The Trading Post #130: Chavez Ravining

If I were to ask you who scored the winning run for the Rockies in their 8-7 win Sunday over the Orioles, who would you guess? Charlie Blackmon? No, he last played Thursday and just hit the Injured List with a calf injury. What about their superstars like Nolan Arenado or Trevor Story? Actually no, although they both reached career home run milestones over the weekend, which we'll touch on later. Could it be someone from their crop of homegrown youngsters, such as McMahon, Rodgers, or Tapia? Nope, sorry.

2017 Topps Fire Green #58 Jeff Hoffman /199

Of all people, it was Jeff Hoffman, who was called up on Friday to start against Baltimore. The O's, by the way, were making their first trip to Denver since the 2004 season. Hoffman did make it five innings but took a no decision.

So what the heck was a starting pitcher doing in the 9th inning two days later? I can't be exactly sure, but he pinch-ran for Daniel Murphy in the final inning, and ended up scoring on a bases-loaded sacrifice fly by Tony Wolters.

Alex from Chavez Ravining included a couple Jeff Hoffman cards as part of a recent trade. Along with Hoffman's yellowish Flame parallel from 2017 Topps Fire, he also sent this Green parallel, numbered to 199. Not only is the Green less common, but longtime readers know that it's basically my favorite color to find on a baseball card.

2017 Topps Fire Golden Grabs Gold Minted #GG-18 George Springer

A few non-Rockies made it into the trade by virtue of their shininess. As usual, Topps Fire printed up a few insert sets for 2017, including this 20-card Golden Grabs set, documenting some of the best catches from across the league. George Springer of the Astros made it in thanks to this snag from May 19th, 2016, which robbed Jose Abreu of a trip around the bases.

This yellowish color signifies it as a Gold Minted parallel, a very appropriate color for an Astros card. It looks a lot like Hoffman's Flame card, though without any refractor action.

2017 Topps Fire Walk It Off Gold Minted #WO-11 Mark Trumbo

We're seeing something pretty similar on Mark Trumbo's Walk It Off card, another Gold Minted variety from a 15-card insert set. Trumbo, who led the Majors in home runs in 2016, has yet to appear in a game this year while recovering from knee surgery. Speaking of the Orioles, he still plays for them, and this card documents his extra-inning heroics on Opening Day 2017.

2018 Topps Chrome Update Pink Refractors #HMT96 Charlie Blackmon

Advancing a year to 2018 Topps Chrome, here's another card with the "HMT" prefix, which I am still trying to figure out. Charlie Blackmon joined Trevor Story in Washington, D.C. on the NL All-Star squad last year. He was mic'd up for a fun inning in center field, but didn't do as well at the plate as Story did, going 0-3.

The All-Star logo is visible on the waterslide, but unlike the card Julie sent, this one is a colored parallel. It's the second time this background color threw me off, as I kept checking Beckett for a Purple parallel. Officially, it's Pink, which is precisely the line of reasoning I went down the last time I saw one of Charlie Blackmon's 2018 Chrome cards.

2018 Topps Chrome Sepia Refractors #141 Starlin Castro

I may not be able to tell the difference between pink and purple, but I know the art of photography well enough to identify this as a Sepia parallel. Topps helpfully labelled this as a Refractor, a bonus not offered to collectors of the Update version of 2018 Chrome. The presence of that label has always varied from year to year, but I can't remember it varying between sets in the same year.

Starlin Castro had his own extra-innings success during 2017, helping the Yankees sink his former team, the Cubs, in 18 innings thanks to a fielder's choice gone awry. The marathon contest on Sunday Night Baseball featured 48 strikeouts between the two clubs, more than Tony Gwynn had in his worst year.

2019 Topps Heritage #242 Ian Desmond

That sepia-toned card is a great segue into some retro Topps Heritage. This one of Ian Desmond will go nicely with the rest of my 2019 Heritage collection. In fact, I saved a spot in the 9-pocket page for this card. The 1970-themed set does a great job at reenacting some of the more famous cards from the original set, but I don't know of any 1970 card that appears to show a small pile of snow at the shadowy base of the outfield wall. It tends to snow well into May here in Colorado, so I know snow when I see it. Desmond looks really bundled up, too, although this is probably a Cactus League shot.

There are walk-offs referenced all over these cards, and before he took over center field duties from Charlie Blackmon this year, he walked off the Padres on August 23rd, 2018, a 2-out, 2-run shot into the left field bleachers.

