Home Run Parade

It’s September.

The evenings are getting cooler. The leaves are showing their first signs of changing. The Halloween candy is stockpiled.

And the Rockies, basement-dwellers for the entire season, are playing spoiler.

Same as it ever was.

The Cubbies are in town this weekend, and they were hoping to keep their slim chances of appearing in the Postseason alive. The Rockies had other ideas, taking two of three so far this weekend, both in dramatic fashion.

2024 Topps Heritage Clubhouse Collection Relics #CCR-ET Ezequiel Tovar (MEM)

Shortly after stretch time at Coors on Friday night, Rockies shortstop Ezequiel Tovar added one run to Colorado's lead over Chicago, by virtue of a solo shot straight into the Rockies' bullpen. 

That was enough to at least keep the game tied when said bullpen blew the lead half an inning later, as has been the story all year long. But it was Tovar's 23rd home run on the year, presenting a perfect opportunity to show off this relic card from 2024 Topps Heritage, gifted to me by family friend Roger as part of a housewarming gift earlier this year.

The 1975 Topps design is on full display in 2024 Heritage, and Tovar's purple jersey swatch fits right in on the bottom half of this two-tone layout. More fun colors on top brand this as part of the "Clubhouse Collection", signifying a relic.

This particular early-season controversy seems to have died down, but I wonder if future relics of the new much-hated Nike Vapor uniforms will look or feel different.

2024 Topps Heritage #379 Hunter Goodman (RC)

With the game tied in the 8th, catcher Hunter Goodman came up to bat with the bases loaded. What happened next capped off a 7-RBI night that he later said was "what you dream about". On an 0-2 count, he went deep for the second time that night, putting the Rockies up by four and giving them a lead they would keep for good.

He's got solid power and is versatile enough to play first base, outfield, and catcher, but his sub-.200 batting average remains concerning. The card back, while a bit hard to read, gives us his complete Major and Minor league records, and tells us that his first big league home run was just about a year ago, Sept. 17th, 2023 against the Giants. 

Goodman has been a Rockie since last year, and Tovar joined a year before that, but with my greatly-decreased posting frequency, this is the first appearance on the blog for either of them. Welcome aboard, guys!

While these are my only two cards from the much-anticipated 2024 Heritage set, Night Owl, the ultimate 1975 Topps fan, just completed 2024 Heritage a couple weeks ago, because of course he did. I've been pretty out of the loop in this community for a while now, but I knew there was no doubt he'd devote plenty of time and resources to this set. I'm glad all is right with the world.

I might as well order a blaster, too.

 

This Is 40

In my previous post, I mentioned the occasion of reaching my 10th blog anniversary. What I didn't point out is that I had not quite turned thirty when I clicked "Publish" for the very first time. A glance at the yearly archives list and a simple bit of math will lead you to the conclusion that I recently hit the big 4-0.

Another trip around the sun means my mom checked my Eight Men Out list again, and a few more cards found their way to me.

1996 Zenith Mozaics #12 Andrés Galarraga / Dante Bichette / Larry Walker

Leading off today is a shiny (Dufex, in fact) card of a trio of Blake Street Bombers. Arranged in a vaguely stained-glass collage style, the 25-card Mozaics insert set from 1996 Zenith combined three teammates per card. Featured for the Rockies, and referred to only by first name on the card back, were Andrés Galarraga, Dante Bichette, and Larry Walker. I'm pretty sure that's Eric Young, Sr. making a cameo in the Galarraga frame, and the design is embellished with a few assorted baseball equipment items, and lots and lots of gold capital letters.

It's a busy card. It looks like the smallest-ever scrapbook page. Note that "Mozaics" is deliberately misspelled with a "z" for "Zenith", because we did things like that in the '90s.

I'm not sure where I first saw this set. It might have been on one of Nachos Grande's group breaks, which is my primary connection to the hobby these days. But I knew it would be a great collectible right from the jump. (Update: it was this post from Mario.)

