What a Difference a Year Makes

I don't really remember when I bought it. It was most likely shortly before the seismic shift we all experienced in early 2020. But whenever it was, I've had a single value pack of 2020 Topps on my card table for quite some time. I bought the factory set last year, as I always do, and a few have trickled in via trade, so sorting through one pack was pretty low down the priorities list compared to everything else that's gone on since then.

2020 Topps #99 Dan Vogelbach

All this time, Dan Vogelbach's smiling face has been looking up at me, and by now this card has etched itself into my memory. I know no bigger fan of his than Tom at Waiting 'til Next Year, and I've seen quite a few variations of this card pop up in my blog feed thanks to him. The stocky player has been on my radar a lot the past few weeks, as he's now on the Milwaukee Brewers. The Rockies played the Brew Crew seven times since mid-June, losing five, which is partly the reason why Milwaukee was on an 11-game winning streak heading into Sunday.

Sadly, Vogelbach experienced a hamstring injury while playing in Arizona, and is out for six weeks. Lucky for him, he managed to score on the play anyway, thanks to some lackadaisical defense on the part of the last-place Diamondbacks.

2020 Topps #212 Mike Fiers

Mike Fiers is still with Oakland, but he's suffering from an elbow injury and has only made two starts this year. His facial hair is a lot more normal in this photo compared to what he's tried to pull off in the past. He's quite well-known for blowing the whistle on the Astros cheating scandal, but he's also thrown two no-hitters in his career, which this card back tells us. One of those came against the Dodgers, the other against the Reds. 

One of those teams has been no-hit so far in 2020. Surprisingly, it's not the Reds. 

The card back concludes by telling us that Fiers is one of only 35 pitchers with multiple no-nos, certainly an elite club. The list of those with three or more is far more exclusive, as mentioned by Justin Verlander when he threw his third in 2019. Nolan Ryan leads with a whopping seven, likely an unbreakable record, even with the way they've been piling up lately.

2020 Topps #262 Anthony Santander

I haven't followed Orioles right fielder Anthony Santander much during his career, and this card doesn't tell us anything beyond his Major and Minor League stats. Still, this card definitely caught my eye thanks to Santander's special alternate jersey which includes the dazzling design of the Maryland state flag on the sleeves and shoulders. 

Camouflaged on his right sleeve is the number 20, a memorial patch the Orioles wore in 2019 for Frank Robinson. Robinson played for the Orioles from 1966-1971, winning an MVP award and two World Series rings. He became the first Black manager in MLB history as a player/manager for Cleveland in 1975. You might find him in your 1991 Topps set and other overproduction-era boxes back when Topps still gave us manager cards.

2020 Topps #86 Hyun-Jin Ryu LL

We lost a lot of baseball legends in 2020, but sadly plenty more passed away in 2019, too. Don Newcombe died in February 2019, and the Dodgers honored "Newk" with a #36 patch, which you can see on Hyun-Jin Ryu's right sleeve.

As noted by the yellow banner on the card, this is actually a League Leader card. You have to flip the card over to find out which stat is being profiled here, and it happens to be ERA. Ryu's 2.32 edged out Jacob deGrom's 2.43, although deGrom is practically a lock to win that title this year. deGrom has been slipping a bit, but it's still below 1.00. And in any case, Ryu is playing for Toronto now. He switched leagues, but technically hasn't switched countries yet, as the Blue Jays are still playing in Buffalo for the time being.

And Don Newcombe still isn't in the Hall of Fame.

2020 Topps #121 DJ LeMahieu

Counting those Blue Jays, it's been over sixty years since there were three MLB teams playing their home games in the state of New York, and almost a century since the Yankees finished a season as the worst of three. It's a technicality, I'll grant that, but it just goes to show what a dominant franchise The Bronx has had for longer than anyone can remember.

Generally speaking, the Yankees don't do memorial patches the way most other teams do. There are occasional patches, often guided by whether a Yankee has had their number retired, but they're more known for wearing black armbands instead, as we can see on DJ LeMahieu's left sleeve. Gio Urshela has another example of this. This particular one was for longtime Yankees All-Star and pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre.

After getting good looks at both the 2020 and 2021 Topps sets, I'm not sure I have a clear favorite. Both have lots of angles and parallelograms, but I do appreciate how much more readable the 2020 set was. I'm still finding myself squinting at 2021 Physical Base cards in Topps Bunt, and my eyes aren't getting better with age, let me tell you.

Nor is my back, but at least that's better than it was a couple posts ago.

2020 Topps #613 Isiah Kiner-Falefa

Sharp-eyed collectors will notice that this Rangers card of Isiah Kiner-Falefa is actually from Series 2. I didn't pull any Rangers in this pack, nor did I find any Rockies. The latter was because of a little bad luck, but the former was because I didn't manage to locate the one single Rangers card Topps added to Series 1. At the time. the card world was abuzz with speculation about why the Rangers were basically omitted, and I've since read that Topps was waiting to add the Inaugural Season logo for the team's new home at Globe Life Field. Nick Solak, the lone Rangers representative in Series 1, didn't have that logo on his card, but it's visible here in the lower right.

I guess it ended up being unintentionally accurate, since the ballpark wasn't able to officially open until late July 2020.

Kiner-Falefa has transitioned away from catching in favor of the left side of the infield, but catchers in full gear always make for a great card, and Topps made excellent use of the horizontal orientation here.

