Making It to the Big Leagues (Part 2: Subsets and Beyond)

It's shortly after 5pm Mountain Standard Time as I begin writing this, and I have Part 2 of a Topps Big League blaster to finish. Part 1 looked at a handful of base cards from 2018 Big League, and now it's time for a few subsets, parallels, and inserts.

The news will be there when I'm done.

What we do know is that Charlie Blackmon had an impressive season in 2017. Good enough for a fifth-place finish in NL MVP voting, in fact.

2018 Topps Big League #303 Charlie Blackmon / Giancarlo Stanton / Paul Goldschmidt SK

Because of that, he got first billing on a whole slew of cards in the Stat Kings subset, which are essentially three-player League Leader cards. This white-bordered card for NL Runs Scored is still part of the base set, but it fits better here in Part 2. Blackmon occupied the top spot, earning a bigger photo than Giancarlo Stanton and Paul Goldschmidt. He crossed the plate 137 times in 2017, which in fact led the entire Major Leagues. Even Aaron Judge's first full season didn't eclipse Blackmon in Runs Scored.

As the card back tells us, Larry Walker still holds the team record, scoring 143 in his MVP 1997 season. Stanton and Goldschmidt are briefly mentioned as well, and interestingly, they were both still on their original teams at the time. Like many elite sluggers, Stanton eventually joined Aaron Judge on the Yankees, and Goldschmidt signed with St. Louis. All three are appropriately shown at the plate on the card front. Unlike a League Leader card from the Topps flagship set, we only get stats for these three players, as opposed to the ten or so players listed you'd see on the back of one of those cards. More photos, fewer stats. It was a winning strategy for early Upper Deck sets, in general.

2018 Topps Big League Gold #305 Charlie Blackmon / Dee Gordon / Ender Inciarte SK

Unless you have an elite eye, are intentionally walked regularly, or somehow manage to generate catcher's interference plays at a superhuman rate like Jacoby Ellsbury, you have to get hits before you can score those runs. And Charlie Blackmon did just that, with a whopping 213 hits. That, too, led the Majors. This time his cardmates are Dee Gordon and Ender Inciarte. Gordon has moved on to the Mariners and is now a free agent, but Inciarte is still with the Braves. Blackmon remains top dog, and got a picture at his home park this time. 

They're tiny on this photo, but both Gordon and Inciarte are both wearing special patches. Gordon, as a Marlin, wore the #16 memorial patch for José Fernández, who died in 2016. Of all the celebrity deaths that year, Fernández's hit me pretty hard. The Marlins also hosted the All-Star Game in 2017, as you can see by the patch on his right sleeve.

Inciarte has one too, which you can just barely see. The Braves wore this patch in 2016 to commemorate their final season in Turner Field, a very short stay. They followed it up with a similar one in 2017, and I can't tell which one this is. In any case, the Braves are in Truist Park now, which has already been renamed once in its short life, thanks to yet another bank merger.

Anyway, back to the card. Getting 213 hits in a 162-game season requires you to have multi-hit games, and Blackmon had 68 of them. That's a team record he did beat, according to the card, outpacing Dante Bichette's 66 in 1998. He had only 36 "o-fers" in 2017.

All base cards in 2018 Big League got some colored parallels, though they aren't serial numbered. This looks pretty similar to the mustard yellow color used in the 2002 Topps base set (and again in 2020 Archives, which we'll get to someday), but they call this one-per-pack variety "Gold".

Hey, it's a budget set and this isn't 1996 anymore.

2018 Topps Big League Blue #315 Charlie Blackmon / Daniel Murphy / Justin Turner SK

Getting 213 hits in a season puts you in a pretty good position to challenge for the batting title, and Blackmon won that, too. José Altuve had a better mark over in the AL, but Blackmon's .331 edged out future teammate Daniel Murphy and longtime division rival Justin Turner, both with .322. 

Actually, they had to split hairs on that one, per the card back. It was a close race, so they had to go to an additional decimal place. Murphy finished with .3221, just beating Turner's .3217. Murphy did even better in 2016 with a .347 average, but lost the batting crown to another Rockie, DJ LeMahieu.

This is obviously another parallel, the accurately-named Blue version, available in blasters only. The dark blue doesn't contrast well with the statistic being featured, and the same goes for the Topps logo. There's one more color yet to come, but we have some more ground to cover before we get there.

2018 Topps Big League #307 Nolan Arenado / Daniel Murphy / Odubel Herrera SK

Back to the off-white borders of the base set, we finally get a different Rockie in the #1 photo. Nolan Arenado led the NL in Doubles in 2017, although a half-dozen American Leaguers had more.

Topps did Arenado and Rockies collectors a favor on this card, as Daniel Murphy and Arenado both had 43 doubles. There's certainly no splitting hairs there. A fractional double is just a single (and a great analogy for electron energy levels, as I suddenly experience a flashback to high school chemistry). Maybe Murphy should have gotten the nod here, as the card back says than Murphy had ten more doubles than Nolan over the prior four seasons. Odubel Herrera, not currently a Major Leaguer, rounded out the top three.

We are all aware of a major political event tonight, but one minor thing we just learned is that Nolan Arenado won his eighth consecutive Gold Glove award, and well deserved! It's nice to see that streak stay alive.

2018 Topps Big League Players Weekend Photo Variations #287 Alex Bregman

We're used to seeing nickname variation cards on some recent Panini sets, and Topps decided to get in on the fun. This card of Alex Bregman lives somewhere between a skip-numbered parallel set and an insert set. It's considered a photo variation, and it has the same card number as his base card, but it has an entirely different design both front and back. 

A-Breg wore that nickname on his Players' Weekend jersey in 2017, which used much better colors across the than in 2019. It was a delightful splash of color in the inaugural year of 2017, so much more fun than the plain black and white uniforms worn in 2019. You couldn't tell the all-black uniforms apart from the umpires, and it wasn't well-received. Players' Weekend didn't happen in 2020, so here's hoping that occasion returns in 2021.

2018 Topps Big League #356 Swimming Pool

I like this Big League set. It puts these unique and fun cards right in the main checklist rather than relegating them to an insert set. It's a lot like the early Triple Play sets. This is another subset, called Ballpark Landmarks. Only half the stadiums were included, and Coors Field was sadly omitted. Their division rival Diamondbacks did make it in thanks to the swimming pool beyond right-center. This isn't as interesting a photograph as we saw on Zack Godley's card in 2018 Stadium Club, and is obviously the exact opposite of social distancing, but it would be a great place to catch a game.

The card back gives us a fun fact, telling us that Mark Grace was the first player to get a Splash Hit in the pool. Of all the games I've watched where the Rockies visited Phoenix, that one has never come up. Topps did get something wrong on the back, telling us that the pool was built in 2011. That's not the case; it's been there since the ballpark opened. And even so, Mark Grace retired long before 2011. That one probably should have been caught.

2018 Topps Big League Gold #362 Stan Musial Statue

Back to the Gold parallel set, here's the Stan Musial Statue outside of Busch Stadium. This statue predated Musial's election to the Hall of Fame by a year, and has been a landmark outside both versions of Busch Stadium. This entered Cardinals lore in 1968, the same year that Bob Gibson gave us one of the best pitching seasons of all time. I don't remember seeing it in an establishing shot during ESPN's Long Gone Summer episode of 30 for 30, but it might have been in there somewhere. Incidentally, there is a fan sporting a Mark McGwire jersey, if you look closely.

2018 Topps Big League Blaster Box Bottoms #B2 Bryce Harper

I promised one more colored border, and here it is. There aren't many with this green border, as it was one of just four possible options collectors could find as part of the blaster box itself. I didn't do a fantastic job of cutting this Bryce Harper card out, as is common with box cutouts that have entered the hobby over the years. It wasn't a "Box Bottom", anyway. It was on the side and at a bit of an angle. It was tricky to get a pair of scissors in there perfectly.

2018 wasn't really that long ago, but already lots of these players have gone on to other teams. Harper is with the Phillies now. He didn't make it into the coveted four-card Box Bottom set in 2019, although he did return there in 2020.

2018 Topps Big League Ministers of Mash #MI-6 Bryce Harper

A few of these cards defy categorization. They're not really inserts, not really main set cards. This Ministers of Mash card of Bryce Harper is the first indisputable insert card I've seen, and we're nearing the end of this post. This ten-card set gave us each player's career home run count through 2017, and Harper already had 150. That ties in to the back of his Box Bottoms card (and presumably his base card, which I didn't pull), which told us that he was the third-youngest active player to reach 150 home runs. Stanton and Albert Pujols were slightly younger, and apparently Mike Trout was exactly the same age, to the day, when he reached the 150 milestone.

If you continue that comparison to Mike Trout, however, Harper has slowed significantly. Through 2020, Harper's "only" at 232, while Trout has screamed to (and a couple past) 300.

2018 Topps Big League Star Caricature Reproductions #SCR-CK Clayton Kershaw

Neither Trout nor Harper have a World Series ring, but as of last week, Clayton Kershaw finally got that monkey off his back. As a Rockies fan, I'd prefer not to have seen those division rivals win it all, but they've been an extremely good team for a long time, no doubt. I guess Mookie Betts was the last key piece to making that work.

In any case, Kershaw went 4-1 in the 2020 Postseason, including two wins in the World Series. His greatness is now without question or reservation. Regardless of his past October struggles, he was a star player to begin with, which meant that Topps included him in this 30-card insert set, which looks a little cartoony but not quite as much as the set's 2019 follow-up. It was also a slight annoyance to count how many cards are in this checklist, because the card numbers are of the alphabet soup variety, rather than the numerical variety.

These Star Caricature cards are from the final insert set of 2018 Big League. One blaster certainly isn't enough to complete it, but it is enough to see a little of everything. I'm glad I finally got around to looking at this, and I didn't expect to like it so much. At such an affordable price, I'll have to be on the lookout for more.

Making It to the Big Leagues (Part 1: Base)

Now that I'm caught up on trade posts, my next project is going through all the blasters that have been accumulating on the same shelf. Most of those have been from 2020, but I have a stack of Topps Big League going back to the brand's inception in 2018 that has just been sitting there.

It would be more accurate to say that Topps Big League replaced Topps BUNT, the physical manifestation of their digital app. An app, by the way, that I spent way too much time on this weekend. Regardless of what they call it, this is the low-priced, youth-focused set that occupies the market segment that Triple Play and UD Fun Pack held back when I was a kid. 

That means affordability, small-ish set sizes, entertaining photographs, and fun facts on the back that may or may not be tangentially related to the actual sport of baseball.

2018 Topps Big League #281 Ketel Marte

Even when I'm not leading off with a Rockies card, the NL West is well-represented. This is Ketel Marte of the Diamondbacks, doing some pre-game warmups with Orbit, the lovable mascot of the Houston Astros. Usually you have to find Opening Day to add mascot cards to your collection, but Big League put it right in the base set. There is one Topps flagship card with a mascot that comes to mind, but it's quite rare. This photo is not going to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated, but it sets a lighthearted tone nonetheless.

Marte's card back calls him "a high-energy performer with good speed." It also mentions that he had two triples in the 2017 NL Wild Card game, part of what ended the 2017 Rockies season earlier than I would have liked. There were two additional triples that game, one by pitcher Archie Bradley, and another by A.J. Pollock.

Yes, yes, I know. COORS. That game was played in Arizona.

Regardless, Marte kept right on going in the 2018 season, leading the Big Leagues with twelve triples. Warming up with Orbit is always a good decision. Just look at those little baseballs on the end of the antennae.

2018 Topps Big League #226 Ichiro

Ichiro is one of those guys that never has a bad card. Not that there are many bad cards out there in this day and age, but he never even has mediocre ones. If they don't show a great action shot, then it's an awesome landscape or wide-angle shot like this. Or this. Everywhere he went, he had mobs of adoring fans from all walks of life and fandoms. Here, I see fans with apparel from the Mariners, Nationals, Royals, Dodgers, Red Sox, Twins, and even the Chicago Bears. I particularly like the giant photo a fan is holding out toward him with two big blue arrows directing him where to sign, as though he hasn't been doing this kind of thing for decades.

2018 Topps Big League #195 Yolmer Sánchez

With or without a pitch clock, baseball does involve waiting around. Of course, for that patience, you're occasionally rewarded with a roller coaster of a game like we saw Saturday in Game 4 of the World Series. But it's a strategic game with time to plan your moves, so no matter what rule changes come at us over the next few years, you can be sure players will still be chewing bubble gum out there on the diamond.

And as long as that happens, I hope baseball card companies aren't afraid to give us cards of players blowing bubbles. It's certainly less problematic than showing players with a big wad of chewing tobacco, especially for a youth-oriented set. And based on what the back tells us about Yolmer Sánchez, who is described on the back as a "fun-loving prankster", this is a perfect card.

2018 Topps Big League #370 Lourdes Gurriel Jr. (RC)

This one is more of a typical card photo, but the memorial patch on Lourdes Gurriel Jr.'s left sleeve caught my eye. The Blue Jays wore that #32 patch in 2018 for Roy Halladay, who passed away in November 2017. Some might remember him as a Phillie, since that's the only team he saw Postseason action with, but he spent most of his career as a Toronto Blue Jay.

You still get to see the Rookie Card logo from time to time in a brand like this, although most collectors will probably consider his true Rookie Card to be #US110 from 2018 Topps Update. Even with a Topps monopoly, the RC logo isn't completely reliable.

Overall, 2018 Big League is a simple but effective design. There are color-coded border accents that don't intrude on the photo. The player's name, team, and position are all in the same small area, and they're a bit on the small side but still easily legible. Again, youth-oriented. The team logo is perhaps bordering on a bit too large, but nothing obnoxiously out of hand like 2010 Topps. And it's foil-free at this price point, which leads to a surprisingly detailed Big League logo in the upper right.

Gurriel's fun fact tells us about his whole baseball family in Cuba, as well as his brother Yuli who plays with Orbit for the Astros. That got me thinking about Cuban players in general, and how many players never got their shot in the MLB due to the geopolitical tensions between the USA and Cuba. As with Japanese players, there were one or two that debuted back in the 1960s, but you didn't see players of either nationality get a shot in the MLB until the mid-'90s.

Just add it to the list of the many what-ifs that are peppered throughout baseball history.

2018 Topps Big League #293 Carlos González

That hasn't been quite as much the case with Venezuelan players. The first Venezuelan Big Leaguer played in 1939, and you'll certainly know the name Luis Aparicio, the country's first Hall of Famer who debuted in 1956.

Similarly, Carlos González and Yolmer Sánchez are fellow countrymen, but only one of them is likely to enter my Coors Field frankenset. Sánchez could up his chances significantly if he joined an NL West team. Actually, he did sign with the Giants for 2020, but the shortened season meant he never got playing time there and just signed right back with the White Sox.

As I scan these, I'm noticing how CarGo's bat peeks out of the frame all the way to the top of the card, always a nice design touch. Gurriel's card didn't do that, so there's a little inconsistency on the design front in that regard.

As this is a rather common set, I've seen it arrive in trades several times. Mostly I've just mixed them in to the blaster pile, so if you sent me cards from this set, they may have been intermingled into this stack over the past couple years. Entropy and all, you know. I don't catalog my cards nearly as accurately as some of you do, so this CarGo card could have been from the blaster, or from one of my many trading partners. 

The trade posts are the catalog, I suppose.

2018 Topps Big League #210 Billy Hamilton

Billy Hamilton, then with the Reds, is the first USA-born player to appear in today's post, and he looks somewhat humbled to be playing in Yankee Stadium. The recognizable upper facade has appeared on many, many cards throughout the years, and I'm glad to see Topps keep the tradition going, even though it's technically a new stadium now. 

His hitting leaves a bit to be desired, but Hamilton is known throughout the league for his speed. Near the end of the 2020 regular season, he stole home, something that Manuel Margot just unsuccessfully tried in Game 5.

Gutsy play, though.

2018 Topps Big League #145 Carlos Carrasco

Cleveland did make it to the Postseason this year, although they were dispatched in short order by the Yankees. Carlos Carrasco started their second game, but things fell apart for the Indians late that day. He'll surely be back for another season in 2021, hurling two-seam fastballs as pictured on this horizontal card.

"Cookie", another Venezuelan, has been with the Indians for his whole 11-year career, although he lost a lot of time in 2019 fighting leukemia. In fact, in looking through this stack of cards, I was pretty surprised at how many of these guys have had to deal with cancer.

2018 Topps Big League #44 Trey Mancini

Trey Mancini has had his own battle to fight. Shortly before turning 28 during this year's dicey spring training, he was diagnosed with stage-III colon cancer. That's a scary thing to happen, especially at such a young age, and he wrote all about his experience in The Player's Tribune.

The 2020 season, in whatever form it was going to take, passed him by, but I hope to see him and Carrasco facing off against each other next season.

2018 Topps Big League #4 Jon Lester

Cancer is further in the past of a few players, such as Jon Lester. It depends on a lot of factors, but treatments for many forms of the disease are becoming more effective. Lester's battle involved a fight with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma back in his rookie year. He's had a long and successful career since then, and pitched Game 4 of the 2007 World Series, the day after I had my own chance to witness such a historic game. 

Incidentally, I recently found out that Game 3 in 2007 marked the first time that two Japanese-born players appeared on opposing teams in a single World Series. Boston's Game 3 starter was Daisuke Matsuzaka, and the Rockies had Kaz Matsui on their roster.

2018 Topps Big League #59 Jameson Taillon

Even with the havoc that coronavirus has wrought on the 2020 season, Jameson Taillon wasn't going to pitch in 2020 anyway. He's recovering from Tommy John surgery, which he underwent in 2019. But before that, he suffered from testicular cancer in 2017, and fortunately recovered from it in remarkably quick fashion. This 2018 card doesn't mention it, but his Did You Know fun fact is that he is "a proponent of proper nutrition, [and] often prepares his own healthy food."

For a kid-focused set, that's probably a good way to handle it.

That was four players in a normal-sized blaster, and I didn't even find Chad Bettis or Anthony Rizzo, both of whom are in the checklist. It's a scary thing, but I'm glad that all these guys are still alive, and other than Bettis, are still playing, miraculously. It's a general fear I think we all have, and the age of COVID-19 certainly doesn't help relax me.

But writing about cards does. I know my audience is pretty tiny, but I appreciate all of you who take the time to visit and comment.

Part 2 of this series on 2018 Topps Big League will have a few inserts, parallels, and league leader cards. I'm not sure whether I'll write it before the World Series ends, but it will come.

 

The Trading Post #127: Night Owl Cards

It's official.

After tense negotiations, both parties have finally agreed that...

2018 Topps Opening Day At The Ballpark #ODB-COR Colorado Rockies

...Bud Black will remain the Rockies manager through the 2022 season.

A lot of the players in this pre-game anthem photo from 2018 Opening Day either won't be back or have already left, including Greg Holland, Carlos González, and the man standing two down from Black, DJ LeMahieu.

There is a particular player, though, who will be, and he just signed one of the most lucrative contracts in the history of professional sports.

2018 Topps National League Standouts #NL-17 Nolan Arenado

The ink is now drying on Nolan Arenado's contract, an eight-year deal for $260 million, with an opt-out after three years. That will keep him in Colorado for at least a few more years, and hopefully he continues to like it here enough to stick around to the end of it, or even beyond.

I'd actually seen that Bud Black card before; I just liked that lead-in so much I couldn't resist showing it again.

Anyway, these cards were sent by Night Owl Cards, a follow-up shipment to the Don Newcombe card sent as part of his 10th-anniversary giveaway. Sadly, Newk passed away since that card entered my collection.

You might think this is just a garden-variety Topps base card, and it does use the same photo, but it's actually from the National League Standouts Team Set, something that's definitely new to me. The set includes just 17 cards of some of the biggest NL players from various teams, mostly the Nationals, Dodgers, and Rockies. I guess the inclusion of Dodgers is why Night Owl bought it. At first, I thought these were just from the Rockies Team Set, not knowing there was a general NL set at all. I just hadn't considered that it would be weird for him to both A) buy a whole Rockies team set and B) send me three cards from it.

That photo, by the way, shows Nolan at bat in Target Field, home of the Twins. That would date this to May 16th-18th, 2017, the opening Interleague leg of a long road trip. There's nothing on the back to differentiate it from Flagship, other than the card number itself.

2018 Topps National League Standouts #NL-3 Charlie Blackmon

Charlie Blackmon's NL Team Set card is different than in Flagship, but still similar. He has the full white pinstripe uniform on instead of the black top, and he's at an earlier stage of his swing. The card back is also different, telling us some Studio-like tidbits like his chess and juggling hobbies, and that he has a finance degree from Georgia Tech. He got some league leader cards in Flagship, and there is a varying photo selection on them all, but always at the plate.

2018 Topps Chrome Pink Refractors #194 Charlie Blackmon

Chrome is different still, opting to show him on the basepaths on this Pink Refractor. Topps also made the massive design change of moving the Topps logo from the left to the right, and putting some background shapes on the design to make up for the lack of a border. This refractor isn't quite rare enough to warrant a serial number, and the color is in that weird gray area where you can't quite tell if it's pink or purple. I even had "Purple Refractor" written before I checked Beckett.

2018 Topps Rainbow Foil #96 David Dahl

Night Owl knows I like shiny cards, and he found a nice assortment. The final example of 2018's "Waterslide" set is a Rainbow Foil parallel of David Dahl, which shows him approaching third base. I'm not sure which stadium this is, but there's probably enough information on the scoreboard to nail down a date, even though they're both divisional games. Jake Arrieta wore #49 with the Cubs, so let's start there.

Turns out, this photo is from 2016, even though it's a 2018 card. The Cubs beat the St. Louis Cardinals (and #50 Adam Wainwright) by a score of 13-2 on August 12th, 2016. The other matchup lines up too, with Mike Foltynewicz beating Stephen Strasburg 8-5. That would place the Rockies in Philadelphia, on their way to a 10-6 loss. David Dahl only reached base once in this game, on a wild pitch in the first inning. This photo definitely shows him going first-to-third on a Gerardo Parra single. Dahl finished the game 0-4 with no walks and a run scored, not a line you see too often.

The Rio Olympics were in full swing on that date, and rather than watching this game, I was likely watching swimmer Katie Ledecky set a world record in the 800m.

2017 Topps Update Rainbow Foil #US230 DJ LeMahieu

Topps has been producing Rainbow Foil parallels for some time now, and DJ LeMahieu got one in 2017's Update Series. It adds a little pizzazz to the rather unattractive green-colored outfield walls in Miami, which sharply contrasts the orange jersey worn by the All-Star second baseman. The next time he makes an All-Star Game, it will likely be for the American League, as he has a two-year deal with the Yankees about to kick in.

The card back heaped lots of praise on DJ's 2017 first-half performance, including his back-to-back four-hit games in mid-June, leading the league in assists and defensive double plays, and a 1.0 dWAR. At the very bottom of all that, the paragraph wraps up with "Exhibition Performance: Did not play."

Sadly, NL manager Joe Maddon decided to keep DJ on the bench during the extra-inning affair. It was his second All-Star appearance, and he went 0-2 in 2015's Midsummer Classic in Cincinnati.

2018 Topps Big League Gold #121 DJ LeMahieu

DJ LeMahieu's leaping throw gives me my very first look at 2018 Topps Big League. I bought a blaster of this last summer, but I've yet to open it. Maybe you could say I'm aging it like a wine, waiting for it to improve the longer I let it mature.

I know this set didn't earn many fans, but I don't really have a problem with it. It's not too expensive, and it has the look of something like Topps Total, plus maybe a mash-up of the large logo from 2010 Topps and a little 1989 Topps with the curve in a different place. It is quite a nice design for such a bargain-priced product. This is the Gold parallel, but unlike the equivalent in Flagship, there is no serial number. It's not shiny, but I like this shade better than what they selected for 2002 Topps.

One of these days I'll dig into that blaster and see if there are any surprises. I just want to catch up on trade posts first.

2017 Topps Heritage Chrome #THC-685 German Marquez /999

The Cardsphere has been abuzz this week with the release of 2019 Topps Heritage, based on the 1970 design. Pat Neshek's sunglasses card will surely go on a few Card of the Year posts in December. But a couple years ago, we were still on the '68 design. German Marquez got a card in High Number that year, a 225-card set from which just 50 were selected to get the Chrome treatment. Those Chrome cards just have 999 copies each, pretty scarce for a partial parallel set.

Putting together a master set of Heritage seems like it would be an absolute nightmare. Good thing a pack or two here and there along with the usual incoming trades satisfies me.

Maybe Nolan Arenado just really likes Denver, but it's likely that the promising young rotation including Marquez and Kyle Freeland was a factor as well. Couple that with Charlie Blackmon sticking around for a few more years, possibly through his retirement, and you have a team that can really find some lasting success under a proven manager.

Thanks, Night Owl!