The Trading Post #144: Padrographs: Abner to Zimmer (Part 3: Not Topps)

For the first time in a very long time, I'm composing a post while watching the Rockies play a live baseball game. That's not a sentence I expected to write as late as August. Under normal circumstances, I'd be watching the middle weekend of the Summer Olympics. But it was not to be.

In any case, I finally have some time to wrap up a three-part post about a trade with Padrographs: Abner to Zimmer. A lot of you have sent me cards in 2020, and I'm woefully behind. I'm trying to keep up with thank-yous on Twitter, but it might be a while before I get a full post written for each of these trades. I'm even running out of places for each stack. On the bright side, I haven't needed to buy pages yet.

Let's see what non-Topps goodies Rod was able to find to round out this trade package.

1997 Donruss #200 Eric Young

It's Opening Weekend at Coors Field, and the Rockies took two out of three against Rod's Padres. A win Friday could have set up a sweep today, but Wade Davis didn't get the job done that night. Regardless, lots of Rockies have been rounding the bases this weekend, just like we see the speedy Eric Young (Sr.) doing here on 1997 Donruss. It's an under-represented set in my collection, and these cards Rod sent might finally force a second page in my '97 binder.

This design has a tiny silver foil element in the lower left, which contains both the team logo and the player's position. Donruss might have scaled this down to near-microscopic proportions in response to the "loincloth" that the '96 set was known for. The foil on this card isn't quite perfect, as the black border slightly covers up the silver foil elements. This copy in particular has a very slight remnant of a Red Sox logo right along the edge.

But making the design elements so small lets the photo do most of the talking, and Young got an especially good Coors Field card, perfect for the frankenset. I can't quite tell who the opposing team is, but based on the color, it's probably the Dodgers. Maybe it's even from that crazy 16-15 game on June 30th, 1996, one of the classic slugfests in the stadium's history that got extra airtime when they were broadcasting replays earlier this year.

Behind that probable Dodger, you can see an earlier iteration of Coors Field, before the right-center fence was raised. If this photo were taken today, the yellow line would be significantly higher, even with the top of the out-of-town scoreboard in right field. There's a banner too, and while advertisements have generally crept into more areas of the ballpark on the outfield wall (as well as onto all jerseys league-wide), in the early days it was generally limited to the area above the bullpens. I'm guessing this banner is from Carquest, an auto-parts chain that no longer markets under that brand in Denver.

1997 Donruss #185 Ellis Burks

The foil element looks much better on this Ellis Burks card, even though he's not in his home ballpark. Burks's career was longer than Young's by this point, so there's no room for a write-up on this card back. Young's had a few nice words to say, including a mention of the first-ever Major League home run in Denver, one of the all-time great Rockies highlights.

1993 Pinnacle Cooperstown #5 Dale Murphy

Few remember, but Dale Murphy was briefly a Rockie in the team's early days. He even had an RBI in that inaugural home opener. He decided to retire from baseball after a couple months with the Rockies. His time in Denver was mostly forgettable, but he had put together an excellent career in the years leading up to that, so excellent that Pinnacle thought he'd make it to Cooperstown one day, including him in a small 30-card boxed set with other prospective Hall of Famers.

I had expected to tie this card in with Larry Walker's uniform number retirement, which was supposed to happen in April. I even had tickets. Walker, of course, finally became the first Rockie to be elected to the Hall of Fame, in his last year of eligibility. It was a real nail-biter. Murphy, despite back-to-back MVP awards and 398 career home runs (none as a Rockie) has been snubbed by Hall of Fame voters. He wouldn't have worn a Rockies cap on his plaque anyway, but still.

Pinnacle did a pretty good job in building this 30-card set. Most players did end up getting the Call to the Hall, with some obvious choices like Ken Griffey, Jr. and Tony Gwynn. There are of course the steroid-associated players who aren't in, Bonds and Clemens and such, but Murphy is one of just a small handful of the 30 who have a pretty solid case but still don't have a plaque. A few weren't able to keep the early magic going, like Dwight Gooden and Will Clark. Others like Don Mattingly and Cecil Fielder just didn't have the longevity to put a truly legendary career together.

That just leaves two players. First is Joe Carter, who still has an interesting case based on his RBI count and also passes the Bill Mazeroski test for having a World Series walkoff homer. And second, Dale Murphy. Both players fell just shy of 400 home runs, but assuming you're not a "Small Hall" sort of fan, I agree with Pinnacle and think both warrant inclusion.

