All-Star Weekend

It has been a very long time since I've blogged about cards the same day I acquired them. But we can restart that clock, because I swung by the Topps booth at the Play Ball Park earlier today and picked up a few packs of 2021 Topps Series 2.

The Play Ball Park is basically what MLB used to call FanFest. To coincide with All-Star week, they filled the huge Colorado Convention Center in Downtown Denver with all sorts of baseball-related activities and exhibits. It's running for several days until the All-Star Game itself occurs on Tuesday. Tickets were free, and I happened to snag one a few weeks ago. It was quite an experience for me, because I haven't been in a crowd even approaching that size since long before the pandemic started.

Some of the highlights of the Play Ball Park included a display from the Hall of Fame, which had historic items ranging from Hank Aaron's 714th home run ball to Jose Canseco's batting helmet to Larry Walker's Spongebob shirt. A separate exhibit gave us a look at some of the various trophies bestowed upon star players, like the Silver Slugger bat and the Roberto Clemente award. The Negro League Hall of Fame had an exhibit too, with glassed-in "lockers" for legends like Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson, and two-way player Martín Dihigo. All sorts of kid-friendly activities like a softball diamond, batting cage, and more were there too.

But the main highlight for me and my first destination was the Topps booth. They had lots of Series 2 for sale, along with an offer of an event-exclusive card if you bought three packs at $4 each and turned in the pack wrappers. As I was slowly reminded of how expensive it can be to venture into public, I was greeted by the shiny 70th Anniversary seal on each of the base cards. But before we get to that, let's have a look at that exclusive card.

2021 Topps Big League All-Star FanFest #ASFF-3 Trevor Story

Unless you've seen the sell sheets, I'm assuming this is your first look at the delayed 2021 Topps Big League design. They picked a half-dozen upcoming Big League cards to make this special set, and I picked the lone Rockie on offer, Trevor Story. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, to be honest. These aren't even on Beckett yet. I'll try to get a blaster once these actually hit the market, but it's appealing at first glance. It's not too overdone, and vaguely reminds me of something like 1993 Donruss or 1993 Pacific.

The back specifically mentions Story's two previous All-Star appearances, which included a home run in his 2018 All-Star debut. He didn't get selected to the roster this year, although he will be participating in the Home Run Derby on Monday evening. He's matched up with Joey Gallo in his bracket pairing, and it's sure to be a great show. They're not using the humidor at Coors Field for the Derby, so we can expect at least a few baseballs to be put into orbit. 

Around Jupiter, that is.

Unfortunately, the card back has a bit of damage. There's a strip a couple millimeters wide across the whole back that looks like heat damage or something. Like the gloss was melted. I've heard Topps has been having some quality control issues lately, and maybe this is a similar example of what other collectors have been seeing. 

2021 Topps #541 Corey Dickerson

At least the base cards themselves looked fine. As expected, the design is basically the same as Opening Day, except the Opening Day banner is replaced with a seal of silver foil in the upper left. Topps has been at this for seventy years, which sounds like quite a bit more than the forty they were commemorating on the 1991 set nearer the start of my collecting career. 

Trevor Story might not be an All-Star, but Germán Márquez is, and he's the lone Rockies representative. Márquez made his way to the Rockies via a trade with the Rays, and Corey Dickerson was the primary return piece. He's been a journeyman since, playing for both Florida teams, both Pennsylvania teams, and was traded to the Buffalo/Toronto Blue Jays a couple weeks ago.

2021 Topps #616 Alex Dickerson

Corey Dickerson is not to be confused with Alex Dickerson, the Giants outfielder. No relation between the two, and only Corey has an All-Star appearance. Both have had great games in Coors Field, though. Corey played for the Rockies for three seasons, and Alex has spent his whole career in the NL West, frequently getting chances to use the Coors Field launching pad. As the card back tells us, he did just that on September 1st, 2020, hitting three home runs for sixteen total bases during a 5-for-6 day at the plate.

As you might imagine, the Giants won that one, 23-5.

2021 Topps #641 Nick Markakis

As the Dickerson not-brothers continue their Major League careers, Nick Markakis decided to end his. He retired after fifteen seasons with the Orioles and Braves, getting up to 2,388 hits. That makes this 2021 Topps card a sunset card, showing us his complete career record going back to 2006 with Baltimore. He wasn't known for great power, and dropped into single-digit home runs for several of his later seasons. But he was a reliable player, a one-time All-Star, a Silver Slugger, and a three-time Gold Glove winner.