Desmond's long career, which reached the 10-season mark last year, consisted of precisely 4,999 at bats when the 2018 season ended. Topps noticed that statistical anomaly, and was sure to point out that his next at-bat would be #5,000. That AB came just a couple months ago, obviously on Opening day 2019 in Miami. He grounded out to short.

2017 Topps Heritage #628 Tony Wolters

Another regular fixture in the Rockies lineup this year is Tony Wolters, who hit his first home run of 2019 last week in Pittsburgh. He's often down at the bottom of the order, but has come up with quite a few key hits this season, including that sacrifice fly that allowed Jeff Hoffman to trot home.

His 2017 Topps Heritage card even mentions sacrifices in its trivia question, asking which Rockie led the NL in 2004. The answer is Royce Clayton, who hasn't appeared on this blog as a Rockie except in a cameo. Also on this card is a rare close-up of a catcher's mitt, plus Wolters's goatee. He's changed it up this year, sporting a pretty awesome mustache.

2017 Topps Heritage High Number Topps Game Rookies #10 Raimel Tapia

It took me a little while to figure out who was depicted on this Topps Heritage insert card, but eventually I realized it was Raimel Tapia, who has been starting in left field most of this season, and performing quite well defensively. This one is part of a 15-card insert set found in the High Number release, which accompanies another 15 cards just like it in the base set. It's a throwback to 1968 Topps Game insert cards, an early example of an insert set. The original '68 insert set is filled with Hall of Famers, including Rod Carew, Hank Aaron, a late-career Mickey Mantle, and Carl Yastrzemski, whose grandson got his first MLB hit on Sunday, and was then picked off seconds later.

I'm not too familiar with the original version of 1968 Topps Game, so I'm going to assume that the red back with a nondescript playing card pattern is a faithful reproduction.

2017 Stadium Club Members Only #244 Raimel Tapia

The other Tapia card Alex sent actually included the player's name, rather than a mostly illegible signature. Sharp-eyed readers will also notice a "Members Only" seal in the lower right, just my second one from this super-rare variety. There's no serial number, but it's generally thought that there are around seven copies printed.

On top of all that, an extremely rare rookie card of a current Rockie from my favorite annual set, it also happens to be a Coors Field card. Doesn't really get much better than this.

Except of course when Tapia gets a walkoff hit in the bottom of the 11th on Memorial Day to drive in Ian Desmond.

2017 Topps Allen & Ginter Relics #FSRB-TS Trevor Story B (MEM)

Relic cards are always pretty fun, and there were a couple of those, too. Taking a quick jump back to retro-style sets, Topps gave Trevor Story a relic card in 2017 Allen & Ginter, complete with a black pinstripe. The Rockies relics I have usually feature purple pinstripes, but there have been a few minor uniform changes at 20th and Blake in the past few seasons.

I mentioned earlier that Story and Arenado reached home run milestones over the weekend. Story's first home run on Friday night was the 100th of his career, and no shortstop in history has reached that mark so quickly. That homer was a long one to the top of the bleachers. He wasted no time at all hitting his 101st, which was an opposite-field walkoff in his very next at-bat.

This is a walkoff-heavy post, perhaps a record-setting one on the blog.

2018 Topps Walmart Holiday Snowflake Relics #R-NA Nolan Arenado (MEM)

Remember what I was saying earlier about snow hitting Colorado in May? That happened earlier this month, but it didn't faze Nolan Arenado at all. His snowy home runs are quite appropriate for this wintry holiday card, a Wal-Mart exclusive. No pinstripe to be found here; instead its an all-purple swatch. Alex even sent these over in thick toploaders, tailor-made for relic cards. And let's not forget that Nolan just hit a milestone of his own, his 200th career home run on Saturday, which I had the privilege to witness.

The first time Alex sent cards was long ago, way back in 2014 on The Trading Post #3. The names may have changed, but the theme is similar. All that time ago, I was still admiring shiny cards and discussing the presence of the Refractor label on Topps card backs. I'd like to think my writing has improved, at least.

Thanks very much, Alex! And here's to more walk-off wins.

The Trading Post #107: Summer of '74

We've probably seen the two biggest transactions occur already during this MLB offseason. Japanese star Shohei Ohtani has chosen to hitch his wagon to the Angels, and the Yankees just took a nine-figure obligation off the Marlins' hands in Giancarlo Stanton, becoming the first team since 1919 to lead the Majors in home runs and then acquire the individual home run leader. The Yankees acquired Babe Ruth almost a century ago, though it would be a few more years before that turned into a championship.