It is too bad that Murph wasn't able to squeak just two pitches out of Mile High Stadium in the thin Denver air and get to that 400 mark. But their stories aren't done yet.

2019 Donruss Optic Lime Green #126 Kyle Freeland

This particular variety of Donruss Optic gives 1991 Fleer a run for its money. I think this colored parallel is the Lime Green flavor (pun intended), but the colored border situation over at Panini is truly insane, so that's the one I am guessing. There is no serial number, which narrows it down considerably.

Freeland, 1-0 on this short season after getting the win Saturday, appears to be pitching in an early-spring Wrigley Field. You can see the basket and the brick, but the ivy is still dormant. Most likely, this is from April 30th, 2018, a loss against Jon Lester, which turned out to be an early preview of the 2018 NL Wild Card matchup. I suppose this could be from that game instead, but the ivy would look different in early October compared to late April. In fact, that very playoff game is precisely what Donruss mentioned on the card back, where he pitched 6.2 scoreless innings in a high-pressure situation, helping the Rockies advance to the NLDS.

2009 Upper Deck Starquest Uncommon Blue #SQ20 Matt Holliday

Matt Holliday was also a starter in that game, but this Upper Deck card was printed long before the Wild Card game had been introduced as part of the Postseason format. He went 1-for-3 with a double that evening before being replaced by Gerardo Parra.

I've seen varieties of this Starquest card before, or at least this image (I think). Matt Holliday looks radiant on this design with a big silver starburst behind him. Upper Deck calls this one a "Blue Uncommon", but it just looks silver to me. Maybe there's the faintest whiff of a shade like smoke blue, but not really. The only blue I see is in the Upper Deck logo itself, which remains a big hole in the baseball side of this hobby. Color confusion aside, we've gone a whole decade without a real Upper Deck baseball card and it is most definitely a loss.

I'm just not seeing the colors this time. I never would have come up with Lime Green on Freeland's card. And this simply isn't blue.

2009 Upper Deck #235 Liván Hernández

It's been quite a while since I've seen 2009 Upper Deck. It's a great-looking set, although I must admit that I have trouble telling the years apart with later UD base sets. Not nearly as bad as with Bowman, but it's tricky. That little baseball diamond hologram is still there on the card back, and I always appreciate getting a uniform number as part of the nameplate on the front.

I have to admit that I don't remember Liván Hernández as a Rockie. It was a brief eight-game stretch in late 2008, and by the time this set came out, he was on to the Mets. He was a real journeyman, playing for nine different teams in his career, almost all in the National League. That gave him time for ten career home runs.

With the sudden implementation of the universal DH, it's possible that we'll never see a pitcher hit a home run again, excluding the rare pinch hit situation. Position players take the mound sometimes, why can't a pitcher pinch hit? The universal DH also reduces the number of interesting baseball card photos available for pitchers, leaving us with shots like this of Hernández firing a comebacker off to first as one of the most unusual-looking pitcher action photos we're likely to see.

1992-93 Excel #36 Mark Thompson

We'll wrap up with a Minor League card, courtesy of 1992-93 Fleer Excel. First off, this has to be the only baseball card set I've ever seen that crosses years. Sets featuring the other major sports do this regularly, but it's very strange to see this on a baseball set. This is an oddball for plenty of reasons. It is officially a Fleer card, and I don't normally lump major brands in with "oddballs", but this is unusual.

Long ago, the Short-Season A Minor League affiliates of the Colorado Rockies, also known as the Rockies, played in Bend, Oregon. That just so happens to be the home of Deschutes, one of my favorite craft breweries. Anyway, as you can see from Mark Thompson's cap, it was easy to adapt the interlocking "CR" typeface into "BR", and later "PR" when the team moved to Portland, right into Rod's neck of the woods. The team logo can be found on the back, and it uses the old Rockies logo with the purple on gray arch rather than the black on gray colors we're familiar with. "BR" might look fine, but stretching "B E N D" into that space where "COLORADO" usually goes looks a bit odd.

We also have a single line of stats, as 1992 truly was Thompson's only professional season to that point. He appeared in several 1993 Rockies team sets, along with numerous other Amateur Draft selections, many of whom never made the majors. The Rockies and Marlins found in 1993 Topps Series 2 looks more like a Bowman checklist. Thompson, though, spent seven seasons in the Majors and was in the Rockies starting rotation in 1996. He had precisely 0.0 bWAR in those seven seasons, but he went 9-11 in 1996, really quite good for a pre-humidor Rockies pitcher.

