When Tony Scott’s 1978 Topps card first appeared, I didn’t know anything about who he was, or how he came to be pictured in a Cardinals uniform. I didn’t know that he had been in the Montreal Expos organization, where he was stuck behind outfielding talent which included Andre Dawson, Ellis Valentine, Warren Cromartie, and Gary Carter (and if you need to look that last one up, go right ahead).
I didn’t know that a trade to a different organization had cleared his path to the big leagues, either. 1978 was the trial run period for free agency in the major leagues, and a player like Tony Scott had no real expectation of being able to ply his trade to the highest bidder. Good enough to play in the majors, obviously, because why else would he appear on a card like this? But also close enough to the edge of the game that any team that wanted his services deserved the best he could give them.
1978 was also the first year that the St. Louis Cardinals operated their triple A farm team in my hometown of Springfield, Illinois. Springfield wasn’t a small town, but at just over 100,000 residents it was much smaller than Denver, where Tony Scott had toiled while in the Montreal farm system. And while Denver has since become a major league city, Springfield, Illinois hasn’t hosted a professional baseball team of any sort since 2001. The Springfield Lucky Horseshoes of the collegiate Prospect League are as close to high-level baseball as Springfield currently has to offer.
So the outfielders who came to play for the Springfield Redbirds in 1978 were all hoping to get to where Tony Scott already was. The Cardinals’ four-year experiment in Springfield netted them a couple of important pieces for their 1982 World Series championship team, and they also developed a prospect named Leon Durham who was eventually traded to the Cubs for All-Star relief pitcher Bruce Sutter. But I had no understanding at all back then of how Springfield and Triple-A ball were hopefully nothing more than a short bump along the road toward major league glory.
Tony Scott played a significant number of games in St. Louis back in 1978, and he became the Cardinals’ starting center fielder during the 1979 and 1980 seasons. He came in to pinch-hit for Lou Brock after Brock had tallied his 3,000th career hit against his former team the Chicago Cubs late in the 1979 season. It had never occured to me before now that Brock’s career milestone hit came against the team that had traded him away, 15 years earlier. Whether Brock would ever admit this or not, that had to be a pretty sweet moment for him.
The Cardinals traded Tony Scott to the Houston Astros for Joaquin Andujar in 1981, and his playing time diminished as age 30 came and went. He was released in the middle of the 1984 season, and caught on with the team he originally played for, the Montral Expos to end the 1984 season. His big league career consisted of almost 1,000 games played, and 699 career hits.
After his playing days were over, Scott coached in the Phillies system for a dozen years, and reached the major league level in 2001. All in all, a pretty notable career, which had the added benefit of never needing to pass through Springfield, Illinois on his way to better things.
Until next time…..