1994 Topps Gold #396 Jeff Bronkey

Continuing my ongoing quest to complete the Topps Gold checklist replacement cards printed from 1992-1994, here's the third such card to enter my collection from the 1994 Gold set. It features the only MLB player born in Afghanistan, Jeff Bronkey. This fact was mentioned on the card back, and remains true today. He briefly played in three seasons for the Rangers and Brewers, earning two saves in his short career.

Topps managed to shrink the typeface enough in 1994 to get the checklists onto only two cards per series, down from three each series in 1993. That means I only need one more to complete the 1994 run of these rarely-seen parallels.

2020 Topps National Baseball Card Day #10 Nolan Arenado

As the seasons continue on, the memory of Nolan Arenado as a Rockie feels more and more distant. While his time in St. Louis hasn't been as strong as hoped, his absence from 20th and Blake is striking. 

Occupying the same #10 in the checklist as he did in 2019, this card celebrating National Baseball Card Day 2020 featured Nolan and his fifth straight season with 35 home runs and 110 RBIs. That sustained performance was an "unprecedented" feat for a third baseman, a word that got far too much usage in 2020.

Though it's a 2020 card, the photo itself dates from 2019, as we can tell from two pieces of evidence. First, the MLB 150 patch on Arenado's right sleeve, worn league-wide throughout the 2019 season. Second, actual fans are in the seats.

Of the three cards Mom gave me for my birthday, this one was all her doing, and she picked well. She always does.

1984 Topps #750 Jim Palmer (AU)

The birthday festivities don't end there, though.

My new father-in-law is another guy I can count on, as he's been giving me autographs for years. My in-laws took us out to lunch at a nearby pizza spot, and there he added to my collection with this autograph of Jim Palmer on a 1984 Topps card. The card itself is a new addition, as is Palmer's autograph to my much more limited autograph collection. 

I always like how Hall of Famers sign with their year of induction, in Palmer's case 1990. He and Joe Morgan were the two inductees that year, both on their first ballot.

In 1984, Palmer was fresh off his third and final World Series championship, appearing in a few games before seeing his long and storied career reach an end. No one printed a card for him in 1985, so this is the closest he came to getting a true sunset card.

2024 Topps NOW #39 Ryan McMahon /888

My birthday doesn't quite stretch out to Opening Day, but spring training is always well underway by the time I blow out the candles. It's a fun time of year. Only a few weeks later, we were together again at the Rockies home opener, thanks to his longtime coworker Dianna.

It's a fun tradition, especially when the beers are flowing long before first pitch. And despite an extremely disappointing top of the 9th, I was there to see Ryan McMahon win it for the Rockies with a walkoff grand slam in the bottom of that same frame, and 888 buyers, myself included, decided they wanted to see this moment on a Topps Now baseball card.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, the card back doesn't have a paragraph, just a photo of Charlie Blackmon pouring out the sports drink cooler all over McMahon. RyMac, as he's known, has been one of the few bright spots of what has thus far been a pretty dismal Rockies season.

In the past decade, while there have been tears, loss, frustration, and grief, more often than not I've been the beneficiary of great strokes of luck and good fortune, and this little baseball card blog is just the tiniest part of it. My collection has grown, yes, but my life has grown in immeasurable ways. The simple fact that people in my life continue to show their appreciation in ways ranging from these little rectangular pieces of cardboard to acts of unforgettable generosity must mean that I've been doing something right these past 40 years.

 

The Trading Post #174: Dime Boxes (Part 3: Shiny)

One year later, I'll finally be wrapping up the longest post series ever. I've had this last little pile of goodies set aside from Nick's 10th anniversary over at Dime Boxes, which has now moved houses with me in the same little team bag.

But wait, you might say. Didn't Nick just celebrate his 12th blog anniversary with another giveaway? Yes, yes he did. And I have a whole new stack of cards on my desk related to that, which I hope to get to before his 13th. 

No promises.

