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.