Hall Bound

For the first time ever, a Rockie is headed to Cooperstown. In his final year on the ballot, Larry Walker earned 76.6% of the vote, just squeaking past the 75% threshold.

I watched the announcement live, and must admit that my heart skipped a beat when his name came up. For too long my hometown team has been denied a presence in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and I can't wait to finally make a trip there and see a Rockies cap on a plaque.

I certainly can't think of a better reason for a one-card post than a Hall of Fame election. But which card to use? He's had some great ones over the years. As I was making my selection, I thought something from 1997 would be most appropriate. That was his MVP year, which remains the only time a Rockie has won the award. Night Owl's recent “Best MVP-year cards” post omitted Walker's 1997 Topps card, as he came out on the wrong end of a split hair, to paraphrase.

As one of the few Rockies fans in this community, I'm glad I have the chance to put a candidate forward for that list. Here's what I came up with:

1997 Bowman International Best #BBI7 Larry Walker

This one checks all my usual boxes. Rockies card. Shiny card. Topps card, the brand that leads off every one of my annual binders. Granted, Bowman falls toward the back of the pack in the Topps section, mainly because I've never been able to keep the designs straight, and because the numbering system is far too counterintiutive.

Bowman's Best, on the other hand, gave us designs that I consistently enjoyed and can recall from memory better than the base Bowman sets. And in 1997, both the base and Best sets included the inaugural version of International parallels, where the card background was modified in some way to match the player's country of origin. The 1999 set channeled the card backs from 1993 Leaf by including photographs of local landmarks. But in 1997, International cards simply had the flag of the player's home country. I have the normal version of this card, but because Walker is just the second-ever Canadian to reach the Hall of Fame, after Fergie Jenkins, choosing the parallel containing the flag seemed especially appropriate.

We strongly associate this red maple leaf on a white background with our neighbors to the north, but it's really a relatively recent creation. Prior to 1965, the Canadian flag included the Union Jack with a red field, as well as a coat of arms. Quite a Canadian form of rebellion against the British Empire, if you ask me. No wars, no riots, just a polite, "we'd like a new flag, please."

Anyway, on the card back, underneath a United Nations-esque banner of various flags, there's a small paragraph featuring Walker's best season, for which they selected 1995. He hit 36 home runs and had 101 RBI, stole 16 bases, and slugged .607. He also led the NL in outfield assists, and his arm was truly something to behold. Just ask Metal Universe. Those 36 homers were also a record for a Canadian-born player.

Of course, he'd break his own record just a couple years later. Bowman couldn't have known it yet, but 1997 was undoubtedly his best year. As I mentioned before, he won the NL MVP, and led the Majors in home runs, on-base percentage, total bases, and slugging percentage. He was second in batting average behind the great Tony Gwynn, and third in RBI behind Jeff Bagwell and Andres Galarraga, his own teammate who took the league lead.

Like his shirt said, he ain't no ordinary sponge.

As amazing as that season was, if he had managed to eke out just a dozen or so more hits, he might have won the Triple Crown, which would have completely changed the conversation about his Hall of Fame candidacy.

Congratulations are of course in order for Derek Jeter as well, a nearly unanimous inductee and one of the many greats to wear the Yankee pinstripes. Ted Simmons and Marvin Miller will join them, thanks to the Veterans Committee.

I doubt I'll be able to witness Walker's induction speech in late July, but I do plan on seeing the Rockies retire his uniform number 33 prior to the game on April 19th. Todd Helton blazed that trail in Rockies history, and here's hoping he'll also get the call before too long.

Rockin' Retro Group Break the First (Part 2: Athletics)

During the time between Part 1 and Part 2, my haul from Nachos Grande's newest group break arrived, including an awesome Andres Galarraga relic card. But his first Rockin' Retro Group Break has a part two to cover before we can get to that. See Part 1 for my hometown Rockies, and my random team this time around was another generally well-liked team, the Oakland (and Philadelphia) Athletics.