He hit one home run in his career. It happened in Wrigley Field off of former Rockie Kent Bottenfield.

It's been a long journey we've been on with this three-part series. I certainly didn't mean for it to take over two months to finish. Blogging hasn't been at the top of my activity list lately, but I have been keeping up with reading most of yours. I can't make any promises about when I'll write my next one (though I still haven't missed a month, nor do I intend to), but thanks to all of you who give me so much to write about. Because of the continued generosity of Rod and many others in this community, I have plenty of content, just limited time to actually write it.

Thanks, as always, for reading!

The Trading Post #125: A Cracked Bat (Part 1: Shiny)

The last time Julie from A Cracked Bat sent a trade package, there was so much to cover that I had to split it up into two parts, Topps and Not Topps. Her latest trade was similar, in that there was a wealth of great cards to pick from, but this time I decided to split it up into Shiny and Not Shiny, another great way to create a two-part post that I've used before. There is a lot of ground to cover, including sets I've never seen before.

2018 Topps Chrome #80 German Marquez

We're going to need to ease into it with some borderless 2018 Chrome, because by the end, you may be seeing stars. German Marquez' base Chrome card doesn't go too over the top, it just whets your appetite a bit for what's to come.

I haven't collected many of the 2018 sets, including Chrome. That's probably why relative newcomer German Marquez is pretty under-represented in my collection outside of Topps Now. He has cemented a solid spot in a talented Rockies rotation, even doing so well in 2017 as to earn a comparison to 2002 Rookie of the Year Jason Jennings on the back of this card.

The waterslide design element pops just a little bit extra when given the Chrome treatment, and for now, this is one of the newest Topps cards around, since I have not yet purchased any of the newly-released 2019 cards. My side table is crowded enough as it is, with lots more trades, an incoming group break, part 2 of this one, as well as two entire blasters unwritten-about, 2018 Opening Day and 2018 First Pitch Big League. Those posts will come in time, with about a 20 percent chance of Marquez being on the hill the day I post.

2016 Topps Update Rainbow Foil #US256 Nolan Arenado AS

I knew this Arenado card from the 2016 All Star Game in San Diego looked familiar. The base version arrived a couple years ago from cards as i see them, but Julie graciously added this rainbow foil version to my collection. The retro Padres colors don't look any more retro, but the background and thin bars surrounding Nolan Arenado's nameplate clearly differentiate it from the base card under the right light.

Night Owl's much-hated smoke area in the upper left remains almost untouched by the effect. The rainbow shininess trails off in that area on a gradient.

What I know for sure is that the "CR" Rockies logo looks really weird on mustard yellow.

2017 Topps Gold Label Class 1 Black #93 Nolan Arenado

Julie clearly knows I like Nolan Arenado, so she added one in from 2017 Topps Gold Label. This one eluded me in Nachos Grande's First Rockin' Retro group break. It's a Class 1 card, meaning that the primary photo of the star third baseman shows him doing what he does best, and that's fielding. This card says nothing about his string of consecutive Gold Gloves, which is now up to six, but it does tell us about his consecutive 40-homer, 130-RBI seasons by the young age of 26. The only other players to accomplish that, we're told, were Chuck Klein and Jimmie Foxx, way back in the 1930s.

The photo shows him standing up, but it still could be a highlight-reel play. Just not the ones where he's thrown out runners from his knees in foul territory, often by several steps.

All three of the Rockies from the earlier group break had white backgrounds on the right side, but Sonny Gray, then of the A's, had a black area instead, just like Nolan's card. Apparently, this is a Black parallel, which led me to go back and revise the caption on Gray's card from a few months ago. I honestly did not put that together until after I scanned the cards for this post, because who knows with fractured sets?

2018 Bowman Platinum #65 Charlie Blackmon

While that revelation settles in, we'll shift to another Rockies star, Charlie Blackmon. Bowman Platinum is something I haven't seen in a while, and that's further reinforced by it being found only in Wal-Mart these days.

Topps took a weird direction with this set. It is a rainbow foil card, although I'm used to lots more shininess with this brand. I like the black border on the right, but this giant pastel-colored swoop thing completely dominates the design. It took multiple looks at this card before I even realized the photo's background is still there, as you can see someone standing on the top step of the dugout.

This set may be too niche to earn its own nickname, but it looks a lot like light trails on a long-exposure photograph. That, or a scene from Speed Racer.

And yes, the swoop is on the back too.

