After finishing third in the National League East in 1984, Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog made clear that his top priority was to find a starting pitcher who could add stability to the rotation. The Cardinals already had Joaquin Andujar to serve as the ace of the staff, but at age 34, Bob Forsch had thrown just 52 1/3 innings in an injury-plagued 1984 campaign and could no longer be counted upon to be a top-of-the-rotation starter.

On December 12, in one of his final acquisitions before he resigned on January 3, 1985, Cardinals general manager Joe McDonald got Herzog the arm he wanted, trading outfielder George Hendrick and prospect Steve Barnard to the Pirates for left-hander John Tudor and catcher Brian Harper.

Trading Hendrick left the Cardinals in need of a middle-of-the-order bat. Hendrick hit at least 16 home runs each season between 1973 and 1983, but in 1984 his numbers dipped to nine homers and 69 RBIs in 120 games.

“George did a good job until the last two years,” Herzog said. “Last year, we’d put a guy on first, but he’d never drive in the guy with a ball in the gap.”[1]

To replace Hendrick, the Cardinals set their sights on San Francisco, where Jack Clark and the Giants had endured a tumultuous relationship. On February 1, 1985, the Cardinals and Giants finalized a deal that would send David Green, Dave LaPoint, Gary Rajsich, and Jose Uribe to the Giants in exchange for Clark.

“I think Jack Clark puts us in the situation of definite contenders again,” Herzog said. “Here’s a guy who can win a ballgame with one swing of the bat. He’s the only player in the league besides (Mike) Schmidt who could hit 20 homers a year playing in our park.”^[2]

A 13^th-round pick in 1973 out of Gladstone High School in Covina, California, Clark made his major-league debut as a 19-year-old September call-up in 1975. In 1978, he enjoyed his breakout season, batting .306 with 25 homers and 98 RBIs. He placed fifth in the MVP voting and was selected for the All-Star Game that season.

Between 1978 and 1983, Clark hit at least 20 runs in five of six seasons. In 1984, a right knee injury limited him to 57 games. He was batting .320 with 11 homers and 44 RBIs in June when he required season-ending arthroscopic surgery.

Clark, who had appeared in more Giants games than any other active player, with 1,044 appearances over nine seasons, had a complicated history with the club. Even though he could be counted on for 20+ homers per year, he had feuded with former manager Frank Robinson and hated playing in Candlestick Park, where the swirling winds made right field a daily adventure.

“There never was a day where it was really, really nice there,” Clark said. “You didn’t mind playing in the cold, but it was the wind. You’d see players on teams, even your team, go after fly balls like they had never played before. But I feel like I became a pretty good outfielder because I had to really improve my concentration.”[3]

In his 1988 autobiography, Wizard, Cardinals shortstop Ozzie Smith wrote that he knew Clark would benefit from a change of scenery.

“I told Lou (Susman) I thought there was a way we could obtain the power hitter everybody agreed we needed,” Smith wrote. “I had met Jack Clark several years back, and I knew that all the reports about him being a troublemaker with the Giants weren’t true. I had come from an organization – the Padres – that was similar to the Giants, and it seemed to me to be a situation where the organization was more to blame than the player. … I pointed that out to Lou and told him I thought Jack would fit into our organization and could give us 25 to 30 home runs a year. The key was to put Jack in a situation where he thought he had a chance to be on a winning team.”[4]

That knee injury was the first sticking point in the trade, as the Cardinals first requested that Clark undergo an examination of his injured knee. Once that was completed, a new wrinkle developed: Clark’s contract had provisions to pay him $250,000 if he were traded, provide a low-interest loan of $250,000, and give him another $250,000 payment if he signed with another team after the 1986 season. After some additional haggling, Cardinals attorney Lou Susman and Giants general manager Tom Haller agreed to split the final $250,000 payment, with the Cardinals paying the greater share. As a result of those negotiations, the Giants removed left-handed pitching prospect Colin Ward from the deal.

“I would have liked to have had the prospect,” Herzog said.[5]

The deal was finalized eight days after it was leaked to the press and four days after Clark completed his knee examination.

