#CardCorner: 1984 Topps Ron Cey

When Ron Cey played his last big league game in 1987, only five third basemen in history had topped his total of 316 home runs.

Cey is also one of just 18 players in history with 2,000-or-more games played and fewer than 25 stolen bases.

But the player known as “The Penguin” for his waddling running style overcame his lack of speed to fashion one of the best careers any third sacker has ever compiled.

Born Feb. 15, 1948, in Tacoma, Wash., Cey knew from an early age that a pro sports career was his destiny – even though his stocky build, which would top out at 5-foot-10 and 185 pounds in the big leagues – would always limit his footspeed.

“As an 8-year-old, I was involved in athletics at the South End Boys’ Club, keeping off the streets and out of trouble,” Cey told the Tacoma News Tribune in 1978 when he was honored by his alma mater, Mount Tahoma High School. “Millions of other children have a dream that someday they will become a Major League Baseball player. I always wanted to be one.

“Many people have asked me what I would do if I wasn’t playing baseball. There was no other choice. That was it. Football and basketball eliminated themselves. It was only baseball.”

Cey starred in all three sports in high school when he wasn’t working at his father’s service station on the Pacific Highway Southwest in Tacoma, pumping gas and washing windshields.

Selected by the Mets in the 19th round of the 1966 MLB Draft after graduating from Mount Tahoma High School, Cey opted instead to play baseball for Washington State University.

“(I) chose WSU because of its baseball reputation and coach (Bobo Brayton) and small-town atmosphere where I could be around my friends,” said Cey, who received his Penguin nickname from Brayton. “After my sophomore season, I knew I would be drafted again. When the Dodgers drafted me, Bobo told me: ‘Give me one more year to refine your fundamentals.’ I told Bobo: ‘Look, it’s my call.’

“I was ready to become a pro.”

The Dodgers took Cey in the third round of the 1968 June Secondary draft for collegiate players, and Cey was soon on his way to the Tri-City Atoms of Kennewick, Wash., in the Northwest League. Cey hit .299 with nine homers and 62 RBI in 74 games that season then began the 1969 campaign at Class A Bakersfield, where he hit .331 in 98 games before earning a promotion to Double-A Albuquerque. The Dodgers sent Cey to the Arizona Instructional League after the season and then back to Albuquerque in 1970, where he hit .331 in 71 games during a season where he fulfilled commitments to the U.S. Army Reserve.

In 1979, the Dodgers posted their first losing season since 1968. Cey, however, kept up his stellar all-around play by batting .281 with 28 homers and 81 RBI while posting a career-best .389 on-base percentage. In the field, Cey tied a full-season NL record by committing just nine errors at third base, leading the league with a .977 fielding percentage.

“The record means a lot to me,” Cey told the Los Angeles Times.

The Dodgers bounced back in 1980, finishing the regular season tied with the Astros to force a one-game playoff. Cey, who was dropped to the sixth spot in the batting order for most of the year, hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth inning off Houston’s Frank LaCorte in the final scheduled game of the season to turn a 3-2 Houston lead into a 4-3 Dodgers win that left both teams at 92-70.

“It seems like all our games go down to the wire,” Cey told Gannett News Service after his home run. “The so-called Hollywood atmosphere is here. You couldn’t write a better script.”

But during the at-bat against LaCorte, Cey fouled a ball off his left ankle. The painful bruise – combined with a right hamstring pull that required taping before every contest – left Cey unable to play in the playoff game. Houston won 7-1, ending the Dodgers season.

In 1981, however, it was finally the Dodgers’ time. Led by Rookie of the Year and NL Cy Young Award winner Fernando Valenzuela, Los Angeles won the first half NL West title, beat the Astros in the NLDS (Cey did not play after suffering a broken left arm when he was hit by a pitch Sept. 8) and then dispatched Montreal in the NLCS (Cey returned for that series and hit .278 with three RBI).

