Gold Medal Club (Part 1: Base)

Despite all the chaos and disruption around us, one thing remains constant. 

I still love Stadium Club.

Thanks to Target's recent policy of taking baseball cards out of their stores, I've actually been able to grab a couple products from their website at regular pricing. One of those was a blaster of 2021 Topps Stadium Club, and it's worthy of at least a podium finish in the 2021 Set of the Year race.

2021 Stadium Club #57 Ronald Acuña Jr.

As usual, the set is full of baseball's brightest young stars, including the Venezuelan sensation Ronald Acuña, Jr. He was having a great season until about a month ago, when he suffered a season-ending knee injury. Sadly, that also meant he had to miss out on playing in the All-Star Game, though he did attend.

When he's not on the field, he's usually enjoying his time off it. His dreadlocks and #13 chain are on full display in this borderless photo. Obviously, the picture was shot through the screen, which detracts slightly, but getting such a candid shot of Acuña that's different from so many other action shots is refreshing.

About a half-century ago, action photos first started appearing in baseball card sets. That artform has advanced so dramatically that us collectors take special notice when a card doesn't have one. Almost every card in the Topps flagship set is an ultra-sharp closeup of a player batting, pitching, fielding, diving, leaping, etc.... Just hanging around on the sidelines has become a rare sight.

2021 Stadium Club #172 Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

Not that perfectly-cropped action photos are boring. Far from it. I think we just like more variety. A set like Stadium Club needs shots of the All-Star Game MVP snagging a ball in his blue glove as much as any other. And that's not even what Vladimir Guerrero Jr. does best. He is second on the home run leaderboard for 2021, just three behind Shohei Ohtani.

2021 Stadium Club #241 Joey Bart (RC)

As young as they are, both Acuña and Guerrero have some service time under their belts by now. But there are lots of fresh rookies in the Stadium Club checklist, like Joey Bart of the Giants. Ostensibly the eventual replacement for Buster Posey, the former Georgia Tech Yellow Jacket is ranked #15 on the list of top MLB prospects. He got a little playing time in 2020 while Posey opted out of the season, but he's appeared just twice in 2021.

In any case, whether they're rookies or veterans, photos of catchers in full gear are great every time. Design-wise in 2021 Stadium Club, there is little to distract from the photo. There's just a little black banner in the lower left with the player's name in silver foil and the color-coded team abbreviation. The Stadium Club logo is in the upper right, and the Rookie Card logo in the lower right. That's about it, which makes the Nike Swoosh stand out that much more.

And clearly he's a catcher, even though this design doesn't explicitly tell us the player's position.

2021 Stadium Club #41 Ian Happ

The ivy wall at Wrigley Field also always looks good on cards, and here's Ian Happ tracking down a daytime fly ball for the Cubbies. The friendly confines have stood for well over a century, but Ian Happ's surroundings have changed dramatically in the past couple weeks. He's now part of a drastically different Cubs team, with stars Rizzo, Bryant, Kimbrel, Báez, and others traded to a variety of contending teams for a massive haul of prospects. Most of them, you'll recall, were part of that magical championship team in 2016.

We'll see what happens with the Cubs and their new prospects in 2026 or so, but the Cubs front office had to make sure that their fans were still intimately acquainted with heartbreak.

2021 Stadium Club #205 Kyle Lewis

It's only fitting that I get to blog about my favorite set on National Baseball Card Day. Of the many synthetic holidays that now fill the calendar, it's one of my favorites, right up there with International Chicken Wing Day, National Potato Chip Day, World Whisky Day, and of course Look For Circles Day.

And I found one, right behind 2020 AL Rookie of the Year Kyle Lewis.

In all seriousness, this is an excellent photo. It would require a lot of patience to get a snapshot of an outfielder right in front of his team's logo. It's definitely a shot the photographer prepared for. And if you look closely, you can see just how perfect the pocket is on Lewis's glove. The only way this could be any better is if the ball were in frame.

