a memorial patch for joe morgan

before he inspired one of my favorite websites of the day, joe morgan was one of the baseball players that i followed pretty closely in the box scores. it had to do with the all-star shield on his 1978 topps card - a designation that increased the player's stardom to me. had topps done things correctly, i would have followed richie zisk more closely, too.

of course, back then, the reds and morgan were in the same division as the dodgers, so i got to see and hear his exploits pretty frequently. that continued even as he later played for the astros and giants, although when the end of 1982 rolled around, i didn't care much for his success that eliminated the dodgers from postseason contention.

morgan's batting stance was one of the many mimicked by me and my neighborhood pals when we would play wiffle ball or home run derby or what we considered to be baseball in the street. our little league coaches were less enthused when we would pump our back arm, but it worked for morgan.

there was no doubt that morgan would be recognized with a memorial patch when he passed away in october of 2020. the only question i had was whether or not multiple organizations would honor him in that way. it turned out that only cincinnati did, with a patch on their right sleeves. this 2021 topps update jonathan india card

is the one that i have added to my memorials collection to represent morgan's patch. 

i thought that the astros might have worn a patch as well, given that morgan actually spent more time with them than any other franchise over two stints. he finished his career with single seasons in philadelphia and oakland before embarking on a broadcasting career that eventually spawned the website "firejoemorgan". 

regardless of his broadcasting career (one that i enjoyed until he began to discount emerging and more modern evaluation tools), there is no doubt that he was a great baseball man. and he was a great ballplayer, with back-to-back national league mvp awards to match the reds' back-to-back world series championships in the mid-1970's, and a no doubt first ballot hall of famer. rest in peace, little joe!