Rockin' Retro Group Break the Second (Part 1: Rockies)

Nachos Grande is one of the greats when it comes to putting group breaks together. His first Rockin' Retro group break was quite a hit, and during the 2018 Postseason, he put together a second. There was some really good stuff in here, and seeing this huge variety of old brands is such a refreshing break from the monopolistic market we have today. There's even some Pacific. Topps was then, and remains my favorite brand, but a little variety is nice too.

Of course I picked the Rockies as my primary team, ending up with the New York Mets as my second, randomized team. That selection is unsurprising, but my first card from the box of 2001 Topps Gold Label surprised both myself and Nachos Grande.

2001 Topps Gold Label MLB Award Ceremony Relics #GLR-AG2 Andres Galarraga HR Bat (MEM)

How about that to kick things off? Usually I save the highlights for the end, but this warranted top billing. Andres Galarraga led the NL in home runs in 1996, and he was rewarded with this beautiful bat relic in 2001 Topps Gold Label. Their relic collection was labeled as MLB Award Ceremony, profiling various award-winning years of players' careers.

The Big Cat hit 47 that year, the first season at Coors Field which wasn't strike-shortened. The AL was really heating up that year, as five other players hit 47 or more dingers, led by Mark McGwire with 52. McGwire was included in this relic set, though it's unclear which of his many league leader stats Topps picked to feature. It's also surprising to remember that McGwire retired in 2001. Seems like quite a while ago.

The handwritten note from Nachos Grande that accompanied my cards said that this pull alone made the entire break worth it for him.

2001 Topps Gold Label Class 1 #47 Jeff Cirillo

Clearly, Nachos Grande likes Topps Gold Label. A more recent release of Topps Gold Label was included in the last group break, ensuring that you have lots of thick, shiny cards to show for your buy-in. They even have some raised lettering. Todd Helton and Larry Walker were included in this stack, as was lesser-known third baseman Jeff Cirillo, who is not on the Hall of Fame ballot this year.

Cirillo was a Rockie for two seasons in the early 2000s, being elected to his second of two All-Star appearances in 2000. Like the rest of the Gold Label base cards I received, this is a Class 1 card, the most common of the three in the fractured set. He played for a few more teams as his career drew to a close, and his only taste of Postseason baseball came in 2007 with the Diamondbacks. The Rockies clinched the NL pennant that year, meaning that Jeff Cirillo's final game was Game 4 of the 2007 NLCS, which took place at Coors Field.

2002 Topps Total Total Topps #TT48 Larry Walker

The 2019 Hall of Fame class is just days away from being announced, and it finally seems like Larry Walker is getting the recognition he earned in his 17-year career. 2002 Topps Total included him in this awkwardly-named 50-card Total Topps insert set, mentioning his 1997 MVP award and three batting titles in four years. The elongated red oval that was integral to the Topps Total logo is used heavily in this shiny insert set.

Larger insert sets tend to bug me slightly, but they make a lot of sense in Topps Total, which had 990 cards in the base set.

2002 Topps Total #238 Pete Harnisch

990 cards means you can include guys like Pete Harnisch, a free agent the Rockies signed for 2002, but who never played. That makes this a rare zero-year card, one on which Topps billed him as "a top member of the Rockies rotation when healthy". Unfortunately, that never came to pass.

He got a card in the 2002 Topps flagship set with the same photograph, but other than that and its associated parallels, this is the only evidence that the Rockies once planned to put Pete Harnisch on the hill. I remember him mainly as a member of the Astros, which is who he played for in 1993 at the height of the overproduction era. This is why I think of Charlie Hough as a Marlin, or Dave Winfield as a Twin. 1993 Topps was gospel and those synapses are strong.

2002 Topps Total #204 Terry Shumpert

Just the same, in my mind, Terry Shumpert was a Royal who played for the Rockies, even though he played in quite a few more games as a Rockie. Unlike Harnisch, Shumpert didn't get a card in 2002 Topps, proving the value of an all-encompassing set like Topps Total. It's what allows him to make his debut on Infield Fly Rule five years after its creation, as opposed to being lost to history. Whichever player's left side is on this card is also probably making his debut, too.

Speaking of that, there are numerous players whose names I know from 1993 Topps that never really had much of a career, especially in the Rockies and Marlins team sets. Surely this also goes for years in which I wasn't collecting, and I'm unlikely to ever hear of them just because of the changing nature of the hobby. A fleeting career from 1999-2000 is something I probably missed. Yet I just recalled the name of Travis Buckley off the top of my head, #732 in '93 Topps, a pitcher who never progressed past Triple-A.

At that age, and especially in pre-interleague days, if someone had a card, their name was worth remembering.

2002 Topps Total #700 Mike Hampton

A set including everyone naturally includes the bigger names as well, including a bunting Mike Hampton. Topps Total tells us on the back about his 1999 season with Houston, a 22-4 year which nearly earned him the NL Cy Young Award, finishing second to Randy Johnson. Yes, the Astros were still in the National League back then, and if not for their recent excellence, I'd still probably think of them that way.

Appropriately for this card, Hampton was no slouch at the plate. He walloped seven home runs in 2001, and before you comment with "pre-humidor Coors!", three of those were on the road.