2021 Stadium Club #185 Kirby Puckett

Moving on from the current young players, we come to the retired legends that populate the Stadium Club checklist. It's been a while since I pulled a Kirby Puckett card out of a pack. And because players like Puckett built such a solid career, it's easy for us to forget that they were once young players with a promising but uncertain future. We've loved watching Acuña these past few years, but that ACL injury definitely puts a question mark or two out there.

When I first started watching baseball in 1993, the Twins were wearing pinstripes and had moved away from the "TC" lettering, so this photo is certainly from early in Puckett's career, maybe even from his rookie year of 1984.

2021 Stadium Club #116 Greg Maddux

More difficult to place in time is this clubhouse celebration photo of Greg Maddux. He's clearly wearing a shirt that says the Braves were National League Champions, but that happened numerous times throughout the '90s, both before and after Maddux's arrival in 1993. The Yankees won more World Series that decade, but the Braves had a longer streak of reaching the Postseason. 

Greg Maddux, one of the greatest control pitchers of all-time, was there for most of it, and his Braves came away with the ultimate prize in 1995. As the card back tells us, he had a 2.84 ERA throughout the 1995 Postseason, part of which came in the NLDS against the Rockies.

2021 Stadium Club #262 Frank Thomas

Of these retired stars, Maddux is mostly out of the spotlight, and sadly Puckett is no longer with us, but Frank Thomas is still well-known to current baseball fans, as he's part of the Fox broadcast crew. David Ortiz is usually the one who is up to the most mischief at the postgame desk, but Thomas is a commanding presence.

Once upon a time, he was known as The Big Hurt, and he was as big a name as they came in the early '90s. The two-time MVP was a fearsome hitter, and it appears that he is using an actual piece of rebar to warm up in the on-deck circle. Apparently, he used this throughout his career, and it allegedly came from the demolished Old Comiskey Park.

If he could actually swing this thing, I'd love to see how far he could hit a baseball with it. 

2021 Stadium Club #123 George Brett

George Brett appeared in this blaster too. His career wrapped up in 1993 along with Nolan Ryan's, so I didn't end up seeing any of it. Neither Brett nor Ryan made the All-Star team or the Postseason in 1993, and that was before Interleague play, so all I knew of them was from their legendary status, and in the case of Nolan Ryan, that orange and blue Pacific set.

On the card back, there's only a single line of stats for his career totals. Active players got another stat line for their 2020 season, but these retired players just have their gigantic numbers jockeying for position on the vertical card back. Brett's 10,349 at bats. Thomas's 4,550 total bases. Maddux's 999 career walks (!). Only the greats can stick around long enough to get that high up the leaderboards.

2021 Stadium Club #51 Willie Mays

As impressive as those numbers are, a few players have true numbers that are even higher. Late last year, the Negro Leagues were elevated to Major League status, so that means some players, like Willie Mays, actually have statistics that aren't really what we thought they were. The card back says that Mays had 1,903 RBI, but thanks to six more that we know about during his 1948 season with the Birmingham Black Barons, that total is now 1,909 as per Baseball-Reference.

It remains to be seen what Topps will do with Negro League stats in future years on cards of Mays and Monte Irvin and Elston Howard and so many more, whether their traditional National League and American League stats will be used for the totals on card backs, or whether we start to see a more complete representation of what actually happened in their careers.

I'm also curious to see whether we'll start seeing more cards of players whose careers ended before Jackie Robinson debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers. It's been a while since I've pulled a Kirby Puckett card, yes, but I most definitely have never pulled a Martín Dihigo card. I'd like to see Topps change that.

2021 Stadium Club #184 Jackie Robinson

Our final card today is Jackie Robinson's, one that I've seen frequently on the blogs this summer. Lots of bloggers have pointed out that this photo was colorized incorrectly, as the Dodgers have never worn red numbers on the back of their uniforms. The small numbers on the front are red, but the backs have always been blue. I wish Topps would just use the original black-and-white photos like they did in earlier releases of Stadium Club.

As the Tokyo Olympics draw to a close, I wanted to share a fun fact about the Robinson family and the Olympics. Due to World War II, Jackie never got a chance to compete in the Olympic games, though he was certainly talented enough. He was a multi-sport star at UCLA, and excelled in Track & Field. So did his older brother, Mack. 

