The Trading Post #140: Nachos Grande

One nice thing about being perpetually behind is that I never have to go fishing for post ideas. It's pretty unlikely that you'll ever see me publish something titled, "Top nineteen cards showing the Pirate Parrot".

Here are two, in case that's what you're here for.

But seriously, the incoming stacks of cards are starting to multiply, as my fellow Cardsphere citizens are keeping my mailbox full. Those are the blogging priority, because I'm extremely thankful for all the carefully selected shipments put together by fellow traders like Nachos Grande. That blaster of 2018 Big League will be in a holding pattern for quote some time to come.

Mom gets to skip ahead, though. Hope you understand.

And what's that you say? 2020 Topps Series 1 is already out? Get in line, I guess.

1999 UD Choice Yard Work #Y12 Vinny Castilla

Nachos Grande's "Season of Giving" has happened before. It took me until early February to get the posts up that time too. He's appeared on The Trading Post theme numerous times, and that doesn't even count all the group breaks he's run. In short, he can take credit for a sizable chunk of my recent collection, and it shows no sign of slowing down.

One of the more eye-catching cards in this stack was a copper foil insert from the final year of Collector's Choice, known in 1999 as UD Choice. Just like a shiny little penny, complete with raised "Yardwork" lettering on the right. It's part of a 30-card insert set, and Castilla is one of two power-hitting Rockies to appear in this colorful homer-focused set.

Specifically, this card describes how Vinny Castilla began his 1998 campaign with a bang, smashing two homers in the brand new Bank One Ballpark on Opening Day, spoiling the inaugural game of the Arizona Diamondbacks. I've seen Pacific chronicle that first-ever D-Backs series elsewhere, mentioning Pedro Astacio's first win of 1998 on his Pacific Online card.

The error that Upper Deck made on this card comes toward the end of the paragraph on the back. After the newspaper-style blurb about the game, they go on to include a "Prologue" about how Castilla would finish his 1998 season with 46 home runs, a career high that he never eclipsed. Todd Helton later bumped Castilla's 1998 season down to fourth all-time in franchise history, but the problem is that UD should have called that an "Epilogue", not a "Prologue".

Card backs are so much fun. One of these days I'll dive into early-90s Score sets and read those novellas.

2005 UD All-Star Classics Midsummer Classics #11 Todd Helton

Here's a less-coppery Upper Deck card showing a youthful-looking Todd Helton. The good stuff here is on the back, where we learn that despite all those Blake Street Bomber power hitters, despite the 1998 All-Star Game actually being held at Coors Field, despite the rule that every team must have at least one All-Star representative, no Rockie homered in an All-Star Game until 2003. Blackmon and Story have both done so in the past couple years alone, but Helton set that Rockies first on the South Side of Chicago.

This insert from Upper Deck's 2005 All-Star Classics also mentions that now-defunct rule that the winning league would get home field advantage in the World Series. It was implemented in 2003 following that disastrous tie in Milwaukee in 2002. The TV networks laid it on thick with "This time it counts" promos, but the American League usually ended up with the win, and the rule was finally rescinded in 2017.

Just in time for the Astros to come along.

But that's a different story.

2009 Topps Ticket to Stardom #136 Todd Helton

It's been a few years since we've seen Topps Ticket to Stardom in these parts, not to be confused with the more violently-named Rocket to Stardom, a late-90s Ultra insert.

The card back highlights Helton's evening on June 10th, 2008, where he went 3-for-4 with a three-run home run. He was sporting a goatee later in his career, so I'm guessing this photo is from much earlier than 2008.

It would appear that Topps grouped teams by card number in this set, as Helton's card is just one before the Troy Tulowitzki card I received years ago, but a closer look at the checklist shows that it's as random as ever. Fleer got pretty weird in their later years, but I loved how they set up their checklists alphabetically by team.

1997 Metal Universe #75 Kevin Ritz

Speaking of weird Fleer (and rockets, I suppose), how about some twin-barreled robotic laser cannons on Kevin Ritz's 1997 Metal Universe baseball card?

Somehow, that's a valid sentence.

And yes, that's what's on this card. Nothing in the whole hobby scans worse than Metal Universe.

As weird as you think 1996 Metal Universe might be, trust me, 1997 is weirder still. Part of me wants to complete it just for the sheer insanity of it. Artist Clayton Chambers is credited with the artwork, mentioned on a card back that would fit perfectly in a late-90s video game menu screen.

There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this, in that Fleer was once a subsidiary of Marvel Enterprises, long before their parent company started cranking out billion-dollar box office blockbusters under the Disney umbrella. There are plenty of Marvel Metal cards out there that look a lot like this, just without any sort of baseball tie-in. Blending baseball and comics isn't the craziest idea to ever come out of a boardroom, but they just don't fit together. I've been through enough mergers in Corporate America to recognize this as a collectible manifestation of "our cultures are really similar!"

1999 Fleer Tradition #528 John Thomson

Even after over six years of writing this blog, somehow there are still Rockies making their Infield Fly Rule debut. And it's not like John Thomson was a one-and-done guy. He spent all or part of five seasons with the Rockies. He didn't have a great time as a Rockie; in fact his 1999 record was an abysmal 1-10. He did turn things around a bit elsewhere in the Majors later on.

Players with cameras is a fun mini-collection topic, but this is just the second one to appear on the blog. I'm guessing Thomson wasn't slated to start this game in Dodger Stadium. He's hanging out with the photographers and looking through a surprisingly beat-up telephoto lens that's likely worth more than my first car (and maybe even my second). He just has his warm up jacket on, and it looks like it's late afternoon with the California sun casting long shadows on the seats and the foul pole in right field. It doesn't look like game day for this starter to me.

