The St. Louis Cardinals signed second baseman Adam Kennedy to a three-year, $10M contract yesterday and will, thereby, re-team Kennedy with his former doubleplay partner from the 2002 champion Angels, David Eckstein.

Barring injury Eckstein-Kennedy will become just the 17th keystone combination to start for two separate franchises. The last doubleplay combo to double up with a second team were Neifi Perez and Todd Walker who started for the Rockies in 2001 and then the Cubs in 2005. There have been just seven replanted doubleplay combos in the majors since World War I.

Here's the full list in chronological order:

There are a few things worth noting here.

The only World Champion keystone combo to repeat with another team prior to Eckstein-Kennedy were Fred Dunlap and Jack Rowe with the 1887 Detroit Wolverines.

Dunlap, Rowe, and Jack Glassock were the only men to appear on the list more than once. Dang, those nineteenth-century doubleplay combinations were incestuous.

Bob Ferguson and Bill McClellan are the only men on the list to appear in two doubleplay combos but to also switch positions. McClellan went from second with the White Stockings (now Cubs) in 1878 to shortstop for the Philly Quakers (cum Phillies) in their inaugural year, 1883 while Ferguson went from short to second.

Finally, my favorite: the Phils recreated the Cubs' late-Seventies doubleplay tandem for one season, that was bookended by two extremely memorial trades involving the two players. First, the Phils traded Larry Bowa for Ivan DeJesus to reunite him with Trillo. That would have been an OK deal. That is until the Chicago GM, Dallas Green, until recently the Phillie personnel director, asked them to toss in a prospect. Of course, his name was Ryne Sandberg, thereby making it among not only the worst Phils trades ever but among the worst trades of all time. At the end of 1982, the Phils traded Trillo along with four other players for Von "Five-for-One" Hayes, who the Phils tabbed as their next franchise player. Hayes was actually pretty good for the Phils but the balance sheet for this one is slanted against the Phils and continues to get worse as the octogenarian Julio Franco continues to play 24 years later.

The three-year gap between Eckstein-Kennedy 6-4-3 double plays is nothing compared to the seven-year wait between Tommy Corcoran-to-Tom Daly flips:

If the Cardinals repeat with a World Series crown next year—OK, stop laughing—Kennedy-Eckstein will be the first doubleplay combo to start and win a ring for two separate franchises. They also may hold the record for the most times being referred to as "pesky" for a two-team doubleplay combination.