2017 Topps Gold Label Class 3 Black #13 Sonny Gray |
As always, players are on the move. Sonny Gray was traded to the Yankees right at the 2017 trade deadline, and there are tons of trade rumors swirling around him this offseason. I'm sure Topps accepts it as an inevitability that these beautiful cards they design can be obsolete in a matter of weeks. Or maybe they just know they'll sell more.
1998 Bowman Chrome International #205 Miguel Tejada |
Coincidentally, Tejada's middle infielder counterpart on the Rockies, Neifi Perez, was my featured card in Part 1. Perez, also from the Dominican Republic, has the English "SS" abbreviation for his position. Tejada, on the other hand, gets a "PC" in that spot, and I'm not quite sure what that means. I am even less an expert in Spanish than I am in Bowman. "Campo Corto" is the translation of shortstop, and those words are found on the back, but I'm not sure how you'd get "PC' from that.
2002 Fleer Triple Crown Batting Average Parallel #78 Eric Chavez /288 |
During that .288 season, Eric Chavez, and all his fellow American Leaguers, wore a commemorative patch on their right sleeves to mark the 100th season of play for the AL. Four teams, but not Oakland, had slightly different "Charter Member" versions of that patch, going all the way back to 1901. Ban Johnson, the founding executive of the AL, isn't named on the patch, but he's a prominent figure in the early episodes of Ken Burns' Baseball documentary series.
I don't know if all the BA parallels have green foil or if that's color-coded to Oakland. My 2002 Fleer pages are sparsely populated, especially when it comes to parallels, so I don't have much to compare it to.
That's not precisely true. I have quite a few 2002 Fleer cards. It's just that there were so many sets, and some of them are pretty underrepresented.
2002 Fleer Triple Crown #118 Mark Mulder |
Mulder was also involved in an infamous trade in my Fantasy baseball league, a not-so-great move on my part when I was getting my feet wet back in 2005. I acquired Mulder, a briefly hot shortstop, and a few others, but the price was way too high.
Lesson learned.
2002 Fleer Triple Crown #134 Miguel Tejada |
The more I see of this Triple Crown set, the more I like it. Collectors have been complaining for years that backgrounds have become too blurry, but when you have the glossy foreground and matte background like this set, a nice bokeh effect really blends in well. I particularly like how the ball that Tejada is fielding is glossy, clearly part of the main attraction.
2002 Fleer Triple Crown #86 Ramon Hernandez |
The card back isn't quite as special, and I'm not a fan of conflicting horizontal and vertical orientations. Most of the card back is horizontal, but Fleer stuck the copyright notice and such on the right hand side, reading bottom-up. It's an awkward look. But the usual quick paragraph is there, and it tells us that Hernandez caught a whopping 143 games in 2001, not even one game off a week.
That pace slowed a lot in his later career, although he did spend the 2012 season as a Rockie. This is his first appearance on Infield Fly Rule, and it's not even in a Rockies uniform. That might be a first.
2012 Panini Cooperstown #120 Rickey Henderson |
Rickey Henderson played for a lot of teams in his long career, but most people remember him with Oakland. He played 14 seasons with them, spread out across four separate stints. This being an unlicensed set, it's hard to tell which team he's on here, but it appears to be Oakland, matching his Hall of Fame plaque. The single season of stats that Panini gives us on the back are from his MVP 1990 season, the year before he'd break Lou Brock's record, which he would further demolish by almost 500 more SBs.
A few other fun facts about Rickey. We all know he's the all-time stolen base leader, with 1,406. He's also the all-time leader in runs scored, which goes to show just how valuable SBs really are. He isn't really known for it, but he had a terrific eye, leading the Majors in unintentional walks, with over 2,000. He's also a member of the 3,000-hit club. And finally, one of my favorite sports stats that shows you what a competitor he is, Rickey is the all-time leader in times caught stealing.
