The Trading Post #138: Big Shep's Cards (Part 2: Fleer)

After Topps, Fleer was my second favorite baseball card brand growing up. The local big-box store carried a lot of Fleer product, which was both easy to find and affordable. In fact, 1993 Fleer was the first set I completed from scratch, rather than just buying the factory set or a hand-collated set at the card shop. So when I was sorting through a large box from Big Shep's Cards, there were plenty of great Fleer cards to put together a post with.

1997 Ultra #189 Kevin Ritz

And Fleer Ultra, commonly known as just "Ultra" despite the gold foil branding Fleer put on every card, leads things off with a duo of Rockies. Kevin Ritz and Todd Hollandsworth were NL West rivals in the 1997 Ultra set, but both spent time with the Rockies, though they were never teammates. This photo of Ritz is probably from 1996, meaning that Todd Hollandsworth's cameo is from his Rookie of the Year season. There are two more photos of Ritz on the back, and he has the same snarling expression on each one.

I got his autograph on a hat during one of my earliest trips to Coors Field, which has since been lost to time. My sister got one too, on a scrap of paper my dad helpfully produced from a pocket memo pad, which ended up in my collection. Dad's hyper-preparedness is sort of a running joke in my family, but he's had the last laugh every time it counts.

Kevin Ritz's actual autograph looks a bit different from the script typeface used on this card, but it's clear what Fleer was going for with the nameplate. They even blended the team banner into the Z at the end of Ritz's surname. All the 1997 Ultra cards have that blending, which works nearly perfectly with Zs and Gs and such, but quite poorly with Rs and Ss. It's definitely an ancestor of 2017 Stadium Club.

2001 Ultra Tomorrow's Legends #4 Todd Helton

I always enjoy looking through the checklists of insert sets that proclaim young players as "Tomorrow's Legends" or "Hall Bound" to see how accurately the card companies selected star players. Is it full of flashes in the pan, or is it more like a visit to Cooperstown? Tomorrow's Legends from 2001 Ultra is a bit of a mix, as usual. You've got your Derek Jeters and Vladimir Guererros in this 15-card set, but also a few who never even had an All-Star selection, like Pat Burrell and Rick Ankiel.

Todd Helton is still in the early stages of his Hall of Fame candidacy, but in 2001, he was fresh off the best season he'd ever have. As with most of his early cards, the card back tells us that he was teammates with Peyton Manning at the University of Tennessee. That was before he became the face of the Rockies, and long before his uniform number in Denver would be retired.

1993 Ultra Performers #7 David Nied

A pair of cards showing Todd Helton and David Nied will give you a complete history of everyone who ever wore #17 for the Rockies. You can see Nied's previous stewardship of that number in the lower right quadrant, the yellow one.

This colorful card is from a 1993 set known as Ultra Performers, and while I purchased plenty of product from Fleer in 1993, I've never seen this one. That's because it's not actually an insert set, but rather it's more of a redemption, only orderable directly from Fleer in exchange for about $10 and some pack wrappers.

Fleer took the trouble to serial number this set, printing the set number in a little white box on the card back, right below the Ultra Performer logo. That same gold foil logo with the blue baseball trail appears both front and back, and the card number is also in gold foil. This one is #34,547 out of 200,000 sets printed. And if Fleer's marketing department took the stance that one of 200,000 was exclusive, just think of how many millions upon millions of cards were printed for the main releases.

2001 Fleer Premium #172 Jeff Cirillo

Fleer Premium only existed for two years, just like Jeff Cirillo's tenure with the Rockies. I've shown his 2002 Premium card, which is a Rockies card in photograph only. Really, it's more of a Mariners card. But in the inaugural 2001 Fleer Premium set, Cirillo has a true Rockies card. It's sturdy, shiny, black bordered, and really quite beautiful. The card back doesn't have many frills either, mainly just statistics, vitals, and a small color photo. He was a real workhorse, playing in over 150 games in each of the five seasons Fleer provided stats for.

If it wasn't buried under an avalanche of other Fleer products, I could see this one doing quite well. Perhaps if Fleer (now part of Upper Deck) ever makes a comeback, a design like this could one day grace packs again.

2001 Fleer Game Time #88 Magglio Ordóñez

As in the Topps post, another Chicago White Sock snuck into the Rockies pile. This one is of Magglio Ordóñez, a longtime American League outfielder hailing from Venezuela. I'm not an expert on Maggs by any means, but I certainly knew of him. Six All-Star selections and a batting title is certainly good enough to appear in a set like Tomorrow's Legends.

Or at least in a smallish Fleer set like Game Time. Not counting short prints, the main set is just 90 cards.

For some reason, this has always looked to me like it should be a hockey set. Maybe it's the small inset photo in the lower left with the grid over it, which reminds me of the tight weave of a hockey net. The background photo, which matches the main photo, transitions to a pixelated look as it moves from top to bottom. There's also a grainy element in the upper left, which I think is meant to represent TV "snow", the noisy static you used to get in the pre-digital rabbit ear days of broadcast television.

2002 E-X #50 Todd Helton

Long ago, I was sent a Todd Helton relic card from 2002 E-X, and now here's the base card. It's a translucent acetate, with a pale gold color making up the non-purple parts of the design. Interestingly, the gold color completely disappears when you hold it up to the light (also when you scan it), looking more like frosted glass. If you look really closely at the design, there's a little bit of texture in the purple area, which is supposed to be baseball stitches. It's very subtle.