And fans will never forget that time he took strike one.

2021 Topps #582 Dwight Smith Jr.

We're very much in the age of second-generation Major Leaguers. Tatis, Guerrero, Bichette, Biggio, Bellinger, Gordon, and many more. I recently found out that Ke'Bryan Hayes is the son of former Rockies third baseman Charlie Hayes. And anyone who completed an overproduction-era set would probably also recognize the names McCullers, Varsho, Romine, and Mondesí. 

I guess it's always been this way, with the Boones and the Alous and the Griffeys and so on, but following this game long enough to see two generations come through feels a little unsettling.

Dwight Smith, Jr. is also on that list, the son of former Cubs outfielder Dwight Smith (Sr.). I haven't followed his career much, but he did get a good Tatooine card in 2021 Topps. I noticed a few of these in just a small stack, including Eric Hosmer's card. This generally requires the photographer to have a higher angle on the field of play, and that's something you'll probably see a bit more often on cards with 2020-vintage photos. Teams across the league didn't allow photographers in the well next to the dugout in 2020, instead stationing them five or so rows up in the seats.

Of course, Dwight Smith, Jr.'s face mask makes this an obvious relic of the 2020 season, but knowing what was happening behind the lens that year gives further confirmation if you know what you're looking for.

2021 Topps #486 South Side Strength / Yoán Moncada / Yasmani Grandal / José Abreu / Eloy Jiménez

Once upon a time, Topps used to cram 132 card numbers, an entire sheet's worth, onto a single checklist. They've trimmed that down significantly, fitting just 33 onto the back of this one. That's basically a fourfold increase in the number of checklists needed, approximately 21 cards in a 700-card set. I enjoy these fun photos as much as the next guy, but that's half a team worth of players that aren't represented in the main set. Couple that with almost 100 fewer cards in the set, and four more teams than we had prior to 1993, that squeezes a lot of players out of having their own card.

In any case, this four-player card shows (left to right) Yoán Moncada, Yasmani Grandal, Eloy Jiménez, and José Abreu. Both sides of the card tell us that these four guys hit four consecutive home runs, which happened on August 16th, 2020. That date was a purple visited hyperlink for me on Baseball Reference, and I had previously looked it up because of Carter Kieboom's commemorative Negro Leagues patch from his Opening Day card. You'll notice that these White Sox are wearing that same patch, pinpointing this to the actual date of the feat. The only slight inaccuracy is that Jiménez and Abreu should swap places to match the actual batting order that day.

2021 Topps #341 Franmil Reyes

That checklist pretty much has to have a horizontal orientation, but this one of Franmil Reyes could go either way. This photo looks like he might have just hit a walkoff home run, and in fact he did just that a couple days ago, a long shot over the tall left field wall in Cleveland.

I saw him play during his last few weeks as a Padre when I visited San Diego. The (loud) fan near me announced his "Franimal" nickname before each at bat. July 2019, the first series after the All-Star break. That was the last time I was on a plane or outside my home state of Colorado. At the end of that month, Reyes was traded to the Indians, which is where he's been ever since.

2021 Topps Rainbow Foil #421 Mark Mathias

Three packs, three inserts. On average I did just fine. I pulled this Rainbow Foil parallel of Brewers outfielder Mark Mathias, whom I have never heard of. It is his Rookie Card, and who knows, maybe in a decade this will be worth thousands of dollars, just like Mike Trout's 2011 Update parallels. 

Or not.

He actually hasn't played in 2021 yet, but this is a really shiny card. Even shinier than these rainbow cards are inside the Bunt app.

2021 Topps '86 Topps Autographs #86A-NN Nick Neidert S2 (AU)

My biggest hit of these three packs was a Marlin. It's an on-card autograph of rookie pitcher Nick Neidert. He pitched as recently as Thursday, so he's still getting his feet wet in the Majors. I hadn't heard of him either, but I have now.

The card back only congratulates me for pulling an autograph, but the front is very true to the 1986 Topps design. It's the logical evolution of the 35th Anniversary insert set that we saw in the previous post, and this color scheme works well for the Marlins. If Topps keeps this cycle up, next year will bring us back to the iconic 1987 set. I'm not sure how they'll handle that, since they featured that set heavily in 2017 when they decided a 30-year anniversary was more to their liking than 35.