The trades that occur in the Cardsphere have far fewer zeroes in the value column, but they are still appreciated, especially when there is a new face in our community. Summer of '74 is a newcomer as of this past April, and Matt P has already established himself as a trading partner with many veteran bloggers.

This won't be a two-part post, but Matt sent me a stack of 1994 Topps Gold cards before I could even blog about this first shipment. Watch for that in the near-ish future, but for now, let's start things off with a double play/cameo card:

2000 Topps #306 Mike Lansing

2000 Topps doesn't get a lot of love. The gray border and vertical back are often cited as demerits, but it's one of my favorites of the long period that Topps moved away from white borders. It has generally good photography, and I particularly like the "Topps 2000" lettering, something that really taps into the turn of the millennium craze that was happening at that time.

Mike Lansing is shown turning two over top of Brian Giles, center fielder of the Pirates. At first, I thought this player was an Oakland Athletic, thanks to the yellow outline on his uniform numbers. It took a bit of digging to find out that neither Brian Giles nor his brother Marcus ever played for Oakland, and what's more, #24 is retired by Oakland, as Rickey Henderson wore it for much of his career. I mistook the black for a shadowy dark green.

This was a tricky one to pinpoint. The Pirates hosted the Rockies twice during the 1999 season, but Lansing only played in the first series. There's no clear situation where Giles was the first out in a double play, so the best guess I have is May 1st, 1999. Giles was forced out at second base in the bottom of the first inning, and it looks like the Rockies may have tried turning a 5-4-3 double play but couldn't pull it off, allowing a run to score. This high slide of Giles', which does not look entirely Kosher to me, may have had an effect. The inning deteriorated from there, as the Pirates batted around and plated three.

I'm not as confident in this detective work as usual, so take it with a grain of salt. But it's a good shot, regardless.

2014 Topps Upper Class #UC-30 Matt Holliday

In 2014, when Upper Deck was several years removed from the baseball card market, Topps was bold enough to name an insert set "Upper Class", and this is my third card from it. There's plenty of gold foil and a nice frame, as well as a posed shot of a youthful-looking Matt Holliday. This 50-card insert set focuses on the player's rookie year, and Holliday's was full of power, including a grand slam. The back also mentions a few other rookies that joined the league the same year, in this case David Wright, Joe Mauer, and Adrian Gonzalez.

None of those players made a dramatic impact last season; in fact Wright didn't play at all. They may have a few years left in them, but their careers are definitely winding down.

2010 Topps Update #US-56 Matt Holliday

Matt Holliday's time in Denver had come to an end by the time the 2010 Home Run Derby was contested, where he represented the Cardinals. He didn't make it out of the first round, and it looks like this particular swing counted as one of his ten outs. But as this card tells us, he did have the longest shot of the night, 497 feet out of Angel Stadium (of Anaheim).

There are logos plastered all over this card, from the huge National League logo in the curve where the team logo is usually found, down to the Home Run Derby logo, which incorporates State Farm, the MLB logo, and a little architectural feature found in the Angel Stadium (of Anaheim) parking lot, which also makes an appearance on Billy Cowan's famed 1972 Topps card.

2013 Topps Emerald #638 Andrew Cashner

Andrew Cashner hasn't been able to take part in any All-Star Game festivities, but he was promising enough a prospect to get a base set card in 2013 Topps. That means there is an Emerald parallel, which is what you see above. The retro Padres uniform clashes somewhat with the design, but in my mind, that's what a Padres uniform should look like. Also notice the camo t-shirt that Cashner is wearing under his jersey, frequently a staple at Petco Park.

This was one of about a half-dozen Emerald cards that Matt threw in, and the retro jersey caught my eye enough to use it in this post. And I'll give a little love to the Padres, a team that the Rockies usually share a similar spot with in the NL West standings. Interestingly, Cashner didn't begin his career as a Padre. He was drafted by a few teams, including the Rockies, but didn't sign until the Cubs came knocking a second time. The Cubs eventually swapped him for Anthony Rizzo, a move that surely helped the Cubs break their curse.

2017 Topps Salute #S-191 Jeff Hoffman

Speaking of big trades, Jeff Hoffman joined the Rockies as the "key return in the Troy Tulowitzki trade". He's young, has performed reasonably well both in the rotation and out of the bullpen, and he may be more of a later-innings guy in the 2018 season, as the Rockies have some work to do in rebuilding their bullpen.

Topps Salute is a rather forgettable insert set that spans a gigantic 250 cards across the two Series and Update. I'm pretty sure I've seen this set before on some of the blogs, and it jumps out at me enough to include in a post, but not nearly enough to make me want to chase the other 249 cards.