2018 Topps Fire Power Producers Gold Minted #PP-11 Charlie Blackmon

From what little I've seen of Topps Fire, there's a lot less actual depiction of fire than numerous sets have used over the years. Even though it's been on the market for two years, this is the first time it's entered my collection. I don't really have an excuse on why I haven't bought any, since this is a Target exclusive. And it's just the sort of thing that seems to unintentionally wind up in your shopping cart when all you needed was mayonnaise.

This yellowish-gold insert parallel is actually from the 2018 release, but Julie also threw in some 2017, which we'll see in part 2. This design doesn't really scream out to me; maybe that's why I haven't sought it out in two years. Like his Bowman Platinum card, it's also rainbow foil, but this shade of yellow is a massive distraction from that. Julie also threw in the Blue Chip variety, but this one of course caught my eye. Picture a slightly lighter shade of the Topps Bunt blue parallels and you'll get the idea.

I'm not sure where Beckett came up with its listing for this set, which I'm not using in the caption. The card number begins with "PP", consistent with the "Power Producers" name I found in a few places. Beckett declares this and its three colored varieties is part of the "Golden Sledgehammer" insert set. Granted, that is a pretty awesome name, but doesn't seem to match anything about this card.

Whatever its true name, the card back mentions Blackmon's 477-foot home run on July 9th, 2017. As is often my luck, I was at the game a day before. But what this card doesn't mention is that it happened on the same day as Kyle Freeland came within two outs of pitching a no-hitter.

Freeland was [puts on sunglasses] on fire that day.

That's to reinforce the pun, but we might really need those sunglasses soon.

2018 Donruss Optic Shock #89 Charlie Blackmon

Donruss Optic is still going strong in 2018, and they're even starting to get fancy with their shiny parallels. I am pretty sure this is the Shock parallel, but I am even less an expert in Donruss Optic than Topps Gold Label, so feel free to correct me. It's actually pretty mesmerizing, because there appear to be shiny dots that move around when you tilt the card. And unbelievably, it scanned pretty accurately.

This design with hints of 1984 Donruss appears to show the center fielder playing in St. Louis. That's my best guess, since it looks like there's just a tiny bit of the Cardinals logo painted on the back wall of the dugout. It might be a logo that Panini missed, though they did a fine job on Blackmon's uniform.

He had a great year in 2017, becoming the first player to lead the Majors in hits, runs, triples, and total bases in the same year. To put a feather in that cap, he also won the batting title.

2017 Donruss Optic #53 Raimel Tapia RR (RC)

Optic was a little bit more in check the prior year as far as parallels go, and that year the set used the familiar upward-sloping design that appears to carry behind the photograph. This year's design is most like 1991 in that regard, and the 1986 design used a similar angle but narrower lines. Panini has a wealth of designs to use if they keep this brand active in the future. It's only a matter of time before we see little baseball bats at the bottom facing right one year, then left the next. Or is it left, then right? I can never remember.

Raimel Tapia got the Rated Rookie treatment in 2017, and the card back describes his first career hit on September 2, 2016, his first of ten that season at the young age of 22. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video must be many times that, but Panini did a pretty good job describing that highlight in less than a hundred. They even put the right name to the card, something the broadcast crew flubbed at first.

2016 Bowman Chrome Draft #BDC-63 Garrett Hampson

With the departure of DJ LeMahieu, Garrett Hampson may be in line for some more playing time in 2019, depending on where Daniel Murphy appears on the defensive chart. He's a promising rookie, although he drew the short straw when the Rockies acquired Matt Holliday in late 2018. They sent him down to make room for the fan favorite's return, but called him right back up once rosters expanded in September, and even kept him on the roster for the Postseason. In fact, he scored one of just two runs the Rockies managed to plate during the entire 2018 NLDS.

At this point in his career, he's a perfect Bowman guy, but he just got his first real Rookie Card in 2019 Topps Series 1. Bowman's scouting report on this Chrome Draft card is that he's a "scrappy competitor" who can "leg out infield hits". That may be, but his first MLB hit was a towering RBI double off the wall in Arizona. That didn't miss being a home run by much, and Topps already mentioned the hit on his 2019 card.

Incidentally, his name came up during a recent conversation I had with Big Shep's Cards, whose friend's cousin is Garrett Hampson.

