The Trading Post #129: A Cracked Bat

Spring is moving along, and that means that I have less time for blogging, as is often the case during baseball season. Since we last checked in, I saw another game at Coors Field, nearly witnessing Madison Bumgarner pitch an immaculate inning before Trevor Story flied out to left. Last week, I took a road trip to Great Sand Dunes National Park, and while I'm nursing a nasty sunburn, it was a nice visit and quite a sight to see.

With the Armed Forces weekend series wrapping up, which makes every catcher look like they're playing for the Pirates, let's look at a small batch of cards sent by that most prolific of traders, Julie from A Cracked Bat.

2001 Topps Archives Reserve #20 Dom DiMaggio '52

There are a ton of reprint sets out there, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are reprints of reprints to be found, but of all the sets out there, 2001 Topps Archives Reserve (and its 2002 follow-up) is my all-time favorite. It's one of the few that brought me back into the hobby at an early-2000s card show, along with 2003 Topps Chrome. It does suffer from the curl that's common with this type of finish, but how often do you find a card of the youngest DiMaggio brother?

He played center field, just like his other two brothers, and while he never got an entire set all to himself like big brother Joe, he did have an equally awesome nickname, "The Little Professor". Shown in the 1952 set, Dom never quite reached the lofty career heights that Joe did. He did, however, put together an impressive hitting streak of his own, 34 games in 1949, which remains the Boston Red Sox team record. Jackie Bradley, Jr. challenged it a few years ago, but came up a few games short when the Rockies came to town.

It's an interesting rivalry those two teams have. The 2007 World Series is the most important aspect of it, but there are a few other moments, like that hitting streak coming to an end. Just last week, the teams split a two-game set in which both games went to extras. And in 2013, Todd Helton played his final home game against the Red Sox. There are a lot of important moments between two interleague teams that obviously don't play each other very often.

2002 Topps Archives Reserve #42 Roy Campanella '53

Moving forward a year in both the Archives Reserve set and the Topps base design set (to 1953), we come to Roy Campanella. The Hall-of-Fame catcher had just earned his second of three MVP awards in '53, and his third and final one came in 1955, along with his only World Series ring. He was an All-Star in every season besides his first and last.

Speaking of 1955, I'm reminded of the classic film Back to the Future, in which Marty McFly returns to November 5th, 1955. That was just over a month after the Brooklyn Dodgers finally won the World Series, but no mention of that is made in the movie. Granted, the fictional city of Hill Valley is way out in California, several years before MLB expanded to the West Coast. But with the whole sports almanac thing in Back to the Future II, and Doc Brown's excitement at the prospect of seeing "who wins the next twenty-five World Series", I feel like the first movie in the trilogy missed an opportunity to mention a pretty important year for a storied franchise.

1996 Metal Universe #86 Joe Girardi

Most cards in this stack formed into surprisingly well-related doublets. This group is courtesy of Skybox Metal Universe, the etched foil set that got off to a very weird start in 1996. Julie has sent cards from this set before, including one where Vinny Castilla shared a card with a giant stinging insect. This one appears to show Joe Girardi cartoonishly bursting through a stone wall.

And somehow, we just accept this.

If you look closely, which I didn't, you'll notice that this is actually a New York Yankees card, despite showing Joe in home Rockies gear. That honestly escaped my attention until I flipped the card over and noticed a Yankees logo.

2000 Metal Emerald #245 Juan Sosa PROS

Metal dialed it down by its final year of 2000, even dropping the "Universe" from its official name. The final 50 cards of the set consisted of Prospects (note the logo in the lower right), and appearing in that set was Juan Sosa. Sosa appeared in eleven Major League games for the Rockies in 1999, plus two more for the Diamondbacks in 2001. His career at the plate consisted of two hits in ten at-bats, and that was all she wrote.

I'm learning a lot about these cards by flipping them over. Next to the card number is a captial letter E inside a black circle, signifying that this is an Emerald parallel. I didn't really think this was anything unusual at first. The green of the outfield grass is a pretty similar shade to the green at the top of the card, so I just thought it was part of the normal design. But the more I look at it, it does have a little extra of that color I love.

2018 Topps Chrome Update #HMT95 Trevor Story

Trevor Story has had a much more successful career at shortstop than Juan Sosa. It's been so successful, in fact, that he earned his first All-Star selection last season. This photo is from that exact game in Washington, D.C. I'm not sure which play, as Story fielded a pair of grounders in the top of the 9th. More importantly, although it was insufficient for the NL to get a win, Story hit a game-tying home run in the 7th inning.

