Note: I collected thousands of bubblegum cards as a kid in the '70s, and I still have a great many of them, shoved in no particular order into cardboard boxes stacked Jenga-like on an upper shelf in a utility closet. I was never into plastic sleeves and playing the baseball-card futures market, so most of my cards, like the one below, are in a condition best appreciated by someone who actually unwrapped them freshly purchased from Williams Pharmacy thirty-some years ago and then proceeded, over the months and years, to put into and then take out of as many types of order (team, position, alphabetical, numerical, by career numbers, etc.) as can possibly be imagined by a busy young brain. I will periodically and randomly pluck from one of my boxes a bubblegum card---meaning a card that actually came packaged with a stick of gum---of a Cardinal player (star or scrub) and feature it on this site.

This bubblegum card, No. 24 in the 1973 series, features Cardinal righthander Al Santorini, who was coming off a moderately successful 1972 with the Cardinals. Spending much of the season as a fill-in for Scipio Spinks as the No. 4 starter (in the days when teams used 4-man rotations) after Spinks destroyed his knee sliding into Johnny Bench at home plate on the 4th of July, Santorini went 8-11 in 30 games, 19 of them starts. Three of those eight wins were complete-game shutouts, all after August 1, including this 12-strikeout gem against the Mets in his next-to-last start of the season.

Santorini would never again taste such success on the mound, as he started 1973 back in the bullpen and made 6 appearances before being traded to the Royals for swingman Tom Murphy. Still only 24 at the time of the trade, he was assigned to AAA Omaha, and he never again played in the majors.

After a phenomenal high school career in Union, NJ, (29-1 and named to the New Jersey Star-Ledger’s “All Century” NJ High School Baseball Team; he allowed 3 earned runs as a senior with 203 Ks in 103 innings), Santorini was Atlanta’s No. 1 draft pick (No. 11 overall) in the first amateur draft, in 1966. He had instant success as an 18-year-old at Austin (AA Texas League), posting a 1.69 era with 49 Ks in 48 innings. He missed most of 1967 with injuries, working just 16 innings, but was impressive enough in 19 starts at AA Shreveport in 1968 to earn a call-up to the Braves at the end of the season, appearing in one game, taking the loss in a start in which he allowed no earned runs.

The newly formed San Diego Padres selected the live-armed Santorini with their 7th pick in the expansion draft prior to the 1969 season, and, just 20 years old at the time, he was inserted into their inaugural starting rotation along with fellow youngsters Clay Kirby (21) and Joe Niekro (24). Santorini got off to a great start, allowing two earned runs or fewer in each of his first eight starts of the season (a Padres record not broken until Jake Peavy ran off 10 to start 2004), earning a 3-2 record to that point. He finished the year with a respectable 3.95 era (vs. league ERA of 3.53) and an 8-14 record, which, incredibly, netted him the distinction of leading the starters in wins (tied with Niekro) and winning percentage (.364) on a staff that lost 110 games.

Santorini regressed in 1970, struggling to a 1-8 record with an ERA above 6 before being demoted to Salt Lake City.

Resurfacing with the Padres in 1971 as a reliever, Santorini was pitching decently, with a 3.76 era and a 2-1 K/BB ratio when the Cardinals acquired him on June 11 in exchange for disappointing prospect Leron Lee (uncle of Cubs’ Derrek Lee) and dimunitive lefty Freddie Norman, who later enjoyed some success as a member of the Big Red Machine in the mid-‘70s. Two weeks before that trade, Santorini was involved in a scheme by Padre manager Preston Gomez in which the righthander was named to start the first game of a doubleheader vs. Houston, prompting the Astros to start a lineup with seven lefties. Santorini retired just one batter before being relieved by lefty Dave Roberts, who would go on to lose 2-1. Santorini then became one of the few liveball-era pitchers to start both ends of a doubleheader when he started the second game, and he gave up 2 earned runs in six innings but took the loss as the Padres got just one single off Larry Dierker. (Anecdote courtesy of baseballlibrary.com)

Santorini remained primarily a reliever and occasional spot starter after the trade to the Cardinals, until his elevation to the rotation in 1972.

I don’t know whether it was injury, ineffectiveness, or lack of opportunity that prevented him from playing in the majors following his May 1973 trade to Kansas City, as the last evidence of him playing that I could find has him at Toledo in 1974.

Santorini is currently the lead pitching instructor at the Jack Cust (Sr.) Baseball Academy in Flemington, NJ.