“This is the world’s longest trade,” said LaPoint, who had gone 33-22 for the Cardinals the previous three seasons. “It’s basically sixth-page headlines now. When they make it last an extra three days over $250,000, something’s wrong.”[6]

LaPoint’s frustration had less to do with the trade’s treatment in the papers than with a lack of communication about his family’s future. When the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reached out to him several hours after the trade had been announced, LaPoint said neither team had informed him of the trade.

“There’s more than ballplayers involved,” he said. “There are families involved. I think they should have at least let me know what was going on.”[7]

Herzog couldn’t disagree. “I wish it could have been handled more professionally,” he said. “Dave’s basically a really good kid, but he didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t know what to tell him.”[8]

Haller told the San Francisco Examiner that the Cardinals’ lack of a general manager following McDonald’s resignation complicated the trade, leaving Susman, an Anheuser-Busch attorney, to handle the details on the Cardinals’ behalf.

“It was ridiculous in a way,” Haller said. “It boils down to a guy who never dealt in that arena before. Right now, he has been handling a lot of their important decisions since they don’t have a GM.”[9]

In Green, LaPoint, Rajsich, and Uribe, the Giants had an opportunity to add two new starters to their infield and LaPoint to their starting rotation.

Green, a highly touted prospect who came to St. Louis alongside LaPoint in the deal that sent Rollie Fingers, Ted Simmons, and Pete Vuckovich to Milwaukee, had claimed the Cardinals’ starting right field job in 1983 and hit .284 with eight homers, 69 RBIs, and 34 stolen bases. In 1984, the Cardinals moved him to first base, where he hit .268 with a team-leading 15 homers, 65 RBIs, and 17 stolen bases. He missed three weeks of the season while rehabilitating from alcohol addiction.

“You’re really gambling on his potential,” Herzog said. “Of all the players I’ve had the opportunity to manage, David Green has more ability than anyone when you consider everything – hitting, hitting with power, speed, and arm. (Garry) Templeton and George Brett are in that category, but David has more power than either one, he runs better than either one, and he throws better than George.”[10]

LaPoint, a left-hander from Glens Falls, New York, was coming off a 12-10 season in which he posted a 3.96 ERA. As a rookie in 1982, he went 9-3 and received no decision in the Cardinals’ 7-5 Game 4 loss to the Brewers. LaPoint allowed one earned run in 6 2/3 innings in that start.

Uribe, a shortstop from the Dominican Republic, had hit .279 in Triple-A Louisville in 1984. Rajsich, whom the Cardinals had acquired from the Mets prior to the 1984 season, had appeared in just seven games for the Cardinals.

“It gives us quality players at three positions and help off the bench,” Haller said. “Green has sock in his bat, LaPoint strengthens our starting pitching, and Gonzalez (Uribe) has a good opportunity to be our starting shortstop.”[11]

Giants manager Jim Davenport said, “You hate to see a guy like Jack Clark get traded away, but any time you can pick up four players like that it’s bound to make you stronger. LaPoint will be one of our starters, Green will play first base, Gonzalez (Uribe) and (Johnnie) LeMaster will battle it out for the shortstop job, and Rajsich will give us strength off the bench.”[12]

Clark proved key to the Cardinals’ 1985 and 1987 National League championships. Before the 1985 season started, Herzog moved Clark to first base and Andy Van Slyke to right field.

That season, Clark earned All-Star recognition for the third time in his career, batting .281 with 22 homers and 87 RBIs. In the NLCS against the Los Angeles Dodgers, he went 8-for-21 (.381), including a three-run home run off Tom Niedenfuer in the ninth inning of Game 6. In the World Series against the Royals, he went 6-for-25 (.240) with four RBIs.

Injuries limited him to just 65 games in 1986, but he returned in even better form in 1987, batting .286 with 35 homers and 106 RBIs, both career highs. He led the league in walks (136), on-base percentage (.459), slugging percentage (.597), and OPS+ (176).

“He’s the greatest fastball hitter I’ve ever managed, and he’s very good with runners on base. Our whole offensive game is geared to getting guys on base ahead of Clark, and everybody in the league knows it,”^[13] Herzog wrote in White Rat: A Life in Baseball.

