Rick Sutcliffe (Almost) Harvested Young Baseball Souls

There but by the grace of Cobra, Hustle, and Schottzie...

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1985 Fleer Star Stickers Rick Sutcliffe (#89) - Card of the Day

It’s hard to even imagine now, and I don’t like to admit it, but there was a time when my Reds fandom was wavering.

It was the summer of 1984, and the Reds were terrible. At the same time, exciting things were happening in baseball…

The Tigers were going to win the World Series by July.

The Padres and Tony Gwynn rose like a San Diego wave to wash over baseball and make us all feel good and sunny.

And in the National League East, the Mets and Cubs flipped the script, going from bottom-dwellers to fighting for a division title in the course of a single offseason.

The Mets were super exciting, with young Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden engendering dreams of a dynasty.

And the Cubs were a complete surprise, as far as I could tell, and who the heck was Ryne Sandberg? Then in June, Chicago traded Darryl Banks, Joe Carter, Mel Hall, and Don Schulze to the Indians for George Frazier, Ron Hassey, and Rick Sutcliffe.

By then, I was watching a steady diet of Cubs games as I gorged on a steady diet of pizza from the local parlor, where I also had the chance to play my two favorite arcade games — Tempest and Centipede. Manual dexterity and fine motor skills have never been my jam.

The Cubs hadn’t been on our local stations the year before, but they were in 1984, with a WGN broadcast hitting the Indianapolis airwaves a few times a week. The Reds, on the other hand, were scarce visitors to our rabbit ears.

So I knew names like Jody Davis, Leon Durham, and Bob Dernier about as well as I knew Brad Gulden, Dave Parker, and Gary Redus.

And then there were the locals, most of whom were either Cardinals fans or Cubs fans. I was an oddball (surprise!). From what I could tell, nice old folks in our community followed the Cubs, while curmudgeons and a-holes followed the Cards.

In fact, my favorite older couple, some of the best people I’ve ever known, had been Cubs fans for 60 years.

The Cubbies were tempting.

But then my parents took me to see the Reds late in June, and I was all in on Cincy, for good.

But then…

Well, but then Rick Sutcliffe went 16-1 for Chicago, Sandberg turned into a true superstar, and the Cubs pulled away from the Mets. I was tempted again — really tempted — but then…

Well, yeah, then Pete Rose came home, joining forces with Parker, Tony Perez, and Schottzie to form Voltron. That reunion sealed the deal, for real and for ever and ever this time.

Still and all, artifacts from the 1984 Cubs still make my tummy tingle and somersault.

Take this 1985 Fleer Star Stickers “card” of Rick Sutcliffe, for example. This puppy shows the Red Baron at his intimidating best, as he looked in the summer of 1984, snarling out of the Wrigley Field ivy.

Now, this is not a great card.

Back in 1981, Fleer debuted Star Stickers as actual card-sized sticker-cards, with many of the same photos as in their base set, but with nifty blue borders and some starry accents. In the context of the time, and by virtue of supplying more choice to collectors, those were great cards in my book.

But then Fleer went with stamps in 1982 and 1983, and when they turned back to Star Stickers in 1984, the flair was gone. Small and beige-bordered, the 1984s were pretty boring, but I was still happy to have them.

The 1985s were pretty much the same, a 126-sticker set, each one on a stiff hunk of white cardboard and measuring just 1 15/16" x 2 1/2". As with most of these types of things, you could also buy an album to put the stickers in, or you could terrorize your friends and family with them.

The red, white, and blue color scheme was just OK in my book, and it turned out to be a preview of the 1988 and 1990 Fleer designs. Not really something to brag about.

But the colors work well for Cubs players, especially when they’re in home pinstripes, and especially when said player helped Chicago win their first division title. As far as I could tell back then, there wasn’t anything more American, after all, than rooting the Cubs on to victory.

In the end, of course, there was only so much the old folks at home could do to will the Cubs toward their destiny. It all crashed to the ground over the course of an October weekend in San Diego.

But hey, at least Sutcliffe and Sandberg got some hardware out of the deal the next month when they were named the National League’s Cy Young and MVP Award winners, respectively.

Today, Rick Sutcliffe turns 68 years old.

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OK, that was a long one, so I’ll wrap up here.

I will say, though, it was pretty easy to leave the Cubs in my rearview mirror as Rose chased Ty Cobb and the Reds chased a division title in 1985. All of the sudden, it was fun to be a Reds fan, and we still had the best of Eric Davis to look forward to.

If there was ever any doubt that baseball was in my marrow before, that summer sealed the deal. When was your never-go-back moment/season?

Thanks for reading.

—Adam

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