The Trading Post #147: Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary

I learned a new term yesterday, the "last at-bat win". It's the away team's equivalent of a walk-off win. It refers to a team taking the lead in their final inning at the plate, then holding the lead for three more outs. The Rockies had just such a win yesterday against the Dodgers, thanks to key 9th inning hits by cousins Nolan Arenado and Josh Fuentes, followed by a Save courtesy of Daniel Bard.

The Angels had a win of each type yesterday against the Astros, both in Angel Stadium. Anaheim was the home team in Game 1 of a doubleheader, winning on a Jo Adell walkoff. They played as the away team in Game 2, a make-up game from a couple weeks ago that was postponed due to Hurricane Laura. The Angels won that one too in "last at-bat" fashion, as Anthony Rendon hit a three-run shot in the top of the 7th that ended up being the difference.

"I hate this doubleheader visiting stuff!", exclaimed Victor Rojas, the Angels announcer, after he mistakenly thought it was the second walk-off of the day.

All this happened in the span of just fourteen innings. Doubleheaders are seven innings this year. It was also 109°F at first pitch of Game 1.

Before 2020 shaped up to be such a wild ride, I claimed a couple free Opening Day cards from Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary. There's been an Angel atop this stack ever since it arrived, so their heroics yesterday made for a great occasion to write a blog post.

2018 Topps Opening Day Blue Foil #33 Zack Cozart

Despite what you see here, Zack Cozart is no longer an Angel. He was traded to the Giants over the offseason, who released him in January. He isn't on anyone's roster currently, and is getting to witness the 2020 season from the outside. He wasn't even an Angel yet when this card was printed shortly before the 2018 season. The card back has five years of his stats with the Reds, including his 2017 All-Star season. There's also mention of Joey Votto gifting Cozart a donkey thanks to that All-Star selection.

Yes, really.

I have no idea how to make a clean transition into this paragraph, so I'll just state the obvious and say that is one of the un-serialed Blue Foil parallels that appear year after year in Topps Opening Day. This isn't the parallel set's first appearance around here, as I found Byron Buxton's card a couple years ago. Incidentally, he beat out an infield single yesterday for his own walkoff.

Speed never has a bad day, they say.

2016 Topps Opening Day Striking Distance #SD-2 Robinson Canó

I also claimed this insert from 2016 Opening Day's Striking Distance set. I showed Mark Teixeira's card from this set back then, and Teixeira did indeed exceed the 400 homer milestone before calling it quits after 2016. Robinson Canó (named after Jackie) remains an active player, and has blown far beyond the 1,000 runs milestone, currently standing at 1,249.

On the topic of milestones and Angels, Mike Trout hit his 300th home run in Game 1 yesterday, passing Tim Salmon's 299 to take the all-time Angels lead. MLB marked the occasion with a 60-second montage of all 300, which is astonishing, mesmerizing, and slightly dizzying. And across town, Clayton Kershaw recently became the third-youngest pitcher to reach the 2,500 strikeout mark.

2019 Stadium Club Warp Speed #WS-7 Trevor Story

Those were the only two cards I actually claimed, but Brian kindly added in numerous extra Rockies cards he had been saving up for me. He must know I love Stadium Club, and this insert card of Trevor Story made its way into the envelope, complete with retro TSC logo.

As I recall, that phrase "Speed never has a bad day" was last uttered by Drew Goodman, the Rockies play-by-play TV announcer regarding none other than Trevor Story. He runs extremely well and has led the Rockies in stolen bases since 2018. While not truly capable of Faster-Than-Light travel as implied by the set's name of Warp Speed, he's in very good company in this 15-card insert set. He's joined by players like Trea Turner, who had an inside-the-park home run a few days ago, Whit Merrifield, who led the AL in stolen bases in both 2017 and 2018, the aforementioned Byron Buxton, and Mike Trout, who is, well, Mike Trout.

It's fun to see how card companies come up with designs to illustrate speed. Frequently it involves shapes like you see here, spirals and vortices and so forth. There's also a little Photoshop motion blur being added around his legs and wrist. That's easy enough to do in-camera with a slow shutter speed, but with the latest fast lenses and ultra-high ISO cameras, sports photographers are able to freeze action and keep it sharp and focused basically every time.