Surely you know about Jesse Owens, who famously won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. One of those races was the 200m, which Owens won in 20.7 seconds, setting what was then a world record. 

Just a few tenths behind and winning the silver medal was Mack Robinson.

We'll never know what Jackie might have done in the 1940 or 1944 Olympics, had they occurred as planned. But we'll remember for all time what he did for baseball, and what his legacy is still doing for baseball. It's just worth remembering that to a degree, he was following in his brother's footsteps.

A more local LCS (Part 2: Topps Archives)

Depending on the World Series schedule and duration, November may be one of the dark months without a single game of Major League Baseball. This just happens to be one of those months, as Game 7 of the World Series occurred on Wednesday, October 30th.

2018 Topps Archives #233 Trea Turner

When all was said and done, Trea Turner and his fellow Washington Nationals were World Champions. Turner was involved in a highly controversial interference call in Game 6. His speed carried him up the first base line at a rapid clip, knocking the glove off of first baseman Yuli Gurriel's hand before the bad throw arrived. Just two batters after that, Anthony Rendon, who led off the post a few days ago, crushed a home run into the Crawford Boxes past Houston's left field, giving an ever-so-slight shrug to the umpire as he crossed the plate.

One thing led to another, and Dave Martinez ended up being the only manager in World Series history to be ejected (during the 7th inning stretch, no less) yet still win the game.

This whole situation was partly caused by Trea Turner's speed, which is the subject of one of the cartoons on this card back. In 2018, Topps selected the 1981 set as one of the designs for that year's Archives, and it's a pretty faithful reproduction of the original, right down to the lack of an official Topps logo on the front. The only issue is that the Nats have never worn the curly W on a white-fronted hat like the ballcap has on this card, nor does it match the red cap Turner is wearing in this posed shot.

The card back is about right, other than squeezing the team name into the top banner in a practically microscopic font size. There are even two cartoons, just like the originals, and the second one mentions the time Turner hit for the cycle against the Rockies on April 25th, 2017. That was during a four game series the Nationals played in Denver, winning three. In fact, they scored in the double digits in all three of their wins, raining on the usual April parade the Rockies celebrate. Colorado had just swept the Giants and were in first place. By the time the Nationals left, they were 14-9 and a half-game back.

I distinctly remember the TV announcers referring to the Nationals and that series as a "buzzsaw".

2018 Topps Archives #69 Gary Carter

That and all the Topps Archives cards in this post came out of a discount box at Colorado Sports Cards. Part 1 showed the goodies that CSC stocked for themselves, and parts 2 and 3 will show cards from the consignment boxes they have set up in the center of the store. Upon checkout, the owner mentioned the particular boxes I thumbed through were set up by Adam, one of my favorite dealers at the local card shows.

1959 Topps was another design selected for 2018 Archives, which we've seen before, courtesy of Julie. I picked plenty more of these out of the discount box. Due to Washington's championship, I thought it fitting to feature a card from the previous iteration of their franchise, the 1994 World Series Champions Montreal Expos.

Specifically, I picked the late Gary Carter, pictured here as a smiling Expo. He was the first player to enter Cooperstown with the Expos on his plaque. He played with a few NL teams during his career, but he started off in Montreal, spent a decade there, and played his sunset season back north of the border in 1992.

2018 Topps Archives #143 Carson Fulmer

1977 Topps was the third set design used in 2018 Archives. I don't know the original set that well, and I haven't really seen it since those Antique Mall Mystery Packs from several years ago. It does contain a cartoon, and this one tells us that Lefty Grove (correctly depicted as a southpaw) once won 20 straight decisions at Fenway. Most likely, that was when he was a member of the Red Sox rather than during his earlier days with the Philadelphia Athletics. He was the AL MVP in 1931, and there are a whole lot of bold numbers on his Baseball Reference page.

I don't have anything in particular to say about Carson Fulmer, nor can I see any particular connection he has to Lefty Grove. Fulmer's not even a lefty. But this photograph caught my eye. At first glance, it looks like Fulmer is standing in front of a distant, snowy mountain. I have a pretty good idea what those look like, since I can see them by looking west from anywhere in Denver. A closer look reveals it to just be some wintry tree branches.