2017 Topps Gold Label Class 3 Black #13 Sonny Gray

My Rockies haul from 2017 Gold Label was a little more complete, but I did get this lone Sonny Gray card from Class 3. In fact, based on the final highlights, I ended up with two of only four Class 3 cards that were found in the entire break. The security stripe, as I called it last time, is a bit more legible, but the three different classes for pitcher cards are a little harder to tell apart. Position players get their three classes of cards in batting, fielding, and baserunning, but pitcher cards are split between the windup, delivery, and follow-through, making it a little tricky to tell which one you are holding.

As always, players are on the move. Sonny Gray was traded to the Yankees right at the 2017 trade deadline, and there are tons of trade rumors swirling around him this offseason. I'm sure Topps accepts it as an inevitability that these beautiful cards they design can be obsolete in a matter of weeks. Or maybe they just know they'll sell more.

1998 Bowman Chrome International #205 Miguel Tejada

Fresh off his debut in late 1997, Miguel Tejada appeared in 1998 Bowman Chrome, and this happens to be an International parallel. I'm no Bowman expert, but this appears to be just the second year this parallel set existed. The shiny front has a map of the Eastern half of the island of Hispaniola, with Tejada's head and cap obscuring Haiti. The card back is entirely in Spanish, taking a page from some early-1990s Pacific sets, as well as Topps' old Venezuelan cards.

Coincidentally, Tejada's middle infielder counterpart on the Rockies, Neifi Perez, was my featured card in Part 1. Perez, also from the Dominican Republic, has the English "SS" abbreviation for his position. Tejada, on the other hand, gets a "PC" in that spot, and I'm not quite sure what that means. I am even less an expert in Spanish than I am in Bowman. "Campo Corto" is the translation of shortstop, and those words are found on the back, but I'm not sure how you'd get "PC' from that.

2002 Fleer Triple Crown Batting Average Parallel #78 Eric Chavez /288

2002 Fleer Triple Crown was a richer vein than those first two sets, yielding a BA Parallel of Eric Chavez. "BA" refers to his batting average, meaning Fleer printed up 288 copies of this card, matching his statistic from 2001. Troy Tulowitzki's .340 batting average led to a similar card in 2015 Donruss, and Topps completely overdid the idea with Moments and Milestones, a set I had to dig deep into the memory banks to remember.

During that .288 season, Eric Chavez, and all his fellow American Leaguers, wore a commemorative patch on their right sleeves to mark the 100th season of play for the AL. Four teams, but not Oakland, had slightly different "Charter Member" versions of that patch, going all the way back to 1901. Ban Johnson, the founding executive of the AL, isn't named on the patch, but he's a prominent figure in the early episodes of Ken Burns' Baseball documentary series.

I don't know if all the BA parallels have green foil or if that's color-coded to Oakland. My 2002 Fleer pages are sparsely populated, especially when it comes to parallels, so I don't have much to compare it to.

That's not precisely true. I have quite a few 2002 Fleer cards. It's just that there were so many sets, and some of them are pretty underrepresented.

2002 Fleer Triple Crown #118 Mark Mulder

Back to the land of the base cards, here's Mark Mulder in that gorgeous emerald green jersey. Apparently he went 21-8 in 2001, just his second big league season, and finished second in Cy Young voting that year.

Mulder was also involved in an infamous trade in my Fantasy baseball league, a not-so-great move on my part when I was getting my feet wet back in 2005. I acquired Mulder, a briefly hot shortstop, and a few others, but the price was way too high.

Lesson learned.

2002 Fleer Triple Crown #134 Miguel Tejada

By the time the Moneyball season of 2002 rolled around, Miguel Tejada (played in the movie by former major leaguer Royce Clayton) was a rapidly-ascending star. In fact, he'd win the AL MVP that year. Even at a young age, he quickly became the best shortstop ever to play for the A's, but sadly lost four straight ALDS series as his only time in the Postseason.