All these designs are nice to look at, but none of these past three have any sort of player-specific paragraph on the card back. Maybe no one really reads them anyway (I've certainly never read all my 1991 Score cards), but if there's anything I find lacking in all these Fleer sets, it's that.

1997 Fleer Rookie Sensations #17 Neifi Pérez

Several years ago, there was a Topps Update insert set called Rookie Sensations. The particular card I have from that set is of Troy Tulowitzki. But long before that, Fleer used the same name for a 20-card insert set. The background encapsulates the late-'90s, and the swirly patterns look either like magnetic field lines or a wind speed map, depending on which scientific field you're an expert in. There were a lot of weird designs to be found throughout the late-'90s, and many of them came from Fleer.

That strange, blocky typeface on the front is also used on the back for the write-up, and it's a little tricky to read. The black letters don't stand out very well against this pink-and-green vortex. In it, Neifi Pérez is compared to Rey Ordóñez, no relation to Magglio.

Joining Pérez in the Rookie Sensations set were Rey Ordóñez, Derek Jeter, Todd Hollandsworth, Bobby Abreu, and quite a few players from that Tomorrow's Legends Ultra insert set.

2003 Fleer Tradition #421 Jason Jennings AW

On his card, Neifi Pérez was listed as a "'97 Rookie of the Year Hopeful". Scott Rolen was the winner that year, the player who finally broke the Dodgers's streak of five straight Rookies of the Year. Before that run, Jeff Bagwell won in 1991.

It would take five more years before a Rockie would win Rookie of the Year honors in 2002, documented on this Fleer Tradition card. Perhaps not coincidentally, 2002 was the year the famous humidor was installed at Coors Field. The card back says that Jennings wasn't intimidated by the thin air at Coors Field, but really it's the dry air that poses a problem. You should see my hands in the winter months. I never really think to wear lotion (and certainly not when handling cards), but they dry out nearly as badly as the baseballs when the days get short.

In any case, Jason Jennings took home the only Rookie of the Year award a Rockie has ever won, and he did it the same year he got to wear a 10th Anniversary patch on his right sleeve, about as clearly visible as any collector can hope for.

Our third and final post will cover the remaining brands. Maybe even Pacific.

The Pinnacle of Affordable Group Breaks (Part 1: Rockies)

They might not be a chance to add the latest and greatest to your collection, but any time Colbey at Cardboard Collections runs one of his affordable group breaks, you know they're an opportunity to take a walk down memory lane for just a few dollars. In late January, he decided to order up some 1995 Pinnacle products, and I bought the usual two-team slot. As usual, part one includes the Rockies, who are on a three-game winning streak, and the randomizer decreed this time that part two will consist of Philadelphia Phillies.

1995 Sportflix #9 Charlie Hayes

Pinnacle Brands put out quite a few products in 1995, including the penultimate year of the lenticular Sportflix set. This set has quite a bit going on. Not only are there two photos of third baseman Charlie Hayes to be found when you tilt the card, but also his last name appears to rush out at you on the right side. Even more than that, the logo on the right side alternates between the Sportflix '95 logo and the Rockies team logo.

These never come across that well in scans, but I don't really expect them to. What you can see anyway is Charlie Hayes' special face guard, which was such a curiosity that it appeared all over his 1995 cards. It pre-dated the C-flap by over twenty years.

There aren't too many stats on the back, but Pinnacle did highlight a few career totals in the Triple Crown categories. Seeing a .267 average isn't too jarring, but above that are his 367 career RBIs, an oddly huge and in-progress number that isn't usually featured on a card, which tend to focus on single-season accomplishments. He finished his career in 2001 with 740 RBIs and a surprisingly consistent .262 average.

1995 Sportflix #10 David Nied

So many pitcher cards show them mid-delivery, with their elbows, arms, and faces contorted into frightful positions. The ghostly half of this lenticular card is no different, but the alternate image shows a rarely-seen shot of this Rockies ace calling a popup. Pitchers seem to do this less often these days, but it's still surprisingly rare to see on a baseball card of any era.

On the back, Pinnacle kept the same theme of including full career statistics through 1995. There's also a small mention of Nied's "first full Major League season" in 1994, blatantly disregarding the strike that shortened both the '94 and '95 seasons. The career stats selected for these card backs mirror the Pitching Triple Crown, the lesser-known cousin of position player greatness. Those stats are wins, strikeouts, and ERA. It's a bit more common for pitchers to lead all three categories than batters to hit for average and power, but it's still quite rare. It hasn't been done since 2011, when both Justin Verlander and Clayton Kershaw pulled it off.

Anyway, looking at the back of Nied's card shows what would pass for a fairly decent single-season performance: a 17-6 record, 139 Ks, and an alarmingly high but Rockies-esque 4.58 ERA. Unfortunately, those are his stats from 1992-1994, and while his win-loss record looks quite impressive, Pinnacle made a significant error. His career record to that point was actually 17-16, meaning they dropped a full ten losses from his career count. When you feature a number that prominently, you really should get it right.

Sadly for David Nied, he'd never win another game, wrapping up his career in 1996 with a 17-18 record.