I was further confused by the orange dots in the lower right. I'm assuming that's an orange tree, so this might be a Spring Training shot. The thing is, the White Sox play their Spring Training games in Arizona, not Florida. We certainly associate citrus fruits more with Florida than Arizona. Heck, it's even in the name, "Grapefruit League". But further research shows that Arizona has quite a citrus industry all its own.

I'm just more used to seeing cacti on the Cactus League cards.

2016 Topps Archives #169 Jorge Soler

It's been a while since I've seen 2016 Archives. I bought a pack when it was still in stores, but it's been rather dry ever since. Compared to other Archives sets in this discount box alone, it was pretty scarce. I only found this one Jorge Soler card which used the 1979 design.

Finding so many Archives cards not long after opening those thrift store bags gives me a rare opportunity to examine these older sets back to back. And the 1979 set looks great here, right down to the retro Topps logo. I'm not nearly familiar enough with these sets to get picky about color combinations or font sizes, but I do notice some slight differences when newer sets are picked for Archives.

Jorge Soler, who is now on the Royals, somewhat quietly led the AL in home runs in 2019, with 48. I'm sure the highlights were there; he just seemed to fly under the radar this year. In any case, back then he was a Cub, preparing to break the longest curse in pro sports, and honoring Ernie Banks with a #14 memorial patch.

2012 Topps Archives #160 Prince Fielder

I didn't realize Soler was a home run leader, but at least I knew which team he was on. But for Prince Fielder, unless you're a Rangers fan, his departure from the big leagues seemed not to really register. I've had several people ask me what happened to him, and when I looked him up, I was surprised to see he hadn't played since 2016. He signed a massive free agent contract with the Tigers in 2012, was traded to the Rangers after the 2013 season, and "retired" in 2016 following a career-ending neck surgery.

The Rangers had to keep him on the 40-man roster through 2017 while they got an arrangement worked out with an insurer for the rest of his contract. That contract was supposed to run through 2020, and Prince was quite upset when it became clear he wouldn't be able to finish it.

But in 2012, when Topps Archives became what we know today, they featured the big slugger on the 1984 design, all ready to go in his new Tigers uniform. I'm sure that most fans, and especially the Tigers, expected Prince Fielder's career to at least keep pace with the annual releases of Topps Archives.

2012 Topps Archives #92 Jordan Walden

I found a few other 2012 Archives in these boxes, the most eye-catching of which was the black-bordered 1971 design. It's reprinted on occasion, and not just in Archives. Even the originals have been showing up here since the early days of this blog.

I'm sure this card will hold up better than real '71s, but this one is already showing some signs of wear on the right edge. Black borders are as fragile as they are beautiful.

Topps probably expected Jordan Walden to be more of a star during his career than he ended up being. The 2011 season, which this card focuses on, was by far his best. He earned 32 saves for the Angels, got some Rookie of the Year votes, and even an All-Star appearance. The Angels traded him away for Tommy Hanson, who ended up being one of many Angels players to pass away long before their time.

Walden last played for the St. Louis Cardinals in 2015 but never returned to his former glory, nor did he earn more than a handful saves here and there.

2015 Topps Archives #75 George Brett

As you can see, I found lots of assorted years of Topps Archives, but the main one was 2015 Archives. That year, Topps expanded the set to 330 cards (including SPs), while reducing the number of reprinted set designs from four to three. 1957 was one of those sets, and the original is one of several 1950s issues that are entirely absent from my collection. Those early years of Topps are pretty spotty. I thought I had the Elmer Valo card, but I guess I've just seen it across the Cardsphere so many times that it's embedded itself in my memory.

Consequently, I don't have much to say on the design, other than it's quite sparse. It was groundbreaking at the time, being the first set to use a color photograph, as well as giving us the standard 2.5" x 3.5" dimensions we know today.

George Brett has a bit of a goofy look in this photograph, posing with a completed swing. It's a strange shot regardless of his expression. I never hit lefty like Brett, but the way the bat is positioned relative to his body just looks a little off to me.

