Joel Kaningher (1947-2023)

My dad passed away earlier this year.

It happened just a few weeks after I penned this post about four new cards I found for my collection amongst the belongings he left behind here in Colorado. It has been a difficult several months to say the least, and is certainly part of why you haven't seen me write anything since then. 

In mid-March, I flew down to Florida to settle his estate. My sister had already planned a trip down there to visit him, so I just tagged along on what we all expected would be a different kind of vacation. An old friend of mine who lives nearby helped me clean out his office and bedroom, and I flew back to Colorado a few days later with a few of his prized possessions. Watches, books, photo albums, things like that. A few fountain pens, which has turned into quite the little addiction, let me tell you.

And yes, baseball cards.

It wasn't much. His card collection from when he was a boy was long gone before I was even born. And most of the few hundred cards he kept from my duplicates box stayed behind in Colorado. But I did find three or four pages of his favorites from recent years.

2010 Yankees Topps 27 World Championships #YC2 Lou Gehrig

Over half of the cards I found came from this complete 27-card set that Topps released in 2010, documenting each of the 27 World Series the Yankees have won in their illustrious history. I remember giving this set to him as a gift, probably for Father's Day. I'm glad he liked it so much that he kept it nearby all this time.

Lou Gehrig was before Dad's time, as was much of the team's success that began with Babe Ruth. The Iron Horse also predated Topps itself, so for all the 1920s, '30s, and '40s guys, Topps simply added their photos to the 1952 design. Later on in the set they did true reprints of actual Topps cards, which you'll see later.

DiMaggio is actually not in this set, surely a rights issue that Topps couldn't resolve.

2010 Yankees Topps 27 World Championships #YC15 Mickey Mantle

But Mickey Mantle is. Three times, actually. 

A reprint of Mantle's mythical 1952 Topps rookie card is #15 in this checklist, already over halfway through the set before The Commerce Comet even makes an appearance. 

Even a casual collector knows this card front very well. But this particular reprint set is a bit different. The back is a dark blue with pinstripes, and it contains a decently long paragraph describing the Series (more or less like the lenticular mini cards found in 1991 Score), along with the overall World Series outcome, and the special championship logo unique to that year.

The 1952 World Series went the distance, with the Bronx Bombers taking the full seven games to defeat their crosstown rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers. My dad was actually born in Brooklyn, but moved to Queens as a child, a decade or so before the Mets came into existence.

It should be obvious by now that my dad was a Yankees fan, through and through. And none other than The Mick was his favorite player.

2010 Yankees Topps 27 World Championships #YC19 Roger Maris

He spoke fondly of Roger Maris, too. Dad would have been fourteen years old during the home run chase of 1961, exactly as old as I was when McGwire and Sosa had their own chase in 1998. I think he felt bad for Maris when remembering how much the media pressure got to him when he hit 61 in '61.

The Yankees did win the World Series that year, a year after their heartbreaking loss to Pittsburgh at the hands of Bill Mazeroski. Topps reprinted Maris's 1961 card, and noted on the card back that the new home run champion hit a World Series home run in Game 3 against the Reds.

2010 Yankees Topps 27 World Championships #YC24 Derek Jeter

I don't think Dad really followed the Yankees that much in the 1970s or '80s, although I did find a picture of him wearing the classic "NY" hat circa 1983. But when the dynasty re-established itself in the late 1990s, he and I were both excited to watch it. Derek Jeter was of course a huge part of that, reprinted here on his 1998 card. It's not quite a perfect reprint, but the only major difference is that the foil is silver instead of gold.

2002 New York Yankees Pocket Schedule

He took my sister and I to Maine and New York City for a vacation in 2002, and he picked up this Yankees pocket schedule somewhere during that trip. One of these games in mid-June says the Yankees played in Colorado. June 19th, to be exact. He splurged on two Club Level tickets for that game, and we got to see the Yankees rout the Rockies in a 20-10 victory. Until last Saturday, that was the most runs I had ever seen an opposing team score against the Rockies.

You'll notice the schedule documents 26 World Championships. The 27th was in 2009, and coincidentally my dad and I went to see them play in Anaheim that year. He lived all over the country, and telling his story through a few baseball games barely scratches the surface of who he was. But, as Terence Mann says in Field of Dreams, baseball marks the time.

2016 Topps #93 Charlie Blackmon

The rest of the cards I found were more stowaways from my duplicates box, like this 2016 base card of Charlie Blackmon. Dad retired to Florida in early 2016, so I'm not quite sure how he got this card. I don't remember mailing it to him, but maybe it was a duplicate I gave him from my very first pack or two of 2016 Topps Series 1. If that's what it was, he moved to Florida very soon after.

In any case, he enjoyed the local teams here, and we watched plenty of Rockies games both on TV and in person together. He knew how much of a baseball fan he raised. He taught me how to keep score, he (and my mom) drove me to little league games and practices, they bought me cards for holidays and birthdays, they took me and my sister to the ballpark.

I remember he got home from work early one summer afternoon, and he said, "I drove by Mile High Stadium on the way home and the seats were starting to fill up. There's probably a game on." And I immediately turned on the stereo to find that he was right. And surely, surely he knew that I stayed up past my bedtime listening to the Rockies on my little clock radio.

2014 Stadium Club #17 Michael Cuddyer

After all he gave me, I'm glad I at least got to share my love of Stadium Club with him. He picked this one out, and while he was never a Rockies die-hard like me, he knew a good card when he saw it.