2021 Topps 70 Years of Topps Baseball Series 2 #70YT-40 Bryce Harper

In any case, the Topps designs of my childhood are still fairly common in current packs. For their 70th anniversary, Topps felt that it was time to do another retrospective of all their base designs one-by-one to make a 70-card insert set. If you remember the 60 Years of Topps set from 2011, it's basically that again. A year-by-year look at each of the main sets Topps has released, some featuring current players and some retired stars. This one has Bryce Harper on the 1990 Topps design, and the card back tells us about the set itself rather than the player. 

This set "ushered in a new decade with pizzazz", explaining the various color schemes and gradients, and I can confirm that these green and white borders are period-correct. It also mentions that 792-card checklist that sounds so correct to me, along with some Nolan Ryan highlight cards and the famous Frank Thomas rookie. There is no mention, however, of the even-more-famous Frank Thomas error card. It's a card so famous my mom knows about it, and has bought 1990 Topps packs for me to check.

Trevor Story has his work cut out for him in the Home Run Derby. Tune in to ESPN Monday night at 6pm Mountain to see how he fares against Ohtani, Gallo, Mancini, and the rest. And if you find yourself at a Topps booth at a future Play Ball Park, open some packs! It's fun for all ages.

A more local LCS (Part 2: Topps Archives)

Depending on the World Series schedule and duration, November may be one of the dark months without a single game of Major League Baseball. This just happens to be one of those months, as Game 7 of the World Series occurred on Wednesday, October 30th.

2018 Topps Archives #233 Trea Turner

When all was said and done, Trea Turner and his fellow Washington Nationals were World Champions. Turner was involved in a highly controversial interference call in Game 6. His speed carried him up the first base line at a rapid clip, knocking the glove off of first baseman Yuli Gurriel's hand before the bad throw arrived. Just two batters after that, Anthony Rendon, who led off the post a few days ago, crushed a home run into the Crawford Boxes past Houston's left field, giving an ever-so-slight shrug to the umpire as he crossed the plate.

One thing led to another, and Dave Martinez ended up being the only manager in World Series history to be ejected (during the 7th inning stretch, no less) yet still win the game.

This whole situation was partly caused by Trea Turner's speed, which is the subject of one of the cartoons on this card back. In 2018, Topps selected the 1981 set as one of the designs for that year's Archives, and it's a pretty faithful reproduction of the original, right down to the lack of an official Topps logo on the front. The only issue is that the Nats have never worn the curly W on a white-fronted hat like the ballcap has on this card, nor does it match the red cap Turner is wearing in this posed shot.

The card back is about right, other than squeezing the team name into the top banner in a practically microscopic font size. There are even two cartoons, just like the originals, and the second one mentions the time Turner hit for the cycle against the Rockies on April 25th, 2017. That was during a four game series the Nationals played in Denver, winning three. In fact, they scored in the double digits in all three of their wins, raining on the usual April parade the Rockies celebrate. Colorado had just swept the Giants and were in first place. By the time the Nationals left, they were 14-9 and a half-game back.

I distinctly remember the TV announcers referring to the Nationals and that series as a "buzzsaw".

2018 Topps Archives #69 Gary Carter

That and all the Topps Archives cards in this post came out of a discount box at Colorado Sports Cards. Part 1 showed the goodies that CSC stocked for themselves, and parts 2 and 3 will show cards from the consignment boxes they have set up in the center of the store. Upon checkout, the owner mentioned the particular boxes I thumbed through were set up by Adam, one of my favorite dealers at the local card shows.

1959 Topps was another design selected for 2018 Archives, which we've seen before, courtesy of Julie. I picked plenty more of these out of the discount box. Due to Washington's championship, I thought it fitting to feature a card from the previous iteration of their franchise, the 1994 World Series Champions Montreal Expos.

Specifically, I picked the late Gary Carter, pictured here as a smiling Expo. He was the first player to enter Cooperstown with the Expos on his plaque. He played with a few NL teams during his career, but he started off in Montreal, spent a decade there, and played his sunset season back north of the border in 1992.

2018 Topps Archives #143 Carson Fulmer

1977 Topps was the third set design used in 2018 Archives. I don't know the original set that well, and I haven't really seen it since those Antique Mall Mystery Packs from several years ago. It does contain a cartoon, and this one tells us that Lefty Grove (correctly depicted as a southpaw) once won 20 straight decisions at Fenway. Most likely, that was when he was a member of the Red Sox rather than during his earlier days with the Philadelphia Athletics. He was the AL MVP in 1931, and there are a whole lot of bold numbers on his Baseball Reference page.