The more I see of this Triple Crown set, the more I like it. Collectors have been complaining for years that backgrounds have become too blurry, but when you have the glossy foreground and matte background like this set, a nice bokeh effect really blends in well. I particularly like how the ball that Tejada is fielding is glossy, clearly part of the main attraction.

2002 Fleer Triple Crown #86 Ramon Hernandez

The way this card is cropped doesn't show the ball that Ramon Hernandez is presumably about to catch, but his full array of catcher's gear comes across in a lovely shade of green. I've long gone on record as liking green cards, and between Hernandez and Mulder, this is the set that might make me start looking for more A's cards for my collection.

The card back isn't quite as special, and I'm not a fan of conflicting horizontal and vertical orientations. Most of the card back is horizontal, but Fleer stuck the copyright notice and such on the right hand side, reading bottom-up. It's an awkward look. But the usual quick paragraph is there, and it tells us that Hernandez caught a whopping 143 games in 2001, not even one game off a week.

That pace slowed a lot in his later career, although he did spend the 2012 season as a Rockie. This is his first appearance on Infield Fly Rule, and it's not even in a Rockies uniform. That might be a first.

2012 Panini Cooperstown #120 Rickey Henderson

The Athletics have been around in one form or another since 1901, and have played in three different cities across America. That of course means they have quite the delegation in Cooperstown, unlike the Rockies, where I had to resort to a card of an umpire to even mention this Panini set in Part 1.

Rickey Henderson played for a lot of teams in his long career, but most people remember him with Oakland. He played 14 seasons with them, spread out across four separate stints. This being an unlicensed set, it's hard to tell which team he's on here, but it appears to be Oakland, matching his Hall of Fame plaque. The single season of stats that Panini gives us on the back are from his MVP 1990 season, the year before he'd break Lou Brock's record, which he would further demolish by almost 500 more SBs.

A few other fun facts about Rickey. We all know he's the all-time stolen base leader, with 1,406. He's also the all-time leader in runs scored, which goes to show just how valuable SBs really are. He isn't really known for it, but he had a terrific eye, leading the Majors in unintentional walks, with over 2,000. He's also a member of the 3,000-hit club. And finally, one of my favorite sports stats that shows you what a competitor he is, Rickey is the all-time leader in times caught stealing.

So when you add all that up, we can calculate a few things. In all his plate appearances, Rickey Henderson stole a base in over 10% of them. There are surely a few in which he stole second and third on his same trip around the bases, but that's a staggering rate. And if you want to take it a step further, if you add his extra-base hits into the mix, Rickey Henderson was in scoring position (or better) in about 17% of all his plate appearances. Give or take, he made it to at least second base a sixth of the time, solely by virtue of his bat, eye, and speed. And that doesn't even count the times a subsequent batter pushed him along.

Bottom line, he's one of the best players to ever grace the sport of baseball.

2012 Panini Cooperstown #8 Connie Mack

So far, this post has focused on the Athletics' time in Oakland, but they got their start in Philadelphia at the turn of the 20th century, and also had a forgettable midcentury stopover in Kansas City. This card of legendary manager Connie Mack is why I qualified the A's home city at the beginning of this post. He was the team's only manager for nearly a half-century, from their founding in 1901 all the way until 1950, the year in which Vin Scully took over broadcasting duties for the Dodgers.

In other words, until 2017, there was an unbroken line of baseball legacy from Connie Mack to Vin Scully going back to 1901. You can push that back to 1886 if you don't count the brief hiatus between Mack's playing and managerial careers.

So yes, this dapper gentleman is in the Hall of Fame. And he does make one wonder why baseball managers suit up in white performance gear as opposed to a suit and tie. It is slightly comical, seeing sharply dressed guys like Joel Quenneville and Gregg Popovich in contrast to, say, Bob Melvin in a green cap and white uniform. But take Earl Weaver, whose legendary tirades maybe wouldn't have been quite as awesome if he were worrying about dirtying up his leather dress shoes.