I noticed the 20th Anniversary patch on Michael Cuddyer's sleeve on this 2014 Stadium Club card, the year the brand returned from a long hiatus. And this year the Rockies are wearing a 30th Anniversary patch. 

Which means that memory I have of turning on the radio is either 29 or 30 years old. Not sure how I feel about that.

2015 Topps First Pitch #FP-01 Jeff Bridges

Dad picked out a fun card or two, such as this well-liked First Pitch insert card of Jeff Bridges. Along with baseball, my dad liked movies. And chess, and physics, and cooking, and a thousand other topics. But during those years when our interest in baseball waned a little bit, he introduced me to plenty of movies. Blade Runner, Midnight Cowboy, Little Big Man, other movies with and without Dustin Hoffman. Later in his life, he just enjoyed watching his favorites over and over again. Charlie Wilson's War was a particular favorite of his, and I think I remember him mentioning Crazy Heart, which would explain why he liked this Jeff Bridges card.

1993 Yankees Team Stadium Club #5 Wade Boggs

But it always came back to the Yankees. That was his team no matter what. I asked him once who he would root for if it ever came down to Rockies vs. Yankees in the World Series. Without much hesitation, he told me the Yankees. I like them too, thanks to him, but I'd have to say the opposite. Mainly I grew to like New York because I wanted a horse in the race when the Postseason came around, and the Rockies, as we all know, are usually wrapped up by the end of September.

Losing 25-1 like they did on Saturday doesn't bode well for this year, either.

But those pinstripes are timeless, and they look good on this Wade Boggs Team Stadium Club card.

2011 Topps Lost Cards #60YOTLC-6 Whitey Ford

It's sad that 2009 was the last Yankees championship Dad got to see. But being alive for seventeen of them is pretty cool. He was still keeping an eye on them in these Aaron Judge years, and I think he would have liked Joe Posnanski's recent feature in Esquire about the new Captain of the Yankees.

I'm wrapping up with this insert card of Whitey Ford, from "The Lost Cards" Topps insert set. Due to rights issues, Ford was never actually in the 1955 set, but this is what it would have looked like.

Whitey Ford, it so happens, is one of the later Yankees connections I had to my dad. During that awful year of 2020, Whitey Ford was one of the many Hall of Famers we lost. I talked to my dad not long after that, asking about more of his old baseball memories. The main thing I remember was him repeatedly using Ford's nickname, "The Chairman of the Board", and I'm sure he saw him pitch at the old Yankee Stadium. 

Dad went to many Yankees games when he was young (somehow nearly always against the White Sox, he told me), and he idolized Mickey Mantle. I can't imagine how special it must have been for him to watch such a legendary superstar play just up the street. It's sad though, because we all know how much knee pain Mantle endured during his career, how "it about killed him", my dad said, when Mantle finished with a .298 lifetime batting average, how even though he's undoubtedly one of the greatest of all time, the knee injury The Mick suffered as a rookie made his career a what-if.

And my dad watched his childhood hero go through that, and the aftermath. I hardly ever saw him upset or bothered by anything he saw in the news, especially over something as inevitable as a celebrity death. But one of the few times I saw him shaken up was in 1995, when the newspaper came one morning and he learned of Mickey Mantle's death. It got to him.

I'll never know what it was really like to watch Mickey Mantle play, but I think at least maybe a little of how much time and effort my dad put into cultivating a love of baseball in his only son was to try to share some of that magic that he (and my grandfather) got to witness all those decades ago in the Bronx.

Thanks, Dad.

Two Years of Change

Two years and two days ago, I spent $28 at a Local Card Shop in Aurora, Colo. It was my first visit to All C's Collectibles, one of the few LCS survivors that had somehow flown under my radar all these years. They also specialize in comics, but as a lifelong baseball fan, I stayed on the periphery of the store where most of the MLB-related goodies were to be found.

I spent most of my time and money going through a discount box, picking out anything shiny or Stadium Club that I could find, including a pair of cards of a player who has stolen the spotlight the past couple days.

2016 Stadium Club Contact Sheet #CS-8 Buster Posey

As you have likely heard by now, Buster Posey announced his retirement. Spending his entire career as a catcher for San Francisco, he won three World Series with the Giants, as well as a Rookie of the Year award, an MVP award, and seven All-Star selections. Twelve seasons might seem like a relatively short career, but catcher is a grueling position, and the broken leg he suffered in 2011 led to the current rules we have around blocking the plate and the sliding lane.

Still, at just 34, he's not the only one to step away from his sport when he probably had some good years left. Andrew Luck of the Indianapolis Colts comes to mind, and there's speculation that Posey just made a tremendous amount of money as an early investor in BodyArmor, a sports drink brand that Coca-Cola just acquired for $5.6 billion.

Back in 2016, Posey found himself in numerous Stadium Club insert sets. I picked up this one from the 10-card photography-themed Contact Sheet set, which I've seen before (I'm at 50% completion!). One of the filmstrip photos of Posey shows the "LON" memorial patch the Giants wore in 2015 for Lon Simmons, the team's longtime broadcaster. The card back mentions his two grand slams in late June 2015, and if you're curious whether he hit either of those against the Rockies, he did not. They were divisional, though, as they came against the Dodgers and then the Padres.

Now is probably a good time to share the highlight of his final MLB hit, a two-out double in Game 5 of the NLDS against the Dodgers.

2016 Stadium Club ISOmetrics #I-24 Buster Posey

Elsewhere in the 2016 Stadium Club master set, Posey was included in the 25-card ISOmetrics insert set, heavily color coded for a Giants player. I've seen this set a couple times too, although I'm far from completing it. 

