A Cardboard Face of Darkness Turns 70
It's like an express trip into the bowels of baseball purgatory
1981 Topps Reds Rookie Stars (#606) - Card of the Day
The Cincinnati Reds of the early 1980s were a painful mess of a team to root for.
The Big Red Machine started to disintegrate after their 1976 World Series victory, first with Don Gullett and Tony Perez leaving town, then Pete Rose defecting to the Phillies after the 1978 season. Even so, the Reds managed to win the old National League West in 1979 before losing the National League Championship Series to the “We Are Family” Pirates.
A third-place finish in 1980 gave way to the heartbreak of the 1981 strike, when Cincinnati posted the best record in the game but missed out on the playoffs because they didn’t win either “half” of the season.
Feels like Bud Selig was involved somehow.
That summer, collectors were pulling the “gem” of a card you see above. Bruce Berenyi led off, followed by Geoff Combe in the center, and Paul Householder doing his best hollow-eyed Data impression to the right.
Combe was already toast by the end of the season, playing his last major league game in early October.
But the fun was just starting for Berenyi and Householder, who would become a couple of the faces of an era of Riverfront ball, fairly or not.
First, though, let’s rewind to that summer of 1976, when the Reds were still steamrolling the game. That June, they picked Berenyi with the third pick of the first round in the secondary phase of the June draft (say that three times fast).
The right-hander went right to Low-A Eugene and started climbing the Reds’ minor league ladder. It was a step-by-step journey that led him to midseason call-up in 1980 — he posted a 7.81 ERA in six starts.
No matter to the Reds, though, as Berenyi was in the bigs to stay. Things looked good in 1981, too, as the rookie posted a 9-6 record with a 3.50 ERA in 21 appearances (20 starts).
Meanwhile, the Reds also picked Householder in the 1976 draft, taking him with their second-round pick. He went to Rookie-level Billings and likewise began his climb. He made his debut in late August of 1980, less than two months behind Berenyi.
Unlike Berenyi, though, Householder spent most of 1981 in the minors and didn’t stick in Cincinnati for good until 1982. And, boy-howdy, what a rip-roarin’ good time our Reds had that summer!
Cincy finished 61-101, which translated to last place in the NL West, 28 games out of first place. And 16 games behind the fifth-place Astros.
For their part, Householder “hit” .211 with nine home runs and 34 RBI while sort of holding his own in right field.
At least he was just 23 years old.
Berenyi, on the other hand, was already 27, way past the age of being anyone’s idea of a prospect. He won nine games and “led” the majors with 18 losses. The good news was that a) he didn’t lose 20 and b) he posted a solid 3.36 ERA.
Even so, you don’t lose 18 games in a season and come out unscathed.
Right away, pulling a Berenyi (or Householder) card from a wax pack became an occasion for moans and groans. Didn’t help that the 1983 Reds finished last again, albeit while improving to 74 wins.
Householder was able to bump his average up to .255 that summer, while Berenyi “only” lost 14 games, going 9-14. The ERA went the wrong way, though, checking in at 3.86.
Berenyi started 1984 at 3-7 with a 6.00 ERA, prompting the Reds to cut bait in June, trading him to the Mets in exchange for Matt Bullinger, Jay Tibbs, and Eddie Williams.
It turned out to be a busy summer in Cincy, roughly culminating when Pete Rose came home in August. Householder was a late casualty, bounced to the Cardinals in September for John Stuper.
By the next spring, hope was running rampant in the Queen City, thanks to Rose, the resurgence of Dave Parker, and the promise of youngsters like Eric Davis, Kurt Stillwell, Paul O’Neill, and Tom Browning.
Meanwhile, Berenyi enjoyed his run through Queens, posting a 9-6 record with a 3.76 ERA in the second half of 1984. But an early-season shoulder injury sidelined him for most of 1985, and he made just 14 appearances in 1986 before his career was done.
Householder went on to play for the Brewers and Astros before hanging up his spikes in 1987.
Today, both men are largely forgotten figures in the annals of baseball, but for Reds fans of a certain age, both names and faces still generate chills of the wrong kind. They were the names and faces — along with Frank Pastore, Duane Walker, Wayne Krenchicki, Tom Lawless, and a few others — of a deep, dark era of Reds baseball.
And also today — like, really today — Bruce Berenyi turns 70 years old.
A Light in the Darkness
Another guy who might rightly be counted as a face of the terrible early-1980s Reds is Cesar Cedeño. But for me, Cesar always represented hope and light, and his 1983 Donruss card is one of the big reasons I took up this hobby in the first place.
So Cedeño’s face and name give me the right kind of hobby chills.
No surprise, then, that I wrote about his rookie card once upon a time. For proof, check out How to Survive the 1971 Topps Cesar Cedeño Rookie Card.
—
I don’t know about you, but the world just feels righter when I’m talking about the Reds, even the Dark Ages version.
And if not, well, there’s always tomorrow, when I’ll probably be a bit less homerific. No guarantees, though.
For now, thanks for reading.
—Adam
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