I don't have anything in particular to say about Carson Fulmer, nor can I see any particular connection he has to Lefty Grove. Fulmer's not even a lefty. But this photograph caught my eye. At first glance, it looks like Fulmer is standing in front of a distant, snowy mountain. I have a pretty good idea what those look like, since I can see them by looking west from anywhere in Denver. A closer look reveals it to just be some wintry tree branches.

I was further confused by the orange dots in the lower right. I'm assuming that's an orange tree, so this might be a Spring Training shot. The thing is, the White Sox play their Spring Training games in Arizona, not Florida. We certainly associate citrus fruits more with Florida than Arizona. Heck, it's even in the name, "Grapefruit League". But further research shows that Arizona has quite a citrus industry all its own.

I'm just more used to seeing cacti on the Cactus League cards.

2016 Topps Archives #169 Jorge Soler

It's been a while since I've seen 2016 Archives. I bought a pack when it was still in stores, but it's been rather dry ever since. Compared to other Archives sets in this discount box alone, it was pretty scarce. I only found this one Jorge Soler card which used the 1979 design.

Finding so many Archives cards not long after opening those thrift store bags gives me a rare opportunity to examine these older sets back to back. And the 1979 set looks great here, right down to the retro Topps logo. I'm not nearly familiar enough with these sets to get picky about color combinations or font sizes, but I do notice some slight differences when newer sets are picked for Archives.

Jorge Soler, who is now on the Royals, somewhat quietly led the AL in home runs in 2019, with 48. I'm sure the highlights were there; he just seemed to fly under the radar this year. In any case, back then he was a Cub, preparing to break the longest curse in pro sports, and honoring Ernie Banks with a #14 memorial patch.

2012 Topps Archives #160 Prince Fielder

I didn't realize Soler was a home run leader, but at least I knew which team he was on. But for Prince Fielder, unless you're a Rangers fan, his departure from the big leagues seemed not to really register. I've had several people ask me what happened to him, and when I looked him up, I was surprised to see he hadn't played since 2016. He signed a massive free agent contract with the Tigers in 2012, was traded to the Rangers after the 2013 season, and "retired" in 2016 following a career-ending neck surgery.

The Rangers had to keep him on the 40-man roster through 2017 while they got an arrangement worked out with an insurer for the rest of his contract. That contract was supposed to run through 2020, and Prince was quite upset when it became clear he wouldn't be able to finish it.

But in 2012, when Topps Archives became what we know today, they featured the big slugger on the 1984 design, all ready to go in his new Tigers uniform. I'm sure that most fans, and especially the Tigers, expected Prince Fielder's career to at least keep pace with the annual releases of Topps Archives.

2012 Topps Archives #92 Jordan Walden

I found a few other 2012 Archives in these boxes, the most eye-catching of which was the black-bordered 1971 design. It's reprinted on occasion, and not just in Archives. Even the originals have been showing up here since the early days of this blog.

I'm sure this card will hold up better than real '71s, but this one is already showing some signs of wear on the right edge. Black borders are as fragile as they are beautiful.

Topps probably expected Jordan Walden to be more of a star during his career than he ended up being. The 2011 season, which this card focuses on, was by far his best. He earned 32 saves for the Angels, got some Rookie of the Year votes, and even an All-Star appearance. The Angels traded him away for Tommy Hanson, who ended up being one of many Angels players to pass away long before their time.

Walden last played for the St. Louis Cardinals in 2015 but never returned to his former glory, nor did he earn more than a handful saves here and there.

2015 Topps Archives #75 George Brett

As you can see, I found lots of assorted years of Topps Archives, but the main one was 2015 Archives. That year, Topps expanded the set to 330 cards (including SPs), while reducing the number of reprinted set designs from four to three. 1957 was one of those sets, and the original is one of several 1950s issues that are entirely absent from my collection. Those early years of Topps are pretty spotty. I thought I had the Elmer Valo card, but I guess I've just seen it across the Cardsphere so many times that it's embedded itself in my memory.

Consequently, I don't have much to say on the design, other than it's quite sparse. It was groundbreaking at the time, being the first set to use a color photograph, as well as giving us the standard 2.5" x 3.5" dimensions we know today.

George Brett has a bit of a goofy look in this photograph, posing with a completed swing. It's a strange shot regardless of his expression. I never hit lefty like Brett, but the way the bat is positioned relative to his body just looks a little off to me.

