Two huge Quisenberry acquisitions: 1975 and 1976 TCMA Waterloo Royals

 I guess I'm not a very good Dan Quisenberry super-collector. I decided to start chasing all his cards almost three years ago, and I just have 45 of his 256 cards. And he played in the 1980s for goodness' sake - there's tons of low-hanging fruit. 

I started my quest with great intentions - I even started a separate blog for my collection of him (Collecting Quiz) which I posted on once after my introductory post. The problem is that my collection as a whole is geared to Topps/Bowman vintage set-collecting; I'm just not used to intentionally seeking out a single player's cards regardless of set. 

I did, however, acquire two of Quisenberry's earliest and most important cards this February: his 1975 and 1976 TCMA Waterloo Royals cards.

 They aren't too flashy, but they're his first cards, in superb condition, and not easy to find either. And they're sort of cute. I like their pictures, and it's kind of funny they misspell his name as Quinsenberry on his 1976 card. 

1975 and 1976 were Quiz's first pro seasons. With Waterloo he was 3-2 with a 2.45 ERA in 20 games in '75, and 2-1 with a 0.64 ERA and 11 saves in 34 games in '76. For the two seasons he struck out 50 batters and walked just 15 (5 of them intentionally) in 86 innings. 

I actually bought the entire team sets. An on-line auction house I occasionally buy from, The Collector Connection, was selling the sets in NM condition, and I decided to go after them. The 1975 set was $62 and the 1976 set was $45 - together they were $125 including the buyer's premium. That sounds like a lot - and it is a lot, much more than I usually spend - but it was a good deal. A 1975 full set alone recently sold for $100+s/h on eBay, and that's not atypical. 

The quality of the cards isn't super high - they're black-and-white, minimalist, and often miscut, and their sizes can vary significantly - but therein lies the quirky charm of odd-ball cards. They aren't processed and bland, even if it takes the loving eye of an obsessed collector to see their beauty. 

Both sets have similarly designed backs.  The only easy way to tell the two sets apart (I mean, apart from the stats listed on their bacsk) is by their front fonts: the 1975 fronts are in a serif font while the 1976 fronts are in a sans serif font. (Serifs are the decorative details on the edges of letters - I had to look that up.) Additionally, the 1975 fronts are all-caps while the 1976 fronts are not. 

The 1975 set has 35 cards while the 1976 set has 33. (The difference is that the 1975 set has a variation and both versions are counted towards the complete set, and the 1975 set also has a card of the GM and his wife.) 

The Waterloo Royals had the best record in the class A Midwest League both years, finishing 93-35 in 1975 and 78-52 in 1976, and they won the league championship in 1975. At the time the big league Royals were a good team on the cusp of being a very good team; they would lose three straight American League Championship series to the Yankees from 1976 to 1978 (heh, heh, heh) before making (and losing) the 1980 World Series. Four regular players on the 1980 Royals - Quisenberry, Willie Wilson, Rich Gale, and Clint Hurdle - were with Waterloo in 1975-1976. 

The biggest difference between the 1975 and 1976 Waterloo Royals was their decline in base stealing and in pitching. Fueled by Willie Wilson (76 stolen bases) and Joe Gates (55 stolen bases), Waterloo stole 188 bases in 1975 to lead the league. Without Wilson and Gates in 1976, Waterloo stole just 95 bases - 215 thieveries behind the league-leading Danville Dodgers. In 1975, Waterloo had a league-leading 2.61 ERA in a severe pitcher's league (the league average ERA was 3.28); in 1976, as the league ERA spiked to 3.93, Waterloo's ERA went up a full run to 3.61, fourth best in the league. 

Here are some of the key or otherwise entertaining cards from the two Waterloo sets: 

Soon-to-be Royals star Willie Wilson had his first card in the 1975 set. Willie, who was just 19 then, led the team with 76 stolen bases and 73 runs batted in. I love the sign behind him dictating where games of pepper may be played. 

I took this picture many moons ago and I'm unsure why I included Charlie Beamon in it. He did hit a team-high .305 in 1975, and would go on to hit .196 in 45 games over three seasons with the Mariners and Blue Jays. I do like how both Beamon and Wilson are wearing a batting glove on only one of their hands, a common custom in those days. 

Al Bartlinski looks like the platonic ideal of a 1970s trainer, and Dave and Brenda Brunk look... very young for people running a ball club. (Dave was the team's GM - together they are listed as the "front office team" on the card back.) I also don't normally think of general managers as wearing partly-unbuttoned shirts revealing voluminous chest hair, but what do I know? 

