Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Nearing Closing Day (Part 1: Coors Field)

As the 2019 Postseason continues, so does my flurry of blogging. I kept up my annual tradition of buying a blaster of Topps Opening Day, and as we near the final game of the season, I have time for my first real deep dive into the 2019 Topps design. This is actually going to be a three-part series, starting with some base cards.

As I leafed through these cards, I noticed that Topps picked a lot of photos that were taken in Coors Field this year. Continuing with Dinger's Mascot card from yesterday, I found over 10% of this whole blaster was shot inside my hometown ballpark.

2019 Topps Opening Day #26 Zack Godley
I'm sure most stadiums have some features that are easily recognizable to fans who have been there dozens of times. Several others, like the ivy walls at Wrigley or the Green Monster at Fenway are known even to casual fans. Coors Field has a few things that make it easy to spot on cards, starting with the forest and water feature behind the center field wall.

The visitor's bullpen is open to this area, giving travelling players a look at some flora native to Colorado. The most noticeable tree is a Colorado Blue Spruce, the official state tree. It's the blue-gray one above Zack Godley's calf, and it looks like a younger one is growing further toward right center. As a fan, you can get a great view of this area just around the corner from the batter's eye, right near where Dinger signs autographs.

On the card back, which returns to including complete career statistics instead of just the most recent five years, Topps mentions Godley's win in Colorado on June 10th, 2018, a Sunday day game. I went to the Friday game of that series, which the Rockies also lost. I am pretty sure, however, that Topps matched the photo to the paragraph on this card, making it sort of an unofficial Topps Now card. After taking a swim in 2018 Stadium Club, Zack Godley started in Denver twice in 2018, but only once during a day game. This is clearly from an afternoon game, so I'm confident in my detective work on this one.

2018 was the 20th anniversary of the Diamondbacks, and on Godley's right sleeve, we can see the patch commemorating that occasion. Most of the patch is the dark red found in the current colors of the D-Backs, but the "1998" on one side of the patch is done in the bluish-purple hue found in the early Arizona uniforms.

2019 Topps Opening Day #108 José Martínez
Other than a Rockies home jersey, the most common telltale sign that you have a Coors Field card is the purple front edge on the roof of the dugout. Like most parks, Coors puts the visitors on the third base side, and that's definitely not a Rockies logo on the cap of the player or coach in the dugout.

José Martínez of the Cardinals has seen a bit of playing time this Postseason, but unless the Cardinals can pull off a miracle, their road likely ends at the NLCS. His uniform number 38 appears on each piece of his protective gear, but there's also a #2 patch on his left sleeve. That is a memorial patch the Cardinals wore in 2018 following the passing of Red Schoendienst, the Hall of Famer who played for and later managed the team. That would place this photo between August 24th-26th, 2018.

2019 Topps Opening Day #159 Nick Martini (RC)
I'm nearing the end of a quest to see every team play at Coors Field. Only a few teams remain, as I crossed both the Astros and A's off the list in late July last year. Nick Martini was in the leadoff spot for the final two games in that weekend series, and pinch hit in the first, so I can't narrow this down any further than July 27th-29th, 2018. I went to the Saturday game on the 28th, which also happened to be Star Wars night. I may or may not have a card from the exact game I attended (part of why these cards interest me so much), but at least I have a souvenir Chewbacca beer koozie.

The Athletics celebrated an anniversary of their own in 2018, as we can see by yet another patch on rookie Nick Martini's sleeve. The A's completed their westward journey from Philadelphia in 1968, with a brief stop in Kansas City from 1955-1967. The patch features both a large "50" and the Tribune Tower, one of the taller old buildings in Oakland.

2019 Topps Opening Day #185 Khris Davis
Khris Davis, Mr. .247, has been showing up a lot around here lately. He was photographed inside Coors Field for his 2019 card, if not during the same game as Martini, then at least during the same series. This particular card doesn't mention his consistent .247 average like his Stadium Club card did, but it's more impressive to see each of those line by line in the usual Topps statistics format.

What the card does tell us is that he's only the third A's player to have three 40-HR seasons, the others being Jimmie Foxx and Mark McGwire. And McGwire didn't manage to do so consecutively, unlike Davis and Foxx.

2019 Topps Opening Day #143 Sean Manaea
With pitchers, it's much easier to narrow down a specific date. Sean Manaea started the Friday game of that series, July 27th, 2018. Easy. He took the loss that game, the opener in a series that the Rockies ended up sweeping.