Another thing that irks me a bit is that Topps omitted five years of Brett's statistics, ending in 1988. He played for the Royals through 1993, and even earned a batting title in 1990.

2015 Topps Archives #214 Orlando Cepeda

There's nothing wrong with posed shots, and I realize that action shots were few and far between for a long time in the hobby. They were so rare as to be worthy of a subset in 1972. Maybe it's just because I grew up in the era of action shots, but when posed shots are visibly wrong relative to the background, it bugs me a little. It's not even that Orlando Cepeda isn't displaying the usual stretch we see from a first baseman. It's just that when we look where he's standing in Wrigley Field, he'd be taking this throw from Row 17 behind the dugout. He's not even playing catch along the foul line.

I like seeing Wrigley Field on cards, and this is probably my first of Cepeda. It just sort of breaks the illusion that this is what he looks like in the field when you realize that a real throw like this would hit him square in the back.

The same issue dings Cepeda's card as happened with George Brett's. The final few seasons of Cepeda's career are gone, stopping in 1970. He played through 1974, and this clearly carries across designs, since we're on 1983 Topps now.

At least his 1967 MVP season is on here, the same year he won his only World Series ring with the Cardinals.

2015 Topps Archives #219 Kurt Suzuki

And after Wednesday's game, Kurt Suzuki can now count himself in the rare company of players who have won a World Series ring. The entire World Series roster of the Nationals all put themselves on that list for the first time, by the way. Even journeyman Fernando Rodney hadn't found himself on a championship team before.

I bet Kurt Suzuki is even happier now than he looks in that inset photo in the lower left as a Twin. He even hit a home run off the great Justin Verlander in Game 2, his first postseason home run, and the first World Series home run hit by a Hawaiian-born player.

2015 Topps Archives '90 Topps #1 Draft Picks #90DPIMS Max Scherzer

In what must be an agonizing statistic for Detroit Tigers fans, following the 2019 World Series, every member of the 2014 Tigers rotation has now won a World Series. Just not with the Tigers. Verlander did in 2017, David Price and Rick Porcello did last year, and Aníbal Sánchez and Max Scherzer got their rings last week.

Max Scherzer was a first-round draft pick in 2006, and Topps put him in a 1990-themed insert set with a little #1 Draft Pick logo up in the corner, just like Frank Thomas's rookie card. First-round picks aren't always successful, but sometimes they're unbelievably dominant. There were a few insert sets designed in the 1990 Topps style, and joining the heterochromatic Scherzer in that set are Buster Posey, Kolten Wong, Jay Bruce, and Mike Trout.

2015 Topps Archives '90 Topps All Star Rookies #90ASIMT Michael Taylor

Topps reused the 1990 design again in a slightly different insert set, this time replacing the #1 Draft Pick logo with the Topps Rookie Cup. There are far fewer big names in this set, so I was able to pull quite a few out of the discount box. Michael A. Taylor, who includes his middle initial that was omitted from this card, is the center fielder who made a great diving grab to help his team advance past the NLDS round.

Yes, I know this is a Nationals-heavy post. They just won the World Series!

2015 Topps Archives #151 David Wright

Like Prince Fielder, David Wright is another player whose career was cut short by health problems. 2015, the year of this card, marked the only time Wright made it to the World Series, and they lost in five games to the Kansas City Royals. Interestingly, half the World Series this decade went the full seven games.

1976 Topps is the third and final design used in the main set of 2015 Topps Archives, and I'd put this one down as my favorite of the three. That Sparky Lyle card already buttered me up a bit, and the positional variation of the design element in the lower left only gets better with age.

2015 Topps Archives #104 Kolten Wong

Speaking of Kolten Wong, he just won his first career Gold Glove. DJ LeMahieu shifting over to the American League opened that door a bit, but Wong earned every bit of it. You can tell from the little player icon in the lower left. Second basemen in this set got this awesome depiction of turning a double play. The shortstop icon is nearly as great, which shows a stolen base attempt.

By the way, Wong played in the 2013 World Series, quite an experience for a rookie with little more than a late-season call-up under his belt. He went 1-for-1, but since it was not a home run, he left the door open for Kurt Suzuki to get that Hawaiian-born player record.