1995 Upper Deck #265 Juan Acevedo (RC) (AU)

I remember Juan Acevedo as one of the many pitching prospects that the Rockies fielded before it became clear how difficult it is to pitch in Coors Field. Alphabetically, at least in my collection where the Rockies are first, he was at the top of the stack in most of the 1995 sets I collected. I have his rookie card from 1995 Upper Deck already, but certainly not a signed copy! This was a nice surprise to get from Matt. I have no idea if this was signed during his rookie year, or perhaps during his brief second stint with the Rockies in 2001. He played with numerous other teams in his eight year career, even closing games for the Cardinals and Tigers.

This has the look of a rookie card to me. His uniform is tucked in just so, his glove looks like it just came off the rack at a sporting goods store, and he's got a touch of his own style in leaving the top button on his road jersey open. He has a more youthful-looking photo on the back, where he appears in the familiar Rockies pinstriped home jersey, which is inset next to a paragraph detailing his Minor League accolades. His big-league debut came in a 3-1 loss played in the Astrodome, a few days after Dante Bichette's historic home run.

2017 Topps Heritage #357 Mark Reynolds

Just like 2000 Topps, 1968 Topps and 2017 Heritage gave us vertical backs. Fortunately for Mark Reynolds, there is plenty of space to have a Home Runs column, but not enough for a Strikeouts column. Those counts have gotten better since he was on the Diamondbacks, but he still struck out 175 times last year. It's amazing that you can hit for power, get away with putting up a .198 batting average in a full season, and still be playing toward the end of the same decade.

The Rockies roster is set to undergo some major changes in 2018. Chris Iannetta will be returning to Denver, making it unlikely that Jonathan Lucroy will stick around. Also hitting the free agent market are Carlos Gonzalez, Greg Holland, and this guy, Mark Reynolds. Do the Rockies keep the veterans around a while longer with some short-term contracts, or do they commit to their solid pipeline and start calling up their prospects like Ryan McMahon and Brendan Rodgers? Ohtani and Stanton are off the market, but there are tons of players out there for the Rockies to fill their 25-man roster.

The Trading Post #92: A Cracked Bat

She's back.

In case you hadn't heard, the always generous Julie has picked the flag back up at A Cracked Bat, her wonderful blog that had been dormant for most of 2016. True to form, she included lots of high end cards that I have no idea where she gets. It's good to have a female perspective on the hobby, but as I recall it's pretty much just her and Ana Lu from Hobby Cards Europe, aside from the occasional guest post.

2006 Fleer Tradition #165 Ryan Shealy (RC)

First base for the Rockies has always been pretty buttoned up by fan favorites. Andres Galarraga started off the franchise covering first base through 1997, passing the torch to franchise player Todd Helton, who retired in 2013. Ex-Twins Cuddyer and Morneau covered it for a couple years, as did Mark Reynolds last year. And the plan is to put newly acquired Ian Desmond there this year. Or at least that was the plan before he fractured his hand over the weekend.

So that doesn't leave a lot of room for guys like Ryan Shealy. He was drafted by the Rockies in 2002, and showed promise in his rookie 2005 season, but there just wasn't room for him. He was traded to the Royals for a couple relief pitchers, but only played three partial seasons for Kansas City.

Upper Deck had acquired Fleer by this time, and they kept the Tradition, um, tradition going for another couple years. Unlike the retro cardboard sets released around the turn of the millennium, this Tradition set is glossy and on white card stock. The yellow band at the bottom reminds me of the very yellow 1991 Fleer set, and I like the color coding and the little hat containing the team logo, a nod to 1981 Topps. 1981, of course, was the first year in ages that Topps had company in the marketplace, with Donruss and Fleer hitting the shelves. Fleer was on life support by this point, but Upper Deck was doing its best to save it.

Anyway, regardless of what was going on in the Hobby in 2006, it's for the best that the Rockies didn't unload Helton to make room for Shealy.

2006 Fleer Tradition Triple Crown Contenders #TC-8 Todd Helton

Even pre-goatee, Todd Helton was well worthy of being included in an insert set. This focuses on his stellar performance in the 2000 season, leading the National League, or rather, the "Senior Circuit", which I'd never heard before and had to look up, in hits, extra base hits, slugging percentage, and more. And yes, doubles.

Julie must have opened a box of this stuff since there were a half-dozen or so cards from it in the package. But these two vying for first base stood out to me.