The season-specific stats Topps highlighted on the card front here are pretty representative of his overall career. His batting average dipped a bit since 2015, as is true for the entire league. 74 runs scored isn't even a career high for him, but is quite excellent for a catcher. And 6.1 WAR in a season is also excellent, although neither Fangraphs nor Baseball-Reference list 6.1 for his 2015 WAR. That complex calculation has evolved over time, and varies depending on whom you ask, so I won't say it's an error. For all I know, Topps has their own WAR calculation.

Posey's fWAR for 2021 was 4.9, ranking among the highest WARs any player has ever put up in the final season of their career, and many players near the top of that list were involved in the 1919 Black Sox scandal.

2019 Stadium Club #178 Bo Jackson

Moving forward a few years in the history of Stadium Club, I found a couple base cards from 2019. First was a relaxed Bo Jackson at the height of his baseball career with the Royals, casually blowing a bubble in the dugout.

Bo Jackson's career will always be one of the great what-ifs in baseball lore. Without getting into the gory details, a freak injury he suffered in an NFL game led to the need for a hip replacement, ending his football career and impacting his MLB career. He attempted a comeback, but it was not to be. It's a real shame, because he could have been one of the all-time greats.

Buck O'Neil used to tell a story about a particular sound he heard once in a great while, a crack of the bat unlike any other. "Like a stick of dynamite going off," he said. In a lifetime around the game of baseball, he said he heard it three times. First from Babe Ruth. Second from Josh Gibson. And finally from Bo Jackson.

Joe Posnanski tells it better than I could ever dream to.

2019 Stadium Club #54 Hank Aaron

The last Stadium Club card I picked was of Braves legend Hank Aaron, who sadly passed away earlier this year. The Atlanta Braves were able to win the 2021 World Series in six games over the Astros, a fitting tribute to one of the greatest players of all time. The Braves won 88 regular season games this year, 44 before the All-Star Break, and 44 after. We also find ourselves in the 44th week of the year, which Vin Scully pointed out on Twitter.

And of course, Hammerin' Hank's uniform number was 44, which we saw mowed into the outfield grass at Truist Park.

This particular photo was from when the Braves were playing in Milwaukee, as you can tell by the letter M on Aaron's cap. That narrows this down to some point between 1954 and 1965, before the Braves departed for Atlanta in 1966. It would be another 20 years past that before they finally got rid of that logo on Aaron's left sleeve.

1990 Bowman #121 Dave Martinez

We'll come back to the discount box in a bit, but first I wanted to cover a few other affordable collectibles I found scattered throughout the store. First was a factory set of 1990 Bowman, priced at around $5 or $6. I'll never turn down a complete set for those prices. 

1990 was the year Bowman mercifully decided to get with the times and go with standard card dimensions, abandoning the 1950s-era size that won't fit in 9-pocket pages. It's a simple design, not deviating much from the 1989 design other than adding the player's name and team at the bottom in lieu of a facsimile signature.

It wasn't a particularly remarkable purchase otherwise except for one thing. This shopping trip was less than a week after the Nationals won Game 7 of the 2019 World Series. Then, as now, the team was managed by Dave Martinez, who once played for the Montreal Expos. The Nationals franchise, of course, was once known as the Expos, but that wasn't the weird part. The weird part was that there was one particular card facing the other direction inside the box. As best I could tell the set was still factory sealed, but somehow, after all those years, I found one card in the middle facing the wrong way, against the slight curl of the rest of the cards.

Dave Martinez.

2019 Topps Opening Day #31 Nolan Arenado

I found some current packs toward the front of the store, and I selected one from 2019 Opening Day. I always enjoy the set no matter how far we are from the actual occasion. And I've enjoyed several variations of this well-cropped horizontal photo of Nolan Arenado the past couple years, even though it is significantly less festive than last time I saw it.

Little did I know at the time Nolan wasn't going to be playing for the Rockies by the time I got this post up. It's basically a foregone conclusion that Trevor Story won't be coming back, and the latest news is that Jon Gray isn't likely to reach a deal either, even though he's the only one of the three who actually wants to remain with the team.

At least Charlie Blackmon will be around for another year.

1998 Pinnacle Inside #109 Tony Clark

Although none of that may end up mattering much anyway, because MLB is hurtling headlong towards another labor dispute. I only mention it here because former Tiger Tony Clark is now the executive director of the MLB Player's Association, so his name will likely be in the news plenty this offseason.

Shortly before their bankruptcy, Pinnacle released the Inside brand for a second year. This slightly blurry photo of Tony Clark is flanked by a few of his 1997 stats, much in the same style as Buster Posey's ISOmetrics card. I got a whole pack of these, and I still have the can they came in.

Yes, the can. Like a can of tomatoes.

Pinnacle was out there. So was Pacific. The hobby is poorer without them around.

Now, back to the discount box.

2001 Topps Archives #245 Al Kaline 54

By now, we've probably had our fill of Topps reprints, but in 2001, Topps Archives was pretty exciting. This isn't quite as alluring as the refractor-finish Archives Reserve set that year, but it's printed on actual cardboard and is surprisingly thick. In other words, it's a reprint that has the general look and feel of the original card, gold foil seal notwithstanding. Also the '54s were slightly larger than the standard size we know today. Just like '89 Bowman and Topps Big, which were my first exposure to the 3 3/4" x 2 5/8" size.