1999 Pacific #152 Jeff Reed

Think of this: 1997 Metal Universe is so crazy that a Pacific card isn't the craziest card in the post. Instead, this is really a nice, normal design, with a fantastic horizontal shot of catcher Jeff Reed in full extension, not to mention the Coors Field home dugout in the background. Pacific even kept it simple with silver foil. None of that red, green, or copper foil you'd find from them on occasion.

There are lots of specific game performances mentioned on card backs in this post, and this one is no different. Jeff Reed came on as a pinch hitter on July 27th, 1998 (back when I still got summer vacations), and ended up with a walkoff double in the 13th inning. Todd Helton got on base to start the 13th, and Reed came through with two outs to send fans home happy.

1999 Pacific #148 Darryl Kile

Incidentally, one of those two outs in the bottom of the 13th came from pitcher Darryl Kile, who pinch hit for Curtis Leskanic, worked a 3-1 count, and popped out to the catcher. Reed was on deck at the time and settled the matter a few pitches later.

It was one of those kinds of games.

In case you were wondering, that's not the game Pacific chose to profile for Darryl Kile's card. They went with September 20th, 1998, in which he pitched 10 shutout innings on 102 pitches in San Diego.

10 shutout innings; how's that for a lack of run support? Kile would have had a "Maddux" if the Rockies did anything at the plate that day before the 11th inning.

In that 11th, Larry Walker pinch-hit for Kile and singled in the game's only run. Dave Veres got the save, and Kile picked up a well-earned win, his last of the 1998 season, and good enough to earn a spot on a Pacific card.

2000 Pacific Crown Collection #96 Larry Walker TC

Pacific didn't have much baseball life left in 2000. They put a single set out in 2001 and decided to focus on other ventures. But 2000 offered some good Pacific sets, including the primarily Spanish-language Crown Collection. If you're wondering whether this card back thought highly enough of Walker's clutch hit back in 1998 that saved Darryl Kile's shutout, sorry to disappoint. In fact, this card is a team checklist, or rather a listado de jugadores del equipo, helpfully checking in card #96 for us.

I thought I'd point out the CHS memorial patch on this card, which the Rockies wore for most of the 1999 season following the events at Columbine High School.

2000 Topps Own the Game #OTG13 Larry Walker

This Own The Game insert card looked incredibly familiar, but what we have is ever-so-slightly different from a card Night Owl sent a few years ago. That one focused on Walker's batting average, but this one, showing Walker in a home uniform, looks at his slugging percentage instead. Now that I have a couple cards from 2000 Topps Own The Game, I can see that it's basically a league-leader set. And since Walker led the Majors in both average and slugging in 1999, he got two cards in this 30-card set, as did other players like Mark McGwire, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, and more.

Walker's slugging percentage was a whopping .710 in 1999, and .567 for his career to that point. That stat dipped ever so slightly by the time he retired, finishing at .565. That's currently 12th all-time, and still ahead of Hank Aaron, whom Walker was compared to on the card back.

Now that he's a Hall-of-Famer, you'll probably be seeing a bit more of Larry Walker on the blog. 

1999 Topps #438 Matt Belisle / Matt Roney (RC)

We'll get back to Hall-of-Famers before this post is over, but not before a quick detour to draft picks.

A pair of Matts appear on this 1999 dual-player card, Matt Belisle and Matt Roney. Though he's pictured as a Brave, Belisle is actually the only one of this pair to ever play for the Rockies. He was a Rockie from 2009-2014 and finished an even 32-32 in relief appearances before entering journeyman status. He pitched as recently as 2018.

Roney, on the other hand, accumulated a 1-10 record over two seasons, mainly with the historically bad 2003 Detroit Tigers, who went 43-119, the worst mark in the MLB since the 1962 Mets. Even recent Tiger and Oriole teams haven't been that bad.

At first, I thought one of the Matts here was Matt Holliday, whose Rookie Card also appeared in this set.

1999 Topps #442 Matt Holliday / Jeff Winchester (RC)

That's actually this one, a few card numbers away in the same subset. Holliday's career lasted about as long as Belisle's, retiring as a Rockie after the 2018 season. I guess I got to see his final game, which was Game 3 of the 2018 NLDS against the Brewers, in which the Rockies were swept. I crunched the numbers, and Matt Holliday has appeared in five-eighths of all Rockies Postseason games (fifteen out of twenty-four).

Rockies Postseason appearances are truly once in a blue moon, aren't they? Two dozen playoff games in club history, and just ten at home. Blue Moon wheat ale, born at the Sandlot Brewery in Coors Field, has a name that ended up being a little too appropriate.

Holliday's cardmate, the only non-Matt in this pair of cards, is Jeff Winchester, a catcher who never progressed past Double-A.

2007 Bowman Heritage Prospects #BHP15 Greg Reynolds

As long as we're doing Infield Fly Rule debuts, how about pitcher Greg Reynolds? I've mentioned him a time or two, but this is his first card here. He had a forgettable Major League career, finishing with a 6-11 record and a -1.5 WAR. Mostly, he's famous in Denver for being selected second overall by the Rockies in the 2006 draft, ahead of players like Evan Longoria, Clayton Kershaw, Tim Lincecum, and Max Scherzer.

It's a good retro card, at least. You don't see actual cardboard often anymore.

