Project 84: Tony Pérez (384)
A new series looking back at a favorite Topps set from the 1980s, one card at a time
About Project 84: A while ago, I bought a box of unopened 1984 Topps cards. Not a wax box, just a regular box, with a bunch of wax packs. I’ve put off starting this project because I kept waiting for a perfect time, have been nervous about really asking people to pay for my writing… there’s always all kinds of reasons to not do something. I was finally like, “well, just open one” a few weeks ago, and the first two cards that I pulled were Hall of Famers. Seems like a good place to start a card-by-card series. This one’s free, you’ll have to pay for most of them, yadda yadda yadda, thank you for your support and I’ll give you Project 84: Tony Pérez
One more thing, though: This series happens to begin at a time when many folks are playing Immaculate Grid, and if that game is up your alley, this series probably will be (you’ll see at the bottom of this post), too (…and also our Discord, where there’s an #Immaculate-grid channel).
On the morning of May 13, 1983, Tony Pérez was batting .326 with an .822 OPS. He’d cooled down a bit, having ended April with only two hitless outings in 18 games and a .369/.406/.431 line, but he’d also found his power stroke, hitting his first home run of the year on May 1 against the Astros, and going deep again on May 6 in Montréal.
On the day before his 42nd birthday, Pérez went 0-for-3 with a strikeout at Wrigley Field, in a 6-3 Phillies loss to the Cubs. On the day he turned 42, Pérez did not play, and neither did the rest of the Phillies and Cubs, as Chicago was fogged in the entire day, and the game fogged out. Pérez got the next day off, the Phillies didn’t play on the Monday, so when he got back in the lineup against the Giants back in Philly on May 17, Pérez was playing for the first time in four days.
He went 0-for-4. Then 0-for-4 the next day. And 0-for-4 the next time he played after that, on May 23. An 0-for-15 slump brought Pérez down to .282/.319/.400. A nice couple of weeks in June were kind of a dead cat bounce, From June 20 through September 4 – the date of Pérez’s last start before the season’s final game – he hit .149/.265/.218 with one home run and 25 strikeouts in 87 at-bats.
Impressively a league-average player at 40 the previous season with the Red Sox, Pérez was cooked, just like that. But when called on to pinch-hit in Game 2 of the NLCS, Pérez delivered a single off Fernando Valenzuela to bring the go-ahead run to the plate. He just wasn’t a hero there because another aging Hall of Famer, Joe Morgan, flied out to end the threat.
Having lost his starting job at first base to fellow Wheeze Kid Pete Rose, who himself was too cooked at 42 to remain in right field, Pérez did get back in the lineup to make two starts in the 1983 World Series. He was 2-for-10 in his final Fall Classic action, as the Phillies lost to the Orioles in five games.
In a career that spanned 2,777 games, my thoughts of Pérez are unduly tilted toward Philadelphia, where he only played 91 of them, plus five in the playoffs, his last on the October stage. Part of that is this card, a rad action shot with a good portrait. I remember getting one in a value pack at Lamston’s years later, and trying to draw my own version of it. Like most of the 1984 Topps set, this is not my first encounter with the card by any means other than the specific one from the pack I opened.
Because of the length of Pérez’s career span, his card only offers his statistics, no fun facts. But thanks to Baseball Reference, we’ve got The Tony Pérez Express to show that his path was unique in major league history, and not to be repeated until Montréal gets a team back, as he went from Cincinnati to the Expos and on to the Red Sox and Phillies before returning to the Reds for his extended farewell tour. Only Bruce Chen, Rhéal Cormier, and Greg Harris can join Pérez in having played for those four teams.
