The Trading Post #132: Baseball Every Night

Just a couple weeks ago, the baseball world celebrated National Baseball Card Day, which fell on August 10th. I didn't have a chance to make to any of the few remaining card shops in the Denver area, but I did tune into the Rockies broadcast that evening for the festivities. The TV crew opened some packs of 2019 Topps on-air, and many of the players reminisced in pre-game segments about their history of collecting cards. Scott Oberg said his father worked for Score back at the height of the overproduction era, and the company gave their employees a free factory set every year.

Despite not doing much with cards that day (in fact, I rebuilt one of the more technically challenging Lego sets in my collection), Peter at Baseball Every Night helped me out with a single-card PWE.

2019 Topps National Baseball Card Day #10 Nolan Arenado

Nolan Arenado was the Rockies' representative in the special 30-card set that Topps released for the occasion, and Peter was nice enough to send it my way. Topps even used a picture from this season, as the Rockies no longer wear pinstripes with their purple or black alternate jerseys, just with the full white uniforms. Nolan has his usual level of intensity on display, and Mike Schmidt has some kind words to say about him on the back, such as "He puts up numbers I never dreamed of."

That's high praise from a Hall-of-Famer like Schmidt. And rightly so, since there are a whole lot of red numbers on the card back.

Design-wise, the two slanted opposing corners reminds me a lot of Panini's 2013 Pinnacle set. I'm not too much of an expert on the legacy Panini brands, but maybe there's a bit of 2019 Donruss in here too?

Speaking of Scott Oberg, he is expected to miss the rest of the 2019 season after being treated for a blood clot. Jon Gray is out for the year too, despite turning in a masterful eight-inning performance against the Marlins last week, which I had the pleasure to witness. The race for second place in the NL West remains fairly tight, although 2019 will likely end up being a disappointing season for the Rockies. After two straight years of Wild Cards, 2019 is shaping up to be pretty typical here in Denver. Things look pretty good in spring, then a horrendous July takes the team out of the running, then by late August everyone's attention starts turning to football.

But I have tickets for Saturday against the Pirates, and you bet I'll be there to cheer my team on.