2020 Topps '85 Topps #85-18 Roger Clemens

You can always count on an insert or two even in the smallest of packs, and this pack came through with a couple pitchers. First up is another non-Hall of Famer, Roger Clemens, pictured with his original Red Sox team. Topps continued their Anniversary theme into 2020 by dusting off the 1985 design. We've seen this for quite a few years now, as we saw similar sets using the 1987, 1983, and 1984 designs.

Even though this young-looking Clemens is on the 1985 design, complete with red stirrups, I believe the photo itself is from 1990. The Red Sox have their own history of wearing black armbands, and I believe this one is what they wore in 1990 following Tony Conigliaro's death. I highly doubt I'd have been able to place this photo without that feature.

Topps reproduced the period-correct lime green background color on the card back, and considered Clemens's total career record when telling us about his massive counts of strikeouts and wins. Despite that, somehow they couldn't squeeze his full annual stats onto the back, cutting off five seasons prior to 1989. Not even his MVP year of 1986 is listed.

2020 Topps Turkey Red '20 #TR-33 Matthew Boyd

My other insert from this pack came from the again-resurrected Turkey Red set. It doesn't have the special texture it did back in 2005 and 2006, but it should still be familiar to collectors who have been around Topps brands for a while. I saw a Rockie arrive last year from Chavez Ravining, but this pack made sure I had both leagues covered. 

I don't know much about Matthew Boyd. After a quick glance at his Baseball Reference page, it appears that he led the AL in home runs allowed in both 2019 and 2020, but he seems to have settled down a bit this year. What I can tell you is that the knee sock style looks perfect on a retro design like Turkey Red.

2020 Topps Turkey Red '20 #TR-29 Nolan Arenado

I didn't pull this final card from a pack. Rather, it came to me from Brian at Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary. It was actually part of a prior trade, but I felt that this particular insert would fit better in this post. These must have been somewhat plentiful, as it's the second Turkey Red I've seen sent by a fellow blogger.

Nolan Arenado, noted as all Turkey Red subjects are as a "Prominent Base Ball Player", has his usual accolades and superstardom documented on the card back. "Defensive brilliance", "astonishing range", "annual fielding awards", and so on. This is not news. What's news since this card was printed is that now he's doing it for St. Louis.

It was a big weekend for him. The Cardinals were in town, marking Nolan's first return to Denver since his offseason trade. Denver-area fans gave him a warm standing ovation before his first at-bat, and it was an emotional moment for all. I didn't attend any of the games this weekend, but it looked a lot like Troy Tulowitzki's first return here in 2016.

It just so happens that Arenado was up to bat in the 8th inning as I wrote this. He grounded out to Ryan McMahon at third who made a play that looked a lot like many plays Nolan made himself at the hot corner.

Having your favorite player switch teams is never a fun experience. It's one of many ways in which a sense of stability is not something I particularly expect any longer. And the world has changed in far more profound ways than that since these cards were printed. But in another sense, things are as predictable as ever. This post's title is intentionally ambiguous, but after all is said and done, Nolan Arenado is still the starting third baseman for the National League in the upcoming All-Star Game here in Denver, and he's still making great plays out there (again, as I write this).

I'll let you know how it goes.

The Start of a Strange Season (Part 1: Base)

Max Scherzer looks like he's seen some stuff.

2021 Topps Opening Day #182 Max Scherzer

As have we all the past year or so.

It's been a while since I've picked up the proverbial pen to write about baseball cards. Things have gotten, uh, a bit out of hand lately. A few days after my previous post, Google decided that continuing to support email subscriptions in Feedburner was just too much trouble for a multi-trillion dollar company to bother with, so that led to an hours-long project of migrating all five (5) of my email subscribers onto a new platform.

That led me down a lengthy path of other computer projects, such as transitioning more of my digital life off of the Google platform. I know all too well who owns Blogspot and I won't be the least bit surprised if I need to do a sudden migration to Wordpress one of these days. That was followed by reorganizing my bookmarks, cleaning up old photos, tagging the last year or so of my Photoshop library, and so on. Pair all that with gingerly venturing back out into the world.

And then the back pain got bad. But that's a different story.

Suffice to say, it would be difficult to find time to write about cards even if it were easy to acquire them. Which, as you know, they no longer are, and that was before Target pulled the plug on the whole thing. So I ended up ordering my annual Topps Opening Day blaster from an eBay user. I paid the same price as Dave & Adam's is currently charging, and got free shipping. So it goes, I guess.

All that to explain why Max Scherzer's expression is just so appropriate, even if the photo isn't quite sharp enough to spot his heterochromia. 

2021 Topps Opening Day #189 Kyle Lewis

For the aforementioned reasons, I haven't bought a pack of this year's Topps base as I usually do by now. This is my first in-person look at the new design, and it's not my favorite. I wholeheartedly agree with the readability issues collectors have pointed out with the player's name. As a collector who grew up in the '90s, that's not entirely unfamiliar. Lots of the early gold foil sets among the Studio and Flair-type brands suffered from this, but it was usually easy enough to just flip the card over and see it on the back in a much more readable typeface.

That is not the case here. It's the same typeface on the back, just a tiny bit larger.

And in the Topps Bunt app, where the actual size on screen can be smaller than a postage stamp? The whole readability situation is quite a bit worse. I do like the hexagons, but they take such a back seat to the many other design elements, and I didn't notice them until leafing through the stack quite a few times.