2015 Topps Archives #134 Duke Snider

Archives always has a great mix of current players and retired legends. I don't think Topps expected David Wright to switch groups so suddenly, but either way, Duke Snider is a great player to share the 1976 design with. The outfielder icon in 1976 might not be as exciting as some of the others, but we get a Brooklyn Dodgers cap in the photo to make up for it.

Snider has the same sort of odd-looking posed lefty swing as George Brett. Maybe it's that a real swing doesn't normally end up that high behind your head. And unlike Brett, there's no indication of twisting the torso. I can't quite put my finger on it. It almost reminds me of that pantomime grand slam that Michael Morse "hit", one of the great moments in pre-Championship Nationals history.

2015 Topps Archives #172 Corey Dickerson

It's been a few posts since I showed an actual Rockies card. That's uncharacteristic of me, I know. Many of the recent sets I've shown predated the Rockies, and a set focusing on retired stars doesn't really leave a whole lot of room for Rockies greats. In fact, the team is still waiting to send a delegate to Cooperstown. Vinny Castilla appeared in this set as a short print, but that's a whole different story.

Corey Dickerson isn't even a Rockie anymore anyway, but rest assured, there are plenty of Rockies cards yet to come in future posts. But not in part 3. That will be shorter than this marathon post, and will have the non-Archives goodies I pulled from this great discount box.

The Trading Post #51: Cards My Mother Didn't Throw Out

Another Christmas has come and gone, and I hope everyone's was wonderful. With both my parents out of town, the usual Christmas traditions didn't take place as they normally do, but that left plenty of time to forge a few new ones.

Shortly before Christmas, reader Jared reached out to me inquiring about a trade, seeing if I had some Diamondbacks to swap. Daniel at It's Like Having My Own Card Shop has ended up with most of what I had available over the past year or so, but I was able to find enough in the extras box to fill a 9-pocket page for a PWE.

Jared has been so impressed with our little community that he decided to start up his own blog, Cards My Mother Didn't Throw Out. I have the honor of being the subject of his inaugural post, which went up today! Go check his blog out and welcome him to the Cardsphere! If anyone out there has Diamondbacks to trade, Jared's on the lookout, specifically for their purple and teal uniforms, and of course that 2001 World Series team.

Jared and I happen to be located in the same state, so swapping PWEs had a pretty quick turnaround, and he put together a pretty nice one to kick off his blogging career.

1998 Stadium Club #209 Neifi Perez

The Raised Baseball set (aka 1998 Stadium Club) makes another appearance on this blog, with a fantastic action shot of Rockies infielder Neifi Perez diving back to first to avoid a pickoff. That's quite the cloud of dust, so he must have been taking a huge lead here. That is a road jersey, though, and the color of the turf in the background looks artificial to me. So maybe the infield dirt just doesn't really get watered in those stadiums. Probably why it always seemed to pile up at the base of the pitcher's mound and along the basepaths.

1995 Leaf #296 Bruce Ruffin

That's definitely natural grass on Ruffin's card, in fact the grass at Mile High Stadium. You can spot a couple orange seats behind the outfield wall, and this 1995 Leaf card uses a shot from the 1994 season, the Rockies' second and last at Mile High before they moved to Coors Field.

Leaf is another one of my favorite sets from 1995. Both that giant team name and the headshot on the left have a rainbow foil finish, along with fairly readable gold script lettering for the name. The stats on the back are a little sparse (to say nothing of the strike shortened season), but there are no fewer than four photographs of the player on this card, including the back.

1995 Leaf #286 Bruce Ruffin (Reverse)

It also has one of the larger card numbers that I can recall, made even bigger by the huge silver seal surrounding it. Leaf used the baseball stadium shape prolifically in this design, as it made up the Leaf logo, the headshot frame, and the central design focus of the card back, with the player's vital statistics cleverly forming the foul lines.

2002 Fleer Ultra #153 Alex Ochoa

Fleer was still a going concern in 2002, and they were still going with the borderless look that pretty much everyone but Topps had adopted on all but the retro sets.

Alex Ochoa, only a Rockie for about half a season, is riding the cushioned pine in a very blue dugout. That is definitely not Coors Field; as they use a dark green. I'm thinking this might be Shea Stadium. That, or the Rockies were playing an exhibition game against the Smurfs.

2008 Stadium Club #56 Garrett Atkins

I've seen this card before, but can't remember whether I posted about it. Horizontal cards usually contain an interesting photograph, and this one is no different. You can just see the ball coming into the frame in the lower right, and the photographer used a fast enough shutter speed to even freeze the rapidly spinning laces. This one looks like it's about knee-high, but you know how balls like that can dive out of the strike zone. Hopefully Atkins laid off this one.