Another thing that irks me a bit is that Topps omitted five years of Brett's statistics, ending in 1988. He played for the Royals through 1993, and even earned a batting title in 1990.

2015 Topps Archives #214 Orlando Cepeda

There's nothing wrong with posed shots, and I realize that action shots were few and far between for a long time in the hobby. They were so rare as to be worthy of a subset in 1972. Maybe it's just because I grew up in the era of action shots, but when posed shots are visibly wrong relative to the background, it bugs me a little. It's not even that Orlando Cepeda isn't displaying the usual stretch we see from a first baseman. It's just that when we look where he's standing in Wrigley Field, he'd be taking this throw from Row 17 behind the dugout. He's not even playing catch along the foul line.

I like seeing Wrigley Field on cards, and this is probably my first of Cepeda. It just sort of breaks the illusion that this is what he looks like in the field when you realize that a real throw like this would hit him square in the back.

The same issue dings Cepeda's card as happened with George Brett's. The final few seasons of Cepeda's career are gone, stopping in 1970. He played through 1974, and this clearly carries across designs, since we're on 1983 Topps now.

At least his 1967 MVP season is on here, the same year he won his only World Series ring with the Cardinals.

2015 Topps Archives #219 Kurt Suzuki

And after Wednesday's game, Kurt Suzuki can now count himself in the rare company of players who have won a World Series ring. The entire World Series roster of the Nationals all put themselves on that list for the first time, by the way. Even journeyman Fernando Rodney hadn't found himself on a championship team before.

I bet Kurt Suzuki is even happier now than he looks in that inset photo in the lower left as a Twin. He even hit a home run off the great Justin Verlander in Game 2, his first postseason home run, and the first World Series home run hit by a Hawaiian-born player.

2015 Topps Archives '90 Topps #1 Draft Picks #90DPIMS Max Scherzer

In what must be an agonizing statistic for Detroit Tigers fans, following the 2019 World Series, every member of the 2014 Tigers rotation has now won a World Series. Just not with the Tigers. Verlander did in 2017, David Price and Rick Porcello did last year, and Aníbal Sánchez and Max Scherzer got their rings last week.

Max Scherzer was a first-round draft pick in 2006, and Topps put him in a 1990-themed insert set with a little #1 Draft Pick logo up in the corner, just like Frank Thomas's rookie card. First-round picks aren't always successful, but sometimes they're unbelievably dominant. There were a few insert sets designed in the 1990 Topps style, and joining the heterochromatic Scherzer in that set are Buster Posey, Kolten Wong, Jay Bruce, and Mike Trout.

2015 Topps Archives '90 Topps All Star Rookies #90ASIMT Michael Taylor

Topps reused the 1990 design again in a slightly different insert set, this time replacing the #1 Draft Pick logo with the Topps Rookie Cup. There are far fewer big names in this set, so I was able to pull quite a few out of the discount box. Michael A. Taylor, who includes his middle initial that was omitted from this card, is the center fielder who made a great diving grab to help his team advance past the NLDS round.

Yes, I know this is a Nationals-heavy post. They just won the World Series!

2015 Topps Archives #151 David Wright

Like Prince Fielder, David Wright is another player whose career was cut short by health problems. 2015, the year of this card, marked the only time Wright made it to the World Series, and they lost in five games to the Kansas City Royals. Interestingly, half the World Series this decade went the full seven games.

1976 Topps is the third and final design used in the main set of 2015 Topps Archives, and I'd put this one down as my favorite of the three. That Sparky Lyle card already buttered me up a bit, and the positional variation of the design element in the lower left only gets better with age.

2015 Topps Archives #104 Kolten Wong

Speaking of Kolten Wong, he just won his first career Gold Glove. DJ LeMahieu shifting over to the American League opened that door a bit, but Wong earned every bit of it. You can tell from the little player icon in the lower left. Second basemen in this set got this awesome depiction of turning a double play. The shortstop icon is nearly as great, which shows a stolen base attempt.

By the way, Wong played in the 2013 World Series, quite an experience for a rookie with little more than a late-season call-up under his belt. He went 1-for-1, but since it was not a home run, he left the door open for Kurt Suzuki to get that Hawaiian-born player record.