Later in the book, Herzog added, “Jack Clark is one of the great power hitters and RBI men in baseball today, one of those guys you stick in the cleanup spot and then build your lineup around.”[14]

Clark injured his ankle on September 9 with three weeks remaining in the 1987 regular season when he tried to avoid a tag at first base. He took just one at-bat during the Cardinals’ NLCS win over the Giants and did not play in the World Series against the Twins. Despite missing the end of the regular season, he finished third in the MVP voting and earned a Silver Slugger.

In January 1988, Clark signed a two-year, $3 million free-agent deal with the Yankees, a move that prompted Herzog to say, “In all honesty, without Jack Clark for 162 games, we’ll be lucky to play .500. … We’re not a contender without Jack Clark.”[15]

Green played one season in San Francisco, batting .248 with five homers, 20 RBIs, and six stolen bases in 294 at-bats. In December 1985, the Giants traded him to the Brewers. The Brewers, in turn, sold him to the Kintetsu Buffaloes of the Japan Pacific League. In July 1987, Green returned to the Cardinals and appeared in 14 games. He played the remainder of his career in the minors and the Mexican League.

LaPoint went 7-17 despite a 3.57 ERA in 206 2/3 innings in 1985. That fall, the Giants traded him to the Tigers. LaPoint’s career took him to San Diego, Chicago (with the White Sox), Pittsburgh, New York (with the Yankees), and Philadelphia, with his final major-league appearance coming in 1991. LaPoint signed with the Cardinals for the 1987 season but was traded to the White Sox at the trade deadline.

Rajsich played one season in San Francisco, batting .165 with 10 RBIs in 91 at-bats. The Cardinals purchased him in July 1985 and sold him to the Chunichi Dragons of the Japan Central League that December. He played three seasons in Japan, hitting 76 home runs and driving in 189 runs.

Uribe proved the key to the deal for the Giants. He claimed the starting shortstop job upon his arrival in San Francisco and wound up playing eight seasons with San Francisco, batting .241 with a .969 fielding percentage for his career. He helped the Giants reach the NLCS in 1987 and the World Series in 1989.

Ward, who originally was included in the deal, appeared in six major-league games for the Giants, all in 1985. He spent the remainder of his career in the minors.

Enjoy this post? Then you’ll love my book, The Trades That Made the St. Louis Cardinals, available now on Amazon!

[1] Rick Hummel, “It’s Official: Cardinals Get Clark In Deal With Giants,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 2, 1985: Page C1.

[2] Rick Hummel, “It’s Official: Cardinals Get Clark In Deal With Giants,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 2, 1985: Page C1.

[3] Rick Hummel, “It’s Official: Cardinals Get Clark In Deal With Giants,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 2, 1985: Page C4.

[4] Ozzie Smith and Rob Rains (1988), “Wizard,” Chicago; Contemporary Books, Inc., 100-101.

[5] Rick Hummel, “It’s Official: Cardinals Get Clark In Deal With Giants,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 2, 1985: Page C1.

[6] Rick Hummel, “It’s Official: Cardinals Get Clark In Deal With Giants,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 2, 1985: Page C1.

[7] Rick Hummel, “It’s Official: Cardinals Get Clark In Deal With Giants,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 2, 1985: Page C1.

[8] Rick Hummel, “It’s Official: Cardinals Get Clark In Deal With Giants,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 2, 1985: Page C1.

[9] Glenn Schwarz and John Hillyer, “It’s official: Clark for 4 Cards,” San Francisco Examiner, February 1, 1985: Page F1.

[10] Rick Hummel, “It’s Official: Cardinals Get Clark In Deal With Giants,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 2, 1985: Page C4.

[11] Glenn Schwarz and John Hillyer, “It’s official: Clark for 4 Cards,” San Francisco Examiner, February 1, 1985: Page F1.

[12] Glenn Schwarz and John Hillyer, “It’s official: Clark for 4 Cards,” San Francisco Examiner, February 1, 1985: Page F7.

[13] Whitey Herzog and Kevin Horrigan (1987), “White Rat: A Life in Baseball,” New York, N.Y.; Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 6-7.

[14] Whitey Herzog and Kevin Horrigan (1987), “White Rat: A Life in Baseball,” New York, N.Y.; Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 170.

[15] Rick Hummel, “Herzog: ‘We’ll Be Lucky To Play .500,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 7, 1988: Page D1.

The post How Jack Clark was traded from San Francisco to St. Louis first appeared on STLRedbirds.com.

The Cardinals and Mets game on April 18, 1987, appeared to be an ordinary April ballgame on the schedule. It was just the 10^th game of the season for both teams, and while the St. Louis and New York ballclubs were considered the leading contenders for the National League East championship, it was too early in the season for the game to have a significant impact on the pennant race.

Then things got weird.

Danny Cox, the 6-foot-4 right-hander from Northampton, United Kingdom, had pitched well in his first two starts of the season and entered with a 2-0 record and 2.84 ERA. However, after working around two hits in the first inning, the Mets took the lead in the second with an RBI single by Lenny Dykstra.

In the third, Cox gave up a double to Darryl Strawberry and walked Kevin McReynolds. Howard Johnson followed with a three-run homer to right field.

“I don’t even feel like I pitched,” said Cox after allowing four runs in three innings. “The game was a lot better after I got out. It couldn’t have got any worse. They hit my good pitches and they hit my bad pitches.”[1]

With Pat Perry pitching in the fourth, Keith Hernandez added a sacrifice fly that gave the Mets a 5-0 lead.

Mets starting pitcher Ron Darling allowed just one hit through the first three innings, but the Cardinals’ offense awoke in a crazy fourth inning. Tom Herr and Jack Clark led off with singles, and Willie McGee was credited with a single after he hit a hard ground ball up the middle. Mets second baseman Wally Backman got to the ball, but dropped it as Herr scored.

Jim Lindeman followed with a two-run double in the right-field gap that scored Clark and McGee. After Terry Pendleton grounded out, the Cardinals attempted a suicide squeeze. Steve Lake bunted it foul, and Hernandez, the former Cardinals All-Star, kicked the ball into the Cardinals’ dugout. Annoyed, Pendleton threw the ball back in Hernandez’s direction.

“It was two competitors,” Hernandez said. “It was the heat of battle. We had words in the middle innings, but when he got that hit in the last inning, we made up. Terry’s a good kid. I shouldn’t have kicked the ball in the dugout. I was wrong.”[2]

With the squeeze called off, Lake hit a ground ball up the middle that Backman fielded and threw home. Lindeman scored easily, and Lake was credited with a single.

Darling struck out Perry for the second out of the inning before Vince Coleman singled and Ozzie Smith drew a four-pitch walk that loaded the bases. Darling then walked Herr on four pitches, tying the score 5-5. Mets manager Davey Johnson replaced Darling with David Cone, who struck out Clark to end the inning.

“We gave them five outs,” Davey Johnson said.[3]

Two innings later, the Cardinals took their first lead of the evening. Cone retired the first two batters he faced, but walked Smith. Herr followed with a double to right field that scored Smith from first base, giving the Cardinals a 6-5 lead and inspiring hundreds of the more than 48,000 St. Louis fans to throw that night’s promotional seat cushions onto the field. The game was delayed for six minutes while stadium personnel removed the cushions.[4]

Perry’s pitching had given the Cardinals a chance to erase the Mets’ early lead, but after he allowed a single to Strawberry to open the eighth, Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog brought Todd Worrell into the game. Prior to the game, Worrell was recognized as the 1986 National League Rookie of the Year and Fireman of the Year Award winner. Once the game started, however, Worrell was unable to find the strike zone. After Strawberry was caught stealing, Worrell walked three batters before finally retiring Dykstra on a fly ball to shallow left field.

The Cardinals carried their one-run lead into the ninth, but Worrell’s wildness continued. After he walked Backman and Hernandez, giving him five walks in an inning of work, Herzog called on Bill Dawley, a 6-foot-5, 235-pound right-hander whom the Cardinals had acquired the previous offseason from the White Sox.

Dawley retired Carter and Strawberry on fly balls (Vince Coleman made a leaping catch of Strawberry’s fly to rob him of extra bases), but McReynolds singled into left field to score Backman. Howard Johnson followed with an RBI single, giving the Mets a 7-6 lead, but Tito Landrum, who had replaced Lindeman in right field, threw McReynolds out at the plate to end the inning. That proved to be a crucial play.

