The Trading Post #123: All Trade Bait, All The Time

It's curious that I seem to do a lot more blogging in the winter months than when baseball season is actually going on. There is a lot to talk about with games every day, but I think baseball itself keeps my interest in the summer. It's during the offseason when I turn to these little cardboard rectangles to keep me going. That, and I like spending more of my free time outdoors when the weather is nice.

We all know Rogers Hornsby's famous quote about what he does during the offseason: "I stare out the window and wait for spring." Well, cards are as good a window as anything.

My notes say this trade package from All Trade Bait, All The Time arrived around the 4th of July. So this is a long overdue post. And there are plenty more overdue posts to come.

1994 Upper Deck Electric Diamond #436 Henry Rodriguez

Most of this package consisted of shiny Dodgers. I can't say I'm the biggest fan of the Dodgers, but shiny cards are shiny cards. Leading off are a couple 1994 Upper Deck Electric Diamond cards. Outfielder Henry Rodriguez is doing his very best Ken Griffey, Jr. against a very dark background. It has to be one of the darkest cards in the whole set. The horizontal orientation makes the most of the design in the main area, but it causes the inset version of the same photo in the lower left to look that much more squished.

The foil on these isn't just silver; it looks a little like the 2014 Stadium Club Rainbow Foil cards. Slightly less sparkly, slightly more noticeable. The back is unchanged, and has another posed shot of Rodriguez decked out in Dodger blue warm-up gear. UD was going for a Studio look with this card.

1994 Upper Deck Electric Diamond #266 Cory Snyder

Cory Snyder's card, on the other hand, is more traditional-looking. Instead of being squished, the inset photo is comically elongated. An astrophysicist might say it is "spaghettified", the colorful term used to describe what happens if you fall into a black hole.

The lanky outfielder is shown standing on a base, flanked by the Cardinals' Luis Alicea on his left, and an unidentified Cardinal on his right, possibly first baseman Gregg Jefferies, who is sharing an intimate moment with Snyder's right leg.

It's pretty difficult to make out on this card, but we can just barely see the memorial patches that the Dodgers wore in the '93 season. On his right sleeve is a patch remembering both Don Drysdale and Roy Campanella, who both died in midsummer 1993. And on his left sleeve is a black patch of #52 for Tim Crews, a teammate who died in the same preseason boating accident that took Steve Olin's life. 1993 was a dark year for the Dodgers organization.

2011 Topps Lineage Diamond Anniversary Refractors #59 Duke Snider

Both Campanella and Drysdale were teammates of Duke Snider back in Brooklyn. This shiny card from 2011 Topps Lineage, one of my favorite sets with retired players, shows Snider taking some swings in the cage, long before batting helmets and batting gloves. This shininess came from Topps' Diamond Anniversary, which was already eight years ago. Not sure if they'll do anything for their 70th, but the 75th is traditionally diamonds again. Buckle up for 2026.

The card back doesn't have any photos or stat lines, just a bold color and a quick paragraph. Snider's mentions his membership in the Hall of Fame, in the context of the superstar New York outfielders that were his contemporaries, Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, both of whom made it to the Hall before Snider.

2012 Topps Gold Sparkle #253 Tim Federowicz

Topps expanded the shiny color palette a bit in 2012, offering this Gold Sparkle parallel. Upon close examination, the Topps logo and the two foil lines surrounding the "surfboard" are a slightly lighter shade of gold than the rest of the card. Nothing is different about the RC logo, the first of journeyman catcher Tim Federowicz' career. The card back tells us that he and then-prospect Ryan Lavarnway progressed through the Red Sox farm system together. I can't say I know too much about either of those guys.

Federowicz and Matt Kemp were traded to the Padres shortly after the 2014 Winter Meetings, and the Dodgers got longtime catcher Yasmani Grandal as part of that trade. Grandal just signed a one-year deal with the Brewers, opening up the catcher slot in LA for Russell Martin to return. It seems that Federowicz will keep bouncing around the league as a third-stringer.

2015 Topps Update Chrome #US280 Mike Bolsinger

I only have about four cards from 2015 Topps Update Chrome, but I have a desire to someday complete it. It's come to me via trade a few times, and I'm still on the lookout for more. It's really one of the sparkliest of sparkly sets that Topps has ever done. It actually works pretty darn well with the 2015 design, especially with those rows of tiny dots at the bottom. The "Future Stars" wording at the top does fade into the design a bit. But that's OK, because Mike Bolsinger hasn't quite developed into a star. I think he was on my fantasy team briefly, but he hasn't played in the Majors since 2017. Right now he's overseas playing in Japan.