2018 Donruss #106 Kyle Freeland

Of course, the Greg Reynolds story is just one data point. They've drafted some greats, like Helton, Tulowitzki, Arenado, Blackmon, Holliday, and Story, to name a few. It remains to be seen how Kyle Freeland's career will shape up, but he's another highlight of the Rockies draft history. He grew up a Rockies fan, and came darn close to pitching a no-hitter a couple years ago.

Every so often, Bowman cards pan out. Turns out I was sent a Bowman Chrome Prospects card of Freeland way back in 2015. He's progressed well enough to get a card in 2018 Donruss, an obvious Coors Field card that shows the raised outfield wall in front of the bullpens, with a bright Comfort Dental billboard just beyond.

That section of Coors Field has been a rotating stream of Denver-area businesses over the years, and watching old highlight reels brings back memories of defunct brands that used to do well enough to advertise in a ballpark. Airtouch Cellular, for example, has been showing up on a lot of Larry Walker highlights recently, and that brand has since evolved into Verizon Wireless. US West was another, one of the Baby Bells that is now part of Centurylink.

These phone companies are something else with their mergers and acquisitions. Which is how you end up with bipedal robot battle tanks on baseball cards.

That about does it for the Rockies, but there were a handful of unopened packs thrown in, which are always a joy to open whether you've completed the set or not.

1989 Topps #269 Tom Bolton

1989 Topps was one of the first sets I completed, and by "completed", I mean I bought a hand-collated set at the local card shop when I was a kid for under $10. I should have known then that this would not be a successful retirement strategy. I even kept a sealed pack of 1992 Stadium Club squirreled away for a time until my curiosity got the better of me.

I don't really know much about Tom Bolton. Topps lost interest in him after he was traded in 1992, but Upper Deck kept him in their sets until his retirement in 1994. What really caught my eye on this card is the Ferris wheel in the background. It's one of the last vestiges of random card backgrounds, sort of like that legendary Luis Alvarado parking lot card in 1973 Topps.

And it says more than a little bit about the circus that's been following the Red Sox this offseason, beginning with Alex Cora's connection to the Astros cheating scandal and his subsequent departure from the Red Sox managerial position. And let's not forget the Mookie Betts trade that's been in question for several days, and the media frenzy surrounding it.

1990 Donruss Bonus MVPs #BC-26 Alan Trammell

I've had 1990 Donruss on my Completed Sets list for a really long time. Not quite as long as 1989 Topps, but I definitely obtained it during my first foray into the baseball card hobby as a kid. However, these one-per-team MVP bonus cards have proven surprisingly elusive.

Alan Trammell got the nod for the Tigers that year, and is the final card in the 26-card insert set. It's hard to imagine a 26-team league, especially when it seems like we'll see a 32-team league shortly. Anyway, Trammell, now a Hall-of-Famer, spent his entire career with the Tigers, and is currently part of their front office. A friend of mine who grew up a Tigers fan ran into him at a sports bar outside Coors Field when Trammell was a coach with the Diamondbacks. My friend felt that nagging sense of familiarity, but only realized after the fact who he had been talking to.

There are enough incomplete insert sets in my collection that I'll open packs of anything, and I'm still likely to find something worthwhile. I have a feeling that I'll catch up on my blog posts before I complete 1988 Donruss, unless I just buy the set outright.

2010 Upper Deck #516 Aaron Hill

The final unopened pack Nachos Grande threw in for me was 2010 Upper Deck. I have around five or six pages worth of this set, so I'm likely to find a slew of new cards even in one single pack. This Aaron Hill card is one of them. It shows Hill when he was with the Blue Jays, er, Toronto, and had just led the league with a mind-boggling 682 at bats in 2009, earning a small splash of red text on the largely empty card back.

There's also a small splash of red on the front, that "TED" patch on his sleeve. That was a memorial patch for Ted Rogers, the owner of the Blue Jays who passed away in 2008. That's the same Rogers family that founded the Canadian telecom Rogers Communications, for which the Jays' home park of Rogers Centre is named.

Below that is an official Blue Jays logo that got Upper Deck in a massive amount of legal trouble.

I consistently can't do a Nachos Grande shipment justice without writing 3,000 words. And I didn't even show you Jamey Wright's Metal Universe card with tiny Death Stars floating all over the place.

OK, here.

1997 Metal Universe #78 Jamey Wright

Thanks for reading!

Rockin' Retro Group Break the Second (Part 1: Rockies)

Nachos Grande is one of the greats when it comes to putting group breaks together. His first Rockin' Retro group break was quite a hit, and during the 2018 Postseason, he put together a second. There was some really good stuff in here, and seeing this huge variety of old brands is such a refreshing break from the monopolistic market we have today. There's even some Pacific. Topps was then, and remains my favorite brand, but a little variety is nice too.

Of course I picked the Rockies as my primary team, ending up with the New York Mets as my second, randomized team. That selection is unsurprising, but my first card from the box of 2001 Topps Gold Label surprised both myself and Nachos Grande.

2001 Topps Gold Label MLB Award Ceremony Relics #GLR-AG2 Andres Galarraga HR Bat (MEM)

How about that to kick things off? Usually I save the highlights for the end, but this warranted top billing. Andres Galarraga led the NL in home runs in 1996, and he was rewarded with this beautiful bat relic in 2001 Topps Gold Label. Their relic collection was labeled as MLB Award Ceremony, profiling various award-winning years of players' careers.

The Big Cat hit 47 that year, the first season at Coors Field which wasn't strike-shortened. The AL was really heating up that year, as five other players hit 47 or more dingers, led by Mark McGwire with 52. McGwire was included in this relic set, though it's unclear which of his many league leader stats Topps picked to feature. It's also surprising to remember that McGwire retired in 2001. Seems like quite a while ago.