1995 Score Summit #45 Larry Walker

The next set is one you've seen a lot of around here, 1995 Score Summit. It's arrived in a few trades and even a Nachos Grande group break. I don't believe I've shown the Larry Walker card from this year, though. These cards always surprise me in how thick they are, and the photo reproduction is really quite sharp. The gold medallion team logo is a bit hard to discern, but it catches the light well enough.

1995 Score Summit Nth Degree #105 Dante Bichette

The primary hit I got in this break was Dante Bichette's Nth Degree parallel, which is one of the most sparkly parallels out there. It's not new to my collection, arriving once upon a time from everyone's favorite French trader, to whom I send my condolences for the destruction suffered by the Notre Dame cathedral this week.

I've shown the card before, but wanted to give my scanner another shot at it to have it turn out less blue than before. Success.

1995 Zenith #20 Dante Bichette

Unlike Summit, 1995 Zenith is a rarity in my collection, occupying only two 9-pocket page slots in my vast collection. Dante Bichette got a card in this set too, and given the small size of all three of these sets (200 cards or less), there is quite a bit of player repetition. They might all even be from the same photo shoot, as Dante is shown in a black spring training jersey with an away uniform on both his Summit and Zenith cards. Summit and Zenith pretty much mean the same thing anyway, as does Pinnacle. The set names in 1995 probably came from a thesaurus. There was no Acme, but that would have worked as well.

Gold foil was the name of the game in 1995, even hitting Topps flagship base cards for the first time. Pinnacle used the normal shade of gold for the various foil elements in this set, but I quite like the shade they used for the brick pyramid element in the background. It's a lot darker of a shade, more like honey, which manages to stand out among all the other gold sets of the era.

1995 Zenith #129 Juan Acevedo (RC)

The Rookie subset in Zenith didn't use the same shade, giving us lots more gold to look at, as well as a duplicated image as a backdrop for the main photo. The card back gives us a nice write-up of Juan Acevedo's prospects on a baseball stadium-themed design, complete with an artificial shadow of the player's head being cast over the outfield. There's even a cute scoreboard with his statistics.

1995 Zenith #129 Juan Acevedo (RC) (Reverse)

It's more cartoony than 1993 Fleer Ultra, which had a similar theme, but Bichette's main set card makes great use of this layout, showing his spray chart to the various fields against both lefties and righties. Bichette managed one opposite-field home run in 1994, long before the phrase "oppo taco" came into use.

1995 Zenith #NNO Chase Programs Checklist

Colbey even included one of the checklists for 1995 Zenith, showing the full breakdown of the three insert sets. Looking over these names reminds you of a few you haven't heard in a while, like Carlos Baerga and Raul Mondesi. Plenty of others are now in the Hall of Fame.

One of the three sets is "Rookie Roll Call". As usual with a set like that, it's peppered with now-legends like Derek Jeter and Chipper Jones, a few minor stars of the day like Todd Hollandsworth and LaTroy Hawkins, plus a few prospects that didn't especially pan out, such as Benji Gil and Bill Pulsipher. Only one Rockie made it into any of these insert sets, and that was Larry Walker.

Given these small set sizes, it looks like I did pretty well as far as pulling full team sets. Summit was pretty far along already, but Zenith is going to need a few more pockets in the 1995 binder.

The Trading Post #126: A Cracked Bat (Part 2: Not as Shiny)

As we saw in Part 1, I have a strong affinity for shiny cards, but regular cards, including those dripping with gold foil, have a place in my collection too. That brings us to Part 2 of a recent shipment from Julie at A Cracked Bat, featuring cards printed on regular card stock but no less awesome or less new to my collection.

2017 Topps Bunt Vapor #V-CG Carlos Gonzalez

I purchased some 2017 Topps BUNT when it was for sale at Target, but I didn't manage to pull any cards as rare as this purple Vapor insert of Carlos Gonzalez. It's numbered to /99 right on the front, and shares equal scarcity with inserts featuring two other background designs, Splatter and Galaxy.

I still have the BUNT app on my iPhone, but I haven't opened it in months. Like most of the BUNT set, this card ties in to the digital app, as the back includes a scratch-off area with a code to redeem a digital version within the app itself. Unfortunately, Topps didn't give collectors much time to do that, as the unscratched code expired in December 2017.

Luckily, in case you missed that short deadline, Topps included a paragraph to keep detail-oriented collectors like me happy. We're told about how CarGo closed out May 2012, which included a game with three home runs, followed the day after with a shot in the first inning. That feat has totally slipped under the radar, and all because he had a night of rest. He'd be immortalized in baseball history with Scooter Gennett and Mark Whiten if he had hit all four of those in a single game.

2017 Topps Fire #175 Nolan Arenado

Those BUNT inserts could easily be confused with Topps Fire, but Fire went a little bit more over the top. This trade package as a whole represented my first-ever look at the set, and here's an example of a base card after the couple parallels and inserts from Part 1. The little light spots all over the card are supposed to be sparks rising in a column of smoke, but they look a little more like a starfield to me, giving this card a very sci-fi look. Maybe something out of one of the Thor movies.

Topps also went with a selective color look here, desaturating Nolan Arenado's skin tones while leaving his purple uniform intact. They also left the 2017 Spring Training patch on his right sleeve alone, the burnt orange of the Arizona desert distracting a little bit from every possible Rockies color.