But even with all the changes over the past year, weekends in mid-January still mean NFL playoffs, which make for some of my favorite background content while writing these posts. 

What completely escaped my attention several days ago is that somehow I just passed my own tenth blog anniversary! As of the 15th, apparently I've kept this little thing going for a full decade. And looking back on my first-ever post, it was pretty much just an explanation about how Nick got me started on this whole thing in the first place.

We have truly come full-circle.

2002 Topps Chrome Traded #T68 Sandy Alomar Jr.

What hasn't changed in the past decade is my love for shiny cards. Part 3 of this blog series that has sprawled across the biggest period of change in my life will focus on the shiny, or at least the serially-numbered.

If any of my readers play the daily baseball-themed puzzle game Immaculate Grid, take note of the above card for the next time Cleveland and Colorado intersect. Sandy Alomar, Jr., the 1990 AL Rookie of the Year (also a useful bit of info) briefly stopped by 20th & Blake for 38 games in 2002, as documented on this Topps Traded card. A true "Short-Term Stop", to borrow Nick's phrase.

Alomar was well into a lengthy career by 2002, so the short paragraph on the card back only has room to simply tell us that the White Sox traded the veteran catcher to the Rockies for Enemencio Pacheco, a pitching prospect who never progressed past Triple-A.

Speaking of the White Sox, the team where Alomar spent the second-longest portion of his career, I recently learned of a documentary available on YouTube called Last Comiskey. I've only watched one of three parts so far, but it offers a look at the 1990 White Sox season, their last in the original Comiskey Park.

2017 Finest Breakthroughs #FB-NA Nolan Arenado

Turning to 2017, when Nolan Arenado still covered the hot corner for the Rockies, we come to the Topps Finest insert set "Breakthroughs".

As best I can tell, this set was unique to 2017, but it absolutely has the look and feel of a mid-90s insert set, something like Power Zone from Stadium Club. It has all the elements. Huge block lettering in all capitals, an eye catching star pattern suitable for a comic book panel, a team logo that is bursting through an area of fractured rock or broken glass, and a close-up action shot. The player's name and the Topps Finest logo are squeezed into the corners like a mere afterthought.

How can you not love something like this?

The theme does actually have a point, in that the card back gives us the player's "Breakthrough Moment". One of Nolan's mentioned was his second-ever Major League home run, a grand slam off of Cy Young winner David Price in early 2013.

2017 Topps Chrome #92 Trevor Story

I'm not sure where Nick found all this 2017 Topps Chrome, but he sent me a base card that could possibly have come from the same pack as that great Arenado insert card. 

Six years ago to the day, the Refractor version of this Trevor Story card appeared on the blog in The Trading Post #112, and then the Prism Refractor version about a year later, both courtesy of Julie at A Cracked Bat, whose blog has sadly gone silent.

Surely I am nearing having the rainbow by now, right?

2021 Topps Update Gold #US195 C.J. Cron /2021

To my eye, this C.J. Cron parallel from 2021 looks more bronze than gold, but there's a /2021 serial number to prove that this is indeed the gold parallel, serially numbered with a print run equal to the card's calendar year.

Cron, currently a free agent, finally found a spot to settle down for a few seasons after changing hands like a hot potato. The card back calls it "five homes in five years", bouncing between the Angels, Rays, Twins, and briefly the Tigers, before finally reaching the National League and spending a few seasons in Colorado. The Rockies traded him back to the Angels in late 2023 along with Randal Grichuk in return for a couple pitching prospects.

Guys like that are useful to keep in mind for Immaculate Grid. I can't tell you how many times I should have guessed Nelson Cruz.

2003 Topps Traded Gold #T265 Clint Barmes FY (RC) /2003

Going back to 2003, we find that Topps Gold had a slightly lower print run. Topps oddly decided to document their 52nd Anniversary on the card front, as well as adding a 1st-year Card stamp that I believe is unique to 2003. The Chrome variety of this card has the same stamp in a non-foil version, and I've also seen it on a Hanley Ramirez card.

