The Trading Post #164: Nine Pockets

To celebrate his second blog anniversary, Gregory at Nine Pockets offered numerous goodies in a giveaway. I've seen a few posts from this giveaway across the community, including Night Owl's post on a pair of 1989 Donruss packs. My selection from this generosity was lot #3, which he called "Three Beltres Belting". That phrase, of course, is a play on the lyrics of "The 12 Days of Christmas", which I recently noticed is 50% birds.

While I'm keeping my bird enthusiasm going in other ways, I'm glad I got the chance to obtain these three cards of future Hall-of-Famer Adrián Beltré, a member of the 3,000 hit club who retired in 2018.

2018 Bowman Platinum #69 Adrián Beltré

This first card from Bowman Platinum wastes no time in telling us about that 3,000th hit, which occurred on July 30th, 2017. Here's the video of that double, a rocket down the third-base line, appropriately enough. That's the position Beltré covered throughout his career, and did so well enough to earn five Gold Gloves.

The card back also tells us that only two third basemen before Beltré reached the all-important 3,000-hit milestone, and those were George Brett and Wade Boggs. Beltré was the first native of the Dominican Republic to get there, beating Albert Pujols to the mark by less than a year. Those two were contemporaries offset by just a few seasons, and when the Angels honored Pujols's achievement, none other than Beltré was there to catch the ceremonial first pitch. Read more about this in one of my recent posts on 2019 Topps Big League.

I'm not really a Bowman guy, but I do actually have a tiny spot in my 2018 binder for this Platinum set already. Julie from A Cracked Bat sent me Charlie Blackmon's card a couple years ago, and I'll only need to move a couple cards around in the page to make this one fit.

2017 Panini Chronicles #25 Adrián Beltré

Next up is a Panini set, 2017 Chronicles. Curiously, I have A Cracked Bat to thank again for the only other Panini Chronicles card I've featured on the blog, a 2018 Arenado. 2017, the inaugural set, is definitely new to my collection, and while this has the look of an insert card, this is indeed the main set.

There are small bits of foil to be found, which include Beltré's uniform number 29 in the upper left and the Chronicles logo below that. The same photo is used three times, twice on the front and once on the back. Panini describes him as "A Powerful Corner Man", and indeed he is. 477 of his 3,166 hits were homers, and the card back notes how he spread those pretty evenly across three of the teams he played for. There was one year in Boston, but he spent the rest of his career as a Dodger, Mariner, and Ranger.

And once he got to the Rangers, he hit my radar as one of the most fun-loving players around. There was the on-deck circle incident, the embarrassing strikeout against King Felix, the perpetual good-natured feud he had with Elvis Andrus touching his head, and lots more.

How can you not love this guy?

2018 Donruss #6 Adrián Beltré DK

So that's why this particular giveaway offering caught my eye. He never played for the Rockies, but he was a fan favorite around the league, and is well-deserving of his eventual Hall of Fame honors.

He's a real Diamond King, and earned a spot in that Donruss subset for 2018. Donruss Diamond King cards aren't what they once were, as there's no Dick Perez artwork or special write-up on the back. Quite frankly, there's really not much difference between the front and the back of this DK design, other than the lack of color. There's no write-up, no stats, just the same photo in a slightly different diamond design.

But that's okay. In this trio, Bowman Platinum gives us the colors, Panini Chronicles gives us the write-up, and DK gives us a throwback to the early days of Donruss. 

And I'm left with a smile on my face for having watched all these Adrián Beltré highlights.

Thanks, Gregory, and here's to many more years!