All I know is that a guy named Cornelius McGillicuddy wearing a bowler hat is basically the last guy I would want to mess with.

2012 Panini Cooperstown #154 Home Run Baker SP

I admit, I need to brush up on my deadball-era Hall of Famers. For someone whose nickname is also the highest-profile statistic in baseball, you'd think I'd have heard of him before. Before he became short-printed Home Run Baker, he was just Frank, but then he joined a young Athletics franchise. In 1909, he tied the AL record for triples by a rookie, with 19, a record that still stands today. And he led the American League in home runs for four straight seasons, 1911-1914. He hit 42 home runs in that span, one less than second-place J.D. Martinez hit for the Red Sox this year.

Baker wasn't even the first player to lead the home runs category in four straight years. He wasn't even the first Athletic to do it. His teammate Harry Davis did precisely the same thing, though with 38 home runs, from 1904-1907. Yet Home Run Baker got the nickname. With all the power hitters we've seen over the decades, from Babe Ruth to Ken Griffey, Jr., the guy who is in the Hall of Fame with "Home Run" in quotes on his plaque is a guy who hit 96 in his career.

1997 Sports Illustrated #57 Scott Brosius SIV

Back to modern times, if there's one thing I've learned about 1997 Sports Illustrated, it's that there are a lot of subsets. SI was not missing the boat in the early days of the Information Superhighway (I wish we still called it that), giving us a vaguely computer-themed subset called SIber Vision. It looks a little like the Nintendo logo, with a bright red starburst design in the background and some circuit board 90-degree angles.

1997 would be Scott Brosius' final year in Oakland, as he ended up being The Player To Be Named Later in a trade they made with the Yankees for pitcher Kenny Rogers. Brosius, an average utility player, would go on to become a key member of the Yankees' dynasty in the late 1990s and early 2000s, even winning World Series MVP honors in 1998, his first year as a Yankee. This card had it right in saying, "Brosius seems to improve as a hitter each season he's in the majors."

The card also mentions his college career at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon. That happens to also be the location of the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum, which airplane fans might recognize as the home of Howard Hughes' famous boondoggle, the H-4 "Spruce Goose". It remains the largest aircraft by wingspan that has ever flown, but those who saw The Aviator know that it only flew once.

1997 Sports Illustrated #175 Mark McGwire / Will Clark CC

Yet another subset from '97 SI gives us a miniature reproduction of actual SI magazine covers. This one shows sluggers Will Clark and Mark McGwire preparing for their third major league season in 1988. Little did they know they would square off in the World Series the very next year, with Oakland coming out on top.

I like this idea a lot. We all know that SI photos make for great baseball cards, but they really are kind of cute when scaled down to this size. And in case you were wondering, 6-seed Kansas did indeed complete the upset during March Madness in 1988, defeating top-seed Oklahoma 83-79.

2010 Upper Deck #365 Brad Ziegler

That about does it for the main attraction, as the 1998 Gold Label and Donruss Optic wells ran dry, but there are always a couple extras to be found when Nachos Grande sends out a shipment. It's almost like getting a free repack with your group break winnings. Many of us have seen 2010 Upper Deck in repacks, and the several shades of green on this card look great. Not much is said about Upper Deck anymore, besides the vague lamentation of "I wish Topps didn't have a monopoly". But their final couple sets were pretty great, in my opinion.

There is a ton of blank white space on the back of this card, however. It's too bad that Brad Ziegler, back with Arizona for a second time before announcing his retirement last month, didn't get to fill out Upper Deck card backs any further past this. And I find it a little strange that UD squeezed the submariner's scouting report into the small brown area on the left, leaving lots of open space on the rest of the card.