2018 Topps Fire #164 Charlie Blackmon

We'll see plenty more of Nolan later, but here's how Topps Fire evolved with the 2018 set. I still have a pretty small sample size with Topps Fire, so I'm not sure how much the card backgrounds vary from card to card. The few I've seen each look pretty unique, though. If you ask me, they look a lot like recent Diamond Kings, especially the Aurora inserts. Charlie's beard is as wild as the background, and Topps gave us a little more right-sleeve patch action, this time with the Rockies' 25th Anniversary patch.

Along with teammate David Dahl, Blackmon got hitched after the 2018 season concluded (no, not to each other), and Dahl and Blackmon will be the starting corner infielders this year, as the Rockies appear not to be pursuing Carlos Gonzalez in free agency. That will give Ian Desmond responsibility in center field. He does have experience in position #8, but not in an outfield as large as Coors Field's. He's been a disappointment at the plate, so hopefully he can turn things around. Seeing Ian Desmond and Daniel Murphy coming in to basically replace CarGo and DJ LeMahieu will take some getting used to.

1996 Donruss Press Proofs #224 Dante Bichette /2000

Dante Bichette was always more of a corner outfield guy himself, but he did play center on occasion. The "loincloth" design element of 1996 Donruss lists him as a Left Fielder. It's an excellent bat rack shot, and you might notice the overall design has a little more gold tint than usual. That's because it's a Press Proof parallel, as noted vertically on the right. That little rectangular medallion in the center gives us the print run of "1st 2,000 Printed", although there is not an actual serial number. It's a rarely-seen variety, and my first example from the 1996 set. I have a couple from 1995, which have appeared on the blog before.

This is a great addition to my collection, and as it turns out, I don't seem to even have the base variety. It will be one of the easier rainbows to complete, as this and the base card are the only two types out there. To find a card that's as rare as a Stadium Club First Day Issue before the regular one seems pretty unusual, especially from a set printed shortly after the overproduction bubble collapsed.

1996 Pacific Gold Crown Die Cuts #DC-29 Dante Bichette

Pacific gave us a similar take on Dante Bichette in 1996, choosing to highlight some of the same stats on the card back as Donruss did, primarily his league-leading stats in home runs and RBIs, and his solid batting average of .340, way above his usual .310. It wasn't quite enough for the Triple Crown, as Mike Piazza was a few points ahead (Piazza was always ruining things for Bichette), and of course Tony Gwynn was heads and shoulders above everyone, way up at .368.

Pacific had it right; it truly was Bichette's "finest season as a pro", and he never eclipsed those numbers. He even came pretty close to the MVP that year, just being edged out by Barry Larkin.

Of course, with Pacific we can always count on some unusual designs, such as this massive die-cut gold crown, which distracts us from the nearly identical photograph they used two years later in 1998 Paramount. It's not the same image, as Bichette is a little later in his follow-through on this one, and 1997's Jackie Robinson patch is nowhere to be found, but that same WGN logo at Wrigley field is peeking in on the lower right.

Sadly, 2019 will be the final year the Cubbies will be broadcast on WGN. They're starting up a new regional sports network in 2020, to be known as Marquee. In their perpetual short-sightedness, the league and the teams are alienating their local fans, especially those wanting nothing to do with cable TV. Cubs day games being broadcast on WGN, which was once in an affordable basic-cable tier, allowed many of us young fans to watch games after school, and is probably why there are Cubs fans everywhere.

I've written about this before, and I think in this day and age when attention is more and more valuable, locking your content behind a paywall with ever-increasing fees is going to force plenty of people to simply look elsewhere. I've even heard marketing pundits compare it to boxing. It's not that boxing is gone, but it's not a thing that everyone listens to on the radio like they did in the 1930s. And if there is another strike in 2021, MLB is going to have an awful time trying to get those fans back.

Anyway, that's enough pontificating about media distribution for now. The whole point of this blog is to pontificate about baseball cards.

1996 Pacific Estrellas Latinas #EL-11 Andres Galarraga

Julie found another one from Pacific's Estrellas Latinas insert set to go along with Vinny Castilla's card that arrived just a few posts ago. That's a complete team set from this 36-card insert set. Granted, it's just two cards, but that's not bad for a set I had no idea even existed a few months ago.

Now that I have two to compare, it's clear that the gold pattern in the background is identical across the whole set. The card back has the Spanish paragraph with an English translation as usual with Pacific, which means we get to see Andres Galarraga's nickname in two languages, "el Gato Grande" and "The Big Cat". We're also told he stole 12 bases in 1995, not something one would expect for someone with a nickname like that.

2015 Topps Mini Black #442 Tyler Matzek /10

Tyler Matzek was found throughout Topps sets for a while, but he's completely fallen off the radar, as he hasn't pitched in the Majors since 2015. The back paragraph refers to him as a "one-time Minor League 'wild man'", so maybe those tendencies crept back in. Still, he also got a card in 2015 Topps, which means he got a card in 2015 Topps Mini, along with all its extra-rare parallels. This Black parallel is numbered to a mere 10 copies.

If you can believe it, this isn't even the rarest card Julie has ever sent me. I once received a 2014 Stadium Club Members Only parallel from her. It's a bit of a guessing game on those but there are probably just seven out there. Short of just sending me a printing plate, that's about as rare as it gets.

