I Nearly Completed a Rennie Stennett Collection

This collect-an-entire-player's-career-cards thing is a total piece of cake, isn't it? That is - if you work on a player who retired before the age of Fleer and Donruss (i.e. pre-80s), and especially if that player wasn't a superstar, and was therefore was left off of specialty cards both during his own time, and is generally also absent from our modern era of tribute cards, historical cards, autograph cards, relics and so on.

Rennie Stennett mostly fits the bill. Why did I decide to collect his cards? It's funny, that. My memories of him as a San Francisco Giant in 1980 and 1981 - his final years as a major leaguer - are rose-tinted, even though they have no reason to be. I remember him as being a really solid member of the squad. His "best" year as a Giant was 1980, when he hit .244 with 2 home runs and 37 RBIs and stole a big 4 bases. No, Rennie Stennett's lore in my muddled head must have come from his days as a Pittsburgh Pirate. Not only did he once go 7 for 7 in a game, he also had some truly magnificent years for the Pirates - like in 1977, when he hit .336 and stole 28 bases, while also compiling a deserved reputation as an outstanding defensive 2nd baseman. There was a real halo effect that came over to SF with the guy, and I guess it never left my head despite all evidence to the contrary.

Moreover, there's his name. Rennie Stennett. It's an outstanding name, right up there with "Bake McBride". Not a funny name, not a cute name - just a cool name. Stennett played from 1971 through til 1981 before retiring. Bookended his Pirates years with two World Series victories - one in his rookie year of 1971, then another with the 1979 "We Are Family" Pirates, beating the Baltimore Orioles both times. Have a nice decade, Rennie!

I decided early on, once I learned that it was standard practice to just collect one dude's cards, to grab all the Stennetts I could. Here's a bunch of them - most of them, actually. I'm still missing his 1976 and 1978 Hostess cards, and a couple of tribute cards from the 21st century - but not many more that I know of. Something like four or five more, and I've got 'em all, including the O-Pee-Chee versions of his 70s Topps Pirates cards.

Here's what his history in cards looks like, more or less, minus the ones I decided not to scan and the few I don't yet have:

Then there's these cards....the first of them is a 1976 MSA Blank Back Disc, and the one at the bottom is a 1989 Topps "senior league" card. Awesome.