yankee player from the early 1980′s, you’d probably never hear Dennis Werth‘s name mentioned—unless you’re asking me.

He was the first New York Yankee card I ever got, which is pretty important to an eight year old kid growing up in New York state. The only Yankees I knew about at that point were Babe Ruth, Bucky Dent, Reggie Jackson, and Ron Guidry. Suddenly I knew another, and his name was Dennis Werth.

Sometime in early May 1982, my older sister Amy and I went to the store. Out of the blue I decided to buy a pack of baseball cards. I liked playing baseball in the backyard and at the park, but I never watched it and didn’t think all that much about it. I knew that my grandfather nearly played for the Yankees in the 1930′s, which was my main reason to like the Yankees. So that sunny afternoon, I think it was a Saturday, I wanted a pack of baseball cards so I could satisfy two curiosities—To see if I’d get a Yankees card, and to taste the gum.

That’s the only two reasons I wanted a pack. I don’t remember who else was in the pack besides Dennis Werth, but I do remember staring at his card as I was crossing the street on my way back home. I wondered how good he was, assuming he was great because he was a Yankee.

I quickly became fascinated by the different team uniforms and logos, team colors, and the different action shots on the cards. The backs were curious to me. It all made me want more, and thus I began to collect cards and turn into a die hard baseball fan. During that summer, I learned from the neighborhood kids how to read the statistics on the back of the cards, and I realized that Dennis Werth, wasn’t one of the great players after all.

Didn’t matter though. He was still “my Dennis Werth” who smacked a 3 run homer against the Indians one day. To me he became awesome in his own way. He was my first Yankee card. He was part of a life altering moment for me.

In ’82, he wasn’t even a Yankee anymore but I didn’t know that at the time. Dennis was actually playing in Kansas City in what turned out to be his final major league season. He’d only played parts of 4 seasons in the majors and could probably be classified as one of those AAAA players. Maybe I’m still looking at him through an eight year old’s eyes who is sure he must be great in some way, but over the course of eleven minor league seasons he had a fine .373 OBP, eight of those being in AAA.

He was at his best though in 1980 for the Yankees, posting a .308/.416/.492 line with a 151 OPS+ over 39 games. He was in New York some more in 1981 but didn’t hit well and spent the strike in AAA Columbus, killing International League pitching with an OPS of 1.063. Ultimately though, his career never quite found it’s way back to 1980.

A few random Dennis Werth facts—

• Is the step father of Jayson Werth.
• Played in his first major league game 30 years & 1 day before I started this blog.
• Earned his first big league hit and scored his first run (in Cleveland), 30 years to the day before I wrote this article.
• Best hitting came when he was 2nd or 5th in the batting order.
• In 47 PA’s with RISP, Dennis had a .422 career OBP.