8 wore 7 and 9

you may have noticed that i've been posting cards weekly from the dodgers' 1990 target set that commemorated the franchise's 100th anniversary as a national league club.  i was pleasantly surprised to find that the cardinals had a similar set issued in 1992 by mcdonald's and manufactured by pacific.  it was a much smaller set (only  55 cards compared to 1095 in the dodger set) but it included a member of the team of my youth.

yes, reggie smith spent two-plus seasons with the cardinals before joining the dodgers during the 1976 campaign.  he was an all-star in both of his full seasons with the redbirds, and drove in 100 runs for the only time in his career while with saint louis.  he also wore number 7 as you can see in that photo - the same number he wore for most of his time spent with the red sox as well.  i have mentioned a few times that i am a numbers person who associates numbers with players as a way of remembering things like locker combinations or phone numbers, and to me, reggie smith is number 8.

when smith joined the dodgers in 1976, steve yeager was number 7 so reggie eventually settled on 8, and he wore that number through 1981 when his dodger stint ended.  reggie eventually returned to the dodgers in the early 1990's as the team's hitting coach, but his familiar number 8 was then being worn by third base coach joey amalfitano, so he went with number 9.  here's a 1994 dodgers police card featuring smith and the rest of the coaching staff showing the unfamiliar number

9 to me is jerry grote.  maybe gary thomasson or mickey hatcher, but certainly not reggie smith.  the folks there on the card, by the way, are mark cresse, manny mota (his 11 should be retired), bill russell (forever 18), smith, joe ferguson (wearing the same 13 he wore as a player with the dodgers), ron perranoski (wearing rick monday's 16), tommy lasorda (his 2 is retired by the club), and amalfitano (with smith's number).

now let's make a hard turn and go back to the cardinals' 100th anniversary set.  whether you are a padre or cardinal fan, you would know the number of the other smith featured in the set to be 1.  ozzie smith's card in the set features a nice double play turn

so i picked it up along with the reggie.  i appreciate seeing the expos' helmet on the pitcher sliding in (i'm thinking that's bill gullickson, but i didn't do any research).  and since i'm posting one ozzie smith dp, here's another.

that one's from 2007 topps triple threads, and the sliding base runner is almost obscured by the cropping, fading, and shading, but you can still see the helmet there in the lower right.

the dodgers' tenure in the national league began two years before the cardinals joined, so the teams have been playing against each other for 123 years now.  that's 2044 regular season games, and the dodgers hold a very slight edge in the series, 1016 wins against 1012 losses.  that doesn't make up for 1985 or last year's nlcs, though.