2014 Bowman Platinum Prospects #BPP83 Trevor Story |
And it's not like no one's tried throwing him a curve yet. He's hit some tough pitches from ace hurlers right over the wall. While he has a long way to go to fill Tulowitzki's shoes, pretty much the whole city would rather see him at short than Jose Reyes. And why not, when you can put yourself in the same sentence as Willie Mays before the weekend even arrives?
He doesn't have a mainstream card yet (though Sooz at Topps is trying to squeeze him into 2016 Stadium Club), and I managed to dig up that Bowman card from the unsorted box where all my incoming trades have been going for the past couple of years. No idea who sent it to me, but thank you!
I had to look through close to a thousand cards before I stumbled across that shiny one of Story, so he hasn't quite cracked Topps Base yet. But the guy ahead of him in the lineup has.
2016 Topps Rainbow Foil #93 Charlie Blackmon |
Blackmon's beard is as bushy as ever, and I've weighed in on the 2016 design already in my Topps Opening Day post. But while I don't see it going down in history as a legend, it does mark a significant shift in their design. There's no border to be found except for that cloud thing in two corners, and I feel like even that is a bit less pronounced on the Rainbow Foil parallels.
2016 Topps Rainbow Foil #12 Nolan Arenado |
2016 Topps #337 Nolan Arenado / Bryce Harper / Carlos Gonzalez LL |
Tie goes to the home city. Or to the player Topps thinks more fans want to see on top. Fair enough, and Harper did go in the first four selections of most Fantasy leagues this year, while Arenado was somewhere in the middle of round two.
2016 Topps #284 Jon Gray (RC) |
I'm not sure why Gray's stats on the back only list his minor league record for 2015 in Albuquerque (not Colorado Springs anymore!), because Gray did get his call-up in late 2015 and started nine games, including one against the Mets that I witnessed in person. He ended the season 0-2 with a lot of no-decisions.
2016 Topps #87 Jorge De La Rosa |
1997 Collector's Choice #320 Andres Galarraga |
This card even contains a Did You Know fun fact, that Vinny Castilla was the first Rockie to start an All-Star Game. I remember that, in 1995. Matt Williams was the elected starter, but couldn't play due to injury. Castilla took the field instead, becoming the answer to a trivia question. Walker, Helton, Tulowitzki, Gonzalez, even Ubaldo Jimenez have been All-Star starters. But none before Vinny.
Interestingly, Galarraga was the first Rockie to appear in an All-Star Game, coming on as a defensive replacement for John Kruk in 1993, and popped up in his only at-bat.
1994 SP #168 David Nied |
Wow, this card is almost 25 years old. And anything lasting 150 years is darn impressive. If baseball can survive all that time, through wars, recessions, gambling scandals, and steroid use, something tells me a couple bat flips aren't going to be a problem.
2014 Stadium Club Triumvirates Luminous #T5A Troy Tulowitzki |
2014 Stadium Club Triumvirates Luminous #T5A Troy Tulowitzki 2014 Stadium Club Triumvirates Luminous #T7B Masahiro Tanaka 2014 Stadium Club Triumvirates Luminous #T6C Carlos Gonzalez |
Though they're not exactly matched as far as card numbers, they all fit together just fine, and way more solidly than Donruss puzzles. There's a really tight tolerance here, and they fit together so well that they won't blow apart from a gentle breeze. Still, there really isn't much of a theme between the A, B, and C cards in any given grouping, other than maybe the position. The centering on Tanaka's card is slightly off, leading to a little break in the colored lines at the bottom, but that is nitpicking of the highest order.
Now just imagine if the Rockies had a guy like Masahiro Tanaka in their rotation to support all these awesome sluggers we have.
And we'll see if Trevor Story can keep his home run hitting streak alive later today.
That's awesome, I didn't know that you could put any set of three Triumvirates together. For some reason, I thought the cuts were number specific so only the correct combinations fit together. It looks great!
ReplyDeleteStory might not have made it into a mainstream set - however, at the rate he's going, the entire Topps Now set is going to be all purple. He's already showed up in that promotion 3 times!
ReplyDeleteAs a rookie, I think his performance so far is getting awfully close to "never going to be broken" status. I'll be watching tonight for sure.
DeleteEven as a Padres fan... I wanted to see Story hit one out in the bottom of the 9th tonight.
ReplyDelete