Thanks to Google Image Search for finding those. This is my 379th post. No one's memory is that good, not even mine.

Prophetically, in The Trading Post #134, I pointed out exactly where on the card back I would expect to find a serial number if I had a rarer version of this Clint Barmes card. Little did I know that one would eventually find its way to me.

2018 Topps Fire Hot Starts Gold #HS-19 Charlie Blackmon

This is not the first gold parallel from 2018 Topps Fire that has been added to my collection. In fact, it's not even the first such card of Charlie Blackmon. For a brand I can't recall ever purchasing at retail, I have a surprising number of Topps Fire cards filling my binders.

This one of Blackmon and his iconic beard is from the Hot Starts insert set, which highlights strong early-season performances. Topps got pretty specific on the card back, pointing out that Blackmon's first seven home runs of 2017 came in a mere 77 plate appearances, good for a "blistering" [note the fire pun] 9.1% Home Run Percentage.

Interestingly, for all you "Coors!" folks, those first seven home runs all came on the road, tying the team mark set by Ian Stewart in 2010. Even Trevor Story's white-hot 2016 debut included some shots at Coors Field. Refer to my prior post in this series for my fond memories of catching at least one of those at Buffalo Wild Wings.

It seems quite rare for the Rockies to play at home on Opening Day. Their home opener is usually a few days into the season, and that trend will continue for 2024, scheduled for April 5th, on what would have been my dad's 77th birthday.

The Rockies are indeed known for hot starts. More often than not, April and May is the best time to be a Rockies fan. No wonder I like spring so much. But by the time we reach the All-Star break, the team is usually out of the running.

By the way, we know Blackmon will be a Rockie for at least one more year, but to my knowledge he has not yet announced any plans for retirement.

2016 Donruss Optic Pink #48 Jonathan Gray RR

Jon Gray, who went by Jonathan on this 2016 Panini card, finally got a taste of the World Series and even won his ring with the Texas Rangers last year. If it's not going to be here, at least it's nice to see former Rockies find success somewhere.

In the 2023 Fall Classic, Gray threw 4.2 innings, struck out seven, and even got the win in Game 3 after taking over for Max Scherzer who had to depart with back spasms. That's the perfect way to get around the difficulty Jon Gray often had in the first inning.

This shiny Donruss Optic card is the Pink parallel, unique enough to warrant a second look on this blog, but not rare enough to earn a serial number.

2021 Bowman Chrome Prospect Autographs #CPA-DM Daniel Montano (AU)

Nick was apologetic about this card's condition. He knew I'd enjoy an on-card Rockies autograph, no matter how obscure the player, and I'm glad he threw it in. The blue ink is a little smudged, and though I was able to clean it up somewhat well, I assume it once had something spilled on it. I probably could have done a better job cleaning it, but didn't want to further damage the autograph.

We'll see how Daniel Montano progresses, but he hasn't really spent much time above the High-A level yet and has dropped off the team's top-30 prospects list. It isn't looking too promising. Still, I'll never turn down a shiny autograph.

2020 Topps Chrome Rookie Autographs #RA-DN Dom Núñez (AU)

The final card of this series is another on-card autograph which seems to have made it through the past few years in much better shape. Dom Núñez even cracked the code and made it to the Majors, though unfortunately he put up a -1.0 bWAR over three seasons, and despite showing a bit of pop for a catcher by hitting twelve home runs, he never exceeded a .200 batting average. Even in this day and age where a guy like Luis Arráez can hit .354 and be an extreme outlier, .180 for your career is not going to cut it.

In any case, I do remember seeing Núñez play, and I can at least make out his initials in his signature. I also enjoy the 2020 design. It's one of those designs I got quite familiar with, given how much time I spent on Topps Bunt when nothing was happening in the early years of the pandemic.

It's unlikely I'll ever match my high-water mark from 2015 of 72 posts in a year, but I certainly hope to beat 2023's total of just 6. I'm a third of the way there already, and looking forward to my second decade of baseball card blogging.