The familiar Topps Rookie Cup gets a spot on Kyle Lewis's card, and deservedly so for the 2020 AL Rookie of the Year. This is a good photo selection, as we can see Lewis about to rob a home run.

2021 Topps Opening Day #205 Trent Grisham

It's been a strange season so far. We've seen a no-hitter basically once a week. We've seen unexpected injuries, a league-wide average lower than it's been in decades (with the Mariners scraping the bottom of the sub-.200 barrel), and young guys dragging MLB kicking and screaming into a new age, all while Tony La Russa puts more stock in the old unwritten rules than the new actual written ones.

Also, these guys all seem to be wearing these little sliding mittens while they run the bases, meant to shield their hands from hard tags and jammed fingers and accidental spikes. I'm pretty sure that's what's sticking out of Trent Grisham's back pocket as he lays out to make this outfield catch, about to land on the Future Stars banner that is larger on the card than his actual name.

2021 Topps Opening Day #102 Nick Solak

Topps says Nick Solak is a Future Star too, but what I really noticed on this and a lot of other cards in this blaster was the sheer volume of commemorative and memorial patches. A lot of teams had something special (or somber) on tap for 2020, such as the inaugural season of the new Texas Rangers park, Globe Life Field. It's where the Rockies began their shortened 2020 season, and where the whole thing wrapped up as a neutral site for the 2020 World Series. The patch on Solak's right arm shows the new stadium and its retractable roof.

2021 Topps Opening Day #104 José Berrios

Powder Blue uniforms are continuing their comeback, as we see José Berríos sporting the Twins alternate jersey in front of a largely empty stadium. In general, Topps went to great lengths to avoid showing empty seats with their photo selection this year, but a few cards do show the undeniable strangeness of the 2020 season. 

You have to look a little more closely to spot the patch on this one, as it's actually on the hat, not the jersey. It was the 60th Anniversary of the Minnesota Twins, marking a surprisingly long time since the first Washington Senators franchise migrated northward in 1960.

2021 Topps Opening Day #210 Chadwick Tromp (RC)

This one's a bit harder to spot, but on Chadwick Tromp's right sleeve, part of the "20 at 24" patch is visible, which marks the two decades the San Francisco Giants have spent at Oracle Park. 24 has nothing to do with Oracle or the many telecom companies that once held the stadium's naming rights, but rather it's an homage to Willie Mays. The Say Hey Kid wore #24 during his career, and the street address of Oracle Park was set to 24 Willie Mays Plaza in San Francisco.

2021 Topps Opening Day #22 Keston Hiura

Other anniversaries around the league included the 50th Anniversary of the Milwaukee Brewers, as shown on Keston Hiura's right sleeve. They began play in 1970, and yes, this calculation does omit the one year the franchise spent as the Seattle Pilots.

2021 Topps Opening Day #152 Dylan Carlson (RC)

2020 also represented the centennial of the Negro Leagues, or at least the centennial of when they reached a certain level of organization and talent with the formation of the Negro National League in 1920. Regrettably, segregation in organized baseball goes back basically as far as the game itself, to the mid-1800s, so saying 1920 really doesn't paint the full picture. In any case, Dylan Carlson of the Cardinals wore a special patch when he took the field one day last year.

2021 Topps Opening Day #61 Carter Kieboom

That patch was actually worn league-wide on August 16th, 2020, and you can see the same patch in the same spot on Carter Kieboom's uniform, placing him in Baltimore and Carlson on the South Side of Chicago. Kieboom being on base allows us to pinpoint this to the 5th inning that day. You can also get a better look at one of those sliding mittens on Kieboom's left hand.

2020 Topps Opening Day #118 Yoan Moncada

The patches continue with this period-correct throwback uniform worn by the White Sox. That patch on Yoan Moncada's left sleeve isn't very recognizable, but under magnification, it's the 1983 All Star Game patch, which the White Sox hosted that year. In fact, that's the same All-Star Game that we all wrote about back on April Fool's Day. I love the attention to detail necessary to make these throwbacks that perfect.

2021 Topps Opening Day #57 Santiago Espinal (RC)

Sadly, it wasn't all celebration and anniversaries last year. Quite a few of these patches were of the memorial variety, honoring those many baseball personalities who are no longer with us. Rookie Santiago Espinal has a black 1 on his sleeve, the number worn by Blue Jays All-Star Tony Fernández, who passed away at just 57. None of us are getting any younger, but it's especially tragic when a guy who was in all the overproduction sets dies, a guy whose contemporaries are still in managerial roles throughout baseball.

2021 Topps Opening Day #159 Dane Dunning (RC)

Dane Dunning of the White Sox, who's wearing a more contemporary Sox uniform, has a little diamond "Farmio" patch on his right sleeve, clearly visible in his follow-through motion. That's the nickname of Ed Farmer, who spent some time as a closer in Chicago, but was much better known as part of their broadcast team, spending almost thirty years behind the microphone.

2021 Topps Opening Day #155 DJ LeMahieu

These memorials cover off-the-field losses, too. DJ LeMahieu has an "HGS" included with his iconic pinstripes. That's for Hank Steinbrenner, part owner of the Yankees. In the Bronx, they usually wear a black armband for this sort of thing, but that honor may just be reserved for players.

2021 Topps Opening Day #142 Salvador Pérez

With the amount of loss we suffered last year, I'm sure there are more black patches to be discovered in this checklist, but the last one I found is the DG patch, worn by one of my favorite catchers, Salvador Pérez of the Kansas City Royals. Those are the initials of David Glass, the former Wal-Mart executive who owned the Royals and ran the team in much the same way as the stores. Lightning did strike in 2015 with a World Series championship, but winning seasons were few and far between during his ownership tenure.