2015 Topps Archives #134 Duke Snider

Archives always has a great mix of current players and retired legends. I don't think Topps expected David Wright to switch groups so suddenly, but either way, Duke Snider is a great player to share the 1976 design with. The outfielder icon in 1976 might not be as exciting as some of the others, but we get a Brooklyn Dodgers cap in the photo to make up for it.

Snider has the same sort of odd-looking posed lefty swing as George Brett. Maybe it's that a real swing doesn't normally end up that high behind your head. And unlike Brett, there's no indication of twisting the torso. I can't quite put my finger on it. It almost reminds me of that pantomime grand slam that Michael Morse "hit", one of the great moments in pre-Championship Nationals history.

2015 Topps Archives #172 Corey Dickerson

It's been a few posts since I showed an actual Rockies card. That's uncharacteristic of me, I know. Many of the recent sets I've shown predated the Rockies, and a set focusing on retired stars doesn't really leave a whole lot of room for Rockies greats. In fact, the team is still waiting to send a delegate to Cooperstown. Vinny Castilla appeared in this set as a short print, but that's a whole different story.

Corey Dickerson isn't even a Rockie anymore anyway, but rest assured, there are plenty of Rockies cards yet to come in future posts. But not in part 3. That will be shorter than this marathon post, and will have the non-Archives goodies I pulled from this great discount box.

The Trading Post #131: Nachos Grande

You're about to see a rare event on Infield Fly Rule. This is a post with precisely zero Rockies in it. I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure that none of these guys ever even suited up for the Rockies. That is surprising, both because the current nature of the game dictates that players are traded almost like stocks, and because this is the largest-ever Trade Stack ever claimed from the recently-redesigned Nachos Grande, at a whopping 35 cards.

I've had Trade Stack #93 on my desk for quite some time, and while everyone's favorite Barry Larkin collector documented his end of the trade in short order, it's taken several months for me to get to it. I've travelled a lot this year, and have seen quite a few MLB games, even one in another city! I had the good fortune to see Billy Joel play at Coors Field on Thursday, who is simply excellent in concert. He even peppered in a couple of Eagles songs.

I haven't been to a Rockies game in a couple months. In fact, my most recent game was the one in San Diego almost a month ago, which is appropriate for our first card.

2017 Topps Heritage #81 Adam Rosales

Adam Rosales is currently in the Cleveland Indians organization, and hasn't played in the big leagues this year. But not long ago, he played a full season with the Padres. That was in 2016, the same year the All Star Game was in San Diego, as noted on Rosales's uniform patch. Topps included him in 2017 Heritage on the '68 design.

Rosales is listed as a third baseman, but he has the versatility to play all over the field. His 13 homers in 2016 was the highest mark of his career, and his signature move is sprinting around the bases after sending one deep. I love seeing hustle like that. He's like the anti-Machado, for a whole bunch of reasons.

One other thing I'll mention about Rosales is that one of my good friends knew him growing up. He's less than a year older than me, and my friend says he and some other buddies "used to take swings in his basement in Park Ridge." How cool would that be for one of your childhood friends to make it in the big leagues? I don't personally know any Major Leaguers, but my sister knows Deck McGuire and his wife. They have kids around the same age, and have all been to storytime at the library together.

2018 Topps Gypsy Queen #130 Michael Fulmer

There were many retro sets represented in this trade, so it's going to take a while to find a glossy card, and even longer to get to the gold foil. Gypsy Queen may be one of the many retro sets out there, but even it is embracing Sabermetrics. The card back tells us that Michael Fulmer had a 0.71 HRA in 2017. I'll admit, I had to look that one up. It stands for Home Runs Allowed (per 9 IP), and Fulmer had the lowest rate in the league that year.

