Star-Spangled Sunday

Every year, I have a birthday.

It's in March.

So that means that I've had a handful of cards on my desk since March, as this blog has really slipped down the list of priorities for me. Meanwhile, my list of bird species seen in the wild has grown to 263, and my number of eBird checklists is approaching 500, so I'm still doing something prolifically, just something that gets me outdoors a bit more than typing and scanning.

1993 Score #419 Joe Girardi

Our hobbies and interests shift over time. I look at this Joe Girardi card from 1993 Score that my Mom gave me for my birthday, and I notice that beautiful snow-capped mountain behind him, and I see not just an inaugural-year Rockies card, I also see what looks like perfect habitat for a White-tailed Ptarmigan, which is not one of my 263 species.

Girardi is one of just five Rockies in the 1993 Score checklist. It isn't a top priority, but I'm very slowly working my way toward that team set completion. I got the Bichette via trade quite a few years ago, back in 2017, so I will have to pick up the pace if I hope to get the remaining three by the time the Mets finish paying Bobby Bonilla in 2035.

1994 Topps Gold #791 Mike Cook

While 1993 Score remains incomplete, one goal I've been working towards for many years is collecting the Topps Gold cards from 1993 and 1994 Topps that replaced the checklist cards from the base set. In the strictest sense of the word, 1992-1994 Topps Gold were not true parallel sets. 1994 had four such replacement cards, three of which you can see here, the fourth and final above.

According to the card back, Mike Cook, who made his MLB debut on July 1, 1986 (long before July 1 became synonymous with Bobby Bonilla), got this as his first and last Topps base card. He did make it into 1989 Fleer, and appeared in the rarely-seen 1994 Topps Team Stadium Club, but that was it other than a handful of Minor League and oddball issues.

Although I'm not sure how much I trust Beckett these days. This card of Mike Cook doesn't appear on his Beckett player page (or Beckett doesn't display multiple pages anymore?), even though they have the 1994 Topps Gold checklist correct. 

In any case, Cook's three games in 1993 were his last in MLB, making this an example of the exceedingly rare Rookie Card and Sunset Card all rolled into one.

From here, I'll have to decide if I want to chase the 1992s as well, but that set predated my interest in Major League Baseball by a year, so it never held quite as much draw over my elementary-school-aged brain as the 1993 and 1994 sets. Still, to a collector from the '90s, gold foil is gold foil, so my next task is to check the 1992s to see how far along I might already be.

1984 O-Pee-Chee #361 Mike Schmidt

On a 96-degree Sunday afternoon, one of my favorite things to do is to write up a blog post for you, my dear readers. Very often, there's a Rockies game being broadcast, and sitting in air-conditioned comfort while watching it is somewhat preferable to cooking like a broiled steak under the intense Colorado sun. It's quite the opposite extreme to the freezing wind tunnel that the ballpark can be on Opening Day.

As I write this, Rafael Devers of the Giants just hit his second home run of today's game, being broadcast on Peacock as part of "Star-Spangled Sunday". That one was "shot out of a cannon" and landed firmly in the upper deck at Coors Field. 463 feet according to Statcast.

It was a similar story on Opening Day this year against the Phillies. It was a day game, home runs were flying, and the only real difference was the temperature. But since it was the Phillies in town to open the 2026 season, family friend Roger saw fit to gift me a 1984 Mike Schmidt card, a power-hitting slugger who no doubt would have loved playing in Coors Field. He ended up with 548 career homers, and even after the steroid era, even after the shift to the focus on exit velocity and launch angle, he's still 16th on the all-time home run list.

I had "the Rockies were losing" as part of that previous paragraph, but they turned it around with Kyle Karros' 3-run shot in the 8th (yes, Eric's kid) to take the game and the series. As the sportswriters like to say, at Coors Field, leads are blown and then ledes are blown.

Sharp-eyed readers will notice that this is actually an O-Pee-Chee card, printed up with the same design as 1984 Topps but on slightly different card stock and with the requisite French translations on the card back.

2024 Topps Chrome Rookie Autographs #RA-CK Connor Kaiser (AU)

Our final card today was given to me by a Braves collector in my friend circle. He knows I'm a Rockies fan and set this autograph card aside for me. It's from the 2024 Topps Chrome set, picturing Connor Kaiser, who very briefly played for the Rockies in 2023. The Diamondbacks took a flyer on him in 2025, where he appeared in eleven games, but he only managed to eke out two hits during that time.