In any case, Salvador Pérez in full catcher's gear makes for a great baseball card.

2021 Topps Opening Day #101 Andrew Benintendi

As is common with Topps cards released early in the year, players are often pictured with their previous year's team. Andrew Benintendi is now sharing the field with Salvador Pérez in Kansas City. Jackie Bradley, Jr., the cameo player in the dugout, is now on the Brewers for their 51st year. Their days of playing in an empty Fenway Park appear to be over.

2021 Topps Opening Day #69 Trevor Bauer

Bauer is on a new team, up to his usual antics as a Dodger.

2021 Topps Opening Day #5 Yu Darvish

Darvish is on a new team, and if he doesn't throw a no-hitter as a Padre this year, maybe it just won't happen for him.

2021 Topps Opening Day #42 Charlie Blackmon

Blackmon is still a Rockie, but that foreground cameo player, uh, isn't anymore. Nor is the GM that traded him away.

2021 Topps Opening Day #89 Albert Pujols

And finally, not that Topps had any way of knowing this in advance, Albert Pujols was unceremoniously DFA'd by the Angels in the final year of his contract, and is now playing for the injury-riddled Dodgers. He now has a home run in Dodger blue, inching ever closer to the 700 mark which he's unlikely to reach.

Pujols has seen more Opening Days than any other active player, whose career goes all the way back to his Rookie of the Year-worthy 2001 season, the same year that Cal Ripken, Jr. retired. I saw him play as a Cardinal, and though his performance has dropped off precipitously in recent years, he's one of the greatest players ever, and certainly one of the greatest to play in my lifetime.

I don't dare to guess what else this year has in store, but I'm fairly confident we'll see another no-hitter. Saying "I hope my back heals before the next no-hitter" doesn't sound quite as hopeless in 2021 as it would in almost any other season.

The Trading Post #155: Topps Cards That Never Were (Part 2: Newer Rockies)

Picking up right where we left off in Part 1, we're looking at some of the best recent Rockies cards from a trade I did with Jeremy at Topps Cards That Never Were. Here's a link to his end of the trade, in case you're curious. There are two more postseason games happening tonight, a backdrop I quite enjoy when cranking out a couple thousand words about baseball cards. Although, NLCS Game 3 was over pretty much before it began.

2014 Topps Gold #20 Charlie Blackmon /2014

Transitioning from Terry Shumpert's 2001 Topps Gold card in Part 1, here's what Topps Gold looked like in 2014. The gold border is still there, but the foil is just the usual silver we saw on 2014 base cards. They didn't have this in 2001, either, but I miss the "ToppsGold" logo that we saw very early in this parallel's life, back in, say, 1994.

Additionally, you'll obviously notice this is what Charlie Blackmon looks like without facial hair. We're not used to seeing him like this at all. I see his 2011 Topps Update Rookie Card quite frequently, and that throws people for a loop, too. We just don't really recognize him without that scraggly beard.

Another change from 2001 Topps Gold is the color of the serial number on the back. Topps still sets the print run equal to the calendar year, meaning these become ever-so-slightly more common with each passing year, but the gold foil serial number is no more, as you can see below. It's just a plain black.

2014 Topps Gold #20 Charlie Blackmon /2014 (Reverse)

Note that Blackmon had a scorching-hot end to his 2013 season, earning NL Player of the Week honors as 2013 neared its end, hitting an even .500 that week.

2018 Donruss Holo Green #235 Charlie Blackmon RETRO

That's a bit more like the Charlie Blackmon we've come to know and love. I'm not sure which road park he's in here, but Panini selected a good photo for an unlicensed set. Blackmon's forearm obscures where "COLORADO" would be lettered across his uniform, making the job of the photo editor that much easier.

This is the second consecutive post in which we've seen the 1984 Donruss design, and it is one of their better ones. The Rockies weren't a team back in '84, but this design accepts new teams quite well, something that can't always be said for '80s sets. "Diamondbacks" is particularly hard to squeeze in to some designs. But licensed or not, Rockies and Colorado fit in these yellow swoops just fine.

Obviously, this one has a green border, my favorite special color to find on a card. Panini goes totally overboard with the number of parallels, so it's a bit of a guessing game, but I'm confident in identifying this one as the Holo Green version. It's a little hard to tell, because only the border has any sort of shininess to it. The card itself is glossy, but it's really just the edges that give you the rainbow look.

2018 Topps Rainbow Foil #559 Ian Desmond

2018 Topps, on the other hand, did this whole card up in rainbow foil, edge to edge. Topps kept this reasonably simple and just called this parallel "Rainbow Foil". It's a pretty card, and will fit nicely right next to a similar David Dahl card that Night Owl sent my way.

Another benefit of this shiny card is that I can disingenuously say that I have the 2018 Topps Ian Desmond Rainbow, even though almost all the other parallels are absent from my collection.

But I wouldn't do that.

I'm not sure how 2021 Topps sets will treat players who opted out of the 2020 season. They'll have to dig into the photo archives deeper than usual, as I imagine they would do anyway. I can't imagine that empty stands would look great on a card, and there were far fewer photographers than usual at 2020 games. Ian Desmond missed it all, as he decided to opt out. I certainly would have done the same.