Sadly, like Henry Aaron, Al Kaline is no longer with us. He passed away on April 6th, 2020, and I wrote a tribute post at the time. But back in 1954, he was a young rookie, destined for great things. He didn't make it into the 1953 set, so this '54 is his Rookie Card. It would definitely cost a few hundred bucks to get a relatively nice original, so I'm happy with a $1 reprint.

For now.

2019 Topps '84 Topps #T84-30 Frank Thomas

Frank Thomas didn't get a ton of Postseason playing time during his Hall of Fame career, but he's a regular fixture on the broadcast team now, right next to David Ortiz and Álex Rodríguez. Topps gave him a card in their 1984-themed 35th Anniversary set in 2019, and this time The Big Hurt is holding an actual baseball bat, not that famed piece of rebar.

2017 Topps Update All Rookie Cup #ARC-21 Anthony Rizzo

But as an example of reprints getting a bit out of hand, here's a 2017 card of Anthony Rizzo, a mere four years after the original came out. The gold foil clearly differentiates it from the actual 2013 base card it replicates, but Topps still saw fit to include the word "REPRINT" on the card back to avoid any confusion.

The card itself is from a 50-card insert set found in 2017 Topps Update, which focused on the history of the Topps Rookie Cup. Rizzo did get one on his card in 2013, and he shares the checklist with players new and old. Buster Posey, Stephen Strasburg, Lou Brock, and many more. The card back has large images of the two Topps Rookie Cup versions found on cards throughout the years, and an explanation of Rizzo's 2012 season that earned him one.

I'm sure this is the 1990s kid in me talking, but I have to say I like the gold foil on the 2013 design more than the silver foil Topps originally used. Not that you could tell either way from the scan.

2010 Topps Cards Your Mom Threw Out #CMT-11 Mickey Mantle

Reprints do have their place, and for the longest time I relied on them to learn the vintage designs and keep some of my dad's idols in my collection. I eventually remedied that, but I still enjoy the 1962 Mickey Mantle in whatever form it takes. 

This one is from the famous 2010 "Cards Your Mom Threw Out" insert set, something Topps put out with absolute confidence during the first year of their monopoly. It spanned 174 cards across three series, and features some of the most iconic Topps cards of all time, starting with the '52 Mantle at card #CMT-1.

2008 Upper Deck First Edition StarQuest #SQ-9 Derek Jeter

Even as we get further away from a time where Upper Deck had a presence on the baseball side of the Hobby, I still can't get enough of these green Starquest cards. It's such a pleasing shade of emerald and they will practically jump out of any discount box right into my hand.

Derek Jeter was officially inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame just a couple months ago, but the actual vote that put him there was about to get underway a mere two weeks after I visited All C's. No one was surprised that he was a first-ballot member, but the identity of the lone voter who left him off their ballot remains a mystery, and ensured that his longtime teammate Mariano Rivera would be the only unanimous inductee for the foreseeable future.

By the way, Derek Jeter has another connection to this post. He is the star player depicted on my can of 1998 Pinnacle Inside. I opened it on the bottom for display purposes, and a smiling Jeter in a warm-up jacket is pictured on the front.

I mean, it's a cylinder, so there technically isn't a "front" of the can, so to speak, but nearer the seam on the "back", there's a nutrition facts-looking label called "Product Facts". The serving size is 10 cards, and there is 1 serving per container. The pack odds are given, and we are promised that we're getting 100% of our % Daily Value of Collectability (sic), Top Players, Inside Info, and Cool Inserts.

Pinnacle very accurately and loudly proclaims that the Inside '98 set is "THE ONLY BASEBALL CARD IN A CAN!" It really was unique but it takes up so much space to package, ship, and store cards that way. It isn't particularly kid-friendly, either. Pinnacle was sure to stamp on the top of the can to "Open with adult supervision". I managed to do it without leaving a sharp edge, but this product was a lawsuit waiting to happen.

2001 Stadium Club Diamond Pearls #DP6 Vladimir Guerrero

After his son wrapped up his rookie season in 2019, I found a card of Vladimir Guerrero, Sr. He was part of the 20-card Diamond Pearls insert set from 2001 Stadium Club, the set that tends to have stickier cards than perhaps any other. This one doesn't seem too bad, but the surface does look a little bumpy to me. Maybe even slightly blistered.

In any case, this card became accidentally relevant during the 2021 Postseason, thanks to Joc Pederson's unique fashion choice of a string of pearls. He's quite the character, and he now finds himself on a short list of players who won the World Series in two consecutive years with different teams.

2019 Finest Blue Refractors #57 Mitch Haniger /150

I've never opened a box of Topps Finest, but I seem to have no trouble finding the occasional gem from the expensive set, like this beautiful Blue Refractor numbered to /150.

Alas, despite all this talk of the Postseason and the World Series, the Mariners haven't quite been able to sneak in for twenty years, though they got tantalizingly close this year. Outfielder Mitch Haniger has been one of their stars, and even has an All-Star appearance to his name. 

The card back tells us about his highlights on June 12th, 2018 against the Angels. Topps got the details...sort of accurate? Haniger did have a home run and an outfield assist that day, but they got the innings all wrong and they incorrectly imply that Haniger's homer was of the walkoff variety.

Incidentally, if you've ever been curious about how to pronounce my last name, it's pretty similar to Haniger. I have a couple extra consonants in there, but that's the general sound. It rhymes with Gallagher.

1991 Leaf Gold Rookies #BC26 Rickey Henderson DP

Finally, I couldn't pass up any early '90s insert with this much gold foil. Leaf really pulled out all the stops for this bonus card. Believe it or not, it's actually the final card of a 26-card insert set called Gold Rookies. Lots of prospects fill out that checklist, like Ryan Klesko, Mike Mussina, and Mo Vaughn.