The handwritten note from Nachos Grande that accompanied my cards said that this pull alone made the entire break worth it for him.

2001 Topps Gold Label Class 1 #47 Jeff Cirillo

Clearly, Nachos Grande likes Topps Gold Label. A more recent release of Topps Gold Label was included in the last group break, ensuring that you have lots of thick, shiny cards to show for your buy-in. They even have some raised lettering. Todd Helton and Larry Walker were included in this stack, as was lesser-known third baseman Jeff Cirillo, who is not on the Hall of Fame ballot this year.

Cirillo was a Rockie for two seasons in the early 2000s, being elected to his second of two All-Star appearances in 2000. Like the rest of the Gold Label base cards I received, this is a Class 1 card, the most common of the three in the fractured set. He played for a few more teams as his career drew to a close, and his only taste of Postseason baseball came in 2007 with the Diamondbacks. The Rockies clinched the NL pennant that year, meaning that Jeff Cirillo's final game was Game 4 of the 2007 NLCS, which took place at Coors Field.

2002 Topps Total Total Topps #TT48 Larry Walker

The 2019 Hall of Fame class is just days away from being announced, and it finally seems like Larry Walker is getting the recognition he earned in his 17-year career. 2002 Topps Total included him in this awkwardly-named 50-card Total Topps insert set, mentioning his 1997 MVP award and three batting titles in four years. The elongated red oval that was integral to the Topps Total logo is used heavily in this shiny insert set.

Larger insert sets tend to bug me slightly, but they make a lot of sense in Topps Total, which had 990 cards in the base set.

2002 Topps Total #238 Pete Harnisch

990 cards means you can include guys like Pete Harnisch, a free agent the Rockies signed for 2002, but who never played. That makes this a rare zero-year card, one on which Topps billed him as "a top member of the Rockies rotation when healthy". Unfortunately, that never came to pass.

He got a card in the 2002 Topps flagship set with the same photograph, but other than that and its associated parallels, this is the only evidence that the Rockies once planned to put Pete Harnisch on the hill. I remember him mainly as a member of the Astros, which is who he played for in 1993 at the height of the overproduction era. This is why I think of Charlie Hough as a Marlin, or Dave Winfield as a Twin. 1993 Topps was gospel and those synapses are strong.

2002 Topps Total #204 Terry Shumpert

Just the same, in my mind, Terry Shumpert was a Royal who played for the Rockies, even though he played in quite a few more games as a Rockie. Unlike Harnisch, Shumpert didn't get a card in 2002 Topps, proving the value of an all-encompassing set like Topps Total. It's what allows him to make his debut on Infield Fly Rule five years after its creation, as opposed to being lost to history. Whichever player's left side is on this card is also probably making his debut, too.

Speaking of that, there are numerous players whose names I know from 1993 Topps that never really had much of a career, especially in the Rockies and Marlins team sets. Surely this also goes for years in which I wasn't collecting, and I'm unlikely to ever hear of them just because of the changing nature of the hobby. A fleeting career from 1999-2000 is something I probably missed. Yet I just recalled the name of Travis Buckley off the top of my head, #732 in '93 Topps, a pitcher who never progressed past Triple-A.

At that age, and especially in pre-interleague days, if someone had a card, their name was worth remembering.

2002 Topps Total #700 Mike Hampton

A set including everyone naturally includes the bigger names as well, including a bunting Mike Hampton. Topps Total tells us on the back about his 1999 season with Houston, a 22-4 year which nearly earned him the NL Cy Young Award, finishing second to Randy Johnson. Yes, the Astros were still in the National League back then, and if not for their recent excellence, I'd still probably think of them that way.

Appropriately for this card, Hampton was no slouch at the plate. He walloped seven home runs in 2001, and before you comment with "pre-humidor Coors!", three of those were on the road.

1998 Paramount Copper #152 Ellis Burks

What's more of a liability for an unlicensed set? A lack of logos or a lack of team names? 1998 Pacific Paramount is technically unlicensed, including the fine print of "Pacific baseball player cards are not manufactured, sponsored, or authorized by any team or league." I checked a few other 1998 Pacific sets and some had this disclaimer, others didn't. Research shows that Pacific's license required them to print Spanish-language cards. This was their first English-only set, so by not fulfilling those terms of the license, they couldn't use team names. They didn't do any airbrushing, as the team logos are in full view. It's just like 2010 Upper Deck in that regard, however none of the 1999 Pacific cards I checked had any such licensing issue.

What a difference a decade or so makes. 1998 Pacific skirted the rules and got flexibility in their license a year later, but 2010 Upper Deck landed in legal hot water and remains absent from the baseball side of the hobby.

Anyway, Ellis Burks got a "Colorado" card in Pacific Paramount's inaugural '98 set, and thus all the colored parallels too. This pleasing shade of copper is a one-per-pack parallel, but the design is one of the least-readable foil designs I can recall seeing. Any printing issues and this would be completely illegible. This is not a set I would particularly enjoy sorting.

1998 Paramount #156 Jeff Reed

Catcher Jeff Reed has been showing up a lot around here lately, and by that I mean twice. The silver foil is the base design and somehow seems a touch more legible, maybe since my eye is so trained to see silver foil. It looks like Reed is in Wrigley Field, which must be where Pacific sent their photographers that year. Dante Bichette's card has part of a "WGN Sports" logo on the brick wall behind the plate.

1998 Paramount #151 Dante Bichette

WGN Sports was one of the great places to watch daytime baseball before MLB broadcasting rules got all screwy. The Braves were occasionally on TBS, but the Cubs played lots more day games.

