Mike Sadek, San Francisco Giants Catcher

Last year I was interviewing for a new job, and one of the folks I was talking with was a forty-ish guy from the company's sales department named Mike Sadek. He and I got along extremely well, and my interview hadn't even wrapped up yet and he'd already told me I'd be a great fit for the company; that he'd try and help me in the door, and whatnot. When he saved time for my questions at the end, I figured it was finally safe to ask what was hovering in the back of my mind the whole time: "Did you know you share a name with a professional baseball player?".

"That's my dad", came the reply. Hot dog! Mike Sadek's super-cool son! Mike Sadek, backup catcher on my life-changing 1978 San Francisco Giants (.239, 2 homers, 10 RBIs). Turns out I got the job, and Sadek the younger was as cool a co-worker as I had anticipated, a fount of baseball knowledge and the possessor of some really funny anecdotes from his Dad's playing days. I reckoned, as I started pulling baseball cards into the house again, that I was going to need to put together a Mike Sadek baseball card collection.

Here's some of the fruit of that endeavor. The Phoenix Giants card you see up top is Sadek's 1975 card there - he'd previously spent some time down on the farm 1969-72 before being called up to San Francisco for the entirely of 1973, then was sent back down to Phoenix for the whole '74 season. Solid work there had him at Candlestick Park for good starting in 1975. So actually the earliest card of his I have - so far - is this 1974 Topps to your left, from before he was sent down. Handsome fella.

I'll admit that the priority level of the catchers on the 1977-1980 Giants are a blur to me, we had so many of them platooning with each other. Marc Hill. Milt May. John Tamargo. (Am I wrong, or did Tamargo later get arrested for something in the 80s? I have a strange teenage memory of this, but no evidence seems to exist online). Seemed like Hill got most of the starts, based on the stats I can find online, but his place in the starting lineup each day was anything but assured.

Not like Sadek was ripping the cover off the ball each night - he hit a total of 5 home runs in 946 lifetime plate appearances in SF - his only team. Clearly, however, he was of value to us during a rough stretch of years, having played for San Francisco from 1973 through 1981 before retiring, with over twelve years in the organization overall. To this day, a lighter-hitting catcher with excellent glove work and pitch-calling ability is a huge asset to a team, and it seems like every team still employs one. David Ross had a legendary career as one of those.

Here are a few of Mike Sadek's cards during his time behind the plate for the Giants. I only have another ten of so to go before I've got his entire career covered, so we'll get a follow-up post going once we do.