1987 Topps #311 Rickey Henderson TBC

We'll close today's post with Stolen Base Henderson, gracing the front of Topps' look back to 1982, a mere five years before the iconic 1987 woodgrain set was released. There's a little reproduction of Rickey's 1982 Topps card on the front, and lots of fun 1982 tidbits on the back, such as Larry Parrish's three grand slams in one week, Salome Barojas' five-save MLB debut (whom Night Owl coincidentally just wrote about), Rollie Fingers' 300th save, and of course Rickey Henderson's 130 stolen bases.

It is nice to have another team to delve into once in a while. Even though I'm an avid Rockies fan, there's only so much that's happened in the last 25 years. Given the opportunity to dig back to 1901, there's plenty of history that remains untold. I've uncovered a lot in 250 posts, but there's plenty more to come.

Cut Short

"Fernandez's statistical possibilities boggle the imagination."

2014 Topps Spring Fever #SF-20 Jose Fernandez

So said Topps in 2014 about Jose Fernandez, the Marlins ace who lost his life Sunday morning in a boating accident. He was just 24 years old, but already had a Rookie of the Year award and two All-Star appearances under his belt.

This card has appeared here before, marking the Baseball Solstice in the 2014-2015 offseason. No one could know that it would make another appearance under much worse circumstances. Fatal boating accidents have struck active Major Leaguers before, as you may recall the 1993 incident that claimed the lives of Tim Crews and Steve Olin. Even outside the baseball world, 2016 has seen its share of untimely celebrity deaths, including Prince and David Bowie, to lesser-known figures like Anton Yelchin and Christina Grimmie.

My thoughts are with the family and friends of Jose Fernandez, as well as the Miami Marlins organization.

I've had a post in mind for a while that's a bit of a downer, and I feel like today might be an appropriate day to share it. Of course, this is not to take away from what happened with Jose Fernandez, who was one of the most promising young pitchers in the game.

A little over a month ago, I did a Cubs-focused post with cards I had obtained at a card show in early 2015. Those cards, and others from that post, have been sitting on my card table for quite some time. As I went through them recently, a theme started emerging that really wasn't all sunshine and roses, like it usually is on this blog, various lamentations about Rockies' losses aside.

1994 Fleer Golden Moments #5 Bo Jackson

Bo Jackson, a multi-sport star, was poised for all-time greatness, but experienced a hip injury on an innocent-looking tackle in 1991 that put an end to his NFL career. The Royals didn't expect him to return to baseball, either, but the White Sox gave him a chance, as depicted on this Fleer insert card that mentions the injury. "Bo's Back", according to the back of this Golden Moments card, long before Topps made an insert set of the same name. Jackson helped the White Sox reach the playoffs in 1993, which was the first postseason that I remember watching. Wilson Alvarez, Tim Raines, and Bo Jackson were some of the first American Leaguers I ever watched on TV in the 1993 ALCS.

He played for the Angels the following year, but decided to retire from baseball after that strike-shortened 1994 season, yet another player whose career was ended by the strike.

2011 Topps Opening Day Blue #106 Todd Helton /2011

Todd Helton had a stellar career for the Rockies, and he was my answer when I was asked the other night during a business trip to the Dallas area who the best-ever Rockies player was. All those doubles and a World Series appearance count for a lot. He was loved in Denver (though there was that DUI incident), but you can't play this game forever. Helton retired in 2013, leaving a bit of a vacuum at first base, even if he does have a burger stand named after him at the ballpark. And he played in the era in which Topps Opening Day Blue parallels still had serial numbers. In gold, no less.

1982 Topps #781 Pete Rose IA

Ten years after Topps debuted the In Action subset, they used it again in the 1982 set. All-time MLB hits leader Pete Rose got a card that likely depicts one of his 4,256 hits. Like Rickey Henderson, Rose is the career leader in several statistics, which are games played, plate appearances, at-bats, and of course hits. Rickey leads not only in stolen bases, but also runs scored, and times caught stealing.

Rickey, of course, is in the Hall of Fame, but Pete Rose is not, despite his accomplishments. His gambling scandal landed him on the list of players permanently ineligible from baseball, which has kept him out of the Hall.