According to the card's back, the Brunks made their abode in Lafayette, Indiana, and were graduates of Ball State University. "Dave was named Midwest League GM of the year in 1974." Today, Dave Brunk is in his 17th year as commissioner of the Peach Belt Conference, a DII athletic conference with colleges in Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. He and Brenda have two daughters and two grandkids. 

The 21-year-old Ken Phelps played only 24 games for Waterloo in 1976, his first year in pro ball. He homered just once, but walked 26 times and hit eight doubles. Phelps didn't break through in the big leagues until 1984, when he was 29, but for four years (1984 and 1986-88) he was a fearsome Mariner hitter. He was platooned at DH and first base so he just got 300-350 at-bats a year, but in those four years he hit about .250 with lots of power and walks. His consistency was incredible for a part-time player: he hit 24, 24, 27, and 24 homers in those years. His best year might have been 1982, when he hit .333/46/141 with 108 walks and 112 runs scored for the Expos' AAA affiliate, the Wichita Aeros. Ken Phelps may not have been much of a fielder, but I don't understand why the Royals and Expos never gave him a real chance; the man could rake. 

The 6'7" Rich Gale was 11-6 with a 3.47 ERA for Waterloo in 1976, and even threw a one-hitter. He was 14-8 with a 3.09 ERA in his rookie season with the 1978 Royals, but rarely was effective after that. By 1985 he was pitching for the Hanshin Tigers. His ERA was 4.30 that year, but he led the team with 13 wins. The Tigers won the Japanese Central League pennant (fueled by fellow gaijin Randy Bass's 54 home runs), and Gale won two games in the championship series to help the Tigers win their first ever championship.

Gale's ERA was about the same the next year - 4.56 - but his record declined to 5-10, which for a high-paid highly-pressured gaijin must have been a harrowing experience. He later said: "I would've been an alcoholic basket case if my family hadn't been there." Gale became a pitching coach after that, spending two years with the Boston Red Sox. 

Clint Hurdle was just 18 in 1976, but he hit 19 homers, walked 118 times, and held enough tobacco in each cheek to make a chipmunk proud. He hit .328 the next year in AAA, and by 1978 he was as much of a hyped super-prospect as it was possible to be in 1978.

He never panned out. He hit .264 in 1978, and in 1980, at 22, he hit .294 with some power, but he never had more than 154 at-bats in a year after that. Whitey Herzog, the Royals' manager in the late 1970s, had called Hurdle "the best player in the minors [in 1977]", and that was pretty tame; in 1986, when Hurdle was 28, he hit .195 for Whitey Herzog's Cardinals. Hurdle later became a successful manager, leading the Rockies to their only NL pennant in 2007 and the Pirates to the best seasons they've had since the early 90s from 2013-15. 

Fernando Llodrat has a piece of gum sticking out of his mouth.
                                          
At first I thought that was all I was going to say about Llodrat, who played just five games for Waterloo: the terseness of that comment would prove a powerful contrast to my screeds on the previous three players.

But then I noticed that in 1979 Llodrat played in a strange and short-lived minor league, classified as AAA but probably not AAA in quality, called the Inter-American League. The league had six teams: two in Venezuela (Zulia and Caracas,) one in Panama, one in Puerto Rico (San Juan), one in the Dominican Republic (Santo Domingo), and a sixth in Miami. Llodrat divided his season between the Puerto Rico Boricuas (a Boricua is a Puerto Rican) and the Santo Domingo Azucareros (azucarero = sugar bowl). With the Boricuas, Llodrat was a teammate of former Reds star Bobby Tolan and former Waterloo Royal Mark Souza, and with the Azucareros was teammates with former Padres shortstop Tito Fuentes, future Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston, and former Red Sox pitcher Dick Pole. (The notorious Mike Kekich managed.) It was an absolutely fascinating idea for a league - six teams from five countries?! - but it fizzled out half-way through the season, with the Miami Amigos in 1st with a 51-21 record. 

The 1975 Waterloo set contains a variation considered necessary for a complete 35-card set. The two cards of German Barranca may seem identical on the front, but on the back of one error lurks. (Sound familiar?)

The card on the right has the back design belonging to the Dubuque Packers, an Astros affiliate at the time. I dig the slugging swine. 

