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 Work Trade

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2019 Topps #647 Kyle Freeland

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

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

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

2019 Topps #499 Daniel Murphy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three parks down, twenty-seven to go.

The Trading Post #99: Collecting Cutch

Nolan Arenado has been having a pretty great summer. Last month, he hit a walk-off home run to complete the cycle, the first time any player has done that while trailing in the 9th. A few, including teammate Carlos Gonzalez, did so when it was tied, but no one besides Nolan did it in such dramatic fashion. That capped off a four-game sweep of the Giants.

Last week, he became the first Rockie to slug two hits in a single All-Star Game. And yesterday, his 5-for-6, 7 RBI, 3-homer performance was one of the best days at the plate any Rockie has ever had, and that's saying something, given the team's history of double-digit win margins at Coors Field.

2017 Topps Jackie Robinson Day #JRD-28 Nolan Arenado

So it was nice to see a few cards of him show up as a bonus from Collecting Cutch, thanks to my Todd Helton entry into his top-ten cards contest. Arenado is making a strong case for keeping hold of his uniform number 28, the same one that hangs in my closet. But on Jackie Robinson Day, he and all his colleagues wear #42, as shown on this insert from 2017 Topps. You can't tell from the scan, but the Topps logo is done up in gold foil, something we don't often see in this set anymore.

On the back, Topps tells us about Nolan's home-run-hitting performance on April 15th, 2015, presumably the date of this photograph. The game was played against the Giants, but this doesn't look like AT&T Park to me. The person in the front row appears to be wearing a Braves hat or something. But people show up to the ballpark with random team memorabilia all the time these days, and I don't just mean Marlins Guy. So I'll trust Topps on this one, and I'll also point out that this year's Jackie Robinson Day was pretty much the same story. The Rockies played the Giants in San Fransisco on April 15th, 2017, and the Rockies won, thanks in part to a Nolan Arenado home run.

2017 Topps Spring Training Logo Patches #MLBST-NA Nolan Arenado (MEM)

This package alone has greatly expanded my count of 2017 Topps inserts, and while I don't usually go for manufactured patch relics, this one appeals to me, probably because it approximates the actual patches worn during Cactus League games this spring. I was expecting it to be metallic, but it's actually some type of polyurethane. The herringbone pattern in the copper area really jumps out, as does the tiny indentation for the ball in the MLB logo at the top of the shield.

Kudos to Topps for keeping the copper thing alive during Upper Deck's conspicuous absence from the hobby. I'd love to see one from the Grapefruit League, as I'm sure there are some slight differences that would make a nice little set.

2013 Bowman Platinum Chrome Prospects Purple Refractors #BPCP40 Nolan Arenado

He's only 26, but he looks quite a bit younger on this Bowman Platinum card from 2013. The base set isn't quite this well color-coded. This happens to be the Purple Refractor parallel, a color variation that is practically tailor-made for Rockies cards. It's not the rarest one out there, nor is it even rare enough to get a serial number, but I don't see how this card could look any better.

We all like to have actual card numbers in our sets, compared to the alphabet soup found on that Spring Training card above. But with Bowman, you get both! It's card #40 from the Bowman Platinum Chrome Prospects set, which helpfully gets shortened to BPCP40. The numbering system of Bowman continues to be one of my biggest sources of confusion in the hobby, further blurred by the fact that the "P" in the Bowman Platinum logo still looks like an "L" to me.

2017 Topps Bunt #80 Jon Gray

Jon Gray, who has returned to the Rockies rotation following an injury, offers my first look at 2017 Topps Bunt. Compared to 2016, this year's set design shrinks the logo way down, and adds a slightly-too-small circular border around it. Also, it's one of the most clearly color-coded sets in recent memory, a nice card to follow Arenado's Bowman Platinum card above. Jon Gray has cropped that long hair a bit since this photo was taken, abandoning the trend that Tim Lincecum started last decade.

Long hair or no, this card is correct. Colorado has never had a pitcher like Gray. 16 strikeouts in one game gives us a tantalizing hint that maybe, just maybe, the Rockies rotation can someday be as fearsome as its lineup.

2016 Diamond Kings DK Originals #DKO1 Mike Trout

Every so often, a non-Rockie sneaks into a trade package. I certainly have no problem with cards of other teams, as I'm a set builder at heart. But it's not something I tend to expect, especially when it's of the best player in baseball. Trout would be a fearsome addition to any lineup, and even though he's fallen out of the top spots on the leaderboard due to injury, he can still keep the Angels on the map.

Earlier this week, he even traded first-inning home runs with Bryce Harper, his NL counterpart that broke into baseball right around the same time. Five years from now, we could even be talking about Cody Bellinger and Aaron Judge the same way. But don't count out Joey Votto, the career Red and 2010 NL MVP, who quietly puts up top-tier stats without the glamour, youth, or fame of Harper and Trout.

I've seen a couple cards from the 2016 Diamond Kings set, but none from this 20-card Originals insert set, one that I probably wouldn't have run across if my fellow collectors never sent me non-Rockie cards. Team collectors, how do you get around this? Do you still have any interest in seeing insert sets that don't feature your team? Maybe that's a question only a set builder would ask, but the gold foil and sturdy playing card surface make this quite a nice card, regardless of who's on it.

And here's a more interesting question: if you ignore sets where your team is absent, do you consider that a disappointment or a relief?

2015 Topps Heritage Chrome #THC-453 Troy Tulowitzki /999

Somewhat surprisingly, there were no Todd Helton cards in this trade package, but Tulowitzki made an appearance or two. It's still a bit strange not to have Tulo around, but the way the team has been playing lately makes it seem a bit more normal with each passing day. Trevor Story is still a solid player, and Brendan Rodgers remains one of MLB's top prospects, though he hasn't progressed past double-A yet.

Of all the retro-themed sets Topps cranks out every year, Heritage is usually my favorite. For some reason, I tend to see more Rockies from 2015 Heritage than any other year, and with 19 cards in my collection, that has to be the whole team set, right?

I'm fortunate to be able to add this Chrome parallel just a page or two away in the binder, just the 8th in a print run of 999. These Heritage Chrome cards are always a bit jarring, just because it's so unusual to see a half-century-old design get the shiny treatment. But because they're serial-numbered and so easy to spot, I do gravitate toward them. And the print run has dropped back down into the sub-thousand range. For a while, Topps set the print run equal to the calendar year the design appeared in. If that trend continued, there would be 1,966 copies of this one, but these are half as plentiful (twice as scarce?) as in some previous years.

2012 Topps Triple Threads Unity Relics #TTUR-155 Troy Tulowitzki /36 (MEM)

The print run drops way, way down on this Tulowitzki relic card, to just 36. The black swatch is housed in a cute little home-plate shaped window. Of course, the plate actually comes to a point at the bottom, but I see what they're getting at. Triple Threads (not triple threats, as I originally typed - insert set idea?) always includes an appropriately thick and shiny card, necessitating one of my 100-pt toploaders.

There's some small text above the serial number that says "2007 Heart and Hustle Award". This is not something I had heard of before, but apparently it's been around since 2005. Tulowitzki was a three-time nominee from the Rockies, but wasn't selected by the MLBPA for the final award. Craig Biggio is the only two-time winner of the award, which is given to "an active player who demonstrates a passion for the game of baseball and best embodies the values, spirit and traditions of the game." Helton never got the nod, nor did a name I expected to see on this list, the always scrappy Eric Byrnes.

I do not know how heart vs. hustle is calculated or weighted, but there are some great players on that list. Todd Helton may have wanted that more than my personal top-ten list, but maybe Nolan Arenado will earn a nomination before too long.

Thanks to Collecting Cutch for this consolation prize, one I didn't expect when I put that Helton list together. But I now have a few more potential candidates if I ever want to make a list for Tulo or Arenado.

Happy National Baseball Card Day!

If you've ever glanced at trending hashtags on any of the major social networks, you've likely run across something like "National [product] Day". National Popcorn Day is in mid-January. National Scotch Day was toward the end of July, as was National Chicken Wing Day to wrap up July.

You're darn right I had wings that day.

Next month, we have Talk Like a Pirate Day on the 19th, and Elephant Appreciation Day on the 22nd. Something to look forward to. You may or may not "celebrate" these holidays, and you're unlikely to be getting a paid day off for any of them, but if you're reading this, you ought to know that today is National Baseball Card Day!

This probably explains why the Rockies TV team were talking cards during the game yesterday in the bottom of the 5th. They opened and compared their haul from a few packs of 2016 Topps, and play-by-play announcer Drew Goodman regaled us with tales of pulling Willie Mays cards, "flipping" cards, and learning back in the early '80s that a prized Ozzie Smith rookie card was worth much less than he and his friends thought it was. Color analyst and former Rockie Ryan Spilborghs reminisced about stale gum, and his unopened Upper Deck set with Ken Griffey, Jr.'s rookie card, which he incorrectly said was 1991.

So in honor of this momentous occasion, there's no better time to see the highlights from a blaster of 2016 Stadium Club, making a strong case for the best Topps product three years running.

2016 Stadium Club #167 Micah Johnson

Awesome photography remains a staple of Stadium Club, and here that means bunting! Over time, this card of Micah Johnson will surely find its way into the many bunting mini-collections in the Cardsphere, including mine that Jeff from 2x3 Heroes kickstarted for me.

Pretty much everyone has compared this year's Stadium Club to 1997 Fleer, and at a glance, it is very similar. The fonts are a little different, Stadium Club uses silver foil instead of gold, and 1997 Fleer lists the position.

1997 Fleer #339 Jeff Bagwell

1997 Fleer also has those cool little foil seals above the last name, denoting for Jeff Bagwell that he was both an All-Star and a League Leader in 1996. I'm not sure in what, though. I had to look that one up, and his 48 doubles led the NL that year.

The difference mainly comes in on feel. 1997 (and 1996) Fleer used an unusual matte finish that's very distinctive. Stadium Club cards are at least twice as thick, and while in a page or display case these might be hard to tell apart, when it's in your hand, it couldn't be easier.

2016 Stadium Club #146 Johnny Bench

There are a lot of horizontal cards in this set, and many of them are terrific! Like he did in 2014, Hall of Fame Reds catcher Johnny Bench makes an appearance, here guarding the plate against the Mets in Shea Stadium. I have to wonder if this is from the same game as his 2014 card, a card I believe was also taken in Shea based on the memorabilia he's signing.

Autograph shots and an imminent play at the plate? No wonder this brand is so great.

2016 Stadium Club #294 Jackie Robinson

As in past years, black-and-white photos of old-time players make a stunning appearance. Jackie Robinson appears in Ebbets Field in a photo that I can't ever recall seeing on a Topps card. Robinson seems to suffer the most from recycled photos, as Night Owl has repeatedly pointed out. In fact, after looking at that post, I recognize this photo in a much more closely-cropped and colorized format from 2010.

The photo looks way better in its original form, capturing the essence of Ebbets Field in one of its final years. There's an ad for 1956 Chevrolet on the outfield wall, so the move to L.A. was just a few years away. Chevrolet still maintains an advertising relationship with Major League Baseball, giving away shiny new GM products to MVPs of both the All-Star Game and World Series. Other car and gasoline ads line the wall, and something that you won't see at ballparks anymore, a tobacco ad.

2016 Stadium Club #6 Brandon Phillips

This behind-the-batter shot is a common photo in recent Stadium Club sets, and it's a tough shot to get with the batter's box and baseline so perfect. Those chalk lines get destroyed after just a few batters, so this one of leadoff hitter Brandon Phillips in an away uniform is clearly the first batter of this game. Maybe even the first pitch.

2016 Stadium Club #3 Matt Kemp

Here's a similar photo of Matt Kemp, then with the Padres. He became a Brave just before this year's trade deadline, his first time playing away from the NL West. I can't tell quite what's going on here (he might be rounding third), but it's a perfect all-dirt "Tatooine" card, a prime candidate for a mini collection, one that Daniel collects.

2016 Stadium Club #113 Andrew McCutchen

McCutchen has another one of these horizontal beauties, and the batter's box line is already pretty disrupted. It could still be the first inning, though. To my eye, McCutchen looks abnormally small here. I guess it's just a weird angle, but you'd expect to see more grass in this photo, and maybe part of the catcher. That seems to be the dirt path back to the dugout behind his head, a feature found in PNC Park. I still think this was taken with a weird focal length or something, since it's unusual to see a batter so alone yet inside the batter's box.

2016 Stadium Club #142A Corey Seager (RC)

There are vertical cards, too. I just got a little caught up with all that infield dirt. Rookie of the Year candidate Corey Seager is showing off his maple bat in the locker room, and he gets the "RC" logo just under the Stadium Club logo in the upper left. Seager's birthdate of 4/27/94 makes him just a couple weeks younger than Dinger, who was "hatched" at Mile High Stadium on 4/16/94.

2016 Stadium Club #93 C.J. Wilson

The photos get weird for a bit, so brace yourselves. C.J. Wilson is doing some sort of karate move in the infield without his hat on. He's holding his blue glove between two fingertips in his right hand, and under the magnifying glass, I think that's a baseball card in his left hand. Maybe even his own.

Pitchers.

2016 Stadium Club #227 Robin Yount

That makes Hall-of-Famer Robin Yount leaning on a dirt bike next to a saguaro cactus seem, well, still rather weird. But it just adds to the charm of Topps Stadium Club.

Good to see he has a helmet by his side. That sport can be dangerous otherwise.

2016 Stadium Club Contact Sheet #CS-7 Miguel Cabrera

Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera had the only insert card in this $20 blaster, one of ten cards to be found in the Contact Sheet insert set. Clearly, it has a filmstrip theme going on, though not quite as literally as those 1994 Leaf Slideshow inserts. Still, a photography-themed card fits with the ethos of Stadium Club perfectly.

Allow me to nitpick a bit. If this really were a set of negatives from a roll of film, the colors would be inverted. I do like the checkmark over the bottom photo, as though that were the one selected from the roll. But that's not actually the photo used on Cabrera's card in the main set, which would have really tied this insert set in to the master product better.

2016 Stadium Club Gold #98 Ian Kinsler

In addition to that insert card, I pulled a couple parallels. This one of Kinsler (to go along with his silver-foil base card) is the Gold parallel. Though you might not find a batting cage shot in 1997 Fleer, the gold parallels would be a bit easier to confuse. Despite the similarity, I still think there's a low likelihood of confusion, way less likely than a reprint from a Topps set like Cards Your Mom Threw Out, or even something like Donruss Originals.

2016 Stadium Club Black #229 Babe Ruth

Finally, here's a Black parallel, seeded 1:8 packs. On average, you'll find one of these in each blaster, but not necessarily of The Sultan of Swat, Babe Ruth himself. As huge an influence as he was, it's surprising that he's not found on more cards. Photos of him seem to be somewhat rare, but getting my Black parallel on a monochromatic card is perfect. I don't know if the black lettering would look quite as good on a full-color card. I'll just have to keep my eyes peeled for one next time I'm at a card show.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy your National Baseball Card Day!