I am not terribly familiar with 2008 Stadium Club. It's a far cry from the awesomeness they've put out the last two years running. But I feel like Topps got the color scheme wrong here. Not the first time I've seen that in a color-coded set, but powder blue has never been a Rockies color. This set has appeared on Infield Fly Rule twice before, and both of those had a proper purple and gray.

Somehow it seems that Atkins got the Tampa Bay Rays treatment, at least on the front. The card back does have the correct color scheme.

2008 Stadium Club First Day Issue Unnumbered #129a Elliot Johnson (RC)

See what I mean?

That's a fantastic action shot, by the way. I hardly know a thing about Elliot Johnson, and even less about whoever he's smacking into at the plate, but I guess 2008 Stadium Club wasn't all that bad. Like Panini Prizm, it's another generally disliked set that doesn't really bother me.

2015 Bowman Chrome Prospects Blue Wave Refractors #BCP187 Kyle Freeland

As is usual for recent Bowman sets, or any Bowman Prospect set for that matter, I have never heard of Kyle Freeland. The Rockies drafted him in 2014, and he's been inching his way up the farm system for a couple seasons. Turns out he's a local kid, having attended Thomas Jefferson High School in southern Denver. And he wasn't even born when the Rockies played their first few games. He was a first-round pick, so he's indicative of the Rockies' new focus on developing young pitchers. Hopefully he, Jon Gray, and the guys they traded Tulowitzki for pan out.

This is a delightfully shiny card, and surprisingly thick. The rainbow lines catch the light from a few different directions. and obviously it has a blue border, one of only two bordered cards Jared included in the whole envelope.

After checking Beckett, I don't think it's the Blue Refractor, as it lacks a serial number. Nor is it the Blue Twitter Refractor, because what even is that? That leaves the Blue Wave Refractor, an un-serialed parallel that matches the shape of the rainbow lines on the front.

2015 Topps Triple Threads Unity Relics #UJR-CDN Corey Dickerson /36 (MEM)

Jared said that he recently picked up a "sweet" Rockies card which he promised to send to me. That must be this one, which contains by far the largest relic I've ever seen. I do know they have those jumbo swatches, but I've never run across one. So this double-tall bat relic from 2015 Topps Triple Threads, numbered to just 36 copies (double chai for us Hanukkah celebrators), takes the crown for Largest Relic In My Collection. Pretty cool.

Thanks Jared, and welcome to the community! Hopefully you can strike up a trading relationship with a few more of us.

Fun Fact: baseballs float.

Things have not been pretty for the Colorado Rockies lately. At this moment, the Rangers are one game behind in the race for 2014's Worst MLB Record. They're dangerously close to losing 100 games for the first time in club history.

When the season has sunk to depths that low, you have to start looking at small miracles to distract yourself from the constant losses.

For example, my first-ever foul ball souvenir would definitely qualify, which I snagged last Friday on Star Wars night at Coors Field!


Incidentally, this ball came off the bat of Christian Yelich on a 2-1 count with runners on first and second and two outs in the top of the 7th.

2014 Topps #358 Christian Yelich

Thanks for the foul ball, Christian!

Though the Marlins trounced the Rockies 13-5, I finally have an indisputable piece of game-used memorabilia, which feels way more special than any relic card I've ever purchased. Except maybe that Willie Mays one.

2002 Topps Archives Reserve Uniform Relics #WM Willie Mays 62 (MEM)

Back to small miracles. Justin Morneau was able to break up Madison Bumgarner's bid at a perfect game in the 8th inning on Tuesday, which was pretty close to being the first no-hitter/perfect game I watched on live TV. It saved the Rockies from being on the business end of a second no-hitter this year, but I would have been just as happy witnessing history.

The following night, Rockies outfielder Corey Dickerson set a milestone with the 100th "Splash Hit" home run in AT&T Park history. It was a beauty, made all the more impressive by the skill with which a fan literally fished it out of the water.

2013 Bowman Draft #35 Corey Dickerson RC

Even after all those years of 'roid-monster Barry Bonds launching home runs into San Francisco's McCovey Cove, it ends up being a Rockie with the distinction of the century mark.

The 2014 Rockies gave us a great April and May, followed by a disastrous summer, concluding with spoiling the fun for the San Francisco Giants. Another textbook Rockies season.