There are a lot of names on that list, including the names you might expect like Joe Jackson and other Black Sox players, along with players, umpires, and managers from long ago that were involved with throwing games. Clearly, baseball does not look kindly on gambling. If you're in a position to affect the outcome of the game, that's one thing, but even Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were briefly banned in the mid-1980s for the mere sin of representing a casino in a promotional capacity long after their careers ended.

The Hall of Fame can choose to keep out the all-time hits leader (other than Ichiro, sort of), but if they keep that up, as well as snubbing pretty much any steroid user, enforcing their own sense of morality risks cheapening the value of the Hall itself. A baseball Hall of Fame that doesn't include Pete Rose, Joe Jackson, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, etc... really doesn't give you a complete list, does it?

2013 Topps Chrome 1972 Chrome #72C-RB Ryan Braun

Unless that policy changes drastically, here's another guy that won't be in Cooperstown anytime soon, Ryan Braun. He was suspended for about half of the 2013 season after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). Whatever accomplishments remain in his career, he's unlikely to get full recognition for them, even if he happens to lead the Brewers to their first-ever championship someday.

Topps is still happy to print nice, shiny cards of Braun in the great 1972 design, so at least Topps knows what the fans want.

2010 Topps Chrome Refractors #209 Daniel McCutchen

It's not just the superstars that used steroids, even players you've never heard of did too. That's why I think steroid use wasn't such a big deal in and of itself. Bonds stood head-and-shoulders above the league even when a large portion of his competitors were using the same compounds. But Daniel McCutchen tested positive as a Minor Leaguer in 2013, and was slapped with a 50-game suspension. He has no relation to the other McCutchen on the Pirates, Andrew, but believe me when I say I experienced a moment of panic when I saw "McCutchen suspended 50 games for positive drug test" on the ESPN ticker just a couple weeks after I selected Andrew as my Fantasy team's first pick.

Daniel McCutchen, despite his use of PEDs, didn't have his performance enhanced that much. He was almost 27 before his Major League debut, and even then, finished with an 8-11 career record over five seasons. He even had an infinite ERA in 2012, giving up two earned runs in one appearance without recording an out. The old divide by zero error doesn't strike many pitchers, so clearly PEDs help some more than others.

All that aside, at least Topps gave him a nice bunting card in 2010.

2014 Topps Archives #175 Yogi Berra

If you've watched any Yankees games this year, you've probably seen a little numeral 8 on their uniform sleeves. That's a memorial for Yogi Berra, the Yankee great who passed away about a year ago. There aren't many players whose count of World Series rings exceeds his uniform number. He was a comedic genius, too, so he'd probably say something along the lines of "I guess I beat the spread" if he were presented with that statistic.

Yogi does look good on the 1989 design in 2014 Archives. I'd say this photo is better than most of what was found in the actual '89 set.

2012 Bowman Sterling Refractors #47 Jordan Pacheco

Even the normal course of baseball transactions leaves some disappointment in its wake. Jordan Pacheco, who appears on a very shiny, serial-numbered Bowman Sterling card, is no longer with the Rockies. He's bounced around the NL for the last few years, but he was one of my favorite young Rockies who came of age as Helton's career was wrapping up.

This card pretty much feels like a Topps Chrome card, maybe a tiny bit thicker. I can't remember if I got it from Christian, my usual dealer at card shows, or from the new guy who bought all of Adam's inventory, the other dealer at the monthly show that I liked to visit. Adam bowed out of the hobby, and as I haven't been to a show since then, I don't know if the new dealer is still active.

2012 Finest #90 Jose Reyes

Jose Reyes was briefly a Rockie following the blockbuster Troy Tulowitzki trade. The Rockies cut him following a domestic violence incident, and he's now back on the Mets where his career began. If the Mets don't choke like they did in 2007, Reyes should make the playoffs again with last year's NL pennant winners. They're tied with the Giants for the NL Wild Card spots, but the always-dangerous Cardinals are definitely in the hunt.

The Marlins, where Reyes played for one season as shown on this color-coded Topps Finest card, are a bit further out, but they've been a factor in the Wild Card race for some time. To lose their ace in such a tragic accident marks a bitter end to the 2016 season. They cancelled their game against the Braves today, and the league observed a moment of silence before each of today's games.

2014 Topps Gold #25 Troy Tulowitzki /2014

More than Pacheco, I really liked Troy Tulowitzki. I've seen this photo numerous times before, and it's a reminder of the days when the Tulo chant echoed throughout Coors Field. Now they do the chant in the Skydome, but he might make the playoffs two straight years if the Blue Jays hold on to a wild card spot in the tight AL East. That's definitely not what would have happened if he stayed in Denver.

CarGo was quoted on the back of Tulo's card, right under the serial number. He says, "When [Tulowitzki]'s not playing, we are a completely different team." Players like Arenado, Story, Blackmon, Gray, and Dahl have helped the Rockies forge a new identity following the trade, but somehow it'll never be quite the same.

Of course, the same goes for the Marlins, and for a much worse reason. It puts things in perspective. When they trade your favorite player, it never feels good. But when an accident like that happens to a 24-year old who made his mark in America after defecting from Cuba, it's a whole different story.

2012 Topps A Cut Above #ACA-17 Tim Lincecum

I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't be writing any of this today. Maybe every one of these words is inappropriate given the situation. But it helps, just remembering that even if things didn't end up that great, there are always good memories to look back on.

Tim Lincecum's career has gone through some tough times recently. He has three World Series rings, but a competitor like that always wants to do the best he can. The two-time Cy Young winner's statistics have been consistently trailing off for years, but he keeps setting his sights on a comeback. The Angels gave him a chance, but he went 2-6 this season. As we saw with Bo Jackson over twenty years ago, hip surgeries aren't easy to come back from.

This die-cut card is from the same set as a Troy Tulowitzki card I got via trade recently, and it shows Lincecum's trademark wild hair. He had a lot to do with the Giants' even-year magic, and without his presence, the streak might come to an end.

2014 Topps The Future is Now #FN-3 Shelby Miller

Shelby Miller has also had a rough go of it. He's back in Arizona's rotation, but he was demoted to Triple-A for a month or so this summer. He's getting things back on track, but went 2-9 in the first half. Zach Greinke hasn't had a great first season in Arizona either. And the trade that brought Miller to Arizona was so heavily in the Braves' favor that plenty of sportswriters could hardly believe it. I was expecting a better season out of Arizona, but maybe that will wait until next year.

2012 Topps Opening Day #189 Mariano Rivera

Lots of iconic players that have been the faces of baseball for the past couple decades finally decided to call it a career. The Yankees are having a tough time succeeding in, let alone making the playoffs since Rivera's retirement in 2013. Rivera set the all-time high-water mark for saves, with 652. And that's not even counting the 42 postseason saves he had in his storied career. Five World Series rings (and oh-so-close to a sixth), a World Series MVP award, and the last player to wear the number 42, the same as his postseason save count.

He appears on this foil-free Topps Opening Day card, but Rivera will always be associated with the last game of the season much more than the first.

2007 UD Masterpieces #14 David Ortiz

Ortiz has been just as important to Boston's recent string of championships as Rivera was to the Yankees. He's up to 37 home runs on the year, which is his final season, or so he says. The Red Sox will be in the 2016 Postseason, so Ortiz still has room for a little more. No one has ever hit more home runs in his final season than Ortiz has now, and there's still a week left in the regular season.

Like Rivera's saves, Ortiz's 17 postseason home runs carry more importance than his 540 in the regular season. He's certainly worthy of an Upper Deck Masterpieces card, and he still had two rings yet to earn when this was printed, one against my beloved Rockies.

2012 Bowman Gold #63 Alex Rodriguez

A-Rod isn't as well-liked as Ortiz or Rivera, but he's still one of the greats. And will probably be in line behind Ryan Braun in the Not-in-the-Hall-of-Fame club. He entered the majors at just eighteen years of age. I knew he was a young rookie, but I checked Baseball Reference to be exactly sure. I thought I had heard seventeen at one point. His first game was on July 8th, 1994. That date looked very familiar, and I collected enough cards back then to remember seeing that date on John Valentin's 1995 cards as the date he turned an unassisted triple play for the Red Sox.

Even weirder, guess who the Red Sox were playing that day? Yes, Seattle. A-Rod was in the hole when it happened, but A-Rod got to witness an unassisted triple play in his very first Major League game. You can even see him in the dugout during that clip. I remember hearing about it on the radio, but I had no idea that a rookie in that game would go on to be such an important figure in the baseball world. Who would know that? The announcers barely realized what happened during the play.

He's known for one of the most valuable contracts in baseball history, and there was talk of him hitting 900 home runs before his career ended. However, he was suspended for the entire 2014 season over his involvement with PEDs. He retired earlier this season with 696 career home runs. He probably wouldn't have caught Bonds or Aaron, but if he played in 2014, I bet he'd have passed Babe Ruth.

1998 Topps HallBound #HB2 Tony Gwynn

Topps was spot-on with this 1998 card of Tony Gwynn, predicting that he was on his way to being voted into Cooperstown. That prediction came true in 2007 on his first ballot. Topps did a pretty good job with these. They picked fifteen players for this die-cut insert set, and all are indeed in the Hall of Fame, or at least they should be. Most who aren't I've already mentioned, which are McGwire, Bonds, and Clemens. The only arguably borderline case in the set was Juan Gonzalez, who did have two MVP seasons, but was one of the main faces of the steroid scandal, which torpedoed his already unclear chances.

Tony Gwynn won eight batting titles in his career, and he was rightly awarded with a plaque in Cooperstown. His career average was .338, and that's the highest any recent player has attained by quite a bit. Come on, he's the only guy in the top-20 with a color photograph.

Sadly, he only got to enjoy that Hall of Fame status for less than a decade. He passed away in 2014 from what he attributed to a tobacco-caused cancer.

2013 Topps Chasing History #CH-55 Ken Griffey, Jr.

Like Gwynn before him, Ken Griffey, Jr. is now a member of the Hall of Fame. He's the highest draft pick to ever make it, and Mike Piazza, his counterpart in the class of 2016, was the lowest draft pick to ever make it. This Chasing History card, one of my favorite insert sets from 2013, told us that Griffey could consistently be relied on for at least 20 home runs a season. Sometimes a lot more. In 1998, while McGwire and Sosa were battling to break Roger Maris' record, Griffey quietly finished in third place with 56, the same count he had in 1997.

Plus he was the guy to collect back in the 1990s, along with Frank Thomas. Those two guys were the blue chips of pre-strike Beckett values.

2007 UD Masterpieces #65 Alex Gordon (RC)

I guess at the end of the day, despite tragedy, misfortune, illness, disappointment, and the simple passage of time, the game carries on. Sometimes it's as simple as this: you get to win a World Series, and your biggest problem is being dropped from the 2006 Topps base set. Cory Lidle, on the other hand, made it into the 2006 Topps Update set, but for a sad reason.

Baseball has been there for this country in hard times. It helped distract people from the depression as soon as they figured out how to light a field. It helped normalize relations with Japan after World War II. And it helped America start healing after the world-changing events of 9/11. It just becomes a little paradoxical when it occurs within the baseball world itself.

And we won't get to hear the legendary Vin Scully guide us through the game after this season, as we have since 1950.

I'm sure we'll see the Marlins wear a memorial patch next week and for the duration of next season. But they lost more than their ace pitcher with amazing reflexes. They lost a bright young athlete who loved the game and who loved life.