2016 Topps Chrome Prism Refractors #37 DJ LeMahieu

DJ LeMahieu decided to play, and earned himself another batting title for his efforts. He hit .364 for the Yankees, becoming the first modern player to win a batting title in both leagues. It's a shame the Rockies didn't keep him. They didn't even make him an offer.

That means that cards like this of him facing an NL West team are unlikely to surface again. A version of this card has appeared here before, thanks again to Night Owl, but this time it has one of the many refractor patterns instead of snowflakes. I believe this is the Prism Refractor, but nowhere on the back does it say so.

Seriously, is there anything more frustrating about Topps Chrome other than Topps seemingly using a coin flip each year to decide whether to label a refractor?

Well, the curl, I guess. This one isn't bad.

What is on the card back is a paragraph telling us that the 6'4" LeMahieu is the tallest everyday second baseman to play the position since George "High Pockets" Kelly back in 1925. That's of course an all-time great baseball nickname, and it rang a bell this year. I remember hearing his name on the Rockies broadcast at some point this season, but I couldn't quite recall why. A Twitter search led me to the Giants' blowout of the Rockies on September 1st, in which Alex Dickerson hit three home runs and had five total hits. The only other Giant to do that was High Pockets himself, way back in 1923, one of many excellent performances on his way to a Hall of Fame career.

2017 Topps Gold #81 DJ LeMahieu LL /2017

One year after that card, DJ got a league leader card for that 2016 batting title I mentioned earlier. He beat Daniel Murphy by just a point, hitting .348. A little lower than .364, yes, but keep in mind that 2016 was a full season. 

This Series 1 card is another example of a Topps Gold card, and without a border, it's pretty difficult for Topps to get that message across. There are a few gold-colored shapes in the background, and the bottom banners have just a little bit of shiny foil. The card back does have a serial number, but it's black, just like Blackmon's Gold card that led this post off. 

2017 Topps Update #US27b Nolan Arenado SP

This is a more accurate example of 2017 Topps base cards. The banners aren't shiny at all, and the only foil to be found is the silver Topps logo. The banner appears on these horizontal cards at a shallower angle, intruding on the photo a little less. Thanks to that, we get to see the curly W on Bryce Harper's left sleeve, part of a snapshot of NL teammates Harper and Nolan Arenado at the 2017 All-Star Game.

Jeremy helpfully set this one apart, because it happens to be a short-printed variation. I appreciate that, because I don't know these sets nearly well enough to spot the gimmick cards at a glance. 

There are quite a few highlights from Nolan's career on the card back, such as his walk-off home run on June 18th, 2017, which completed the cycle. That was on Father's Day, and is one of the most frequent recent highlights the Rockies use in TV spots. He had 50 extra base-hits in the first half of 2017, but the stat that really caught my eye is that he didn't make an error until June 1st. He's that good in the field, and that's why he keeps winning the Platinum Glove.

2012 Topps Career Day #CD-24 Troy Tulowitzki

Troy Tulowitzki had games like that, too. That's the subject of this 2012 Topps insert set called Career Day. It's 25 cards in total, and Tulo shares the checklist with some truly legendary Hall of Famers. We can see on the front that he had an excellent game on August 10th, 2009, and flipping the card over gives us his complete stats that day. He went 5-for-5 and hit for the cycle, defeating the Chicago Cubs. At the time, that was the fifth cycle in Rockies history.

Get used to seeing inserts like these, because they're going to make up all of Part 4 (and Part 5 depending on how deep the gold mine goes).

2011 Topps Chrome Vintage Chrome #VC33 Troy Tulowitzki

Here's another Tulowitzki insert card, known as Vintage Chrome. It's a 50-card set modeled after the debut 1996 Topps Chrome set. This isn't a perfect replica of the design, as the original had an array of tiny diamonds across the whole card. This is a lot more like a mirror finish, and has the least amount of curl I can ever remember on a Chrome card.

I'm almost certain that this is from the same game as the photo from Tulo's 2011 Topps base card (and by extension, Opening Day). The unknown Royal isn't present in this photo, but the same sign is behind Tulowitzki on the outfield wall, placing him in Kaufman Stadium. I believe that's an ad for Buck Night, a promo the Royals run where all sorts of food and goodies within the ballpark are priced at just $1.

The card back is also an accurate reproduction of 1996 Topps, and the paragraph mentions Tulowitzki's hot September 2010, in which he had 15 homers and 40 RBIs, putting him on par with Babe Ruth in his dominant 1927 season. I found that surprising. We all know that Babe Ruth set his asterisk-free home run record of 60 back in 1927, but I didn't know that fully 17 of them came in the final month of that legendary season. 

If you think about the way we track a season's worth of home runs these days, Ruth wouldn't have been on pace to set his own record until the final week or so.

2019 Topps 150th Anniversary #346 Chris Iannetta

One last modern-looking card before we get to a few retro sets. It's the newest one of the day, just a year old from the 2019 set. I ran across this 150th Anniversary parallel set in one of my first posts of 2020, not knowing what a crazy year we'd be in for. Nevertheless, the 150th Anniversary logo was used in 2019 Topps Series 1 and 2, not just Update like I saw in that post. 

By this point in his career, the recently-retired Chris Iannetta had a long enough career to crowd out room for a paragraph on the back. Between that and a complete list of statistics, I'll take the statistics. 