The 2015 flagship design will be remembered for being a bridge between the solid-color borders Topps used throughout their history and the quasi-full-bleed designs we have today. Night Owl ranked it at the very top of this decade's designs, and it's definitely memorable.

2018 Topps Gypsy Queen #65 Trevor Story

Topps has finally decided that "Gypsy Queen" takes up too much space on a design, so they just shortened it to GQ. They did this on autograph cards last year, and the change has now arrived on the main set. I don't think I've ever bought a pack of the stuff, yet I am pretty sure I have something from every year it's been out. 2018's design is a bit more modern-looking than some past years, and I actually like this quite a bit. I particularly like the photo of Trevor Story flinging a ball toward first base while nonchalantly blowing a bubble. That's how routine it is for him.

Not even a retro design like Gypsy Queen is immune to Sabermetrics, as the card back mentions that Story had 11 Defensive Runs Saved last season, tops for NL shortstops. That paragraph resides above a little gold-colored plaque with the Gypsy Queen name in it.

2018 Topps '83 Topps Blue #83-76 Ryan McMahon

Story has a locked-in starting gig, but Ryan McMahon's future with the Rockies is uncertain. He'll probably be a utility player for some time to come, and he's got some big shoes to fill if he wants to play on the right side of the diamond with some big names ahead of him. In fact, the Rockies recently signed Mark Reynolds to a Minor League deal, and he has plenty of experience playing first base at Coors. The young prospect, though he looks good on this 1983 design, has his work cut out for him.

2018 marked the 35th anniversary of the '83 design, and Topps honored it with a 100-card insert set featuring current and retired players, along with the usual slew of colored parallels. This is obviously the blue one. It's the continuation of the 30th Anniversary 1987 cards printed in 2017. Julie has sent me those, too. I still haven't purchased any, but Topps is using the 1984 design on their Anniversary cards this year.

Speaking of, I'm just a few weeks away from my own 35th Anniversary, so to speak. I was born the same year Don Mattingly's rookie card was leaving the Topps factories.

2018 Topps MLB Awards #MLBA-23 Nolan Arenado

Half the size of the '83 Anniversary set, Topps put out a 50-card MLB Awards insert set to honor 2017's top performers. To no one's surprise, including Topps', Nolan Arenado added another Gold Glove to his trophy case. At the time, it was his fifth, and he won a sixth for his 2018 campaign. As Topps says, "there's little drama associated with the announcement". His Defensive Runs Saved count reached 20, and he was credited with 57 completely subjective "Good Fielding Plays".

The design is a bit unnecessarily busy, but the photo selection is appropriate for a defense-focused card of maybe the best defender in the game right now.

2018 Score #13 Nolan Arenado

He's great at the plate, too. Panini recognized that, and added Nolan to the 2018 Score set, yet another of the many legacy Pinnacle brands they have resurrected. They took a page from 1989 Fleer and many others in editing the bat to extend outside the frame, and we can also see soon-to-be center fielder Ian Desmond in the on-deck circle.

I'm a little disappointed, because if there's one thing I associate with Score, it's the novel-length write-ups found on the card backs. This one has a bit about his rate of home runs per at bat, massively higher than the average big-leaguer, especially with runners in scoring position.

Someday I will read all my old Score cards. I can only imagine the gems hiding in there. For example, I just learned that Jim Clancy, #424 in the 1990 Score set and then an Astro, was the first Blue Jay to reach 100 wins with the club. He remains third on the all-time Jays win list, behind Dave Steib and Roy Halladay. Interestingly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, no Rockie pitcher has reached that milestone yet. The current leader is Jorge De La Rosa, with 86.

1990 Score #424 Jim Clancy (Reverse)

That's what a Score card should look like. Yes, I realize that Clancy's write-up is shorter than most, but that's because Score included his complete career stats, something Topps did for the 2019 set to everyone's appreciation.

2018 Panini Chronicles #35 Nolan Arenado

By the way, that Score card isn't actually a main set. It's a 30-card insert set for this one, 2018 Panini Chronicles. Like the Score insert, it uses the same photo front and back, although we do get a different write up on the base card. Nolan doesn't just rack up Gold Gloves, but also Silver Sluggers, and he's becoming so feared a hitter that the number of walks he's drawn has been increasing steadily, as this card tell us.

If I collected other sports, I'd probably know Panini's lineup better. After all, they have the exclusive license for both the NBA and NFL. Baseball seems like it's getting more niche all the time, and Panini has the licenses for both the most popular sports league in the USA, and also the one with the best-known players. Not a single MLB player is on ESPN's 100 most famous athletes, not even the generational superstars like Mike Trout, or the flashy crowd-pleasers like Yasiel Puig.

2018 Topps Heritage New Age Performers #NAP-14 Nolan Arenado

Topps has kept the New Age Performer insert set going with Heritage for a while, usually offering some funky hippie fonts to take us back to the late 1960s. When I saw this card, I thought of another particular card of his that I thought was a New Age Performer, but it was actually something from Topps Archives.

2018 Topps Archives #66 Wade Davis

There are a couple pages of 2008 Heritage in my collection, and a real 1959 Topps Robin Roberts card, my first-ever vintage card, so I am a little familiar with this design. At first glance, I thought it was Heritage, but Wade Davis hadn't quite hit the big leagues in '08. So that leaves Topps Archives again, and they changed the card stock just enough where I can't pick it out by feel anymore.