Barranca didn't knock anyone's socks off with his play at Waterloo. He had no power, an unimpressive batting average, and didn't steal bases. He did show excellent plate discipline for a teenager, walking 102 times in 157 games over 1975-76, but that was it. But he started stealing bases with Jacksonville in 1977, stole 75 bases for Omaha in 1979, and ended up spending parts of four seasons as a pinch-runner and pinch-hitter for the Royals and Reds. In 1979 he was 3 for 5; the next season he played in seven games without batting. 

Barranca, a native of Vera Cruz, had a similarly slight career in the Mexican League: He was 8 for 28 for Campeche in 1988, 2 for 5 for Monclova in 1990, and 1 for 4 in 1994 for Industriales. 

He had a much more substantial career in the Mexican Pacific Winter League (AKA the Liga Mexicana del Pacifico).  He hit .244 with 138 stolen bases and 235 walks in 551 games over ten seasons for Mazatlán, Hermosillo, Tijuana, and Guasave. He set a record during his time with the Naranjeros de Hermosillo by stealing six bases in one game, and is 3rd all-time in career triples with 31. His 7 triples in 1977-78 tied a since-broken LMP single-season record. 

Earlier I said I'd show you the key or otherwise entertaining cards from the sets, but I've decided I just want to show them all. Because they're minor league cards and reasonably rare, there isn't much out there on either the set or the players. TCDB currently only has pictures of four of the 1976 cards; I'd just like to get everything in one place for posterity.

(In other words, I got carried away and started finding everything about the cards and players interesting. This happens to me sometimes.)

Here's a trio of future big-leaguers.

Craig Eaton was a pedestrian 3-3 with a 4.85 ERA in 1976. He appeared in five games in relief for the 1979 Royals.

Danny Garcia hit .292 with 2 homers, 73 walks, and 26 stolen bases in 1976; he was 2-for-14 in 12 games for the 1981 Royals. In 1982, his final year in pro ball, he hit .393 in 83 games: .424 in 26 games (39 for 92) for the Mexico City Reds, and .378 in 57 games (73 for 193) for the Buffalo Bisons, AA affiliate of the Pirates. Now that's what I call going out with a bang. 

In 1975 Roy Branch was 21 but already in his fifth pro season. He had a 6-1 record with a 1.93 ERA with Waterloo before moving up to AA Jacksonville. He had a 7.94 ERA in two starts with the 1979 Seattle Mariners. 

These four endeared themselves to me in miscellaneous ways. 

Gary Williams, just 20 years old in 1975, was the ace of Waterloo's pitching staff, going 12-2 with a 2.17 ERA and 112 strikeouts in 116 innings. He spent the next two seasons with Jacksonville but didn't have much success. Gary played in the Mexican League from 1978 to 1981. He was great for Tampico in 1978, going 10-6 with a 2.02 ERA and 127 strikeouts in 116 innings, but it looks like he hurt his arm in 1979, and he didn't do well after that. For his Mexican League career he was 23-17 with a 3.63 ERA for Tampico, Leon, Aguascalientes, Toluca, Tigres, and Chihuahua. 

Joe Gates, also 20 years old, was probably Waterloo's best player in 1975 - even better than Willie Wilson. His average, .270, was just as good, and he stole 55 stolen bases. His power was less but he walked 122 times - 96 more times than Wilson - and so scored 115 runs with a .443 OBP. But Wilson developed from there and Gates didn't. Gates made the majors with the Chicago White Sox, batting .175 in 24 games in 1978 and 1979 while Willie Wilson became a star. 

Bobby Edmonson, 18 years old in 1975, hit .170 with 9 homers and 16 runs scored in 89 games. I think there's a weird beauty to those numbers. Sadly, Bobby never played again in pro ball.

Willie Clark was drafted in the 11th round of the 1973 draft from Jackson State University. For his pro career he had a 31-11 record and 2.49 ERA, but he never made it above Waterloo. 

                

I love how the low-budget quality of old minor league cards can show you views of stadiums you would never think of seeing on a baseball card. These pitchers pictured in the midst of the stands are excellent examples. 

I will now show the players who appeared in both team sets, an exercise I hope you will find as instructive and oddly fascinating as I do. 

I don't know why my 1976 set came with two copies of the wonderfully named Karel deLeeuw - there's no variation that I can see - but I'm not complaining. Karel spent three years with Waterloo from 1974 to 1976, hitting .268, .281, and .260 with plenty of power. He played in just 171 at-bats over 74 games in 1975, for whatever reason, but he was the team's most productive batter by far, with a .413 OBP and .521 SLG - his SLG being 86 points higher than anyone else with significant playing time. 1976 was his last season in pro ball -  like Willie Clark, he never made it past Waterloo despite playing well. 
                                              
Clint Hurdle was not the only Waterloo player sporting chaw in his cheek.