To save the game, Davey Johnson turned to Jesse Orosco, a left-hander from Santa Barbara, California, who was drafted by the Cardinals in the seventh round of the 1977 draft but didn’t sign. Smith, reaching base for the third time in the game, drew a leadoff walk, and Herr sacrificed him to second base. With Clark at the plate, Smith stole third base and scored when Carter’s throw to third base got away.

With the score tied once again, the game went into extra innings.

The Mets regained the lead in the top of the 10^th. Al Pedrique, who entered the game at shortstop after Rafael Santana was lifted for a pinch-hitter, drew a walk to lead off the inning and advanced to second base on a sacrifice bunt by Dave Magadan. With Dave LaPoint in the game in place of Dawley, Dykstra advanced Pedrique to third base with a ground ball to first base, and Pedrique scored when LaPoint uncorked a wild pitch.

For the third time in the game, the Cardinals rallied back. Orosco retired Landrum to open the inning, but Pendleton and Lake both singled. Herzog inserted rookie catcher Tom Pagnozzi in the game to bat for Curt Flood and replaced Lake on the base paths with Tom Lawless.

Pagnozzi proved up to the task, lashing his first big-league hit to right field to tie the score. Coleman grounded to first base for the second out of the inning, but advanced Lawless to third and Pagnozzi to second. The Mets chose to walk Smith to load the bases and pitch to Herr, who already had reached base four times in the game and had driven in the winning run in three of the Cardinals’ five previous victories that season.

It proved to be a poor decision.

“As a hitter, that’s a perfect situation to be in because there was nowhere to put me,” Herr said in 2020. “(Orosco) had to get ahead, and he had no command of his breaking ball that night. That’s what made him great – he was a slider pitcher – but he got in trouble with his slider, so he couldn’t throw that. I was just sitting on a fastball, hopefully something up in the zone that I could hit a sacrifice fly. That was all we needed. That fly ball just happened to go out of the ballpark.”[5]

Orosco threw a first-pitch fastball and Herr turned on it, depositing the ball over the left-field wall for a 12-8 victory. Orosco knew it was headed over the wall as soon as it was hit.

“I was hoping it would hit a bird or something,” he said.^[6]

As Herr circled the bases, promotional seat cushions from all corners of Busch Stadium were tossed onto the field, so many that when the Cardinals and Mets arrived at the stadium the following day, the grounds crew was still picking them up.[7]

“I knew it was out when I hit it,” Herr said. “It was a great feeling seeing everybody waiting at home plate and going a little crazy.”[8]

After the game, an usher brought Herr the game-winning home run ball.

“Is it dented on the side?” Herr asked.[9]

Herr finished the game 3-for-3 with two walks, two runs scored, and six RBIs. McGee, Pendleton, and Lake finished with two hits apiece. LaPoint was credited with the win, while Orosco took the loss for the Mets.

“Our guys showed a lot of guts,” Cox said. “Down 5-0 in the fourth inning and we come back and win … that shows what this club is made of.”[10]

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[1] Rick Hummel, “Cox Marvels At Cards’ Saturday Night Special,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 20, 1987: Page 6C.

[2] Rick Hummel, “Herr’s Slam Stuns Mets 12-8,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 19, 1987: Page F1.

[3] Rick Hummel, “Herr’s Slam Stuns Mets 12-8,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 19, 1987: Page F1.

[4] Rick Hummel, “Herr’s Slam Stuns Mets 12-8,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 19, 1987: Page F1.

[5] KSDK Interview, “Tommy Herr talks about the famous ‘seat cushion night’ at Busch Stadium in 1987,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C49qoyikhyo, May 27, 2020.

[6] Rick Hummel, “Herr’s Slam Stuns Mets 12-8,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 19, 1987: Page F1.

[7] Rick Hummel, “What a wild ride the Cards took in ’87,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 13, 2007: Page B5.

[8] Rick Hummel, “Herr’s Slam Stuns Mets 12-8,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 19, 1987: Page F1.

[9] Rick Hummel, “Cox Marvels At Cards’ Saturday Night Special,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 20, 1987: Page 6C.

[10] Rick Hummel, “Cox Marvels At Cards’ Saturday Night Special,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 20, 1987: Page 6C.

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