Sharp-eyed readers will notice that Rickey Henderson, was not, in fact, a rookie in 1991. Nor was Nolan Ryan, who is also in this checklist. But Leaf decided that honoring Rickey Henderson's record-breaking 939th stolen base and Nolan Ryan's 7th no-hitter were worth disrupting the overall theme of a Rookies set. I can't say I disagree.

A well-stocked LCS, especially one that's been in town for so long, always has surprises. Including some fresh, sealed 1998 air.

The Start of a Strange Season (Part 2: Inserts)

It wasn't that long ago that I was regularly pulling three or four Blue Foil parallels out of a single blaster of Opening Day. Unless my luck has changed, I'm more likely to just find one with today's level of production. 

2021 Topps Opening Day Blue Foil #177 Gleyber Torres

And here it is.

No need to hit the panic button just yet. We're still far away from the days of 1991 Donruss Elite, an insert set which you'd be lucky to find within four cases, despite a 10,000 print run. But still, it's getting harder and harder to find what you're looking for. And I'm not even sure these have a limited print run anymore.

In much the same way, the Yankees are having a hard time finding wins this season. They're in a tough division (and they usually are the ones making it a tough division), so their 31-28 record is only good enough for fourth place. The twice-no-hit Mariners have scored more runs this year. 

Gleyber Torres isn't really to blame for that, since he missed some time due to COVID protocols, but he has since returned and I'm sure he's just aching to play a few games against Baltimore to get his bat going. The card back shows his full professional statistics, so there's no room for a fun paragraph, but it would be a perfect spot to mention his 13 home runs against the Orioles in 2019.

For the first time in a while, the date listed on the front of these Blue Foil parallels was truly Opening Day, league-wide. No overseas exhibition games a week early, no big-market rivalry matchup the day before. Everyone simply began April 1st at the starting gate, as it should be.

2021 Topps Opening Day Mascots #M-3 Mr. Met

The actual Opening Day has been in flux for a while, as have the insert sets found in the set itself, but Mascots are always there to delight us. This insert set is a big reason why I keep coming back to the brand.

For 2020, mascots didn't have fans to entertain nor many games to work, so most of these card backs mention their efforts in the community, such as working with MLB's Play Ball program or area nonprofits. All while properly masked, of course. Seeing mascots wearing masks reminds me a little of the airplanes that did too.

2021 Topps Opening Day Mascots #M-7 Sluggerrr

Sluggerrr of the Royals also masked up, and he looks a lot like I looked for most of last year. Wearing a mask, shielding his eyes to see into the distance (part of my new birding hobby), and holding a sign that says "Food". This mascot is reaching right out to me.

He's also surrounded by cardboard cutouts, and my single favorite mascot moment from the strange 2020 season was Blooper of the Braves pumping up the cutouts, motioning for them to get on their feet. 

Yes, Blooper fully embraced his role last year.

I showed these cards to my girlfriend, and she remarked at how strange it was that Sluggerrr's crown is a fully-formed structural part of his head. In truth, these aren't that different from a giraffe's actual horns. But Sluggerrr is supposed to be a lion. King of the Jungle and all that. He shares uniform #00 with Mr. Met, Dinger, and Carmelo Anthony of the Portland Trailblazers, who we watched a lot last week during the first round of the NBA playoffs. The Nuggets, whose mascot is a similar-looking mountain lion named Rocky, advanced to the second round.

2021 Topps Opening Day Mascots #M-16 Mariner Moose

As usual, Mariner Moose popped up for me as well. Seriously, I have an uncanny gift for pulling Mariner Moose cards. Someday I'd like to convert that into seeing a real one in the wild.

Mr. Moose looks exceptionally casual in this shot, throwing out the first pitch while wearing a pair of board shorts. Interestingly, I had a dream last night where I was on my way to throw the first pitch at a Rockies game. Somehow, I was identified as the one millionth fan at the gate, and was led as a VIP all over the stadium. I woke up before the actual ceremonial moment, but I'm pretty sure that's what they had in mind.

Somehow, I had the presence of mind while in the dream to question what the big deal was about being the one millionth fan. Even the lowest-attended teams pull in more than that during a season, Marlins excluded.

2021 Topps Opening Day Legends of Baseball #LOB-2 Roberto Clemente

Next up and new to the Opening Day insert family is the Legends of Baseball set. I'm pretty familiar with these from seeing them in the Bunt app, but it's nice to also have a physical copy. Each one has their place, and I'm starting to view it a bit like the physical book/e-book debate. There are advantages and disadvantages to each, but electronic cards save you the trouble of having to buy sleeves and pages and binders. I can carry lots of "cards" around in my pocket that would otherwise require expensive and hard-to-find supplies to store. 

So I effectively have two copies of this Roberto Clemente card. Say what you will about digital cards, but no one will argue that he's a Legend of Baseball. A frequent Gold Glove winner, an even more frequent All-Star, and a beloved figure in Pittsburgh. He's an undisputed legend, and we'll sadly never know how much more legendary his numbers could have been if not for his tragic death in 1972.

2021 Topps Opening Day Legends of Baseball #LOB-23 Rickey Henderson

On the other hand, unlike Clemente's 3,000 hits, we can be reasonably certain that Rickey Henderson's 1,406 stolen bases was about as high as that number could go. Rickey played well into his forties for any team that would take him, and he added just three steals to that number in his final season.

A career that long will bridge different eras of baseball, from the speedy early '80s into the power-heavy early 2000s. As we know, stolen bases are an endangered species these days, but Rickey was on the cutting edge of the latest movement to disregard the old unwritten rules. Rickey would often bolt for second (or third) regardless of the count or the score. And judging by how White Sox manager Tony La Russa is (publicly) handling his own players swinging away on a 3-0 count, I have to wonder how he and Henderson ever got along all those years in Oakland.

2021 Topps Opening Day Legends of Baseball #LOB-10 Derek Jeter

With all the Yankee greats we've seen over the years, including Lou Gehrig who now has his own special day in the MLB calendar, it's surprising that they had a single-digit number left to give to Derek Jeter, another obvious legend. With Jeter's number retirement in 2017, not to mention his imminent Hall of Fame induction, every number from 1-10, and many others, have been retired in the Bronx.

Each of these card backs picks a few key statistics that confirms their legendary status, and of course there's enough for each of these players to fill volumes. Jeter's card tells us that he reached the Hall of Fame in 2020 with 99.7% of the vote, without quite saying that he was one vote shy of unanimity.

2021 Topps Opening Day Opening Day #OD-1 New York Mets

Across town, the New York Mets have a lot more of these numbers still in circulation. This Mets outfield crew celebrating a win on Opening Day 2020 are Brandon Nimmo, Jake Marisnick, and Michael Conforto. Nimmo's #9 is no longer worn in the Bronx thanks to Roger Maris, and Marisnick's #16 (obscured by his glove) was retired for Whitey Ford. Only Conforto's #30 is still available in both boroughs.

All three of these guys look really happy to be in the Win column, a feeling they hadn't known for a long time due to the shortened season. As expected, staff ace Jacob deGrom pitched the season opener, and as expected, the Mets gave him next to no run support, relying on a solo shot by Yoenis Céspedes to win the game 1-0. That's still continuing this year, despite deGrom's sub-1.00 ERA putting him in the conversation with 1968 Bob Gibson. I just looked up his WHIP and it is 0.569. His ERA+, an advanced stat based on the league-average ERA, is a statistics-breaking 624, with the league average defined as 100.

I mean, this guy's WHIP looks more like a slugging percentage. This is all unheard of, yet he has a 5-2 record with two no-decisions.

Typical Mets.

2021 Topps Opening Day Outstanding Opening Days #OOD-4 Bryce Harper

There are a few other insert sets with long odds that I didn't pull, but I had good enough luck with the rest. Outstanding Opening Days is the last of the plentiful sets, and a young Bryce Harper is the lone representative I found from this 10-card insert set.

You might think this is from Harper's debut game in 2012, but his career didn't begin until late April that year. His first taste of a true Opening Day came during this game in 2013, where he hit two home runs against Ricky Nolasco of the Marlins. Those two solo shots were the only runs scored all day, during a game that barely cracked the two-hour mark.

We're well into June by now, with the season a bit beyond one-third over. In fact, this is about as long as the regular season lasted in the shortened 2020 year. The season is still pretty young, and the Rockies are planning on taking Coors Field to full capacity on June 28th for a day they are calling "Opening Day 2.0". 

Perhaps I'll blog about my 2020 Opening Day blaster by then.

A Work Trade

While the Rockies have been mired in their textbook July slump (though they have managed to put together a two-game win streak), the big news for fans is the recently-announced retirement of Troy Tulowitzki. After 13 seasons, many of them injury-shortened, the All-Star shortstop has decided to step away from playing the game of baseball. After many great years as a Rockie, he spent some time in Toronto, and finally got to live his dream of playing in the Bronx, occupying the same spot in Yankee Stadium as his idol Derek Jeter.

2019 Topps Historic Through-Lines #HTL-22 Derek Jeter / Jackie Robinson

Speaking of Derek Jeter, a card of his came my way this week in unexpected fashion. A coworker whose last day was Thursday mentioned last week that he was starting to get into baseball cards. He knew I was the guy to ask, and after mentioning that he had spent around $150 on some current product after unearthing his 35,000-card childhood collection, I told him I'd be happy to pull some cards out of my duplicates box.

On Monday morning, I had a small box with a few hundred cards for him in my cubicle, ready to drop them off free and clear. But he made a trade out of it, offering up four cards from 2019 Topps Series 2 (presumably left over from his $150 spend), including the Historic Through-Lines insert card you see above. It was most welcome and entirely unnecessary, as I was just excited to be in the vicinity of a fellow collector. But offloading a bunch of duplicates in return for some Hall of Famers that I wouldn't find in the factory set worked just fine for me, especially when they came in four perfectly perfect penny sleeves, the mark of a new collector who just dropped some dough on supplies.

Troy Tulowitzki may not have been a legendary player of the same caliber as Jeter and Jackie Robinson, but his career will definitely remain a question mark of what might have been. He finished with 225 career home runs, five All-Star appearances, two Gold Gloves, and a .290 average.

2019 Topps Historic Through-Lines #HTL-44 Corey Seager / Pee Wee Reese

Continuing the shortstop theme is another card from Historic Through-Lines, this one featuring Pee Wee Reese, who shared the middle infield with Jackie Robinson, and Corey Seager, the 2016 NL Rookie of the Year. Reese is pictured as a Brooklyn Dodger, which is where he spent the vast majority of his career, but he did make the trip out West in 1958 to play his final season in Los Angeles. Seager is chipping away at Reese's record mark of home runs by a Dodger shortstop, and in today's game, he's likely to break that sooner rather than later.