1997 Topps Awesome Impact #AI-6 Todd Hollandsworth

Our next shiny card delves back much further into the Topps vault, all the way back to 1997. Maybe it was printed in advance of the annual awards, but this card doesn't say a darn thing about Todd Hollandsworth winning NL Rookie of the Year in 1996, capping off a run of five straight Dodgers to win that award.

What we're seeing here is an insert card from 1997 Topps Awesome Impact. There are all sorts of shapes visible in the background, and a larger-than-usual Topps logo. He's even wearing Cory Snyder's #28 from a few cards back. There was another Dodgers commemorative patch for '96, which Hollandsworth has on his left sleeve. It marked the 35th season the Dodgers played in Dodger Stadium, beginning in 1962. They played in the LA Memorial Coliseum for several years after leaving Brooklyn, which hosted an NFL playoff game just yesterday, where the LA Rams beat the Dallas Cowboys.

That blows my mind a little bit. I'm turning 35 this year, and it doesn't really seem like that much time. In my mind, the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn was ancient history, but 1996, the 35th year of Dodger Stadium, feels very recent. It's also surprising when you look at the context of this set, which featured top young stars like Scott Rolen, Derek Jeter, Andruw Jones, Billy Wagner, Chipper Jones, Mariano Rivera, and more. The checklist looks more like this year's Hall of Fame ballot than a list of up and comers.

That's the Awesome Impact for me right now, realizing how long ago the mid-'90s were. Even Todd Hollandsworth's time as a Rockie is coming up on two decades ago.

1999 Black Diamond Triple #42 Chan Ho Park /1500

Let's bump it up a couple years to 1999, an even twenty years ago. Upper Deck debuted their Black Diamond set that year, which came in a few parallel varieties. If you can look past the bright gold color, you'll spot three diamonds in the upper left, signifying this is a "Triple Diamond". Base cards just have a single black diamond in that area, and I would assume a similar pattern for the Double and Quadruple varieties.

It doesn't really jump out at you, but there is a large black serial number on the back, #675 out of 1,500. It's a nice card of the first Korean player in the Majors.

1999 Flair Showcase Row 1 #15 Kevin Brown /1500

Our final Dodgers card of this post carries an equal degree of scarcity, this time printed in gold right on the front. From what I can tell about this fractured set, The Row 1 Showpiece cards appear to be the scarcest, uh, cycle(?), other than the traditional parallels.

At the time, Kevin Brown's mark of 46 postseason strikeouts in 1998 was an all-time record, according to the card back. It's been eclipsed a few times since then, most notably by Curt Schilling in 2001. What's even more interesting about this card is that it compares Brown's stats through 1998 with Don Drysdale's through 1963. They had surprisingly similar statistics in their careers, though Brown pitched into his 40s and Drysdale hung up his spikes at just 32. He retired young, just like Sandy Koufax. One wonders what would have happened if guys like Drysdale and Koufax got the benefit of modern surgical techniques.

2000 Metal Talent Show #TS15 Ben Petrick

That does it for the division rivals, but my fellow trader was nice enough to throw a couple Rockies in the stack. This is one of the more tame-looking cards from Skybox Metal, the final one from the Talent Show insert checklist. The players in it are about what you'd expect for a prospect-heavy collection, a few guys you've never heard of, others that had some playing time like Erubiel Durazo and Ben Petrick, plus some bigger stars like Alfonso Soriano and A.J. Burnett.

The Cardsphere has a healthy appreciation for Ben Petrick, and it's surprising how often I see his cards. Not a ton of other Rockies from this era show up in my mailbox so consistently besides the obvious ones like Larry Walker and Todd Helton.

2018 Topps Heritage #348 German Marquez

Back to current times, this year's Topps Heritage gave us the 1969 design. Night Owl just got a ton of these, a surprising number of which depicted players without hats. German Marquez, one of my frequent Topps Now subjects, does indeed have a hat, as well as a giant Topps All-Star Rookie trophy. He's not actually an All-Star yet, but there's the trophy nonetheless. It's a pretty basic design, and the Rockies existence translates well to the retro design.

The card back uses some archaic terms, sort of like that Don Newcombe card I got from Night Owl. We're told that Marquez "emerged as a reliable moundsman in 2017". Spellcheck does not recognize that word, nor have I ever heard anyone refer to a pitcher that way. But by leading the Rockies in strikeouts, clearly his "slants" are solid.

We're less than three months away from the baseball season, and I can't wait to see this moundsman challenge his own record for whiffs in 2019.