Dale (not Dave) Hrovat provided low-volume but high-quality relief pitching for Waterloo for two years: he had a 2.09 ERA in 23 games in 1975 and a 6-0 record with 9 saves and a 0.51 ERA in 25 games in 1976. Hrovat made it as far as Spokane (AAA) in 1978 and finished his pro career with a 2.59 ERA. 

                        
                                                                     
Tom Laseter looks kind of like a 1970s superhero: he has that clean WASP look, cool hair, and a batting glove that is strangely reminiscent of Iron Man. He presumably was a pinch-runner foremost in 1975, going 4 for 34 with 16 runs scored in 32 games, but in 1976 he really did hit like a superhero with Waterloo, hitting .333/5/18 with 22 runs scored in 19 games. But he hit just .242 after being called up to Jacksonville, and the next year, again in AA, he hit .242 with a whopping two home runs in 121 games. 

Steve Lacy's card has print lines on the top, left, and bottom. Lacy hit .174 in 1975 and .285 in 1976. Way to improve, Lacy. 

                  

Darrell Parker was one of Waterloo's best batsmen both years, hitting .304 and .314 with fair power. He never made it past AAA Omaha. 

Manuel Moreta was a back-up infielder and pinch-runner in 1975, going 10-for-40 with 13 runs scored . He was a part-time regular the next year but hit just .172 with a .181 SLG. They should've left him on the bench.                                                                                                                                                                 

I don't know who the man staring over Mike Williams' right shoulder is but he sure is creepy. Williams had a good to start to his pro career, showing good control in his first two seasons and going 11-6 with a 3.18 ERA in 1975. But he was just 7-6 in 1976 and, possibly cursed by the ominous man behind him, began losing his control. It just got worse after that season. He walked 84 batters in 92 innings in 1977 and 75 batters in 82 innings in 1979, but did manage to spend three years in the Pacific Coast League. (He had ERAs of 7.02, 4.54, and 7.28 in those seasons.)

Mike Williams carefully wrote "Mike Williams" on his glove in 1975, presumably to distinguish his gear from Gary Williams'. 

Hal Thomasson, who has print lines on both his cards, was okay. 

Mark Souza had a 7.71 ERA in five relief appearances for the 1980 Billy Martin-led Oakland A's. He was a teammate of German Barranca with the 1979 Inter-American League Puerto Rico Boricuas; he had a 1-6 record but a 2.40 ERA. 

Luis Silverio retired with a career major league batting average of .545. (He was 6-for-11 in eight games for the 1978 Royals. ) Silverio was just 3-for-26 in 12 games for 1975 Waterloo, but hit .272/14/82 in 1976. I like how he's visibly older in his 1976 picture; his baby fat seems to have dissipated. 

               

Roy Tanner didn't do much of anything on the field in 1975 or 1976, but he must have showed plenty of leadership because he earned the coveted player-coach designation at age 25. He managed four years in the low minors for the Royals from 1980 to 1983.

The harried-looking John Sullivan caught 116 games for the Tigers, Mets, and Phillies between 1963 and 1968, hitting .228 and scoring the grand total of 9 runs. He had a 434-288 managerial record in the minors. After managing Waterloo from 1974-1976, he helmed Omaha in 1977 and 1978. He became the Royals' co-batting instructor in 1979, helping replace Charlie Lau, and was the Atlanta Braves' bullpen coach in 1980 and 1981. He served as Blue Jay bullpen coach from 1982 to 1993, and caught the Joe Carter walk-off home run that ended the 1993 World Series. 

The most significant moment of Sullivan's career from my perspective was when he converted Dan Quisenberry from a starter to a reliever at Waterloo in 1975. 

Sullivan and Silverio had identical strange cuts on their top-right corners in 1975, though you can't see Sullivan's very well from this angle. I'm not retaking the picture.

Well, there you have it: my titanic analysis of the 1975 and 1976 Waterloo Royals cards and players.

This is a timely post, as the Royals of today are currently battling my Yankees in the ALDS, just as the two teams battled in days of yore. The series is tied up 1-1; I hope it will be the beginning of a new chapter in the Yankees-Royals rivalry. And I hope the Yankees will get the best of it, just as they did in the 1970s. 

As I wrap up this post, here's a fitting song: Waterloo Sunset by The Kinks. 

                                              

For the sake of comprehensiveness, here are the pictures of the rank and file Waterloo warriors for whom I have no words.