Design-wise, I'm not thrilled by this set, which feels awkwardly named and not the best execution of a two-player card. 2011's Diamond Duos came to mind first, although there are some intriguing pairings in Historic Through-Lines, like Ichiro with Shohei Ohtani, Bob Feller with Corey Kluber, and Christy Mathewson with Max Scherzer.

2011 Topps Diamond Duos #DD-GT Carlos González / Troy Tulowitzki

Here's an example from Diamond Duos, which I received via trade from Texas Rangers Cards long ago. Look how much energy this card has! Judging by the helmet rack in the dugout behind both players, these photos were probably from the same game. There's even a Todd Helton cameo in the on-deck circle behind Tulo. Sadly, the card back is an accurate microcosm of Tulo's career, which tells us that Carlos González emerged as a "top run producer" in 2010 while Tulowitzki was sidelined with a broken wrist. Troy did return later that season to hit 15 home runs in the month of September alone, though it was not enough to secure a playoff spot that year.

Interestingly, Tulowitzki's career batting average when this card was released was .290, and while it did trail off later in his career, it shows what a determined competitor he is, keeping consistent stats as best he could while dealing with frequent injuries.

I enjoyed the privilege of seeing both Tulo's and CarGo's returns to Coors Field with visiting clubs, and was proud to give them each a standing ovation for their long careers in Colorado. In fact, González's game was the same game as Ian Desmond's moonshot, which was documented on my first Topps Now card of the year.

2019 Topps #647 Kyle Freeland

My coworker threw in a couple base cards in addition to the inserts, two with lots of glorious Rockies purple. Kyle Freeland led things off, the "breakout star" pitcher who put together a 17-7 season last year, but hasn't done any better than 2-8 so far in 2019, which included some time in the Minors to figure things out. It's been a frustrating year to be a Rockies fan, especially given their playoff-caliber greatness the past two seasons.

It's almost August, and this is the first appearance of the 2019 Topps Base design on this blog. I'm not super proud of that. Even worse, the Bowman-esque 2020 design was just released this week, so I am way behind the curve here.

The two big design elements that jump out at me are the reverse hockey sticks that emulate 1982 Topps, and the pattern of small dots on the edges, which always remind me of a 2013 Topps insert set called Chasing the Dream. I'm sure those dots have been used in a bunch of sets, but that's the one I think of.

2019 Topps #499 Daniel Murphy

The final card depicts Daniel Murphy, the veteran who is covering first base this year. Earlier in the season, I wasn't quite sure what to think of him. He's a good player, but he's just sort of, goofy. Even this photograph looks a bit goofy to me.  He mixes up his facial hair style quite frequently, always seems to have a smile on his face, nearly got steamrolled during a between-innings mascot race, and belly flopped to touch home plate.

Mets and Nats fans, was he always like this? Because I'm definitely warming up to him.

One final thing I'll mention as part of the July round up was the game I attended in San Diego. I had a Southwest flight credit to use, so I figured I'd venture to another Major League town and visit a new stadium. I was there on July 13th, and saw the Atlanta Braves beat the San Diego Padres in 10 innings.

I did a few laps of Petco Park before the game to check out the dining options, which did not disappoint. There was also plenty of craft beer to enjoy. What surprised me were all the little nooks and crannies on the main concourse. It's not a level walkway that simply encircles the field like at Coors Field. There are a few spots that bend and twist, a couple shortcuts, and some hidden spots, especially in left field between the bullpens and the Western Metal Supply Co. building down the line. My seat on the third base side offered great views of downtown San Diego and the glide path of the airport.

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#walletcard at Petco Park, home of the Padres! Already lots of scoring and it's still the first inning. #NLWest #baseball #sandiego #mlb

A post shared by AdamK (@adamk0310) on Jul 13, 2019 at 6:03pm PDT

And yes, I did snap a #WalletCard photo op. Fernando Tatis, Jr. was at the plate, and Manny Machado hit two home runs that game, just like I saw him do the last time I was at Coors Field in mid-June.

Three parks down, twenty-seven to go.

Road Trip!

Last week, my girlfriend and I took a road trip to visit some of her friends and family in Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas. What better week to do it than the week of July 4th (assuming you have air conditioning in your vehicle, of course)? Though my home state of Colorado is a hotbed for craft beers, we found that the microbrewery craze has infiltrated that region as well, as we came back with several six packs from the Dallas area.

While it was nice to get away and relax for a while, the hobby was still in the back of my mind. I was frequently glancing at the many roadside stores, curious if I might find a card shop nestled in one of those towns. As we were preparing to head out of Arkansas and back toward Oklahoma City, my vigilance was rewarded just outside Fayetteville.

1992 Bowman #611 Bill Swift (FOIL)

I spotted a small white sign as we were about to leave town. A few quick turns later, I walked through a windowless and unassuming white door. Inside, I found Cleve's Baseball Cards and Collectibles to be a well-stocked shop, and after wandering around for a few minutes, I asked for a box of baseball singles to dig through, affording me a #walletcard photo op.

#Walletcard in a card shop I stumbled onto in #Arkansas.

A photo posted by AdamK (@adamk0310) on Jul 7, 2015 at 2:13pm PDT

Bill Swift's card above was the first one I picked out of that box, which more or less ended up being a quarter box, once we settled up. Gold foil from the early '90s draws me in no matter which state I'm in.

1994 Score Gold Rush #118 Willie Blair

I was surprised to find so many Rockies cards in a corner of Arkansas. Almost a quarter of the Score Gold Rush parallels I found were Rockies. The owner even had a flag on display from the 1998 All Star Game, the only year it's been in the Mile High City. Turns out, he is a Rockies fan, and he even owned a chain of record stores in the Denver area back in the '70s. Small world.

1999 Upper Deck 10th Anniversary Team #X5 Cal Ripken

I immediately recognized the 1989 Upper Deck design on this card, but figured it to be a more recent throwback parallel. Sure enough, this is from 1999's 10th Anniversary Team insert set, UD's self-congratulatory set documenting its first decade. The gold foil on the base line is rather tasteful, but there are only so many gold seals you can put on a card before it starts looking cluttered.

There's a tiny photo of Ripken's actual 1989 card on the back, and they picked a pretty similar shot for this anniversary card. I didn't know the specifics of this card when I set it aside, but an iconic design is always worth a second look.

2001 Topps Through The Years Reprints #50 Derek Jeter '93

I knew this was a reprint right off the bat, thanks to the Topps 50th Anniversary logo in the lower right, but I'd know this card anywhere. Other than Griffey's rookie from the aforementioned 1989 Upper Deck set, Jeter's rookie from 1993 Topps is one of very few cards from that era that still holds some value. Last year, I bought the Topps Gold parallel of this card from Christian, my primary card show dealer, for around $15. 

Topps released many reprints in their golden anniversary year, spanning insert sets, a large subset of the Traded set, and even some gold-bordered Factory Set exclusives.

2001 Topps Through The Years Reprints #42 Ken Griffey, Jr. '92

This Griffey is the one of three others I have from this 50-card insert set, and I'm pretty sure it came from one of my first-ever visits to Christian's table, circa 2003.

1994 Leaf Slideshow #6 Barry Bonds

I collected a lot of Leaf cards, even in my childhood days. It was a nice product, and affordable, even on a kid's budget. I thought I knew the 1993 and 1994 sets pretty well, which is why I was surprised when my girlfriend showed me this one out of the dollar box. It's made to look like a slide (remember those?), and might be the first transparent card to hit the market, a few years before 1997 Skybox E-X 2000.

It's full color and everything. And if you could hack a slide projector to fit a baseball card, I'm sure it would project nicely before melting.

And now, how about a few cards with absolutely no gold foil at all?

2005 Finest #162 Reggie Jackson RET

Due to the high price of Topps Finest, I've never actually purchased a box or even a pack of it. I've always relied on scavenging the discount boxes. I find them rather frequently, but there are definitely gaps in my collection. This is my first card from 2005 Finest, and it strongly resembles the ripple/fingerprint element in this year's Topps base set.

I've compared the hexagon-heavy 2003 Finest to 2014 Stadium Club Triumvirates, so if one wants a preview for what Topps has up its sleeve in coming years, Finest seems to be a good place to look.

Speaking of 2014 Stadium Club, this was the first time I found the set in a discount box.

2014 Stadium Club #53 Willie Mays

In addition to Mays and this vintagey-looking photograph (to go along with his Field Access insert), I also found Yasiel Puig's card. Two players that couldn't be more different. 

2014 Stadium Club is only a 200-card set, and I'd love to build the whole thing. I've yet to purchase any 2015, but from what I've seen so far in the blog community, I don't like it as much as this epic 2014 set.

2000 Topps Tek Pattern 5 #9 Andruw Jones

Topps also resurrected the Topps Tek brand last year, and I found a few examples from 2000 in this box. Like all Topps Tek sets, there are numerous background variations, but unlike the nearly 10,000-card master sets of a few years prior, this one is a much more manageable 900.

1996 Leaf Preferred Steel #2 Paul Molitor

I found about a half dozen Leaf Steel cards, which you've seen before on Infield Fly Rule. As you can see, these were all pretty beat up and chipped around the edges, but that doesn't affect their heft or magnetism. It's surprising, though, that pretty much the only metal baseball cards out there are quite fragile.

1992 Kellogg's All-Stars #1 Willie Stargell

I'm not the biggest fan of oddballs, but these Kellogg's cards are starting to grow on me. Unlike the miniature ones we're a bit more familiar with, this is close to normal-sized. It's a standard width card, though it's about a centimeter shorter. It's from 1992, and I had no idea Kellogg's was making these 3-D cards that recently. Whatever they did, they found a way to prevent the cracks that are frequently seen on earlier cards.

2000 Pacific Crown Royale #89 Rickey Henderson

My girlfriend found a few of these "Princess" cards in the same dollar box that yielded Bonds' transparent slide, so I couldn't resist. She also noticed that they had a sealed box of Crown Royale football cards on the shelf, and I had no idea that Panini resurrected this brand in recent years. 

Henderson in a Mets uniform is pretty unfamiliar, but he did play for quite a few teams in his long career, especially toward the end. Unlike, say, John Elway, he didn't quite know when to hang them up, and he kept signing with whatever team would take him.

Just when you thought Pacific cards couldn't get any crazier, they go and do something like this:

1998 Pacific Paramount Special Delivery #20 Jose Cruz, Jr.

From the Special Delivery insert set, they sort of went postal here.

Pun intended.

The back looks like a postcard, with a second photo in the upper right made to look like a postage stamp, echoing the overall outline of this card. The font on the back is script, clearly mimicking handwriting. It's sort of like the Studio credit card idea on steroids. Which is entirely appropriate for 1998.

I guess when you stumble on a card shop a thousand miles from home that's run by a Rockies fan, anything goes.