I'm not the type to downplay the importance of advanced statistics, unlike many old-school announcers. This is a game of numbers, and there are some valuable insights to be gained by slicing the numbers a different way. The only trouble I have with them, as I was still raised on batting average and ERA, is that I don't have that innate sense for what a "good" number is. 0.71 HRA sure sounds good, but I'm not at the point where I can, at a glance, know whether that's better or worse than other players. I'm sure it will come with time, but it's a bit like the metric system. I know the math behind what, say 90 km/h represents, but probably couldn't pilot my vehicle to that exact speed without having to convert it in my head. It's a bit like a second language, I suppose.

Even with all this talk of Sabermetrics, I'm reminded of a post I ran across on reddit today. Since the dawn of Major League Baseball there have been nearly precisely as many hits as there have been half-innings. Well over a hundred years of play across hundreds of thousands of games has produced a sport that generates, on average, one hit per every three outs.

2009 Upper Deck Goudey 4-in-1 #35-56 Russell Martin / Brian McCann / Ryan Doumit / Geovany Soto

Upper Deck gave us plenty of entrants into the retro set library, including their brief resurrection of the Goudey brand. The 2009 set offered an insert set modeled on the 1935 design, which featured four players per card. This grouping of four catchers, two of whom are still playing, unintentionally foreshadowed Upper Deck losing their MLB license the following year. These four close-ups of armored catchers doesn't feature a single team logo.

This is actually a fantastic card for fans of catchers on the defensive side of the game. Current sets don't give us many catchers who aren't simply batting, and I'd love to see more cards like this, especially with catchers still wearing their masks, as Ryan Doumit is here. Remember that Johnny Bench card from 2017 Stadium Club? Catcher's gear cards are awesome, and might even be mini-collection worthy.

1999 Upper Deck Retro #90 George Brett

Most catchers on cards just happen to be partially in the frame, like this unknown American Leaguer behind George Brett. The mask is there, along with a left-handed mitt, but there's not much else to go on. Some of the coloration in the background is making me lean Blue Jays, but that's just a guess.

Like in the previous Trade Stack I claimed, there was some Upper Deck Retro. This base card is from 1999, the final year of the set's two-year run, and this is the first base card from the '99 set to enter my collection.

The card back has no picture, but includes about half of his annual stats, a color palette similar to the front, the usual Upper Deck diamond hologram, and a fun fact about this Hall of Famer. You may have heard this before, but we're told that George Brett is the only player to win batting titles in three different decades. One of those years, 1980, also was his MVP year.

Back on the front, in tiny print on the lower left, Upper Deck has the slogan "A Guaranteed Hit". I doubt that meant UD was promising a rare card in every box, and more likely referred to their certainty that this set would be a top seller. As "nineteen 99" (also spelled out in the lower left) was the final year of Upper Deck Retro, that did not come to pass.

1998 Upper Deck Retro #115 Mark Kotsay FUT

I've yet to see a base card from the prior year, 1998 Upper Deck Retro, but Nachos Grande has become my sole supplier for 1998's Futurama subset. This marks my fourth card from that subset, one from very early in Mark Kotsay's career. The journeyman outfielder played for seven teams before retiring, and shifted to first base later in his career.

I didn't really notice the sepia-toned photographs last time I saw these, but when you know Kotsay is wearing the bright teal jersey of the early Florida Marlins, it's slightly jarring to see that taken away.

1991 Topps Archives 1953 #25 Ray Boone

A major part of this trade stack was a batch of Cleveland Indians from the 1953 Archives set. Ray Boone, who took over at shortstop in Cleveland for Hall of Famer Lou Boudreau, would be traded to Detroit partway through the 1953 season, leaving the city where he began his career and earned a World Series ring in his rookie year of 1948. His one and only postseason at-bat was a strikeout in Game 5.

1948, of course, was the last time that the Indians won the World Series. That's 71 years, but that number becomes particularly impactful when you remember that was Ray Boone's rookie year, and his son Bob and grandsons Bret and Aaron have all concluded their MLB careers by now. Aaron Boone is now managing the Yankees, and had to argue against Brett Gardner's completely unwarranted ejection during Friday night's game in Toronto.