Congratulations to Nick on on ten, eleven, and twelve years!

A Wedding Present

It is a time of new beginnings. 

The last time I posted, I was on the verge of getting married and moving into a new house. I'm happy to report that all went according to plan, though not without the ongoing state of chaos and expense that comes with moving households.

But as we enter 2024, I wanted to kick off the new year, pun not intended, with a football post. At the wedding in October, I was given a set of 1984 Topps Football cards by Roger, a longtime family friend of my wife's who graciously agreed to officiate our wedding. 1984 happens to be the year I was born, and Roger had the perfect gift ready to go.

1984 Topps #63 John Elway (RC)

As a native Coloradan, and now a resident of Denver proper, I've long been a fan of the Denver Broncos. And it just so happens that John Elway's rookie card is the gem of this complete set. Roger hand-collated it himself from a case of '84 he bought long ago, and all 396 cards are there and accounted for. 

Elway is a member of the Ring of Fame, the list of retired Broncos greats that encircles the interior of Empower Field at Mile High. And he brought Denver its first two Super Bowls (after losing a few), even earning MVP honors in Super Bowl XXXIII.

Prior to becoming an NFL legend, he was famously a baseball star at Stanford. The cartoon on the card back (this is still Topps, after all), tells us that he hit .318 in the Yankees farm system.

1984 Topps #72 Louis Wright

Elway was immediately preceded in joining the Ring of Fame by Louis Wright, a cornerback for the team from 1975-86. The card back points out that Wright led the Broncos in interceptions in 1983, with six. Wright at CB gave us an early sneak peek of the type of play we eventually saw from Champ Bailey.

I had the pleasure of meeting him once at a Christmas party. Very nice guy. My dad and I even played a few rounds of foosball with him.

1984 Topps #163 Craig Colquitt

I'm turning 40 this year, and there has been plenty of NFL history that has gone by in that time. So much history, in fact, that we are well into the era of father-son NFL duos. I had never heard of punter Craig Colquitt before, but certainly recognized that surname. That's because his son, Britton, was the punter for the Broncos from 2010-2015. His older son, Dustin, also spent time in the NFL, as did his nephew, Jimmy.

I don't know if this held true for the remainder of Craig's career, but according to the card back, Craig had thus far never had the misfortune of having a punt blocked.

1984 Topps #123 Dan Marino (RC)

The other key rookie card in this set is Dan Marino, Elway's quarterback counterpart on the East Coast. They took a similar trajectory as contemporaries, but Marino consistently tops the list of best players who never managed to win a Super Bowl, joining similar ringless baseball legends like Ted Williams, Ernie Banks, and Ken Griffey, Jr.

Elway wasn't too far off from appearing on that list himself. He won Super Bowls XXXII and XXXIII, retiring shortly after winning his final championship. But he did lose three in four years, nearly sealing an unfortunate fate for the Quarterback Class of 1983.

1984 Topps #55 Dave Logan

Dave Logan is pictured here as a Brown, where he spent most of his career, but he did wrap up his career in 1984 as a Bronco. Despite that brief stint at Mile High Stadium, he's much better known in these parts for his broadcasting work, as he has been on the Broncos radio team since 1990, which is certainly as far back as my memory goes.

1984 Topps #37 Cris Collinsworth

In fact, in thumbing through this set, I was struck by just how many of these guys ended up in broadcasting. Cris Collinsworth has been on the Sunday Night Football crew since 2009, and I'll tell you, his voice has become quite recognizable.

Of course we can add Troy Aikman and Tony Romo to that list, whose careers began quite a bit after this set was released. 

1984 Topps #162 Terry Bradshaw

Here's a once-spry Terry Bradshaw, who has perhaps overstayed his welcome at Fox.

1984 Topps #111 Howie Long (RC)

And rookie Howie Long, who has shared the analyst desk with Bradshaw for many years.