There's not nearly as good a view of the forest on this card, but there is a blurred view of the "415" in straightaway center. Perhaps surprisingly, that is not the deepest center field wall in the league. That honor would go to The Polo Grounds Minute Maid Park at 436 feet.

Sean Manaea may not have won this game, nor the AL Wild Card game a couple weeks ago, but the card back does highlight his no-hitter on April 21st, 2018 against the Red Sox, the first of three League-wide that year. The card even gives us a quote from the catcher that day, Jonathan Lucroy, about how masterful it was.

2019 Topps Opening Day #85 Germán Márquez
The way the photographer captured Germán Márquez's pitching motion doesn't allow us to see the Rockies 25th anniversary patch, but it's still visible on the side of his hat. The card back mentions that he threw an immaculate inning in 2018—three strikeouts on nine pitches—and even took home the Silver Slugger award for pitchers. Depending on whether the NL one day adopts the Designated Hitter, he could be one of the last pitchers to ever win the award.

Obviously, any Rockies home card is a Coors Field card, or perhaps a Mile High Stadium card if we're talking about the early days. This Márquez card was the only Rockie in the blaster, which would be a slight disappointment if not for all these other Coors Field cards.

Even without the pinstripes, which were removed from the team's 2019 uniform when paired with the purple jersey, there's just enough purple among the fans in the seats to confirm that those are all Rockies fans back there.

2019 Topps Opening Day #12 Zack Greinke
Which is what I am using to place this Zack Greinke card in Coors Field. It's by far the most tenuous evidence, but there are so few other pro teams that wear purple that I think it's a reasonably safe bet. That is, unless there are a bunch of Minnesota Vikings and throwback Toronto Raptors fans that decided to show up that day.

Zack Greinke is a figure in the 2019 Postseason, but not with the Diamondbacks and their unappealing dark gray road uniforms. He's with Houston now, his first return to the AL since 2012. See, I remembered the Astros switched leagues! Partly because they are up to bat in the ALCS as I write this!

It's become apparent that Greinke is no fan of giving postgame interviews. He battles social anxiety, and getting up in front of a bunch of reporters before and after every start, especially in the postseason, can't be fun at all. It can be hard to put yourself in another man's shoes, but I wonder if he feels a nagging sense of dread every time his start comes to a close and he knows he'll have to face the media. If so, it's a feeling I can identify with; just one of those things you know has to be done but remains a pretty unpleasant feeling until you get through it one more time. Which is pretty much how I feel any time my office phone rings with an unknown number.

Whether you make five figures or eight, public speaking, or even human interaction in general, just doesn't come naturally for some of us.

2019 Topps Opening Day #56 Justin Upton
The last Coors Field feature commonly seen on a card is the manually-operated out-of-town scoreboard in right field. This is my favorite feature to find. Depending on the angle, it's likely that you'll be able to find the exact date of the photo, or if you're lucky, the exact play. Let's try with Justin Upton.

Even without looking, I know this is from the Angels' visit to Denver in early May of 2018. I know that because I was in London at the time, and prioritized getting $600 round-trip airfare over seeing Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani. I'll catch them next time.

Specifically, the dates were May 8th and 9th, a quick two-game set that the teams split. May 8th was the day the Yankees-Red Sox London Series was announced, which I learned about from the nightly London newspaper.

Anyway, let's see which game this was from. The key piece of info is the 6-5 score, Pirates over White Sox. That was their final score on May 9th, and while that was the score for a very brief two-batter window during the May 8th game, odds are this is from the 9th. This is almost certainly from the top of the 8th inning, where Albert Pujols doubled Upton in, after Upton doubled his own way aboard to lead off the inning. Upton did go second-to-third again in the 9th inning, but that was on a bases-loaded walk, and I wouldn't expect any player to be kicking up dirt on a leisurely play like that.

Incidentally, if MLB chooses to add another couple teams, this feature will need a little work. It has seven columns and two rows, room enough for the maximum of fourteen out of town games that can take place on any given day. But if there's a fifteenth in Portland or Nashville or wherever, they'll have to find a way to extend this under the right field foul pole, or perhaps encroach onto the warning track party suites that can be seen below it. That, or just overhaul the whole thing so each column is narrower, but that would make it even harder to read from my preferred seats on the third base side.

There are some other Coors Field views to be spotted, like the left field bleachers and the upper decks, but they're quite rare. And you'll basically never see them all in one set like in 2019 Topps Opening Day.

I found a few more base cards with photos from some of the other twenty-nine ballparks, which I'll have for Part Two of this miniseries.


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