1995 Score Summit #42 Andres Galarraga

Not every card of Andres Galarraga can be a relic, but it's one of just a few I received from 1995 Score Summit. It's surprisingly thick, and a rarely-seen set in these parts. The team logo scans even a little better than it looks in person, an eye-catching gold medallion on a white background.

The card back is unusual. It breaks down his monthly statistics into a grid, which is then overlaid on a baseball diamond. It's a bit hard to decipher, and is a bit depressing, because the months of August and September 1994 are conspicuous strike-impacted columns of zeroes. Of all the years to give out monthly stats, 1994 is a terrible pick. Galarraga experienced a season-ending injury in late July 1994, so his August looks even worse than other players in this set, but in effect, he only lost a couple weeks of playing time.

1995 Score Summit #42 Andres Galarraga (Reverse)

At least the photo on the back is a good one. It shows Galarraga in the dugout holding a "Catch the Fever" pennant, likely an item of fan memorabilia he was asked to sign. He also has those wraparound shades that everyone was sporting in the 1990s.

1995 Score Summit #149 Juan Acevedo (RC)

As was common with Score sets, the Rookies got a little bit of a different design. Check Juan Acevedo's card in 1995 Score Select to see what I mean. In Summit, the gold team logo shifted toward the left, which partially covers a rocky-looking silhouette at the bottom. It looks a little like a canyon wall but it could just be houses.

Both Beckett and much of the hobby seem to have a convention of dropping the main brand from sets like these. It's just listed as "Summit", even though Score's logo is clearly displayed. Same thing goes for Pacific "Paramount", and most famously, Fleer "Ultra". Even Topps "Finest" can't escape that fate, yet Topps Chrome seems to retain its full name. I tend to go back and forth, but I'm not above overriding an official Beckett listing from time to time. Like right now.

1991 Topps Archives 1953 #332 Eleanor Engle

Obviously, the Rockies were nowhere to be found in 1991 Topps Archives, one of Topps' earlier offerings to resurrect an old design, in this case, the 1953 set. Nachos Grande was nice enough to include one anyway, since the Mets are absent, too. It's somewhat rare as overproduction-era sets go. The final grouping of cards in the set are all part of a "The Cards that Never Were" subset, noted as such on the back, and can be differentiated by their strangely-colored backgrounds.

Quite a few huge names that didn't make it into the original '53 release are here, such as Hoyt Wilhelm, Richie Ashburn, Hank Aaron as a prospect, Ted Williams, and Don Newcombe. Also included toward the end of the checklist is Eleanor Engle, the first woman to sign a contract to play pro baseball. She signed with the Harrisburg Senators in June 1952. Unfortunately, that lasted about a day before the powers that be decided it was still 1952.

There are always little glimmers of gender integration in pro sports, such as Manon Rhéaume, who played in a couple exhibition games for the NHL's Tampa Bay Lightning in the early '90s. But anything more still seems to be a long way off. Perhaps not coincidentally, Larry Doby, the second African-American player in the MLB, and first in the American League is directly after her in the checklist.

Sooz wrote about this card once, and noted Engle's own comments about this card, who said "I look like a skunk at a picnic." It's a shame, because it was reported that she could hit better than some of the guys out there. Time will tell; I just think it would be nice to see more women on the diamond than Jennie Finch once a year in the Celebrity Softball game after the Home Run Derby. Or even in the broadcast booth. Jenny Cavnar called a few games for the Rockies last season, and I was sure to voice my support before NLDS Game 3 back in October.

2016 Donruss #173 DJ LeMahieu

These are mostly older sets, so there are obviously no current players depicted. But even DJ LeMahieu in 2016 Donruss won't be back next year. The paragraph on the back tells us that "If LeMahieu had started the 2015 season any hotter he would have spontaneously combusted." Trevor Story did about the same a year later.

DJ became a Rockie thanks to one of the best trades the team has ever pulled off. He came over from the Cubbies with Tyler Colvin in exchange for prospect Casey Weathers, who did not make it past Double-A, and third baseman Ian Stewart. The New York Yankees see plenty of value in him, signing him to a two-year, $24 million deal. Add in Adam Ottavino, whom they just inked for three years at $27 million, and Troy Tulowitzki, and it looks like the Yankees are stockpiling lots of ex-Rockies talent.

I continue to hope that Nolan Arenado is not among them, because I'd really like to see him stick around. But I'd also like to see him win a World Series, and with top Rockies players heading elsewhere, that's looking less likely to happen in Denver.

1998 Fleer Tradition #443 Pedro Astacio

We still have a couple more sets to go, continuing with 1998 Fleer Tradition. After a couple years of matte finish, Fleer decided to go back to glossy. They also selected an, ah, interesting photo of Astacio leaning in to see a pitch. He's 6'2" but he looks like he'd be taller. Maybe it's just the angle.

Like DJ, Pedro Astacio became a Rockie via a trade, a late-season straight-up swap with the Dodgers for Eric Young. He spent five years as a Rockie, and still stands atop the leaderboard in a few categories, including complete games.

1998 Fleer Tradition #561 Dante Bichette

Dante Bichette was a big guy. He's listed as 6'3", 235 lbs. It became a bit of a running joke in Denver every February how much he had bulked up in the offseason. This article from 1998 says he put on 44 pounds by the time that year's Spring Training began. And since this is Series 2, we might be looking at a card from precisely that time. What really caught my eye, though, is that the bat looks just about ready to stand on end, something Martin Prado once managed to magically do.

1998 Fleer Tradition Vintage '63 #89 Darryl Kile

You might think this is an insert from 1998 Fleer, but it's actually a one-per-pack partial parallel set. The photos are the same as the full-bleed base cards, overlaid with the classic 1963 Fleer design. Unlike Topps, Fleer has far fewer iconic sets in the archives, so they return to this one a lot. In fact, the flagship 2003 Fleer Tradition set just reproduced it entirely, not even bothering to make it a parallel.

The Rockies put a lot of resources into their rotation in 1998, signing Darryl Kile in the offseason. Astacio fared better at elevation than did Kile, who led the Majors in losses his first year as a Rockie, with 17. The card back tells us that he won the NL Pitcher of the month in July 1997, but neglects to mention that was with the Astros. Fleer was serious about this being a parallel set; even the write-up is identical to his base card, which was also included.

1997 Donruss Limited #14 Matt Williams / Vinny Castilla C (Reverse)

This break was a monster. We're down to our final set, which is 1997 Donruss Limited. It's pretty, but it's a strange one. The cards are all two-sided, and there are short-printed subsets, but they're scattered all throughout the checklist instead of grouped.

Counterparts are the primary card type, featuring a star player on the front, and a not-quite-as-good player on the back, with a little statistic at the bottom. Vinny Castilla, whose 113 RBI in 1996 was second among NL third baseman, appears on the card back of a Counterparts card. Andres Galarraga, by the way, led all the Majors that year, with 150.

Castilla is considered the secondary player on this card, so who was the primary player?

1997 Donruss Limited #14 Matt Williams / Vinny Castilla C

It's Matt Williams, who had just become an Indian in a monster offseason trade. His side is much shinier than Castilla's, at least in person, and also color-coded differently. Williams, you'll recall, is the player whom Castilla replaced in the starting lineup of the 1995 All-Star Game.

1997 Donruss Limited #87 Larry Walker / Eric Young D

The Double Team subset consists of 40 cards, and while they're not serial numbered, these have been calculated to consist of 4,400 copies based on the total production run. We get to see Larry Walker on the shiny front side, and rather than an alternate team on the back, Double Team cards are shared with another teammate, in this case Eric Young. The reverse side has the non-shiny appearance, along with the usual card number and logos you'd expect to see on a card back. We're also told how long each player has been with that team at the bottom, instead of a stats-based tidbit.

1997 Donruss Limited #169 Larry Walker S /1100

Our final card of this marathon post is an even rarer subset called Star Factor, also 40 cards large. Again, there is no serial number, but this is one of just 1,100 copies. The same player, in this case Hall of Fame candidate Larry Walker, appears on both sides with more statistics at the bottom. This one happens to mention his six straight extra base hits, precisely the same series of hits documented on his 1998 Fleer Unforgettable Moments card.

So there you have it. Another 3,000-word post about an awesome group break run by Nachos Grande.

And that's just part one.

The Trading Post #116: ARPSmith’s Sportscard Obsession

Other than a Mike Piazza Ultra Pro oddball, which had a stated print run of a whopping 100,000, the first time I saw a reference to a limited print run on an actual card was when I pulled Matt Williams' 1995 Donruss Press Proof. There's no serial number per se, but there's a gold-colored (not foil) banner at the top on the back that states "1st 2,000 Printed". Donruss followed what Topps was doing with Stadium Club First Day Issues, though Donruss actually put that 2,000 limit on the card itself rather than just the sell sheets.

1995 Donruss Press Proofs #533 Curt Leskanic /2000

This Press Proof of Curt Leskanic is just the second one to find its way into my collection after that Matt Williams card I pulled long ago, thanks to the one of the other Adams in the Cardsphere (or am I the other Adam?), the one of ARPSmith’s Sportscard Obsession. Many of you have been receiving similar shipments from him, and his is the last trade package before I'm caught up! Well, other than some old, old card shows. But that's a different story, and one I may save until after the Winter Olympics.

Curt Leskanic has proven to be quite a character, but sometimes he's just a normal pitcher. When these 2,000 copies were printed (as well as the rest of the silver-foiled base cards), he had a 2-6 record and 5.45 ERA in his first two years as a Rockie. He'd start turning that around once Coors Field opened, appearing in a league-leading 76 games in 1995 and even earning 10 saves.

I never saw this mentioned on a card, but apparently his cousin is Katrina Leskanich, lead singer of Katrina and the Waves, whose 1985 hit "Walking on Sunshine" might go down as the most infectious, upbeat pop song of all time.

1999 SkyBox Premium #44 Darryl Kile

It's actually a bit tough to mention the late Darryl Kile while listening to that song, but carry on we must. The rainbow gold foil certainly caught my eye, but Skybox overdid it a bit with the vignette border and what looks like an apparition of Dinger behind him. The card back is a bit strange too, listing his last name on top, as in "Kile Darryl". Also, his uniform number of 57 is directly above the card number, meaning if you don't know who he was and what number he wore, there are plenty of things that could confuse you, especially if it's a guy who had two first names.

Design gripes aside, if you glance at his pitching hand, you'll find about the best look at a circle changeup grip I can ever remember seeing on a baseball card. Picture the A-OK sign (which has taken on some unfortunate cultural meanings in recent years) with three fingers wrapped around the baseball, and you have a tough pitch to hit. Perhaps it's not great that we can see the pitch grip from the batter's perspective, but it's still one with a lot of movement.

2000 Upper Deck HoloGrFX Longball Legacy #LL15 Larry Walker

Like we saw in the previous post, Larry Walker was known for hitting tape-measure home runs, and I'm sure at least a few of his 383 came on the circle change. Upper Deck HoloGrFX (alphabet soup of a name worse than a lettered card number) gave him and fourteen other players a card in the Longball Legacy insert set. Those three innocent little baseballs on the left were sent quite a long distance, as the card back documents Walker's three longest home runs of 1999. It's basically a bar graph (and perhaps educational for someone studying math and statistics in school), but it confusingly looks a bit like the trajectory they could have taken. Walker's three longest in 1999 were 470', 465', and 460', and the longest of those got a small write-up.

It came on June 22nd, 1999 off of Scott Sanders in the sixth inning. Darryl Kile started that game against the Cubbies, and Sammy Sosa even hit a home run in the 13-12 slugfest. There's just one teensy problem with this Upper Deck card.

Contrary to what this card tells us, it most definitely did not take place at Wrigley Field. Rather, it was at Coors Field, and I'll fight UD on that one if I have to, since I was there. Unfortunately, the Rockies came out on the losing end of this one, but my dad and I did move down to the lower deck to see the last couple innings.

It seems as though I'm developing a reputation for Chief Fact Checker in this community. There are a lot of errors out there.

1998 Pinnacle #190 Larry Walker GJ

Still, Larry Walker did hit homers all around the league, including at Wrigley, and also at Jacobs Field, home of the Cleveland Indians, where the 1997 All Star Game was held. During that MVP season of his, Walker reached the final round of the Home Run Derby, losing to Tino Martinez of the Yankees. He's also remembered (and mentioned on the card) for some on-field antics during the exhibition game itself while facing Randy Johnson.

Now, I'm no Indians expert, but "Goin' Jake" is not a term I have ever heard anyone use to describe a home run hit at Jacobs Field. I guess if you're on the verge of bankruptcy, as Pinnacle was in 1998, then you can just invent all the terms you want. But I have a feeling I'd get some pretty weird looks if I were to shout that in downtown Cleveland, especially since it's not even called that anymore. I do wonder if Indians fans still colloquially call it Jacobs Field, even though it's now officially known as Progressive Field.

I can assure you we do that in Denver, where the home of the Broncos is still generally known as "Mile High", regardless of whichever bankrupt sporting goods company currently owns the naming rights.

2003 Upper Deck Standing O #S-26 Larry Walker

Look, there goes one of those baseballs now!

Surprisingly, despite its odd appearance and insert-esque card number, what you see above is not actually an insert card. Upper Deck released a full, 126-card main set in this mini-baseball style, complete with raised laces and a subtle leather-like texture. It's rather small, about as big around as a racquetball, leaving room for just three seasons of statistics on the back.

It would make a suitable Frisbee in a pinch, or perhaps a shot glass coaster. And the best part is that there are no corners to ding, thanks to its circular nature, which is good, because it does have a tendency to fall out of card stacks, much like minis.

2004 Bazooka Red Chunks #89 Shawn Chacon

Cards got pretty thick for a while in this shipment, starting with red parallels from 2004 Bazooka. Tom sent cards from this set once, as have a few others, but I'm always surprised at how thick they are. The red and white rounded banners at the bottom remind me of a rail logo, perhaps a blend of the London Underground and the old Amtrak logo.

I remember Shawn Chacon being one of the Rockies' better pitchers in the mid-2000s, even earning a spot on the 2003 All-Star roster, just the second Rockies pitcher to do so, after Mike Hampton. He moved to the bullpen in 2004, amassing a dismal 1-9 record with an ERA over 7.00, but still managed to earn 35 saves. The Alaska native is probably tossing a few warm-up pitches in [checking telecom merger history] Pacific Bell Park, because I really hope the outfielder isn't paying that little attention during a live at-bat.

2000 Topps HD #9 Vinny Castilla

Back home at 20th & Blake, we can see Vinny Castilla, with a Lou Brock Speed rating of three baseballs, rounding second and holding on for dear life to his batting gloves. It's not quite as thick as the Bazooka card above, but it is noticeably heavier, thanks to the two layers of plastic that make up the front and back.

Topps HD is a new-to-me set released in 2000, and it definitely does have a sharpness and smoothness advantage over its paper counterparts. It's one of those rare cards where the card number matches the player's uniform number (frankenset idea?). As early as 1999, Vinny Castilla already held the career home run record for Mexican-born players, a record he tacked onto for another several seasons. His final career total of 320 is more than double Jorge Orta's count in second place. As this card relates, the Rockies began their 1999 season in Monterrey, Mexico, beating the Padres by a score of 8-2. Castilla had four hits in that game, though none of them left the yard.

This brand has eluded my collection, and even my knowledge, for close to two decades, so thanks to Adam for sending it my way.

2001 Topps HD Game Defined #GD5 Todd Helton

He even threw in an insert card from the following (and final) year of Topps HD. The Game Defined (HD, High Definition, get it?) was a 10-card set containing lots of Hall of Famers, such as recent inductees Vladimir Guerrero and Chipper Jones. Like many early Helton cards, this one mentions his football career at the University of Tennessee. It also calls him a "dependable, at times dominant, offensive player". He was no slouch in the field, either.

The design is a bit interesting. On the left, the photo is grainy and pixelated, but then on the right, it becomes colorized and sharper. I guess what they're going for is that the player pictured in the center is literally bringing the game into sharper definition.

I didn't have an HDTV until 2008, so this may have been lost on me at the time.

2002 Stadium Club Reel Time #RT11 Todd Helton

Topps kept the moving picture theme going in Stadium Club the following year. We're back on paper and away from plastic, but the card hasn't gotten any thinner. The filmstrip theme Topps used on both the front and back reminds me of the Contact Sheet insert set from more recent Stadium Club releases.

Topps certainly recognized Helton's greatness on the card back. He was called out as a "batting title favorite" and potential .400 hitter. Todd only won the batting title once, with a .372 average in 2000. He came very close in 2003, hitting an impressive .358, but Albert Pujols edged him out by a point. They also compared him to a pair of baseball legends, George Brett and Stan Musial, the latter being the only player besides Helton with at least 2500 hits, 350 homers, 550 doubles, and a .315 average.

He's one of the best combinations of power hitting and contact hitting to ever play the game.

2001 Upper Deck e-Card #E4 Todd Helton

We'll continue the Todd Helton love fest with a similarly pixelated Upper Deck insert, an e-Card insert that is forever destined to remain in the physical world. Upper Deck's digital site is no more, so this special code is just a jumble of random letters, and isn't even long enough to be a useful password in this day and age. Nine characters with only one letter would be cakewalk for a talented hacker to break.

You know the story by now. "He can hit for both power and average and is also a fine defensive player."

2005 Reflections #3 Todd Helton

By 2005, Helton had the beginnings of his trademark goatee, something that would endure much longer than the single-year Upper Deck Reflections set. Nothing besides the Reflections logo in particular looks quote like a reflection to me, but UD did use an oddly squarish font on the back.

Shiny and Rainbowy with gold foil just wasn't enough to firmly establish a set by 2005, even with Donruss and Fleer about to exit the market.

2001 Donruss Class of 2001 Yearbook #YB-7 Todd Helton

Speaking of Donruss, yet another Todd Helton insert card was packed into this envelope. Helton supercollectors have their work cut out for them. I honestly haven't seen any of these.

You might think Donruss Class of 2001 was an insert set all its own, but no, it was a 301-card main set (there are two card #252s, apparently), of course with its own group of short prints and inserts. Now, I was a high school junior in 2001, and I only have the official yearbook from my senior year. This is a tiny bit too early to coincide with my own yearbook, but it didn't really have this scrapbook look anyway.

However, I did check this one for texture, as the layering and framing of each component did look like it could have been raised. It even reminded me of Pacific's highly underrated Card-Supials inserts, which are just the cleverest things.

2003 Playoff Prestige #138 Jose Hernandez

Adam had an eagle eye on this one, sorting a 2003 Playoff Prestige card into my pile. Jose Hernandez certainly looks like he's on Milwaukee here, and the way the lettering lines up, it almost appears like the "Colorado Brewers" is the team. Not that such a team would be inaccurate by any stretch.

Happy Stout Month, by the way.

Anyway, now that we've concluded the Todd Helton portion of this post, Hernandez was signed to cover the other side of the infield over at shortstop. Hernandez, whom both Fleer and Topps managed to picture in a Rockies uniform on their 2003 cards, spent just a half-season in Denver before being traded to the Cubs for Mark Bellhorn.

1996 Topps #428 Bartolo Colon / Doug Million / Rafael Orellano / Ray Ricken

We'll wrap up with a couple horizontal Topps cards. A few posts ago, I mentioned the quandary I often found myself in with multi-player cards. In my 1996 Topps set, I have this one filed as a Rockie, under the late Doug Million, though normally the player on the far left would decide where this one would be filed. As you can see, that player is none other than Bartolo Colon, who, at 44, is still getting minor league contracts. Sadly, none of the other players on this card ever made it to the Major Leagues, but Colon has had one of the longest careers in recent memory.

Million, by the way, really did earn the Gatorade National Player of the Year award in 1994, something that Bowman said Michael Cuddyer won, when it was actually the State award in Virginia. That makes Million's passing at the age of 21 even more tragic.

Prospects will always be a guessing game. Three other Rockies had prospect cards in '96 Topps, Angel Echevarria, Derrick Gibson, and the most successful, Neifi Perez. Some of their cardmates include Shane Spencer, Rey Ordoñez, interleague Rockie-slayer and 1998 AL Rookie of the Year Ben Grieve, and 2005 World Series MVP Jermaine Dye.

1999 Topps Opening Day #105 Vinny Castilla

The late 1990s marked the rare period where you had Blake Street Bombers playing alongside then-newcomer Todd Helton. Here, he's congratulating Vinny Castilla via high-five, while Dante Bichette looks on in appreciation of whatever Vinny just did. It's an unbroken chain right back to the inaugural days. Castilla played with Helton, Helton played with Nolan Arenado in his final season (though I can't recall any cards of them together), and here we are 25 years later.

On the card back, Topps tells us about Vinny's walk-off homer on June 3rd, 1998 against the Diamondbacks. At the time, that shot ended the shortest game in Coors Field history, at just two hours and eleven minutes. Amazingly, that record only lasted about a decade, as Aaron Cook twirled a masterful gem on July 1st, 2008, shutting out the Padres in just an hour and fifty-eight minutes.

That's way less time than it took me to write this post.

I wouldn't be quite sure what to do with myself if Coors Field emptied out just after 9:00 pm, but I'm sure I'd be dazzled.

By the way, Cook only needed 79 pitches to do that, easily earning himself a "Maddux", a complete game shutout with less than 100 pitches. Out of curiosity, I did learn that one of Greg Maddux's own "Maddux" performances came in at an even shorter game time, just one hour and fifty minutes. A lot of that depends on what your offense does, but that is one quick game.

Thanks again to Adam for this great stack of cards and all the Todd Helton inserts!