This marks Wade Davis' first appearance on the blog. He was a bit shaky in his closer role, something I witnessed firsthand in 2018, but he still led the NL with 43 saves. He was a "door-slamming fireman" more often than not, but six blown saves is not great. We'll see if he can stay atop the NL leaderboard in 2019.

1994 Fleer Extra Bases #246 Greg Harris

The final cards of this post are from yet another new-to-me set, the oversized Fleer Extra Bases. It's a monster 400-card set that I never knew existed, and I have no idea how you'd store that many cards like this. The width is exactly what we're used to, but they're about an inch taller. I guess it would fit in 9-pocket pages if you just leave the top row empty and use 50% more pages.

The aspect ratio allows for some unique cropping, but I am pretty sure there are no horizontal cards to be found. The usual Rockies of the inaugural era turned up, as well as Greg Harris, who is also making his debut on Infield Fly Rule. This gentleman is Greg W. Harris, not to be confused with his ambidextrous contemporary, Greg A. Harris, who played for Boston at the time.

Fleer tells us that Harris "has the ability to be one of the Rockies' top pitchers." That may have been true, but Harris did not fare well in two seasons with the Rockies. He went 1-8 in 1993, and technically improved his win percentage in 1994 by going 3-12. His career ended a year later, his career cut short by a botched surgery, but he ended up winning a lawsuit against his doctor. Quite the crazy story.

He became a Rockie via a trade with the Padres, who also sent Bruce Hurst to the Rockies. Hopes were high, but Hurst's best years were behind him. He only appeared in three games as a Rockie, and he was one of many players whose careers ended with the 1994 strike.

This has gone down as the worst trade in Rockies history, as they shipped Brad Ausmus, Doug Bochtler, and Andy Ashby off to San Diego. Believe it or not, Ashby was the PTBNL in this one.

At least they got it out of the way early.

1994 Fleer Extra Bases Second Year Stars #15 David Nied

We'll close with another chapter in Rockies pitching busts, the first overall pick in the Rockies/Marlins expansion draft, David Nied. Rumor has it that the Atlanta Braves chose to protect Deion Sanders over Nied in the draft, but they were none too happy with Neon Deion after he split time between the Braves and NFL's Atlanta Falcons during the 1992 Postseason. The latest episode of 30 for 30 tells that story brilliantly.

Anyway, the Rockies have had problems with pitching literally since day one. That reality has changed, and the perception is starting to change, as well. But despite what Fleer says, Nied didn't turn out to be a Second Year Star. Elsewhere in this 20-card insert set, you'll find a few Marlins from the expansion draft, including Jeff Conine and Trevor Hoffman. Also in that set are Mike Piazza, Pedro Martinez, and Tim Salmon. Nied is the lone Rockie.

It's a good design, though, and you can find this filmstrip theme in various Stadium Club inserts. The four images on the left aren't actually any different. Rather, they're just progressively zoomed-in. It looks similar on the back, but with a slant.

Julie included lots of the Blake Street Bomber guys with this stack of Extra Bases cards, but based on who I got in the insert set, I chose to take a darker path and get a feel for how bumpy the pitching really was in those early days.

Some of these sets are so new I just haven't had a chance to buy them yet. But Julie has some sort of magic way of unearthing surprises even for this seasoned collector.

The Trading Post #94: Cardboard Clubhouse

Adam was a fairly common name when I was growing up. Starting in the first year or two of elementary school and throughout my public school career, there were lots of Adams. Adam W., Adam T., Adam G., Adam B., and of course myself as Adam K. There's even another Adam K. at my current place of employment, so our colleagues have to come up with other ways to differentiate us, primarily that the other Adam K. is a talented dancer and soccer player, of which I am neither.

Even in Boy Scouts, there were two Adam S.'s in my patrol, leading to this particular exchange shouted between tents one dark night at a mountain campsite:

"Hey, where's Adam?"
"Which Adam?"
"S!"
"Which S?"
[frustrated pause] "<other S.'s last name>!"

Even in the Cardsphere, there are a couple of Adam S.'s, entirely different from the ones I knew in my Boy Scout days. Giants fan Adam (aka arpsmith) writes "ARPSmith's Sportscard Obsession", and Adam Sanders writes Cardboard Clubhouse, the sender of this particular PWE.

2010 Topps #51 Eric Young Jr (RC)

The Adam S. in question, a Reds fan, found this Rockies card of Eric Young, Jr. sliding into home plate at Coors Field against a Cincinnati Reds catcher. We might have enough information here to date this card. Ryan Hanigan was the regular catcher for the Reds in 2009, and Cincinnati visited Denver in early September 2009. Young, Jr. scored multiple times during that series, but the most likely candidate is September 9th, 2009. Eric Young, Jr. got on base to lead off the third inning, advanced to third on a Carlos Gonzalez single (wow, CarGo was a Rockie way back in 2009?), and scored on a sacrifice fly by Seth Smith.

He is facing away from the catcher, but that sliding position is fairly dangerous, the way his spikes are up like that. It's a good Nike ad, at least, but it's probably best that the pitcher wasn't nearby.

2015 Topps Rainbow Foil #94 Tommy Kahnle

Tommy Kahnle is now part of the Chicago White Sox organization. I might even get to see this ex-Rockie when the White Sox come to town in July, as part of my quest to see every Major League team in person. Even though Kahnle didn't make a huge splash for the Rockies (originally drafted as a Yankee), I'm still glad to have this Rainbow Foil parallel from 2015 Topps.