The World Series featured another rematch with the Yankees, but this time Cey hit .350 with a homer and six RBI. His three-run homer in the first inning of Game 3 – with the Dodgers trailing the series 2-games-to-none – gave Los Angeles an early lead, and Cey scored the eventual winning run on a double play grounder by Mike Scioscia in the fifth inning as the Dodgers won 5-4. Cey had two more RBI in Game 4 and another in Game 6 as the Dodgers won four straight to capture their elusive title.

That he even played in Game 6 was mind-boggling as Cey was hit in the head by a pitch from the Yankees Goose Gossage in the eighth inning of Game 5, knocking him from the game. Cey stayed in Los Angeles in the hospital for tests after Game 5 while his teammates flew to New York but rejoined the Dodgers the next day after he was cleared to play.

The earflap on Cey’s helmet likely saved him from serious injury, and soon MLB would institute a rule stating that all batters (except those who played before the rule was enacted) would have to wear at least one earflap on their helmet.

Cey shared 1981 World Series MVP honors with teammate Pedro Guerrero and Steve Yeager.

The World Series win marked the end of the Cey-Russell-Lopes-Garvey infield as Lopes was traded to the Athletics on Feb. 8, 1982, to open a spot for touted youngster Steve Sax. Now 34, Cey hit .254 with 24 homers and 79 RBI that year but the Dodgers failed to repeat at NL West champions.

Usually cordial but not effusive with the media, Cey maintained an even-keel approach throughout his career – no matter the Dodgers’ record.

“I am the way I am,” Cey told the Los Angeles Times. “I don’t bother anybody and nobody bothers me. I have a job to do and I’m paid well to do it.”

But with the Dodgers looking to move Guerrero to third base to open up spots in the outfield, Cey’s time in Los Angeles was at an end. On Jan. 19 1983, Cey was traded to the Cubs in exchange for Vance Lovelace and a minor leaguer. He had one more year on his contract that was worth $390,000, but the Cubs tore that up and gave him a five-year deal worth a reported $4.75 million.

Cey’s bat was slowing but he was still solid at the plate in 1983, hitting .275 with 24 homers and 90 RBI. Then in 1984, the Cubs advanced to the postseason for the first time since 1945 by winning the NL East. Cey hit .240 with 25 homers and 97 RBI then homered in Game 1 of the NLCS vs. the Padres in Chicago’s 13-0 win. His third inning double in Game 2 gave the Cubs a 2-0 lead that would turn into a 4-2 win, but Cey had only one hit the rest of the series as the Padres rallied to win in five games – with Cey’s old teammate, Steve Garvey, hitting a walk-off home run in Game 4.

Cey remained the Cubs’ regular third baseman in 1985 but saw his batting average fall to .232 to go along with 22 homers and 63 RBI.

“Three years ago, I was supposedly too old for the Dodgers,” Cey told the Los Angeles Times in the spring of 1986. “I proved I wasn’t too old then, just like I’ll prove I’m not too old now.”

But Cey appeared in just 97 games in 1986, hitting .273. The Cubs informed Cey at the end of the season that they would not bring him back in 1987, and on Jan. 30 he was traded to the Athletics for Luis Quinones.

After hitting .221 over 45 games, the A’s released Cey on July 15, 1987, ending his career.

“Baseball’s been my life for 31 years,” Cey told McClatchy News Service after he was let go. “Now I can get on with the second half of my life if nothing happens in the next couple of weeks.”

When nothing did, Cey walked away from the game with a .261 batting average, 1,868 hits, 1,012 walks, 328 doubles, 316 home runs and 1,139 RBI. No Los Angeles Dodger has ever played more games at third base, and Cey’s 766 walks are tops in L.A. Dodgers history.

Cey is one of only 11 third basemen in history with at least 1,900 games played and a career WAR of better than 50.0.

“I worked hard, I was dedicated and I was willing to sacrifice,” Cey said in 1978. “I had the willpower to succeed against adversity.”

Craig Muder is the director of communications at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum