Playing in the Big Leagues (Part 2: Subsets and Beyond)

The days are really starting to blend together. Consider how I opened my blog post with Part 1 of a 2019 Topps Big League blaster:

"It's a sunny but cold day in Colorado, following a few days of snow. And since it's too cold to be able to do much bird photography (another one of my many hobbies), this makes it a good day to look at a blaster of 2019 Topps Big League."

All that remains pretty much true today, same as it was this time last week. We're a few days removed from the last measurable snow, and I did manage to spot a few birds today (including a raven), but one day is pretty much indistinguishable from any other, and they're still getting shorter. At least the insert cards we'll see in Part 2 offer a little bit of novelty, something that's in short supply these days.

2019 Topps Big League #346 Charlie Blackmon / Christian Yelich / Matt Carpenter SK

Even the 2019 Stat Kings subset looks pretty much like it did in 2018. Once again, Charlie Blackmon led the NL in runs scored, though his cast of supporting characters is different. Charlie got top billing again with an even scragglier-looking beard than he had the previous year, flanked by 2018 NL MVP Christian Yelich, who made a cameo on Trevor Story's base card. Elsewhere in the NL Central, Matt Carpenter rounds out the trio.

2019 Topps Big League #350 Freddie Freeman / Anthony Rendon / Nick Markakis SK

Nolan Arenado led the NL in doubles during the 2017 season, but didn't even crack the top three in 2018. That honor went to Freddie Freeman, who won both the 2020 NL MVP award and the NL Hank Aaron Award, which is given to the top offensive player in each league. He's only the second Brave to win the award, after Andruw Jones. He's joined on this three-player card by Anthony Rendon, who actually tied Freeman's 44, followed by fellow Brave Nick Markakis, who was up to bat during one of the funniest (slightly NSFW) broadcasting moments in Red Sox history.

Interestingly, Anthony Rendon had every right to be the featured player here. I guess he just lost out alphabetically. But he hit an identical 44 doubles in 2019, and managed to tie once again for the NL lead, deadlocking with Corey Seager. I didn't pull the NL Doubles leaders card in 2020 Big League, but it appears that Rendon was listed first that time. We'll eventually see some 2020 Big League, but that's for another day.

2019 Topps Big League Wall Climbers #WC-9 Mookie Betts

I don't remember exactly how many packs were in this blaster. Probably nine or ten. But it was enough to encounter plenty of inserts, such as this Mookie Betts card from the 10-card Wall Climbers set. He was Yelich's MVP counterpart in 2018 over on the AL side, and has racked up five consecutive Gold Gloves by now. Of the many Mookie Betts highlights that belong in this set, Topps chose July 21st, 2018, as noted on the card back. Careful observers will note that the play in question took place in Detroit's Comerica Park, while the photo on this card is clearly in Fenway Park.

In any case, the wall in this part of Fenway isn't particularly high, certainly not high enough to have to "climb". But now that he's a Dodger, he still needs to put those acrobatic skills to the test in Dodger Stadium and elsewhere in the National League. Perhaps you saw him during the NLCS.

2019 Topps Big League Blast Off #BO-10 Giancarlo Stanton

Of course, robbing home runs wouldn't be such an amazing highlight if it happened often. Usually they sail far, far over the wall, especially when they come off the bat of a slugger like Giancarlo Stanton. That leads to his appearance in Blast Off!, fifteen cards showing some of the best power hitters in the game. Joey Gallo is indeed featured in this set, the player who at various points in his career has had more home runs than singles. As of the end of 2020, his singles count is ahead by two.

Stanton is the main event on this card, though, complete with a rocket launch theme. The card back tells us that the longest one of Stanton's 38 homers in 2018 went a whopping 458 feet, and it was the first one he ever hit wearing the Yankee pinstripes. At home, that is.

Back when he was a Marlin, one of his shots to straightaway center featured the single most perfect crack of the bat I've ever heard. Bonus Marlins Home Run Sculpture if you click on that one.

2019 Topps Big League Players Weekend Nicknames #PW2 Jose Altuve

Topps got some good photos on Players Weekend in 2018. We saw Edwin Diaz, aka Sugar, wearing his Players Weekend jersey in Part 1, and they used this photo of Jose Altuvé from the same weekend for a 30-card insert set. The diminutive Astros second baseman is simply known as "Tuve". I saw him play in person once, and the main thing I remember is that he got picked off of first base.

Speaking of the Astros, Family Guy gave us a particularly hilarious take on the team's cheating scandal in a recent episode.

All these Big League insert sets are generally pretty plain. No flashy banners, no foil, not even many bright colors. It's sort of a flat look, like iOS 7 when they got rid of all the shading. I do like the little motion lines they put near the Big League logo and the bat in the lower right. 1982 Donruss could only dream of such things.

2019 Topps Big League Blaster Box Cards #B3 Mike Trout

As in the 2018 set, Topps turned the blaster box itself into a card. Unfortunately, I think I did an even worse job cutting this one out than the Bryce Harper card I tried the year before. I might invest in a paper cutter if they keep doing this sort of thing. It's basically the same as a normal base card, other than a dark brown border and actual cardboard rather than paper stock. Trout is one of four possible options, and it's clear to see which one you'll get when you buy the blaster itself.

I didn't pull Trout's normal base card, but I'm assuming the card back is basically identical, other than the card number. On it, Topps recognizes Trout's talent and how his name alone singularly identifies him as the best player in baseball. With rare exceptions, he's been either #1 or #2 in AL MVP voting his whole career. 2020 was an off year for him, as he only finished fifth.

He's so good, in fact, that all you really have to do is follow which legendary Hall of Famers he passed in WAR in any given month and simply tweet "Mike Trout". That is acceptable as a complete tweet. You may have even arrived at this post from just such a tweet.

2019 Topps Big League Star Caricature Reproductions #SCR-CA Chris Archer

Star Caricature Reproductions is the last insert set I found in this blaster. I'm only missing an example of Ballpark Oddities, a small and intriguing-sounding set. This is a set I've seen before, as Trevor sent over Charlie Blackmon's card in a PWE last year. The artwork on Blackmon's card always struck me as a little strange, and I think Chris Archer's card is a little more like what I expect. The design has the same dotted line border as the Nicknames set, but they replaced the ball and bat with a pennant and a slightly modified Big League logo. It's sort of like a little Easter egg hunt, finding where the crossed bats logo pops up on a design.

Chris Archer has spent some time as a Pirate, but he missed the entire 2020 season for reasons beyond the pandemic. There's talk that he'll end back up with the Tampa Bay Rays, and judging by how far they went in the 2020 Postseason, that looks like the place to be right now.

2019 Topps Big League Blue #150 Albert Pujols

Time for a few parallels before we wrap things up. It's back to the base card design, and this Albert Pujols card is given a nice shade of blue on the border, a color found only in these blaster boxes. The photo is obviously a ceremony of some kind, and it happens to be from June 2nd, 2018, the day that the Angels honored Pujols's accomplishment of reaching the 3,000-hit milestone. Pujols threw out the first pitch to Adrián Beltré, another member of the exclusive club, and that's what's pictured here. 

As you can see on the left side of the card, he was presented with a special portrait for the occasion, and to my eye, it would not look out of place as a Star Caricature Reproduction card. Even the card back mentions this major accomplishment, which is essentially a lock for gaining entry to the Hall of Fame. Of these few players, only Pete Rose, Alex Rodriguez, and Rafael Palmeiro haven't punched their ticket for Cooperstown, and they all have special circumstances keeping them out. Among recently-retired and still-active players, I have no doubt that Ichiro, Pujols and Beltré will make it in once the requisite five years after retirement have passed. 

As for potential upcoming members to the 3,000 hit club, Miguel Cabrera might make it; he has 134 to go. Beyond that, it might be a while before we see anyone else get to 3,000 hits. Robinson Canó is relatively close, but he's been suspended for the entire 2021 season. And after him, Nick Markakis is the next active player on the list, but he's not even at 2,400. It's not an easy thing to do.

2019 Topps Big League Blue #327 Cody Bellinger

An hour's drive up The 5 and you'll come to Southern California's latest World Series Champions. The Angels held that title for nearly two decades until the Dodgers finally put all the right pieces in place. A lot of those pieces are happily celebrating in this photo, surrounded by another Blue border. The border color works great on a Dodgers card. The main event here is 2017 NL Rookie of the Year Cody Bellinger, who clearly just did something excellent, and we can also see Max Muncy in the background, wearing #13.

2019 Topps Big League Gold #183 Victor Robles

Our final card is of the Gold variety, a one-per-pack parallel that can be found even outside blaster boxes. The border color isn't tremendously different from the light brown found on normal base cards, but I guess it's about as close to "Gold" as it can get at this price point.

Victor Robles has been with the Washington Nationals since his rookie debut in 2017. He earned a World Series ring in 2019, and is shown here wearing the team's special 4th of July jersey. Notice the curly W/quasi-Walgreens logo has a stars-and-stripes motif. I'm guessing he's celebrating hitting a triple, judging from his position on the diamond. That was before they implemented Baby Shark celebrations, with increasing degrees of intensity for hitting a single, double, or triple.

Alternately, "The fish I caught was thiiiiis big!", which I totally would have submitted to Beckett's funny captions column when I was a kid.

Topps Big League just puts you in that frame of mind.

The Trading Post #156: Topps Cards That Never Were (Part 3: Oddballs)

It's been a busy week of writing about a trade I did with with Topps Cards That Never Were, but after two posts of Rockies, you've seen lots of cards that indeed were. If you're not a Rockies collector, you probably haven't seen most of them, but you likely at least know the sets. In Part 3, we'll see some oddballs and one Card That Never Was.

1994 Topps Custom #NNO Don Baylor

Jeremy is known in the community for his custom cards, such as what you see here. He clearly puts in a truly breathtaking amount of work into these customs, and was kind enough to print out a few for this trade. As you may know, 1994 Topps was the first factory set I ever bought, and I like the design a whole lot more than I bet you do.

Unfortunately, though they made an appearance in 1993, manager cards were a casualty of the 1994 Topps set. Jeremy sought to right that wrong by creating this custom card of Don Baylor, manager of the Rockies from their inaugural 1993 season through 1998, the year Coors Field hosted the All-Star Game. He also came back as a hitting coach in 2009 and 2010.

There's no back on this card, which would have made this an exponentially bigger project, but the 1994 design is spot-on. If anyone at Topps wants to hire Jeremy to work on future Topps Archives or Heritage sets, he'd be a great candidate.

2002 Grandstand #13 Clint Hurdle

It's been a long time since manager cards have appeared in a Topps set. They do pop up in Heritage for historical accuracy, but I think the last time they were in the flagship set was 2009. But that gives space for oddball sets to ease into their niche. 

And in this case, that niche exists entirely outside the world of Beckett. I have no idea what this thing is, and searching for "Armour Stars", the logo that appears on the back, gives no good results about what this was supposed to advertise. There's a little "Grandstand 2002" name on the back of this Clint Hurdle manager card, so I guess that's the set. 

Whatever it is, the front has an excellent example of the Rockies 10th Anniversary logo, which appears in slightly lower resolution just centimeters away on Hurdle's sleeve. 2002 was his first year as manager, where he stayed until mid-2009. He's actually the longest-tenured Rockies manager, and the only one to lead them to the NL Pennant.

2001 Royal Rookies Amazing Todd Helton #A2 Todd Helton

Todd Helton played a large portion of his games under Clint Hurdle, but that hadn't quite started when this oddball was printed. This is an insert set from 2001 Royal Rookies, and Todd Helton got his very own five-card insert set all to himself. On card #A2, we're told about his time at the University of Tennessee, something many cards mention. They also paint him as a power hitter that can hit to any field. 

There's no MLB or even an MLBPA logo on this card, but there is something called an Official Player License with "OPL" in a black-lettered logo next to the copyright date. I've never seen such a logo before or since, and couldn't even venture a guess as to who says it's official. Such is the world of oddballs. At least Beckett knows about this one.

2001 Post #18 Todd Helton

Oddballs are seen as having a bit more legitimacy when they're attached to a major brand. Post Cereal teamed up with Topps in 2001 for the latter's 50th anniversary. I'm not much of a breakfast guy, so I definitely wouldn't have seen this when it was actually on grocery store shelves, in specially marked boxes, part of this complete breakfast.

I said I wasn't a breakfast guy, I didn't say I never watched a cartoon when I was 8.

This Post and Topps joint venture consisted of eighteen cards, and Helton wrapped up the checklist. The card back has his facsimile signature, the usual vital statistics, and his complete career record up to that point, 1997-2000. He had already hit 137 doubles in barely more than three seasons, and had just won the batting title with a .372 average.

2001 Upper Deck Twizzlers #7 Todd Helton

2001 gave us a bumper crop of Todd Helton oddballs. Who knew?

This one is from Twizzlers, who joined forces with Upper Deck to counter the Post and Royal Rookies offerings in the oddball market. This set is a mere ten cards, and appears to be unlicensed. There's no team logo or official name anywhere, and this red jersey looks like a Photoshop job to me. 

Examining the oddball logo more closely, we can see it's for Twizzlers and the Big League Challenge, although I can't find any details on what the Big League Challenge actually was. The card back doesn't say anything about that, but they do mention his .372 batting average, as well as his 42 home runs and what ended up being a career-high 147 RBI.

The logo has a certain Young Adult fiction ring to it, as in "Todd Helton and the Big League Challenge". Or perhaps some Colorado music scene mash-up, like "Big Head Todd and the Big League Challenge".

These oddballs are making my writing style feel a little odd today. It's the perfect time to get to a Pacific card.

1999 Revolution #50 Darryl Hamilton

I vacillate on whether to call Pacific an oddball brand. It suits my purposes this time, but they made so many sets for long enough that they could go either way. They were just so...out there. Card-Supials, anyone?

This is positively tame by Pacific standards, and I really mean that, despite all the gold and sparkly silver and and burnt orange shapes. Darryl Hamilton and part of that dark blue area are lightly embossed, for good measure. It's just the second card from 1999 Pacific Revolution to enter my collection, joining Barry Bonds.

Darryl Hamilton and Barry Bonds were actually teammates for a couple years in San Francisco, so it's appropriate that they'll be sharing space in one of the later pages of my 1999 binder. 

2016 Topps Update Team Franklin #TF-6 Jose Altuve

We come to our final card of this oddball post with Jose Altuve, who just hit an RBI triple in Game 6 of the ALCS as I write this. After the Astros cheating scandal, I'm now the opposite of an Astros fan, but this card fit too well into the theme of this post.

It's an obvious promotion for Franklin, the batting glove company. I had one a lot like that when I played in Little League. There are Franklin-related hashtags and URLs and social media handles all over the back, but this isn't as much of an oddball as you might think. It clearly has the Topps logo in the upper left, and this is actually part of a 20-card insert set that appeared in 2016 Topps Update. The product placement is pretty blatant with this one.

And in case you were curious, no, Wil Myers is not in the set.

This is an appropriate segue into the final Part 4, which will consist of plenty more Topps inserts. There will be less product placement, and really not that many batting gloves at all.

The Trading Post #36: A Cracked Bat

I'm in the middle of the busiest 30-day period in a very long time. Between early June and early July, I'll have traveled outside the USA for the first time, gone to my company's annual sales conference, taken a road trip to three states I've never seen before, not to mention some very positive developments in my relationship.

That's partially why my only post since May was an Instagram photo from my trip to Austria, but as I am between major events at the moment, I'd like to take the opportunity to keep this blog active.

Returning to my long-running The Trading Post theme, here's a trade package from Julie at A Cracked Bat that I received this spring. Julie has sent me lots of cards this past year, and has been one of my best trading partners. I commented on a long-ago post of hers claiming a Kellogg's 3D mini, which I'll get to later.

2014 Bowman Chrome Dualing Die-Cut Refractors #DDC-SB Eddie Butler / Corey Seager

This isn't the first card from this die-cut set that I've received from Julie. I'm guessing she opened at least some 2014 Bowman, and found another young Rockies pitcher to send my way, as the previous card was of Jonathan Gray. Both Butler and Gray are promising pitchers on the Rockies roster, although Butler's cardmate got a bit more of the write-up on the back.

2005 Topps All-Stars #TAS1 Todd Helton

Topps was going a bit wild with the shiny patterns as recently as 2005, which shows up better on the scan than in person, amazingly. I tell all my trading partners that I love shiny stuff, and though it looks a little juvenile, it will do just fine.

1998 Pacific Omega Online Inserts #28 Larry Walker

This one is even wilder, though it's from Pacific, so that all checks out. Their Pacific Online set from 1998 is fairly well-known, as it's pretty much a Geocities website on a baseball card. However, as I just learned from this trade, they extended that theme to an Omega insert set that same year. They used the same URL, but made the whole thing look a little bit more like a circuit board. Maybe I'm stretching a bit, but I even see some 1994 Finest in this design.

2001 E-X #9 Larry Walker

Here's another one of Walker, although this one is more sparkly than shiny. All these premium Fleer brands may not have sold that well in their day, but they are certainly thicker than recent Topps Archives sets, a topic that's gotten a lot of press in recent weeks. Defgav at Baseball Card Breakdown even did a scientific test of the thickness of various brands with medical-grade equipment.

I don't have any details like that on this E-X card, although I can tell you that Walker's outline is printed with a very subtle outline.

2001 Fleer Premium #101 Todd Hollandsworth

More premium Fleer cards were included, such as this one of Todd Hollandsworth playing the outfield in an unmistakable Wrigley Field. Hollandsworth spent a short time with the Rockies, but is better known as the last of four consecutive Dodgers to win the Rookie of the Year award, his coming in 1996.

1996 Emotion-XL #171 Jason Bates

Jason Bates, on the other hand, spent his entire, though short, career as a Rockie. He got plenty of cards in the post-strike baseball card era, and here's yet another rarely-seen Fleer brand, Emotion-XL. What's so distinctive about it is that it strongly resembles some recent Gypsy Queen parallels, as it has a cloth-like raised paperboard frame.

2014 Topps Gypsy Queen Framed Blue #59 Wilmer Flores /499

Fleer also put a foil seal on theirs, so that Emotion set would feel right at home to any GQ fans.

2011 Topps Allen and Ginter Hometown Heroes #HH70 Troy Tulowitzki

This has been an unusually Fleer-heavy post, but there was plenty of Topps to be found, like this "Hometown Heroes" insert set from Allen & Ginter. I'm not wild about any of the tobacco-era resurrected brands, but A&G is the one I like the most in that space.

On this card, we learn that Tulowitzki is from Sunnyvale, California, right in the heart of Silicon Valley. In fact, one of the companies I work most closely with in my new role is headquartered there, along with countless other tech companies. The back of this card even mentions that he's from a "tech-heavy" region, surrounded by Santa Clara and San Jose.

I don't know whether the A's franchise will move out of Oakland, but they'd have plenty of local business clients and advertisers if that ends up happening.

2013 Topps Update #US226 Michael Cuddyer

I've always felt like the Topps Update brand has gone pretty heavy on All-Star Game and Home Run Derby cards, but this one of Cuddyer is a near-perfect prediction of where he'd be playing two seasons later. The Mets hosted that year, and Cuddyer may have liked the orange color so much that he wanted to wear it full-time.

1994 Select #145 Eric Young

The giant gold stripe down the center of 1994 Score Select cards doesn't place it among my favorite designs, but this card brings back fond memories. My sister and I watched a lot of Rockies games when we were kids, and Eric Young was one of my sister's favorites. I remember her frequently calling him "Mr. Smiley." One look at this card and you know that's appropriate. Young always brought a great energy to the early Rockies teams, and I'm happy that he's still involved with the organization as a coach.

2013 USA Baseball Champions #15 Frank Thomas

Occasionally, a few non-Rockies cards make it into a package. Frank Thomas was one of the biggest names of my early card collecting days, so it's always nice to get a card of him, even if it's not MLB-licensed.

In reading up on Thomas' Team USA days, I was surprised to learn that he didn't participate in the 1988 Olympics. But if he did, then he would have had a card in 1988 Topps Traded, and we all know that set well enough to know that Thomas didn't appear on a Topps card until two years later.

1980 Kellogg's #55 Joaquin Andjuar

As promised, here's the Kellogg's card that triggered this trade package in the first place. This is my very first card from the Kellogg's brand, and I picked it for those great Astros uniforms of the late-1970s. Jose Altuve had a recent throwback card with a better look at this uniform. I dig almost all of it, except for the uniform number on the pant leg.

They've been through quite a few uniforms since then, with varying degrees of how much orange they include. I feel like the Astros have been aimlessly hunting for an identity for quite some time now, going so far as to switch leagues, a move that still isn't intuitive to me. Almost every time I see them on the out-of-town scoreboard or ESPN ticker, my brain screams "interleague game!"

At least Orbit is back.