2015 Topps Mini #683 LaTroy Hawkins

Minis also have a tendency to stand out, especially of veteran players like this. This isn't quite his sunset card, as he got a Blue Jays card in 2015 Topps Update before retiring. He was part of the Tulowitzki blockbuster trade, but I don't know if any Jays stats made it onto the back of that card.

You can imagine how tiny the statistics are printed, especially on a mini. Of course, 2017 cards omit all but the last five stat lines, which could be even fewer than five seasons if a mid-season trade took place. That new design decision also calls into question what a sunset card even is, since they won't have complete career statistics on their final card anymore. 2015 wasn't really that long ago, but a lot has changed.

The rosters have changed too, and it's surprising how different the roster is even a couple seasons later. Julie included the entire mini Rockies team set, minus Arenado and Justin Morneau's league leader card, who won the batting title in 2014. Blackmon, De La Rosa, LeMahieu are all in there, but plenty more, maybe even a majority, are long gone.

2015 Topps Gypsy Queen Mini #78 Charlie Blackmon

Before returning to a standard size, the minis got even minier. This is from the distinctive 2015 Gypsy Queen set, and it's a parallel just like the white-bordered one I got from Cardboard Collections. So now there are a couple parallel varieties kicking around my collection, on top of the base version (which I had to check for).

Makes me wonder how close I am to the rainbow. Probably still pretty far away, knowing Topps these days.

2016 Bowman Platinum Top Prospects #TP-JH Jeff Hoffman

Back in the land of 2.5"x3.5", Bowman Platinum continues its run after a break in 2015. Jon Gray's card, which recently found its way to me from Johnny's Trading Spot, is from the base set, but this card of Jeff Hoffman, the primary return piece in the aforementioned Tulowitzki trade, is part of the quasi-insert Top Prospects set. It's still sort of a continuation of the base set, but Bowman, ever-bent on making things as confusing as possible, didn't even use numerals in the card number. But it is available in all the same parallel varieties as the 100 base cards.

Hoffman isn't in the regular rotation yet, but with the unfortunate return of Chad Bettis' cancer, he might be appearing in more 2017 games while we wish Bettis a speedy and full recovery.

2016 Diamond Kings Framed #169 Tom Murphy

More young Rockies are likely to take the field in 2017, with Tom Murphy a leading candidate to appear behind the plate, sharing duties with Tony Wolters. I wouldn't call him a Diamond King just yet, but Donruss has to pick someone to show off their custom Rookie Card logo. Like that Charlie Blackmon card I linked to earlier, this is the framed parallel, with a raised cardboard border surrounding the card. The playing-card like feel of Diamond Kings cards, coupled with that frame, make this feel even more like a painting than other framed cards I've seen.

When I got a similar card recently from UD Masterpieces, I even said that Diamond King cards were going for that type of look. With this card, I'll say they finally got what they were always after.

1994 Collector's Choice Silver Signature #304 Eric Young

Before moving into the high-end cards, let's take a quick step back into the Blake Street Bombers era. 1994 Collector's Choice was a solid successor to the legendary 1993 Upper Deck, as the 1994 UD base set moved in a more modern direction and allowed them to begin their long fascination with copper. Silver Signatures are a fairly frequent specimen around here, even in Julie's past trade packages. Andres Galarraga gets a small cameo on the back, but the main attraction is this photo on the front. Judging by the blue on the outfield wall, I'll guess this is Shea Stadium. It looks like EY ran in a little bit too far on this popup, but he was a good defender so he likely made the catch.

2016 Topps Tribute #17 Nolan Arenado

Sometimes I wonder if Julie is an anonymous lottery winner or something. Because she sends me a lot of obviously expensive stuff. Judging from everyone else's posts, I'm not the only one. Nolan Arenado, my favorite current Rockie, gets an amazing-looking card in Topps Tribute. It's not much thinner than the whole stack of cards I've shown thus far, and has a very visible rainbow finish. Unlike some rainbow/refractor cards, this is pretty obviously so, meaning you don't have to hold it under the lamp just right.

Going back to the humidor from my previous post, this card points out that Nolan is the first Rockie to put up a 40-homer season since it was installed. Not even Todd Helton did that in the post-humidor era. Which makes a possible Hall of Fame case for Arenado more likely. I hope we don't have to wait that long to see a Rockie in Cooperstown, but if Larry Walker keeps getting the snub, I don't see who else would be on the horizon, other than Helton, who's a borderline case to begin with.