1998 Paramount Copper #152 Ellis Burks

What's more of a liability for an unlicensed set? A lack of logos or a lack of team names? 1998 Pacific Paramount is technically unlicensed, including the fine print of "Pacific baseball player cards are not manufactured, sponsored, or authorized by any team or league." I checked a few other 1998 Pacific sets and some had this disclaimer, others didn't. Research shows that Pacific's license required them to print Spanish-language cards. This was their first English-only set, so by not fulfilling those terms of the license, they couldn't use team names. They didn't do any airbrushing, as the team logos are in full view. It's just like 2010 Upper Deck in that regard, however none of the 1999 Pacific cards I checked had any such licensing issue.

What a difference a decade or so makes. 1998 Pacific skirted the rules and got flexibility in their license a year later, but 2010 Upper Deck landed in legal hot water and remains absent from the baseball side of the hobby.

Anyway, Ellis Burks got a "Colorado" card in Pacific Paramount's inaugural '98 set, and thus all the colored parallels too. This pleasing shade of copper is a one-per-pack parallel, but the design is one of the least-readable foil designs I can recall seeing. Any printing issues and this would be completely illegible. This is not a set I would particularly enjoy sorting.

1998 Paramount #156 Jeff Reed

Catcher Jeff Reed has been showing up a lot around here lately, and by that I mean twice. The silver foil is the base design and somehow seems a touch more legible, maybe since my eye is so trained to see silver foil. It looks like Reed is in Wrigley Field, which must be where Pacific sent their photographers that year. Dante Bichette's card has part of a "WGN Sports" logo on the brick wall behind the plate.

1998 Paramount #151 Dante Bichette

WGN Sports was one of the great places to watch daytime baseball before MLB broadcasting rules got all screwy. The Braves were occasionally on TBS, but the Cubs played lots more day games.

1995 Score Summit #42 Andres Galarraga

Not every card of Andres Galarraga can be a relic, but it's one of just a few I received from 1995 Score Summit. It's surprisingly thick, and a rarely-seen set in these parts. The team logo scans even a little better than it looks in person, an eye-catching gold medallion on a white background.

The card back is unusual. It breaks down his monthly statistics into a grid, which is then overlaid on a baseball diamond. It's a bit hard to decipher, and is a bit depressing, because the months of August and September 1994 are conspicuous strike-impacted columns of zeroes. Of all the years to give out monthly stats, 1994 is a terrible pick. Galarraga experienced a season-ending injury in late July 1994, so his August looks even worse than other players in this set, but in effect, he only lost a couple weeks of playing time.

1995 Score Summit #42 Andres Galarraga (Reverse)

At least the photo on the back is a good one. It shows Galarraga in the dugout holding a "Catch the Fever" pennant, likely an item of fan memorabilia he was asked to sign. He also has those wraparound shades that everyone was sporting in the 1990s.

1995 Score Summit #149 Juan Acevedo (RC)

As was common with Score sets, the Rookies got a little bit of a different design. Check Juan Acevedo's card in 1995 Score Select to see what I mean. In Summit, the gold team logo shifted toward the left, which partially covers a rocky-looking silhouette at the bottom. It looks a little like a canyon wall but it could just be houses.

Both Beckett and much of the hobby seem to have a convention of dropping the main brand from sets like these. It's just listed as "Summit", even though Score's logo is clearly displayed. Same thing goes for Pacific "Paramount", and most famously, Fleer "Ultra". Even Topps "Finest" can't escape that fate, yet Topps Chrome seems to retain its full name. I tend to go back and forth, but I'm not above overriding an official Beckett listing from time to time. Like right now.

1991 Topps Archives 1953 #332 Eleanor Engle

Obviously, the Rockies were nowhere to be found in 1991 Topps Archives, one of Topps' earlier offerings to resurrect an old design, in this case, the 1953 set. Nachos Grande was nice enough to include one anyway, since the Mets are absent, too. It's somewhat rare as overproduction-era sets go. The final grouping of cards in the set are all part of a "The Cards that Never Were" subset, noted as such on the back, and can be differentiated by their strangely-colored backgrounds.

Quite a few huge names that didn't make it into the original '53 release are here, such as Hoyt Wilhelm, Richie Ashburn, Hank Aaron as a prospect, Ted Williams, and Don Newcombe. Also included toward the end of the checklist is Eleanor Engle, the first woman to sign a contract to play pro baseball. She signed with the Harrisburg Senators in June 1952. Unfortunately, that lasted about a day before the powers that be decided it was still 1952.

There are always little glimmers of gender integration in pro sports, such as Manon Rhéaume, who played in a couple exhibition games for the NHL's Tampa Bay Lightning in the early '90s. But anything more still seems to be a long way off. Perhaps not coincidentally, Larry Doby, the second African-American player in the MLB, and first in the American League is directly after her in the checklist.