We're quite familiar with Topps Heritage and how they try to reproduce the look and feel of an old set. Reenacting portraits and poses, matching up teams to the old card number, and so on. In the coming years, we'll finally be arriving at the point when Topps started including action photos on their cards. Are they going to look like they do now, with a cleanly-blurred background and tack-sharp subjects? Or are they going to have an older look and feel, where more of the background is in focus, less motion is perfectly frozen, subjects aren't framed quite so tightly? Typeface and color shade nitpicks aside, the Heritage versions of early-'70s sets aren't going to look quite right to my eye if the action photos lack a certain retro look.

2013 Bowman Prospects Purple #BP102 Jayson Aquino

Brian was also on the lookout for purple-colored borders for me. 2013 Bowman and its Prospects offshoots were color-coded sets, but usually the colored borders are applied to every card equally. It's just an excellent conjunction when the checklist of a purple parallel set happens to land on a Rockies card.

This is another variant of Jayson Aquino's card that Julie sent my way. This one doesn't have a serial number and is much less shiny, but it still earns a place in my 2013 binder along with at least five other varieties. When I last wrote about him, he wasn't more than several months removed from his most recent MLB appearance. By now, that door seems to have closed for good for this Bowman Prospect.

2018 Topps Archives Purple #124 Nolan Arenado /175

Nolan Arenado appears on this parallel from 2018 Archives, which has an ever-so-slightly darker shade of purple on the border. When I looked at this set a few months ago, I lamented that DJ LeMahieu's card lacked purple. This certainly makes up for it, but the white-on-yellow text in the pennant is still completely illegible.

Fortunately, every fan knows just where Nolan Arenado plays. He's one of the true masters at the hot corner, a "human highlight reel" as the broadcast team likes to call him. The card back calls him "a genius gloveman", along with plenty of batting accolades and clutch hits. Also on the card back is a serial number, noting a print run of just 175 copies.

2017 Topps Gypsy Queen Missing Blackplate #252a Nolan Arenado

In that same post (#143) as LeMahieu, I received a certain variant of 2018 Gypsy Queen that didn't use the black printing plate during production. Apparently, Topps also created that same variant in the 2017 set. Compare this slightly blue-tinted card with the normal example, just a few cards down from Aquino in that post on Julie's trade, #112.

I continue to remain in awe not only at how many parallels there are these days, but also that numerous bloggers all over the country continue to find them for me.

The only thing that's really changed since the last time I wrote about a variant of this card is that I've now been to Petco Park, where this photo was taken.

2018 Donruss Out of this World Crystals #OW10 Nolan Arenado

We'll conclude with a short trip over to the unlicensed side of things. Panini can make shiny cards, too, and there's so much going on here that I barely noticed there were no logos on this one. Both Panini and Topps have used this broken glass shard pattern, which I've likened to Topps Atomic Refractors from 2011. I'm again surprised at how well it scans.

The set itself is a space-themed insert set called Out of this World, featuring Nolan Arenado standing on the moon. It contains twelve cards of some major power hitters, guys like Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Mike Trout, and Joey Gallo, who has more career home runs than singles. Mickey Mantle is even in it, right there at card #7.

Curiously, Mickey Mantle's career ended in 1968, one year before the actual moon landing. But he put 536 into orbit from both sides of the plate, and all these guys, even Trout, have a long way to go before they can catch him.

There is no serial number on this card, which, according to Beckett, means it's the Crystals parallel. That could be, but what's weird is that the so-called base card is serial numbered to 999, yet this parallel is presumably more common.

I already put a Bowman card in this post, which is confusing enough. I won't dare try to figure Panini's methods out here.

This card especially stood out because of this photo I took last night, a waning gibbous moon with Mars appearing quite nearby. It won't look quite that close tonight, but celestial objects are always worth a look, especially if you have the luxury of dark skies. If you're unable to stargaze tonight, I'll simply note that the card back keeps the space theme going by mentioning Arenado's stellar 2017 season.

Thanks to Brian for the freebies and the unexpected Rockies bonuses!