Topps Update loves to give us All-Star Game cards, and they even included the game logo going down the waterslide on this chrome card. Unlike Metal Universe, I think I have a pretty good handle on Topps base and Topps Update, but I can't come up with anything that fits the "HMT" card number prefix. Any help?

2015 Topps Update Chrome #US170 Mike Foltynewicz (RC)

As sparkly as they are, there are far too few cards from 2015 Topps Update Chrome in my collection. I'll jump at any chance to find more, especially on the 2015 design that has been holding up pretty well.

Mike Foltynewicz was just a rookie back then, breaking into the league with the Braves after a trade with the Astros for Evan Gattis. He's established himself as a star pitcher, even joining Trevor Story on 2018's NL All-Star team, but he's gotten off to a rough start in an injury-delayed 2019, putting up an 0-3 record so far.

That does it for the Topps Chrome pair, so let's move on to...Stadium Club!

2016 Stadium Club ISOmetrics Gold #I-20 Dee Gordon

Specifically, one of the ISOmetrics inserts from 2016, my second. The insert set has some elements of 1995 Fleer, mainly thanks to the assorted statistics displayed on the card front. 58 stolen bases definitely stands out in this era of the game. There are a few names scattered among the league leaders the past few seasons, but Dee Gordon, José Altuve, and Whit Merrifield are some of the last to keep this once-crucial stat alive. Even Gordon is cultivating his power stroke, having hit three homers partway through May. He's never hit more than four in a season, and the only one he hit in 2016, the year of this card, was an emotionally-charged shot in the Marlins' first game back after José Fernández' untimely death.

1994 Stadium Club Dugout Dirt #12 Darren Daulton

Moving back to Stadium Club's first generation, Darren Daulton has shown up in two consecutive posts. This looks like a tight play at the plate with a Tim Wallach cameo, taken at some point during the 1994 season.

That brownish patch on both players' right sleeves marked the 125th anniversary of professional baseball. Technically, MLB hasn't existed quite that long, but 1869 is recognized as the first year of the Cincinnati Red Stockings. Daulton's and Wallach's playing days don't seem like they were 25 years ago, but it's true. Players across the league in 2019 are wearing "MLB 150" patches in just the same spot.

There were gold foil parallels in 1994 Stadium Club, but this is actually another insert, from the 12-card Dugout Dirt set. There's a rather frightening caricature of Daulton in "Daulton's Gym" on the card back, complete with a little heart tattoo on his massive bicep containing a couple of his stats.

I like the front better.

1994 Ultra Award Winners #10 Kirt Manwaring

Our final grouping consists of Giants catcher Kirt Manwaring. First up is another 1994 insert, this one from Fleer Ultra's very yellow Award Winners set. It's not the same shade of yellow as 1991 Fleer, but to my eye, it's unmistakably Fleer. There are actually quite a few Giants in this 25-card insert set, no doubt due to their 103-win season in 1993, just one short of the Braves' 104. Manwaring won a Gold Glove in 1993 for his stellar .998 fielding percentage, and he threw out 42.3% of base-stealers, something we used to track more carefully back when players actually stole bases.

1992 Leaf Black Gold #208 Kirt Manwaring

Manwaring concluded his career as a Rockie, but when I first got into collecting, he was a Giant. The hobby was certainly going in the direction of gold parallels in 1992, and Leaf wasn't about to be left out. Their Black Gold parallels, not to be confused with the Topps inserts of the same name, included a striking black border with a very appropriate amount of gold foil, and also used a gold background on the card back instead of the usual grayish-silver. There's even a Leaf watermark which also appears on normal cards.

It's taken me quite a while to notice, but the little baseball in the lower right corner of '92 Leaf looks a lot like the baseball and its related motion lines in the Rockies team logo. I noticed that shortly after noticing that Manwaring isn't wearing batting gloves in this shot.

1996 Topps Laser #115 Kevin Brown

That does it for the pairs, but there's one last card all on its own, perhaps just the way Kevin Brown would like it. Julie has sent Topps Laser before, and this set always impresses me. There are a few designs to be found in the set, and this flaming baseball is reserved for some of the game's best pitchers. 1996 ended up being one of Brown's better years, as he finished second in Cy Young Award voting, made the All-Star team, and went 17-11. He also led the league in hit batsmen, which doesn't terribly surprise me given his volatile reputation.

I always expect these laser-cut cards to be more fragile than they are, which is a welcome surprise. I also enjoy running across the Marlins' original turquoise color, which is ever so slightly present in their redesigned logo.

Thanks, as always, to Julie for these five happy pairs of cards and Kevin Brown.