[Terry D]

During his long tenure as the Dodgers' third baseman, Ron Cey hit for consistently good power and played respectable defense as well. By the early 80s, the old Cey-Lopes-Garvey-Russell infield was old and the Dodger management planned to phase in younger players. Lopes went first, his place being taken by Steve Sax. Garvey was the next to be replaced, yielding his spot to Greg Brock. Cey went to the Cubs at the same time, but replacing him was not so easy. German Rivera posted fairish numbers in the low minors but didn't look like a hot prospect until '83, when he was promoted to AAA Albuquerque and had a monster year there. At that time the Dodgers did not yet realize how much the Albuquerque park inflated offensive statistics, and as a consequence they tended to overvalue not only Rivera but a number of other prospects of that era--Greg Brock, Franklin Stubbs, etc. Rivera played about half a season's worth of 3B for the Dodgers in '84, hitting .260 and posting a .678 OPS. LA lost confidence in Rivera as a result and traded him to Houston, where he hit just .194 in 1985, his last year in the bigs. Images of Rivera as an Astro are scarce for some reason. The only one I had seen until lately was a small, blurred black and white photo on an Astros fan site. Here is an alternative, a Historic Images photograph offered recently on ebay.