2018 Topps Allen & Ginter World's Greatest Beaches #WGB-5 South Beach

Boone's card is the glossiest one we've seen yet, but as retro as this post is, let's include some Allen & Ginter, shall we? Every year around this time, the hobby erupts in either appreciation for the set, or indignation for the so-called quality of non-baseball topics in the set. I still enjoy it, and the History of Flight insert set in 2019 A&G interests me, although I will question the skipping of card numbers 301-350.

Anyway, here's a card of a beach. I made sure to get some beach time in during my trip to San Diego, and even managed to avoid a sunburn. I haven't been to South Beach, the subject of this insert card, or even Miami. My beach visits in Florida have been limited to the Cape Canaveral region. It sure looks enticing, though I doubt you'll find three perfect scallop shells like you see on this card.

1994 Post #30 Orlando Merced

I've hunted for them more carefully than seashells, but try as I might, I have yet to find an Utz potato chips oddball card this year. Fortunately, I love potato chips even when they don't include baseball cards, so that's not a huge disappointment. Perhaps I'll just have to keep searching. However, I'm not really much of a breakfast guy. I'll have an apple for breakfast most days, or perhaps the occasional granola bar. I can't remember the last time I bought a box of cereal, so completing a Post cereal oddball set would be out of the question. Fortunately, I have trading partners looking out for me.

Long before Upper Deck lost their MLB license, companies like Post were putting out sets with the logos airbrushed out. Pirates outfielder Orlando Merced was the final card in the 30-card checklist that year, and this is the third card I have from the set. Andres Galarraga is in my collection, which I thought I posted about once upon a time, but I couldn't find anything in the archives.

There was another logo-less cereal oddball in this stack, the Kirby Puckett card from the 1989 Cap'n Crunch set. Bob Walk the Plank added that to my collection long ago in The Trading Post #4.

1995 Collector's Choice #26 Paul Shuey

I was a big fan of Collector's Choice as a kid, and I bought plenty of this 1995 release. I didn't notice until recently, though, how strange these Rookie Class subset cards are. The bubbly pink background wouldn't be at all out of place in 1995 Fleer. Maybe it's just Paul Shuey's card, because a few others in my collection have a much smoother background in the pink area.

I also question whether this is a true action shot, because that is certainly a strange look on this reliever's face, which goes along with a comically high leg kick.

Pitchers.

Incidentally, he is one of the few pitchers to pull off the error-assisted feat of striking out four batters in an inning.

1994 Topps Gold #351 Gary DiSarcina

We're finally at the point of gold foil, and what better way to introduce it than on 1994 Topps Gold? There's an anthem shot on the card back for you mini-collectors, and Gary DiSarcina is wearing the same California Angels uniform that was used in Angels in the Outfield, one of the baseball movies I grew up watching.

DiSarcina spent is whole career with the California/Anaheim Angels, and is now the third base coach for a New York Mets team that is heating up at a good time. Their walkoff win on Friday night saw Rookie of the Year candidate and Home Run Derby winner Pete Alonso (aka Polar Bear) hit his 38th home run of the season.

2001 Topps Gold Label Class 1 #23 Darin Erstad

Gary DiSarcina retired in 2000 without any Postseason experience, but his teammate Darin Erstad was present in 2002 for the first World Series title won by the Angels.

Really, he was more than just "present" in that Series. His leadoff home run in the 8th inning of Game 6 kickstarted a rally that would not only see the Angels stave off elimination, but go on to win the whole thing in Game 7 over the Giants, with Erstad himself catching the final out.

This Topps Gold Label card was printed a year before that, with a photo from 2000, their 40th Season. Erstad is sporting an anniversary patch on his right sleeve documenting that milestone, back when the team was still known as the Anaheim Angels and was laying it on a little thick with the heavenly wings motif.

There's another reason I remember Darin Erstad besides his World Series heroics. He was the subject of a trivia question I missed. One day in high school, my teacher asked a question about her alma mater: "Which Angels player went to the University of Nebraska?" I guessed Chad Curtis, drawing on my encyclopedic knowledge of the 1994 Topps set many years too late. Curtis hadn't been an Angel since then, and the correct answer was, of course, Darin Erstad.

Whether they're a friend of a friend or the answer to a trivia question, these baseball players are more than just athletes.

Thanks to Nachos Grande for the swap!