Fun card to add to the WTHBALLS stable today, a "not so missing" 1979 card for long-time Major League pitcher Mike Morgan, who made his Big League debut in 1978 as an 18-year-old with the Oakland A's:
Morgan
had three starts in his first taste of the Majors, going 0-3 with a
bloated 7.30 earned run average in 12.1 innings of work.
He
wouldn't fare much better the following season when he went 2-10 over 13
games, posting an ERA of 5.94 in 77.1 innings, still a teenager.
However,
after spending all of 1980 and 1981 in the Minors, he was back in 1982
as a member of the New York Yankees, where he put in a solid year, going
7-11 over 30 games, finishing up with a respectable 4.37 ERA over 150.1
innings.
In 1983 he would find himself as a member of the
Toronto Blue Jays, where he appeared in only 16 games, posting a record
of 0-3 with a 5.16 ERA, and would take a step back even further the
following year where he spent the season in the Minors.
However,
in 1985 he was back for good, and as it turned out would spend the next
18 years as a Major League pitcher, becoming a specialist out of the
bullpen in the last half, appearing in a total of 597 games before
retiring after the 2002 seasons.
Morgan led the league in
shutouts in 1990 with four while a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers,
and won a career-best 16 games while with the Chicago Cubs just two
years later, going 16-8 with a very nice 2.55 ERA over 34 starts.
At
the age of 41 in 2001, as a member of the Arizona Diamondbacks, he
finally got a taste of a championship, as the Diamondbacks beat the
three-peat champ New York Yankees in the World Series in dramatic
fashion.
All told, Morgan finished with a record of 141-186,
appearing in 597 games, 411 of those starts, with 10 shutouts and eight
saves, striking out 1403 batters while walking 938.