So when you add all that up, we can calculate a few things. In all his plate appearances, Rickey Henderson stole a base in over 10% of them. There are surely a few in which he stole second and third on his same trip around the bases, but that's a staggering rate. And if you want to take it a step further, if you add his extra-base hits into the mix, Rickey Henderson was in scoring position (or better) in about 17% of all his plate appearances. Give or take, he made it to at least second base a sixth of the time, solely by virtue of his bat, eye, and speed. And that doesn't even count the times a subsequent batter pushed him along.
Bottom line, he's one of the best players to ever grace the sport of baseball.
2012 Panini Cooperstown #8 Connie Mack |
In other words, until 2017, there was an unbroken line of baseball legacy from Connie Mack to Vin Scully going back to 1901. You can push that back to 1886 if you don't count the brief hiatus between Mack's playing and managerial careers.
So yes, this dapper gentleman is in the Hall of Fame. And he does make one wonder why baseball managers suit up in white performance gear as opposed to a suit and tie. It is slightly comical, seeing sharply dressed guys like Joel Quenneville and Gregg Popovich in contrast to, say, Bob Melvin in a green cap and white uniform. But take Earl Weaver, whose legendary tirades maybe wouldn't have been quite as awesome if he were worrying about dirtying up his leather dress shoes.
All I know is that a guy named Cornelius McGillicuddy wearing a bowler hat is basically the last guy I would want to mess with.
2012 Panini Cooperstown #154 Home Run Baker SP |
Baker wasn't even the first player to lead the home runs category in four straight years. He wasn't even the first Athletic to do it. His teammate Harry Davis did precisely the same thing, though with 38 home runs, from 1904-1907. Yet Home Run Baker got the nickname. With all the power hitters we've seen over the decades, from Babe Ruth to Ken Griffey, Jr., the guy who is in the Hall of Fame with "Home Run" in quotes on his plaque is a guy who hit 96 in his career.
1997 Sports Illustrated #57 Scott Brosius SIV |
1997 would be Scott Brosius' final year in Oakland, as he ended up being The Player To Be Named Later in a trade they made with the Yankees for pitcher Kenny Rogers. Brosius, an average utility player, would go on to become a key member of the Yankees' dynasty in the late 1990s and early 2000s, even winning World Series MVP honors in 1998, his first year as a Yankee. This card had it right in saying, "Brosius seems to improve as a hitter each season he's in the majors."
The card also mentions his college career at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon. That happens to also be the location of the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum, which airplane fans might recognize as the home of Howard Hughes' famous boondoggle, the H-4 "Spruce Goose". It remains the largest aircraft by wingspan that has ever flown, but those who saw The Aviator know that it only flew once.
1997 Sports Illustrated #175 Mark McGwire / Will Clark CC |
I like this idea a lot. We all know that SI photos make for great baseball cards, but they really are kind of cute when scaled down to this size. And in case you were wondering, 6-seed Kansas did indeed complete the upset during March Madness in 1988, defeating top-seed Oklahoma 83-79.
2010 Upper Deck #365 Brad Ziegler |
There is a ton of blank white space on the back of this card, however. It's too bad that Brad Ziegler, back with Arizona for a second time before announcing his retirement last month, didn't get to fill out Upper Deck card backs any further past this. And I find it a little strange that UD squeezed the submariner's scouting report into the small brown area on the left, leaving lots of open space on the rest of the card.
1987 Topps #311 Rickey Henderson TBC |
It is nice to have another team to delve into once in a while. Even though I'm an avid Rockies fan, there's only so much that's happened in the last 25 years. Given the opportunity to dig back to 1901, there's plenty of history that remains untold. I've uncovered a lot in 250 posts, but there's plenty more to come.
I remember my buddy in high school had Clark sign that Sport Illustrated issue at a card show back in the day. He always hoped that he'd one day get McGwire to sign it too.
ReplyDeleteP.S. 2002 Fleer Triple Crown is pretty nice. That'd be a fun box to open.
I'm always kind of amazed at how unfamiliar most of the bloggers seem to be with Frank Baker, everybody sure likes to have fun with his nickname once they find out about him though.
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