I didn't pull the Pat Neshek card

This year's Topps Heritage begins a new decade, opening up the '70s with the gray-bordered 1970 set. I found a value pack at Target not long ago, and while I didn't pull the famed Pat Neshek card, where the sunglasses-wearing Phillies reliever pays homage to Lowell Palmer's card in '70 Topps, I did find one of the other cards from this set I had my eyes on.

2019 Topps Heritage #214 Todd Frazier

Todd Frazier, now on the Mets, got a fantastic card this year, showing him signing autographs in none other than Coors Field. It's rare for a card to show the upper portions of its distinctive architecture, but this wide-angle shot did it well. I'm pretty sure this is the first card out there that shows a glimpse of The Rooftop deck, which replaced a few thousand seats in upper right field in 2014. Even without knowing the look of the stadium, that fan with a Rockies cap just to Frazier's left is a dead giveaway.

Pat Neshek wasn't the only one to give us a throwback to the 1970 set. Topps pointed out on Twitter that this one is reminiscent of Bud Harrelson's card, though that photo was taken in Shea Stadium, long before Coors Field was a figment of anyone's imagination.

Coincidentally, the first-ever Rockies game occurred in Shea Stadium, on April 5th, 1993, though they'd need to wait for their first home game later that week to get their first win.

2019 Topps Heritage New Age Performers #NAP-23 Trevor Story

I didn't pull anything earth-shattering in this pack, but I was pretty happy with the lone insert. Luckily, a Rockie found its way to me, and it's Trevor Story, one of the few bright spots in this year's season. Things have not been going well for them, as they are way down in last place already with a 5-12 record. Sunday's game was a gem, a one-hit shutout that also saw Nolan Arenado hit his first home run of the season, followed up by another one tonight. Story, on the other hand, has been flashing plenty of power since the beginning, already with four on the year.

The New Age Performers insert set carries on for another year, and looks even more early-'70s than before. Topps compares the power-hitting shortstop to Rico Petrocelli, "an anomaly as a fence-busting shortstop" for the Red Sox, who hit 29 homers in his '70 campaign. That was actually a significant drop from 40 in 1969, his second of three All-Star years.

Plenty of shortstops have proven to be power hitters since then, and Fernando Tatis, Jr, the hot-hitting rookie Padre squaring off against the Rockies this week, is rapidly adding his name to that list.

2019 Topps Heritage #165 Jorge Soler

Most Americans know April 15th as Tax Day, but those of us who are baseball fans take the day to celebrate Jackie Robinson Day. Everyone wears #42 on the field, forcing you to really know your team to know what's going on out there. They're also wearing a commemorative patch on the right sleeve today, a diamond with crossed bats surrounding the number 42.

Jorge Soler has a team-specific patch on his uniform, worn during the 2018 season to commemorate the 50th season of Royals baseball. I know him better as a Cub, when he was a member of the team that finally broke the curse. His time on the Royals hasn't been as successful, but he's been healthy so far this season.

2019 Topps Heritage #97 Rich Hill

Rich Hill also wore a special patch last year with the Dodgers, marking their 60th anniversary of moving to Los Angeles. The veteran has statistics on the card back dating back to 2005, leaving no room for a cartoon or paragraph. He'll be adding another line to that resume shortly, but he still has a rehab start to make before he returns to both the Dodgers and my Fantasy team, the Lucky Numbers.

2019 Topps Heritage #59 Mike Clevinger

The 2019 season is still quite young, but plenty has happened already. The Rockies have dug themselves quite a hole, the Mariners have an amazing home run streak going (which may end shortly), and Mike Clevinger has been bitten by the injury bug. He's expected to miss at least two months, which opens up a spot for Carlos González on the Indians' 40-man roster.

The set might be using a 49-year old design, and Topps is definitely going for a certain look with the photos, but there are a few things that show unmistakable progress. Major League Baseball in Denver, for one thing, and more Cuban players like Soler in the league. There may have been a handful of players with long-ish hair in the carefree days of 1970, but tattoos like Clevinger has are a much more recent development.

There are Topps Heritage collectors that examine every aspect of the set in minute detail. Font size and placement, color shades, whether certain words are abbreviated or spelled out, and so on. The only thing I really noticed is that some cards have a little vertical white bar (a "pipe" in techno-speak) between the name and position, and others, like both these pitchers, don't.

2019 Topps Heritage #372 Kevin Newman (RC) / Kevin Kramer (RC)

The two-player Rookie Stars cards are faithfully reproduced in this year's Heritage. Vida Blue's and Thurman Munson's rookie cards both appeared on this design. Kevin Newman, on the other hand, might not be mentioned with names like that given his early defensive performance. He committed three errors in a single inning against the Cubs a week or so ago. He's had a bright spot in his young career though, an extra-innings walk off a few days before.

Newman shares a card with another Kevin, Kevin Kramer. His fellow middle infielder hasn't appeared yet in 2019, but did play a few September games with the Pirates last season.

2019 Topps Heritage #368 Nick Markakis AS

Nick Markakis, who surprisingly didn't have an All-Star selection until 2018, appears on the properly-named The Sporting News subset. None of that "The Topps News" knockoff anymore. He's certainly been worthy of a selection before, but it took him this long before fans recognized his talent, giving him the opportunity to appear on this All-Stars-only subset.

There are no stats on the card back, just a large drawing of Markakis, his name, a small cartoon, and a mention that he has the all-time highest fielding percentage for right fielders, at .994.

The card front shows him appearing to burst out of the newspaper in the background, and just to give you an idea of how I think, this reminds me of how the label looks on bags of Krunchers potato chips. They're so good. I haven't found them around here more than once or twice since I was a kid, though.

2019 Topps Heritage #386 Willians Astudillo (RC) / Stephen Gonsalves (RC) / Kohl Stewart (RC)

Some teams have enough promising rookies to warrant a three-player card. I haven't heard of Stephen Gonsalves or Kohl Stewart, but Willians Astudillo is a 27-year-old utility player that's fast becoming a fan favorite. "La Tortuga" (the turtle) hit his first home run of the year in Philadelphia, but he's not really a power hitter. He's just that lovable guy who plays with a tremendous amount of heart. Even better, he pretty much never strikes out. He has exactly as many big league home runs as strikeouts. Four.

Just look at that grin.

This is a bit of a late post, but that's how the schedule tends to go for us fans out west. Both the Colorado Avalanche and Rockies had games starting at 8:00 pm Mountain tonight, and it'll probably be around 11 by the time I finish scanning and proofreading. The West Coast games are late for nearly everyone, but when I was in South Carolina for work last September, some of those Dodger games didn't wrap up until well after midnight.

If you can tolerate that surprisingly few people on Eastern time have any idea how time zones work, Mountain time is really a nice compromise, even for a night person like myself.