2017 Topps Chrome Prism Refractors #92 Trevor Story

Clearly, Julie has tapped a rich vein of 2017 Chrome cards, because she sent me a slightly different version of this Trevor Story card last year. That was the regular refractor, this one is the slightly rarer Prism Refractor. The "spotlight" design on the normal refractors isn't used here, instead using lots of tiny facets in the background design, while at the same time allowing a clearer image of the dugout in the background.

I spent some time last year gushing that Topps labeled the refractor as a refractor, but this one is missing that note. I guess it's obvious enough that it doesn't need to be differentiated from the normal chrome card. I don't think I noticed the "Chrome" lettering in the banner before, which is a little redundant with the usual Topps Chrome logo.

2018 Topps Fire Green #54 Trevor Story /199

Like me, Topps isn't above using puns. The card back on this trippy 2017 Topps Fire parallel tells us that "Story was en fuego" at the beginning of the 2016 season, having hit seven home runs by the time his career was six games old.

What we're looking at here is the green parallel, and I guess green is the dominant color here, but red is really giving it a run for its money. As are numerous other colors. This wouldn't be out of place in 1995 Fleer, and is probably the closest thing yet to what we'd see if Jackson Pollock designed a baseball card.

There's a /199 serial number on the back, which is also the only place we see Trevor's first name.

2017 Topps Triple Threads #49 Carlos Gonzalez

We're going to take a little break from the contemporary art of Topps Fire parallels and return to a more traditional design with clean lines. Julie has sent me Triple Threads cards of Carlos Gonzalez before, too. I have no idea where she gets all these, but I'm glad she's on my side.

Despite endless trade rumors, Carlos Gonzalez reached free agency after his time with the Rockies, and with the cold state of free agent signings, his place for 2019 has yet to be determined. I'd love to see him return to right field at 20th and Blake, (well, right field is more like 22nd), but the free agent market is weird right now. Things are also weird in his home country of Venezuela right now, although he resides in this beautiful home in Orlando.

We're about to leave the modern era and return to the Blake Street Bomber era. If anything, the cards are just going to get stranger.

1997 Upper Deck Star Attractions #SA14 Larry Walker

I almost forgot about die-cuts. This one really isn't all that shiny compared to some others, but it has a pretty unique look. The background is blurred in a way that looks like a still from a rotoscope movie. You can still see the dugout and the first few rows of fans, but it's a different style of blur than you normally get from a camera.

The die cut itself is fairly simple, although it reminds me that there are relatively few die-cut designs that are so symmetrical. And the photo is cropped perfectly to contain Larry Walker, not omitting any of his batting stance and the power he's generating with his back leg.

Most of Larry Walker's cards from this era mention his stellar MVP 1997 season, although Upper Deck lamented on this insert that "another season went by without a Triple Crown winner". He fell a little short on RBIs, and trailed in batting average to the great Tony Gwynn, but did manage to lead the NL in home runs.

1998 Studio Hit Parade #2 Larry Walker /5000

Studio was no different in 1998. They got a little more in-depth than the usual Triple Crown statistics, pointing out that Walker's .720 slugging percentage was fifth-best in NL history. That number was miles ahead of the AL leader Ken Griffey Jr. at .646, who took home that league's MVP.

Sportflix and Studio both used Hit Parade as an insert set before Topps got around to it some time later, and Donruss even decided this one of Larry Walker was worth limiting to 5,000 copies. I am in possession of #3,886. The surface is what's known as etched foil, and up close, it basically looks like the ridges of a fingerprint.

1996 Ultra Power Plus #11 Larry Walker

Our final card has a very similar etched surface, but lots more color. At first glance, I thought this was yet another mid-90s Stadium Club subset that eluded me all these years, but it's actually from 1996 Fleer Ultra. Those who collected 2014 Topps Power Players should find the colorful concentric circles on this similarly-named Power Plus insert set somewhat familiar.

Baseball terminology has changed a bit over the years. The card back says that Larry Walker is a "strong two-way player", and then proceeds to tell us about his home runs and steals, as well as his outfield arm. That could be taken a couple ways, that he has both speed and power, or that he excels at both offense and defense. Today, of course, with the arrival of Shohei Ohtani, that term has evolved to mean players who can both hit and pitch, perhaps the two most divergent skills in the sport. Matt Davidson's name is coming up frequently in those discussions, and many scouts are looking for it in young players.

I could never see Larry Walker as a pitcher, but the two photo selections of this card give us a glimpse of what that might look like. Maybe, with a design like this, it's from a parallel universe where that did indeed happen.

I always learn a lot from Julie's trade packages, and in part 2, there are still more sets that are making their debut in my collection.