Kaiser is still playing at the Triple-A level in the Royals organization, but at the age of 29, it seems doubtful that it's going to happen for him. Wishing him the best, of course, and regardless, an on-card autograph of a Major League player is always cool.

I've become the guy who people come to for bird identification, but at least for a few people, I'm still the guy who can appreciate a baseball card, too. Whether it's a two-hit flash in the pan, or an all-time great legend, or anywhere in between, these all have a place in my collection.

Ceremonial First Penguin

We're slightly closer to Opening Day than we are to Game 7 of the 2025 World Series. Baseball will soon return, and this year we have the World Baseball Classic to whet our appetites.

In the meantime, the hot stove season has been heating up again, with most of the remaining big free agents completing their upcoming deals. It hit the wire today that the Mets landed Bo Bichette, yesterday the Dodgers signed yet another superstar in Kyle Tucker, and Alex Bregman will be headed to the Windy City.

Bregman will be crosstown rivals with a particular feathered friend who threw the ceremonial first pitch at a White Sox game last season, as documented on a Topps Now card.

2025 Topps Now #276 Pepe the Penguin /3720

Pepe, a Humboldt Penguin who resides at the nearby Brookfield Zoo, popped over to Rate Field on Chicago's South Side last spring for World Ocean Day, documented in this adorable video. 

3,720 of my fellow flightless bird lovers picked up the Topps Now card documenting the occasion in honor of World Ocean Day, although I believe I bought this one on the secondary market rather than directly from Topps.

That's my second Topps Now card with a bird on it. Only about 11,000 more species to go.

Whether its cards or birds, I'll always be a collector at heart. I couldn't even begin to guess how many cards are in my collection, but I have seen 257 unique bird species since I picked this hobby up during the early days of the pandemic.

We don't count zoo animals.

2025 Topps Now #497 Brenton Doyle /389

I visit the zoo on occasion, but you're more likely to find me at the science museum, which is where I was when the Rockies staged their amazing 17-16 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates in early August last year. I was so fired up by that win that it inspired me to write a whole post about it, so naturally I picked up the Topps Now card highlighting the game's biggest hero, Brenton Doyle. 

This one had a much smaller print run at just 389, but it gives us a great look at the second release of the City Connect uniforms the Rockies now wear. Personally, I preferred their license-plate themed green and white alternates. The new alternates are a mix of blue, purple, pink, and orange. They're meant to generally represent the outdoors of Colorado, especially the eye-popping sunsets we get a great view of at Coors Field, but I have heard several fans critique them as looking like a 1990s Taco Bell uniform.

In any case, a win is a win, albeit one of only 43 the team put together last year. In response, the Rockies have finally decided to make some (potentially) meaningful changes to the front office, hiring Paul DePodesta to run the show at 20th and Blake. You might remember Jonah Hill playing him in the Moneyball movie.

We'll see what happens, but fans are cautiously optimistic that this season might be the sign of better things to come. We're still a long way off from guys like Schwarber or Bregman signing here, but they've made a couple interesting free-agent pickups thus far. Willi Castro just signed a 2-year deal with the team, who should be a helpful utility player. He'll join Michael Lorenzen, who the Rockies formally inked yesterday, a veteran pitcher who is eager to meet the challenge and has some possible two-way potential. They call the new pitcher/DH regulations the Ohtani Rule, but the rule is available for any team to try.

2017 Topps Update #US28 Drew Robinson (RC)

Today is a quick three-card post, concluding with one of my Eight Men Out cards. It's from the 2017 Topps Update set, which is getting a bit far back in years already. Drew Robinson, pictured here on his rookie card, played a handful of games for the Texas Rangers and then later as a Cardinal. His career bWAR is -0.4, so you may not have much memory of him as a player. 

He is more well-known for an off-the-field reason, in that he survived a suicide attempt in April 2020. Since then, as part of his recovery, he has become an advocate for mental health, even serving in that capacity for the San Francisco Giants front office.

Sadly, he lost an eye and experienced other injuries on that day in 2020, but he did mount a comeback in the minors for the Sacramento River Cats in 2021, before deciding to retire. It's an inspirational story, a reminder that mental health is a priority for all of us, even for those living the Major League dream. His story isn't over, and as the saying goes, "where there is life, there is hope."

There's more to this set than Aaron Judge's rookie card.

Take care of yourselves.