Sooz wrote about this card once, and noted Engle's own comments about this card, who said "I look like a skunk at a picnic." It's a shame, because it was reported that she could hit better than some of the guys out there. Time will tell; I just think it would be nice to see more women on the diamond than Jennie Finch once a year in the Celebrity Softball game after the Home Run Derby. Or even in the broadcast booth. Jenny Cavnar called a few games for the Rockies last season, and I was sure to voice my support before NLDS Game 3 back in October.

2016 Donruss #173 DJ LeMahieu

These are mostly older sets, so there are obviously no current players depicted. But even DJ LeMahieu in 2016 Donruss won't be back next year. The paragraph on the back tells us that "If LeMahieu had started the 2015 season any hotter he would have spontaneously combusted." Trevor Story did about the same a year later.

DJ became a Rockie thanks to one of the best trades the team has ever pulled off. He came over from the Cubbies with Tyler Colvin in exchange for prospect Casey Weathers, who did not make it past Double-A, and third baseman Ian Stewart. The New York Yankees see plenty of value in him, signing him to a two-year, $24 million deal. Add in Adam Ottavino, whom they just inked for three years at $27 million, and Troy Tulowitzki, and it looks like the Yankees are stockpiling lots of ex-Rockies talent.

I continue to hope that Nolan Arenado is not among them, because I'd really like to see him stick around. But I'd also like to see him win a World Series, and with top Rockies players heading elsewhere, that's looking less likely to happen in Denver.

1998 Fleer Tradition #443 Pedro Astacio

We still have a couple more sets to go, continuing with 1998 Fleer Tradition. After a couple years of matte finish, Fleer decided to go back to glossy. They also selected an, ah, interesting photo of Astacio leaning in to see a pitch. He's 6'2" but he looks like he'd be taller. Maybe it's just the angle.

Like DJ, Pedro Astacio became a Rockie via a trade, a late-season straight-up swap with the Dodgers for Eric Young. He spent five years as a Rockie, and still stands atop the leaderboard in a few categories, including complete games.

1998 Fleer Tradition #561 Dante Bichette

Dante Bichette was a big guy. He's listed as 6'3", 235 lbs. It became a bit of a running joke in Denver every February how much he had bulked up in the offseason. This article from 1998 says he put on 44 pounds by the time that year's Spring Training began. And since this is Series 2, we might be looking at a card from precisely that time. What really caught my eye, though, is that the bat looks just about ready to stand on end, something Martin Prado once managed to magically do.

1998 Fleer Tradition Vintage '63 #89 Darryl Kile

You might think this is an insert from 1998 Fleer, but it's actually a one-per-pack partial parallel set. The photos are the same as the full-bleed base cards, overlaid with the classic 1963 Fleer design. Unlike Topps, Fleer has far fewer iconic sets in the archives, so they return to this one a lot. In fact, the flagship 2003 Fleer Tradition set just reproduced it entirely, not even bothering to make it a parallel.

The Rockies put a lot of resources into their rotation in 1998, signing Darryl Kile in the offseason. Astacio fared better at elevation than did Kile, who led the Majors in losses his first year as a Rockie, with 17. The card back tells us that he won the NL Pitcher of the month in July 1997, but neglects to mention that was with the Astros. Fleer was serious about this being a parallel set; even the write-up is identical to his base card, which was also included.

1997 Donruss Limited #14 Matt Williams / Vinny Castilla C (Reverse)

This break was a monster. We're down to our final set, which is 1997 Donruss Limited. It's pretty, but it's a strange one. The cards are all two-sided, and there are short-printed subsets, but they're scattered all throughout the checklist instead of grouped.

Counterparts are the primary card type, featuring a star player on the front, and a not-quite-as-good player on the back, with a little statistic at the bottom. Vinny Castilla, whose 113 RBI in 1996 was second among NL third baseman, appears on the card back of a Counterparts card. Andres Galarraga, by the way, led all the Majors that year, with 150.

Castilla is considered the secondary player on this card, so who was the primary player?

1997 Donruss Limited #14 Matt Williams / Vinny Castilla C

It's Matt Williams, who had just become an Indian in a monster offseason trade. His side is much shinier than Castilla's, at least in person, and also color-coded differently. Williams, you'll recall, is the player whom Castilla replaced in the starting lineup of the 1995 All-Star Game.

1997 Donruss Limited #87 Larry Walker / Eric Young D

The Double Team subset consists of 40 cards, and while they're not serial numbered, these have been calculated to consist of 4,400 copies based on the total production run. We get to see Larry Walker on the shiny front side, and rather than an alternate team on the back, Double Team cards are shared with another teammate, in this case Eric Young. The reverse side has the non-shiny appearance, along with the usual card number and logos you'd expect to see on a card back. We're also told how long each player has been with that team at the bottom, instead of a stats-based tidbit.

1997 Donruss Limited #169 Larry Walker S /1100

Our final card of this marathon post is an even rarer subset called Star Factor, also 40 cards large. Again, there is no serial number, but this is one of just 1,100 copies. The same player, in this case Hall of Fame candidate Larry Walker, appears on both sides with more statistics at the bottom. This one happens to mention his six straight extra base hits, precisely the same series of hits documented on his 1998 Fleer Unforgettable Moments card.

So there you have it. Another 3,000-word post about an awesome group break run by Nachos Grande.

And that's just part one.