1984 Topps #390 Joe Theismann

Here's one more veteran broadcaster, Joe Theismann, who used to be in the booth for Monday Night Football. Long before that, he was QB on Washington, and wore a football helmet that doesn't look anywhere near strong enough.

His playing career goes back to the early 1970s, where he spent three seasons on the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League. All three of those seasons are represented on the card back, squeezing out any room for a cartoon or fun fact.

No relation to the Heisman Trophy, which I questioned when I was young.

1984 Topps #287 Jack Youngblood

Jack Youngblood also did a little broadcasting work, but that was before my time. I mainly recognized him from one of the few other football-focused posts I have done, the Merlin Olsen blog bat-around.

Youngblood doesn't look all that different in 1984 than he did in 1975. In fact, 1984 Topps doesn't look all that different from 1976, at least as far as the little football helmet design element. 1984 gives the helmet a bit more team flair, and assumes that fans have learned AFC vs. NFC teams well enough to omit that data point from the card front.

1984 Topps #253 Doug English

I know Doug English even less than I know Jack Youngblood, but I am always a fan of commemorative uniform patches. All Detroit Lions wore the team's 50th Anniversary patch in 1983. which we can see on English's left shoulder. The patch marks their inaugural season of 1934, as well as four styles of football helmets worn through the years.

Sadly, their many years of futility have continued for well over 50 years by now, but they play the Rams Sunday evening, and you know what they say about any given Sunday.

1984 Topps #357 Ronnie Lott

Ronnie Lott, on the other hand, that's a name I do know. He was on the winning end of one of those hearbreaking Broncos Super Bowl losses, he's a Hall of Famer in both the Pro and College institutions, and is among the best to ever play Safety. Notably, he didn't switch to that position until 1985, and he's still listed as a Cornerback on his 1984 card.

As a baseball fan, it has become jarring to see the number 42 on a uniform. MLB retired that number for Jackie Robinson in 1997, and I don't follow any sport nearly as closely as baseball, so it's just an unusual thing to see in my personal sports viewing habits.

1984 Topps #322 Lawrence Taylor IR

Action shots were still a bit rare in these mid-1980s card sets. Jack Youngblood's photo is essentially unchanged from 1975, other than whether his helmet is on or off. A good action shot was notable enough that Topps put the best ones in a special "Instant Replay" subset. They even were kind enough to include the exact date of the photo, one of my favorite things to know about a sports card.

This one of Lawrence Taylor was taken on December 17th, 1983, as the New York [Football] Giants, lost to the Washington [Football Team]. The early part of this game went well for L.T. and the Giants, including this chaotic-looking tackle-for-loss, but the Giants were not good that year, and lost this game to the eventual NFC champions.

1984 Topps #280 Eric Dickerson (RC)

Arguably the next most important rookie card in the set, after Elway and Marino, was Eric Dickerson. The Hall of Fame running back still holds the record for most rushing yards in a season (asterisk, when O.J. Simpson played, it was only a 14-game season). He set that record in 1984, a year after winning Rookie of the Year as noted on this card.

The glasses he's sporting on this card aren't just for looks. They were prescription goggles, needed to correct a condition of myopia.

1984 Topps #228 Walter Payton

Today's last card is another all-time great running back, Walter Payton. No action shot this time, though he does have an "Instant Replay" subset card one card later in the checklist. I just really liked this close-up photo of him.

Much ink has been spilled debating the greatest baseball players of all-time, and it's hard to rank, say, Stan Musial vs. Ted Williams. The late Walter Payton easily finds himself at the very top of the RB rankings, right up there with Jim Brown, Barry Sanders, Dickerson, and more. Notably, the card back tells us that he ranks 3rd all-time on the NFL rushing list. Even this late in his career, he had plenty more in the tank, and pushed his way up to #1 at the time of his retirement. Only Emmitt Smith has eclipsed him, and with the way the game has changed, the top NFL rushing list might be set in stone for a very long time to come.

Thanks to Roger for broadening my collecting horizons with this excellent wedding gift!