I mentioned that I split the Older Rockies and Newer Rockies into two posts, separating them right around the time of their 2007 Pennant. Iannetta was there for that glorious season, but he returned to the Rockies for his final two Major League seasons. We'll see that happen once more by the time this post ends.

On to the retro sets.

2009 Topps 206 Bronze #247 Huston Street

Topps 206 is one of those classic brands that sporadically hits the market every eight or ten years. You can never really be sure when it's the "final" year of something, can you? It's back for 2020 as a Topps Online Exclusive, but I haven't been interested enough to purchase any. I'm sure I'll see it come my way at some point in the next decade.

This card allows me to have shown all three Topps 206 sets on the blog, excluding 2020. I feel like it may have been an insert set at some point, but maybe I'm thinking of Turkey Red. Retro sets aren't my area of expertise.

Huston Street's card here is a Bronze parallel, an extra thick version of an already thick set. It looks fine from the front, but appears to be a little miscut on the back. Nothing serious, though. I especially like Street's old-style glove he's posing with. He definitely never used that in a real game, but how awesome would that be?

2011 Topps Allen & Ginter Mini A&G Back #193 Jorge De La Rosa

It's common to find minis when we're dealing with retro sets, and one came along in the form of a 2011 Allen & Ginter back variation. When you flip it over, you get a portrait of the same guy I saw on a Bazooka back variation that Nick sent long ago.

2008 Topps Heritage #317 Matt Holliday / Hanley Ramirez

Concluding Part 2 is a two-player subset card from 2008 Topps Heritage. It's based on the 1959 set, the first-ever vintage set to enter my collection. Like Chris Iannetta, Matt Holliday had two stints with the Rockies, returning in 2018 for a final playoff run before retiring. This card is from his first go-round with Colorado, and it documents his near-MVP performance in 2007. He led the NL in a bunch of statistics, including doubles, RBI, hits, and that frequent Rockies accolade, batting average. Holliday hit .340 in 2007, and while he narrowly lost the MVP award to Jimmy Rollins, he was named MVP of the 2007 NLCS.

Holliday's card mate is Hanley Ramírez, then a member of the Florida Marlins. They were still called the Florida Marlins at this point, and hadn't changed to that crazy shade of green you see in the Arenado/Harper card above. Hanley didn't lead any categories in 2007, but according to the card, he narrowly missed matching Eric Davis and Barry Bonds in putting together a season with 30 home runs and 50 stolen bases. No one really talks about the 30/50 club, but that is an impressive showing of both power and speed, even if he only made it to 29/51.

If you like oddballs, don't miss Part 3!

The Trading Post #143: Padrographs: Abner to Zimmer (Part 2: Topps)

My previous post was on May 25th. Turns out that was a pretty big day in U.S. history. For obvious reasons, I haven't been focused on baseball or my collection, as my attention has turned to much more important matters. I've learned so much these past few weeks, and there's so much left to learn. While Infield Fly Rule will be keeping its baseball focus, feel free to head over to my personal Twitter account if you'd like to continue the conversation.

In the meantime, I owe a lot of fellow bloggers trade posts, and Nick just added himself to that list again with a PWE that arrived yesterday. I still have plenty of cards from Rod at Padrographs: Abner to Zimmer to cover, so here's Part Two, the non-Stadium Club Topps products that caught my eye.

2019 Topps Franchise Feats #FF-10 Todd Helton

Part one of this three-part series was something of a love letter to Coors Field, a place that is still sitting idle. But it has been home to the Rockies since 1995, and many of the events documented on this card took place, in part, at Coors. Franchise Feats is a 30-card insert set, one for each team. Topps picked some really big names for the well-known teams, players like Babe Ruth, Stan Musial, Hank Aaron. Todd Helton got the nod for the Rockies entry in this insert set, and he was responsible for one of the eleven batting titles mentioned on the front.

What other claims to fame do the Rockies have? Well, they've made the playoffs five times, always via the Wild Card, which is the nice way to say that they've never won their division, but boy did they come close in 2018. They're a high-scoring NL team, which everyone already knew. They have won eleven total batting titles, but what might be surprising is how many different players have contributed to that haul. Most of the big names are there: Galarraga, Holliday, Blackmon, González. But the only one to win multiple batting titles as a Rockie was Larry Walker.

Also, they're the first team in the Mountain Time Zone. One could put the Diamondbacks in that category, kind of, but during the long summer months, most of Daylight Saving Time-resistant Arizona is on Pacific Time.

Of course, there are more feats on the back, mainly the Rockies improbable Pennant-winning run in 2007, of which Todd Helton was a big part. Helton wrapped up the Part One post, and I had intended for this card to be a transition into the rest of the Topps cards, but that post would have been five thousand words.

2019 Topps Total #49 Chad Bettis

In 2019, Topps Total made a comeback. I skipped it entirely. It bore little resemblance to the first Topps Total sets of the early 2000s. Yes, it was a huge 900 cards like the early sets, but rather than being an affordable and easy-to-build set like what Topps Total originally was, it was an online-exclusive print-on-demand offering at $10 per 10-card pack, more or less putting the Topps Now distribution model into pack form.

They released it in nine waves, an explanation of which is half the write-up on the card back. Not much room is left for player statistics or anything like that. Worse, these waves all had varying print runs, so completing a set like this would be an exercise in frustration. And even if you did, you'd get to read the same blurb about how the set features "a wide range of superstars, rookies, rising youngsters, and veterans" 900 times over.

Bring back Score.

To be fair, Chad Bettis didn't get many cards in 2019, although he was in Topps Series 1. A lifetime Rockie, which the card back also tells us, this card from Wave 1 has a print run of 584, according to Beckett. Scarcity has its place, but not with Topps Total. The whole idea of Total is to ensure middle relievers and bench players get cards too, but when they get a print run that makes Heritage short prints look downright plentiful, it defeats the purpose.

2019 Topps Total #159 Chris Iannetta

And another thing. At a buck a card, spell the guy's name right. It's Iannetta with two Ns.

Topps certainly expected these to have an element of scarcity, and I'm basing that on the fact that they decided to put some microprint under the Topps logo on the back. It's way tinier than the Pinnacle Authenticator rectangle you used to see in the 1990s, and you need a powerful magnifying glass to read the repeating word "TOPPS" in all capital letters.

I'm guessing this photo is from Spring Training. Looking at the team name on the dugout railing, they're playing the Oakland Athletics. But unless Topps dug very deep in the photo archives back to Iannetta's first stint with the Rockies, circa 2009, this would have to be from a Cactus League game.

2019 Topps Pro Debut Ben's Biz #BBB-BE BenEverywhere

I at least had an awareness that Topps Total was a product again, but a five-card insert set from Topps Pro Debut? This is brand new to me, as is Ben Hill, a sportswriter who covers Minor League Baseball. That number one on the back of Hill's jersey represents the number of Minor League parks I've visited, but he's been to all 159, wrapping up with Suplizio Field, home of the Pioneer League Grand Junction Rockies. That's the subject of this card, along with the hashtag #BenEverywhere. You can even see the interlocking "GJ" on the baseball in his right hand, which matches the style of the "CR" Rockies logo you're more likely to be familiar with.

I can't say I've ever seen the GJ Rockies in action, and it's been a while before I've been that far west in Colorado. It and Fruita are the last large-ish cities in Western Colorado before you reach the vast expanse of the Utah desert. Definitely top off your tank before proceeding.

Sadly, things don't look good for the state of Minor League Baseball, and it's likely that over a quarter of those 159 parks and their associated teams and players will suffer from the proposed contraction. Even the Majors are having a hard time getting a plan together right now, and Minor Leaguers are criminally underpaid even in the best of times.

2018 Topps Archives #129 DJ LeMahieu

Finally arriving at something I'm more familiar with, here's 2018 Topps Archives. I did a fairly deep dive of some recent Archives sets a few months ago, but I didn't run across many Rockies then. Now-Yankee DJ LeMahieu, yet another NL batting champion (mentioned on the card back), appeared on the 1977 Topps design, unfortunately without much purple. I suppose I don't mind the red color used for the Rockies team name, but the white-on-yellow text in the pennant is nearly unreadable. I had to look pretty closely to see that it has him listed as a second baseman.

What grabbed my attention the most is that he's not holding his own bat in this posed shot. He wore #9 for the Rockies, clearly visible behind his thick facsimile signature. But he's holding Trevor Story's bat, #27.

Retro card backs mean cartoons, and this one shows us a comic-book version of Fred Lynn hitting the first Grand Slam in an All-Star Game. We're not given a date for that, but it happened in 1983.

By the way, DJ had to give up #9 when he joined the Yankees, as that number was worn by Roger Maris and retired in 1984.

2018 Topps Gallery #117 Trevor Story

In Topps Gallery from the same year, Trevor Story has his own bat back and is even holding it so the label on the knob isn't upside-down. I haven't seen many of the recent Topps Gallery sets, although the brand was resurrected back in 2017. The earlier sets simply used photographs, but later on Topps channeled their inner Diamond King and went with painted images. This artwork was created by artist Dan Bergren.

I know even less about Project 2020 than Topps Total, but apparently this idea of artwork cards has gone completely crazy. I've seen enough on Twitter to know that some of the artist proof versions of Project 2020 are going for truly insane prices. That Michael Jordan documentary coupled with COVID-19 have teamed up to have done some wild things to the card market. Am I supposed to dig up all my 1987 Topps and sell them on eBay now? And I saw that Nachos Grande flipped an ungraded Trout Rookie Card for almost a grand?

I don't know. I'm probably just going to enjoy this Topps Gallery. It has gold foil, you know.

2019 Topps Gallery #79 Kyle Freeland

Gallery looked even more elegant in 2019. That script lettering at the bottom looks great, perhaps like one of the first Flair sets, and the urge to display it in something other than a 9-pocket page isn't something that crosses my mind for most sets. The very fine texture lines on the border are one of the most beautiful and precise features I can remember seeing on a card.

Neither Kyle Freeland nor Trevor Story are veterans yet, which means that the "Gallery Notes" sections on both their card backs mention some Minor League accolades, as well as some key events so far in their young careers. One of Story's is of course his barrage of seven home runs in his first six Major League games, and Freeland's is his near-no hitter in 2017, one of several major Rockies events that I missed by a day, another being Troy Tulowitzki's unassisted triple play.

We have Carlos Cabaleiro to thank for this artwork.

2019 Topps Gypsy Queen #89 Ian Desmond

I was sent a green parallel of 2019 Gypsy Queen last year, but this and a few others in the stack represent my first normal base cards from the 2019 release. As I said then, it's a busy design. Maybe it's me, but I feel like recent GQ sets are just trying a little too hard. Just above the position in the lower right is a tiny label that says "slated at". I definitely did not notice that when I first saw the set last year.

I'm not sure how much helmet flinging Ian Desmond does, but this looks like a happy occasion since all the fans are up on their feet. My first instinct was that the disappointed player in the visitor's dugout was a Padre, and sure enough, that's the very team that Ian Desmond hit a walkoff 2-run homer against on August 23rd, 2018. If I have the right moment, I missed this by two days.

I'm not sure exactly how Topps adjusts photos for Gypsy Queen, but whatever they do, it really makes shadows and dark areas stand out, especially pinstripes. This photograph would have a much different look if it were in the 2020 set, because last year the Rockies decided not to wear pinstripes with this alternate jersey anymore. I haven't yet seen many cards showing this new uniform, although a few have trickled into the market. I was expecting to have seen more 2020 Rockies cards by now with the new look, and I've been curious about how it will come across on baseball cards, but 2020 has had other plans.

2018 Topps Gypsy Queen Missing Blackplate #83 Mark Reynolds

It doesn't seem that long ago that Mark Reynolds was getting regular playing time with the Rockies. He was a frequent starter in 2016 and 2017, and while this Gypsy Queen card is from 2018, he was with the Washington Nationals that year. He came back to the Rockies for 2019 and even had a pitching appearance, but decided to retire a couple months ago.

The card back of this sepia-look parallel, which deliberately didn't use the black printing plate, says that the power-hitting Reynolds was only 19 homers away from hitting the 300 milestone. Sadly, he didn't quite reach that level, retiring with 298.

It might be obvious in retrospect, but he was on the leading edge of the three true outcome game we have today, putting up truly atrocious batting averages (below .200 multiple times), leading the league in strikeouts four years running (fantastic, if you're a pitcher), yet still finding himself among the top-150 home run hitters of all time when all was said and done.

2019 Topps Heritage #248 Gerardo Parra

Like Mark Reynolds, Gerardo Parra also spent some time with the Washington Nationals and even had a pitching appearance with them. But he electrified the nation during the World Series last year, and everyone's favorite Baby Shark-loving hugger became a true fan favorite. He signed a one year deal in Japan, and he's likely the only Washington National from 2019 who is actually playing games right now.

I opened plenty of 2019 Heritage last year, but Parra was not among them. I did see enough to recognize that we're probably seeing the same dusting of snow by the fence as we saw on Ian Desmond's 2019 Heritage card, although Parra looks significantly warmer, and he's also giving us our best look yet at the team's 25th Anniversary patch.

2018 Topps Heritage #200 Pat Neshek

Pat Neshek was a Rockie only briefly in 2017, but he still got a card in 2018 Topps Heritage, which was based on the 1969 set. He famously recreated the 1970 Lowell Palmer card in 2019 Topps Heritage, a card that has still evaded my grasp, but he got a hero card number of 200 in the 2018 set. The pose doesn't really match, but he shares a card number with the game-changing Bob Gibson, fresh off his record-setting 1968 season.

There's a little cartoon on this one too, documenting Neshek's two All-Star appearances in 2014 and 2017.

2019 Topps Chrome Refractors #183 Trevor Story

There have been a lot of retro cards so far in this post, but I can't resist a shiny object. This one of Trevor Story, using a different bat than he posed with for his Topps Gallery portrait, is a refractor, and Topps helpfully labeled it as such under the card number. It's one of the least-curled chrome cards I've seen in a while, and I really like how the 2019 design looks when given the shiny treatment.

2018 Topps #534 Germán Márquez

I didn't like the 2018 design quite as much as 2019, but I'll be honest, going down a waterslide sounds completely awesome right about now.

For his 2018 Topps base card, Germán Márquez was honored with the Topps Rookie Cup, and had a very similar shot appear in one of his 2018 Topps Now cards. It's a good high-number candidate for my Coors Field frankenset. But you might notice that this one is rather miscut. There's nowhere near enough overlap to tell what card was next to him on the sheet, but it's somewhat of a rare sight these days. It's more noticeable on the back, and that's probably because this is a full-bleed card. With no true border, it's pretty hard to figure out centering unless you have a literal slice of another card encroaching on the photograph.

That does make me wonder about how PSA and BGS and so forth come up with a centering grade on a full-bleed card.

2019 Topps Walmart Holiday #HW188 David Dahl

We'll close with one of the festive Holiday parallels from Wal-Mart. This one is cut accurately, or at least I think so. There's a nice border of holly and ivy, the accent colors are changed to red and green throughout (even on the back), and there's a stencil-like border surrounding the photograph itself. I rarely see these, but somehow they're always a little more interesting than the usual colored borders that Topps inundates us with. It's a fun stocking stuffer, and an opportunity to experience a little baseball in the dead of winter when these are released.

Of course, we have just as much of a lack of baseball right now as we do on Christmas Day, yet we're a week away from the longest day of the year. It's staying somewhat light until after 9pm right now. And I have tickets for June 22nd to see a game that will not happen.

2020 is one for the history books, and who can possibly imagine what will happen by this year's holiday season? To paraphrase Terrence Mann in Field of Dreams, America continues to roll by like an army of steamrollers, although Major League Baseball isn't marking the time so far in 2020, at least not on the field. And in the grand scheme of things, perhaps that's best. I've written about Mike Hampton at least three times in the history of this blog, a pitcher who spent just two seasons with the Rockies. But it wasn't until a couple weeks ago that I learned the name Fred Hampton. I learned neither of those names in school. Point being, it's up to us to educate ourselves.