The stucco set (is that what we settled on calling it?) already seems like a distant memory, but if it's to be the last-ever bordered Topps base set, then I think they did a great job with it.

1995 Stadium Club #109 Doug Million

That's about it for the new cards, as the rest were mostly from the 1990s. 1995 Topps Stadium Club introduced a new brand logo that would stick around for a couple years, and it appears on this Draft Picks subset card. I've written about Doug Million's sad story before, and this promising lefty never had a chance to pitch in the Majors before his tragic death. The Rockies pitching staff is facing something similar today, as starter Chad Bettis will likely be missing most of the 2017 season as he is treated for testicular cancer.

I hope that I'll be seeing Chad Bettis cards long into the future, regardless of which team he's on.

1995 Stadium Club #94 Walt Weiss

Walt Weiss also got a card in that same Topps Stadium Club set, which was generally being referred to as TSC during this period. I can't quite tell if he's sliding into third or diving back to first base to avoid a pickoff attempt. Probably the former, unless the first baseman is playing far behind the runner. Either way, we can see that the former Rockies manager wore his cap underneath his batting helmet. I don't see anyone do this anymore, but it wasn't that uncommon in the 1990s. When I played my two seasons of little league, I used to do exactly that when I strolled up to the plate. Always wanted to be like the big guys. Unfortunately for me, that is slightly more difficult when your helmet has ear flaps on both sides. I guess I just didn't have the leverage at the age of ten to demand a right-handed batting helmet. But a switch-hitter in the Majors got a choice of either.

1995 Collector's Choice SE #260 Dante Bichette FT

1995 Collector's Choice SE came out in the final month of 1994, and the blue foil made it one of my favorites at the time. I have seen these Fantasy Team subset cards countless times, but I never really looked that closely at them. This was a decade before I knew anything about fantasy baseball, but the back of this card gives a look at per-position fantasy rankings, based on the standard 5-category scoring. Those 5 categories were based on statistics that you'd find in a box score in the newspaper, since this was long before any sort of live scoring you could check on an automatically refreshing webpage.

Strangely, the column for batting average shows a zero in front of the usual three-digit number, as in 0.284. More strangely, there is no column for runs scored, one of the key statistics in 5-category scoring. And perhaps strangest of all, Dante Bichette's fantasy stats don't even appear on the back of his own card. Luis Polonia is at the top of the AL outfielder rankings, and Derrick May atop the NL rankings. Rockies outfielder Mike Kingery shows up midway down the NL ranks, but Bichette is nowhere to be found.

That seems to be an error, as I checked the back of several other cards in this subset. Greg Maddux, Craig Biggio, and Jeff Bagwell are all listed at the top of their league table, in bold no less. Bichette and his stellar seasons as a Blake Street Bomber surely put him as a top-ranked outfielder. Which is pretty much where Carlos Gonzalez and Charlie Blackmon can be found today.

1995 Donruss #383 Roberto Mejia

Continuing our flashback to 1995, Roberto Mejia, an expansion draft pick, appears in this 1995 Donruss set. The front is pretty standard for a mid-1990s card, with a full-bleed photo and lots of illegible silver foil. But I do think I finally know whose batting helmet Charlie Hayes was wearing on his 1994 Upper Deck card.

1995 Donruss #383 Roberto Mejia (Reverse)

Over twenty years later, the back of 1995 Donruss clearly influenced the 2016 Topps Bunt set, with its huge team logo, a touch of color coding, and a general gray color.

Fake-finger-gun back at you, Roberto. I'm sure that was a nice throw.

1994 Score #528 David Nied

David Nied, the Rockies first pick in the Expansion Draft, was featured in the fragile 1994 Score set. The little yellow 1993 Rookie label isn't quite accurate, as Nied pitched three games for the Braves before the Rockies and Marlins poached rosters from the rest of the Major Leagues.

This photo is probably from 1993, making the blurry foreground catcher likely either Joe Girardi or Danny Sheaffer, both of whom also got cards in 1994 Score. Surprisingly, for as much 1994 Score as I collected when it was new, and for as many early Rockies cards as I get via trade, this Nied looks to be a newcomer to my collection.

Thanks again to Adam S. for sending this Adam K. some great Rockies cards, and I hope he enjoys the upcoming baseball season, which kicks off one week from today!

The Trading Post #82: Cardboard Clubhouse

Since the inception of Infield Fly Rule, Adam from Cardboard Clubhouse has been one of my most frequent trading partners. He was part of my giant outgoing mailday on Monday, and many of my trading partners and #Supertraders should be seeing something from me, if it hasn't arrived already. I turned on the Broncos game last Sunday and nearly emptied out my trade box, packaging up a dozen or so PWEs and at least that many bubble mailers.

It's that time of year, and while I haven't gone for any of Topps' snowflake cards this year, hopefully I did manage to spread a little cheer around the Cardsphere. I've also been on the receiving end of a few packages recently, including a Christmas card from Adam that included a small stack of Rockies cards. Once I managed to de-glitter them, there were some nice surprises inside.

