Today’s Lineup…
🌱 Card of the Day - Tending the baseball garden
♊ A Twin bill (and glove and bat and…)
1983 Topps Billy Gardner (#11) - Card of the Day
Quick — picture yourself as a major league manager in Spring Training. And then imagine if a photographer comes up and tells you he wants to take your picture for a Topps baseball card.
Now imagine further that you once had some experience in this realm, but that you thought that part of your life might be behind you.
After all, you spent 10 years in the majors as an infielder, until you were 35. Then you kept plugging away in the minors for years, taking your last plate appearance at age 43.
In between, while you were still playing, or thinking about it, you were earning your coaching chops. Then, nearly 18 years after your final appearance as an MLB player, you were back — as the Twins’ third base coach for the strike-torn 1981 season.
But before the players laid down their bats in anger, you got the call, replacing Johnny Goryl.
And sure, the 1982 season would carry with it some growing pains, but 60-102 is easier to swallow when you have a future full of Kent Hrbek, Tom Brunansky, Gary Gaetti, Frank Viola, and the likes to keep your diamond dreams stoked.
Now…
With all of that under your belt and to look forward to, how would you smile for the camera?
Yeah, I think Billy Gardner just about nailed it on his 1983 Topps card up there. And, even though I never knew much about him and didn’t much care — he wasn’t a Red, after all — this card made me think Gardner appreciated his lot in baseball life.
And the young core did start to come through in Minnesota, improving to 70-92 in 1983, and a break-even 81-81 in 1984. But a 27-35 start in 1985 reversed the trend, and it was too much for Gardner to overcome.
You can see, perhaps, that Gardner had become a bit less sanguine by then:
At any rate, in came Ray Miller, who left his post as Orioles pitching coach to relieve Gardner. Miller guided the Twins to an even 50-50 record the rest of the way, then saw his troops tumble to 59-80 in 1986 before he, too, got his walking papers.
That opened the door for third base coach Tom Kelly, who stepped in as interim skipper. That qualifier didn’t last long, of course, and Kelly helped the Twins fulfill their promise — two World Series championships in five seasons!
Gardner, meanwhile, got one more shot at being a skipper, taking over the reins of the Royals from the terminally-ill Dick Howser in 1987. After a 60-62 start, though, Gardner was gone again, replaced by John Wathan.
By the next year Gardner was working in the private sector, and he kept a pretty low baseball profile from that point forward. But he left the diamond world with some great memories, and at least one baseball card that reminds us how much fun this all can be.
News broke this week that Gardner had passed away at home in Connecticut on January 3. He was 96 years old.
1982 Minnesota Twins Postcards
If you want another look at Gardner from his early days in the manager’s chair, you could do worse than the 1982 Minnesota Twins Postcards issue:
This 34-card set was produced by Park Press and sold at the Metrodome. It featured all of the guys who would go on to become big stars with the Twins later in the decade (OK, Kirby Puckett isn’t here), as well as Gardner and his coaches, Karl Kuehl, Jim Lemon, Johnny Podres, and Rick Stelmaszek.
And, looking at the then-mid-fifties Gardner with a bat in his hand, you sort of get the feeling that old batters never stop dreaming. And that, maybe, 55 is the new 43.
—
That’s it for this Billy Gardner Twin Killing edition, but Gardner did make one more cardboard appearance. That one came after his brief Royals run, in the 1987 Topps Traded set.
Always leave ‘em with a smile, right, Billy?
Thanks for reading.
—Adam
More cardboard fun: