World's Finest Rennie Stennett Collection

With apologies to Rennie and Mrs. Stennett, but when they eventually open the Rennie Stennett Baseball Card Museum, I'm pretty confident it's me they'll be calling first. In May, I talked a bit in this blog post about why I was collecting Rennie Stennett cards, and I crowed a bit prematurely about being almost done with collecting his entire run of cards. Nope, there were still more to go, and I suspect there probably still are - but I'm hard-pressed to figure out at this point what I don't have.

I recently got Rennie Stennett's 1975 SSPC card, #575 in the set, which you see to your left here. It highlights the #1 thing people know about our man Rennie - that he went 7 for 7 on September 16th, 1975 in a 9-inning game, leading the Pirates to a 22-0 win over the Cubs that day.

This 7-for-7 is also the reason that Stennett was given not one but two cards in the 1994 Upper Deck Heroes of Baseball set, highlighting his achievement. Please note that I have both the original Stennett cards in this set, plus versions stamped "Major League Baseball 125th Anniversary". Anyone know what that's about?

In my SportLots order that contained these cards, the sender was kind enough to include this 'lil mini-card in my order from Rennie's time on the San Francisco Giants:

I've also got all of the man's Kellogg's cards now. Far as I can tell there are three of them, but I just scanned this 1977 one for you here:

Then there's this 2001 Upper Deck "Decade Dateline" card - I guess the set commemorates things that happened in the 1970s - and of course it celebrates Stennett's 7 for 7 again:

Finally, I was able to nab two more 1990s cards of Stennett playing in the Florida Senior League for the Gold Coast Suns, the first from Elite and the second from T&M Sports. Call me if you ever need these cards for a Stennett museum, OK folks?

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.