1993 Topps #551 Eric Young

It's set to hit subzero temperatures in the Denver area this weekend, and the snow is already falling, so Eric Young with a giant cactus behind him is a welcome sight. 1993 Topps, the second factory set I ever purchased, marked the first appearance of Rockies and Marlins in Topps base. Even then, they didn't show up until Series 2, but the league expansion did help the set balloon to an enormous 825 cards that year. That was still before any action shots could be used, so there are just a bunch of posed images. But there are a few interesting backdrops. Jerald Clark has a lovely seaside photo, and Jim Tatum has another desert landscape behind him. Marlins cards look similar, but much more tropical.

And very much above zero.

2008 Upper Deck Diamond Collection #DC-12 Manny Corpas

The Rockies had about fifteen seasons under their belt by the time Upper Deck was nearing the end of its baseball product. I seem to run across a lot of these Diamond Collection inserts. I'm not sure how common they are, but they're one of those sets that just seem to gravitate toward me.

Manny Corpas was a serviceable closer for the Rockies, racking up 34 saves throughout his career. He hasn't pitched in the Majors since 2013, but I can't help imagining that he'd still be an asset to the bullpen. The Rockies did just sign reliever Mike Dunn to a three-year contract, so the front office is clearly taking steps to address that weakness.

Still not sure about that whole Ian Desmond thing, though. They really have no option but to stick him at first base, a position he's never played. The outfield is pretty much stacked, but they only let you play three at a time. Between CarGo, Blackmon, potentially Desmond, and prospects Dahl and Tapia, they really need to convert some of that into pitching, as hard as it would be to see some of them go. It's almost like the Rockies are banking on the NL adopting the DH.

Last season Dickerson was traded for Jake McGee, so at least there have been some moves in that direction. But both players were a bit of a disappointment last season.

2012 Topps #460 Thomas Field (RC)

Between Tulowitzki and Trevor Story, the Rockies have been completely set on shortstop for quite some time. Except when Tulowitzki and Story were injured. Still, that didn't leave much room for Thomas Field, one of the few players to pass through Denver that I've never heard of, even though he got a Topps base card in 2012. He appeared in a mere 18 games for the Rockies, and in a few games for the Angels and Rangers the past few seasons. He seems like one of those players that tops out at Triple-A. But he did just sign with the Twins organization, so there's still hope.

1995 Fleer Ultra #376 David Nied

David Nied shows up a lot around here, and though he didn't become a household name like many of his teammates, he still was a rather familiar face of the early Rockies. Though it was pricey, I managed to buy a few packs of 1995 Fleer Ultra after the strike ended. Compared to the craziness of 1995 Fleer, Ultra gave us a foil-heavy but very clean set. This set has managed to grow on me quite a bit since I started this blog, but the two different foil colors still bug me a little.

1998 SkyBox Dugout Axcess #141 Vinny Castilla TRIV

This is one of those sets I had no idea existed until I started blogging and making trades. The Skybox division of Fleer definitely tried hitting the lower end of the market, something that Topps has been neglecting for some time. Dugout Axcess is a set I've seen before, but not this subset. Apparently there's a parallel of this card numbered to just 50 copies, which is surprising for such a low-end set.

Anyone care to take a guess at the answer to this Trivia question? There are some hints about an "improbable event" at "hitter-friendly" Coors Field in late 1996.

Yes, that was the only no-hitter ever pitched in Coors Field, thrown by the Dodgers' Hideo Nomo. The Rockies have been no-hit three times, twice by the Dodgers.

There are lots of other trivia questions on the back of this card, like what's Ken Griffey, Jr.'s given first name? What happened to Ivan Rodriguez on June 20th, 1991 besides his MLB debut? And there's an out-of-date question about the career home runs leader.

Junior's real first name is George, as was his dad's. Pudge happened to have his (first) wedding day the same day as his call up. And Hank Aaron was still the Home Run King in 1998, but Barry Bonds was well on his way to taking the crown.

1994 Stadium Club Team Finest #4 Andres Galarraga

Finally, this was the shiniest card in the envelope. Topps was still making these odd team sets under the Stadium Club brand in 1994, with an entirely different design from the regular Stadium Club cards. They did the same in 1993, the first of just two years this concept existed.

Adam, in fact, sent me an Eight Men Out card from 1993's Team Stadium Club set, so he probably found about as many of these cards as I used to. But this one's from 1994, and it has a Topps Finest finish on it, one of a 12-card partial parallel set, which I'm about halfway to completing now. Chrome wouldn't exist for another couple years, but Finest had already established itself, as did the curl that would forever plague beautiful cards like this. It was still such a new technology that Topps had to list the U.S. patent numbers on the back of the card.

I didn't know that a Rockie was honored with a card in this small set way back in 1994. And surprisingly, I don't have the base version. This card looks so familiar, but it's brand new to me. Maybe it's just the design. As much as I've collected since I was a kid, the sets I knew from 1993 and 1994 will forever be etched in my memory much more clearly than others. Recent Topps base sets I do pretty well with, but I can't match the set to the year for at least half of the 1960s and 1970s. And for Bowman, I might as well throw darts.

It's a little off-center, which has to be pretty blatant on a full bleed card to even notice. But I know exactly where this one will go in my binders, and it's a design I could basically draw from memory if I needed to.

Glad I could swap some holiday cheer with a longtime trading partner, and if your shipment just went through my local post office, I hope you enjoy yours.