2016 Topps Museum Collection #79 Corey Dickerson

Corey Dickerson has been playing for Tampa Bay since 2016, so even these ultra-expensive sets can't get past the nature of late-breaking offseason trades. Dickerson is pictured as a Rockie, and there's some analysis of his stats on the back, but no mention of his January 2016 trade to the Rays.

It's quite a striking card, the black border with the thin silver foil frame. Some of the lines around the Museum Collection logo are surprisingly even thinner and mostly uniform. And the photograph is as sharp as they come. When I hold such a card, I can't help but wonder how they can even print something like it. That Eric Young card is pretty nice compared to something twenty years its senior, but we're definitely living in the high definition era.

2016 Topps Triple Threads Amethyst #88 Carlos Gonzalez /340

So far we have Tribute and Triple Threads, and don't forget about Tier One. Museum Collection is an outlier, yes, but the high end brands from Topps are clearly being brought to you by the letter T. These are getting so high-end now that serial numbers are making their way onto the cards. A print run of 340 signifies that this is the Amethyst parallel, so this just so happens to be the perfect color-coded variety to match the Rockies' colors. The purple areas you see will vary depending on which colored parallel you have.

Topps changed the Triple Threads logo for 2016, making me wonder if there was yet another high-end set out there. And as long as we're on T words, how about tessellation? The pattern of triangles in the background illustrates that concept of closely stacked similar shapes. By the way, Nolan Arenado isn't the only recent Rockie to hit 40 homers. CarGo accomplished the same feat in 2015, just a few days after Arenado hit the mark.

2014 Topps Triple Threads Unity Relics #UJR-JCH Jhoulys Chacin /36 (MEM)

Jhoulys Chacin's Triple Threads from two years earlier contained the logo that I'm more familiar with. It's still a pretty thick card, and is textured on the front similarly to the swatch. That double-height uniform piece is unique in my collection, as best I can recall. Unfortunately, though it does have one of the prized pinstripes, it is slightly misaligned. I even mentioned such a possibility in my previous post.

Sometimes I wonder how these things are constructed. I'd certainly never tear apart a card like this, especially one with such a low print run, but I am curious as to how these little scraps of fabric stay in place so firmly. I'd be surprised if it were glued, as I'd expect an adhesive to discolor and seep through the fabric. Perhaps one day I'll appease my inquisitiveness and sacrifice a relic card.

You know, for science.

The Trading Post #71: garvey cey russell lopes

Regular baseball games have gotten back underway following the All-Star Break, and the Rockies have already won their first series in the second half. Last night they completed their first win while trailing after seven innings this year, thanks to lots of heads-up baserunning by Trevor Story, and even more defensive blunders by the worst-record-in-baseball Braves.

Perhaps not an incredible accomplishment, but still, these are games the Rockies should be winning. They dropped Sunday afternoon's contest 1-0, but still won the series.

2000 Fleer Tradition Update #U7 Brent Mayne SH

Of course, those 1-0 games have a high potential to go to extra innings, especially when the lone run comes on a walkoff hit. Brent Mayne, a catcher, once found himself called upon to pitch in an extra-innings game, and even earned the win, thus getting a place in this Fleer Tradition Season Highlights subset. The game is still talked about in Rockies fan circles, and is occasionally aired in condensed form on the Rockies' cable channel.

It goes to show how low the bar is to be remembered on the mound for the Rockies. Jamie Moyer and Brent Mayne are among the more famous Rockies pitchers, the former being the oldest pitcher to earn a win in baseball history, the latter not even being a pitcher.

Anyway, this was from a stack of cards sent by garvey cey russell lopes (gcrl), the well-known Dodger blog titled and written in the broken-shift-key style of e.e. cummings. He sent over a nice variety of cards earlier this year, and not just Rockies, as you'll see later.

2016 Bowman Prospects #BP121 Jeff Hoffman

With all this talk of Troy Tulowitzki, it's only right that I examine the other side of the trade a bit more. I've talked plenty about Jose Reyes, who is now back with the Mets. But the Rockies also got a few pitching prospects, the most promising being Jeff Hoffman, pictured on this 2016 Bowman card. Hoffman is still in the minors, but appeared in the All Star Futures game last week and performed well.

2016 Bowman #31 Charlie Blackmon

Bowman's still keeping the same practice of making the base and prospect cards just a bit different. That's part of why I almost never know what year of Bowman I'm looking at—there are basically twice as many sets as there are years. Still, Bowman Prospects is technically an insert set, so I guess it sort of makes sense in that twisted form of Bowman logic.

At least it doesn't have a random "Chrome" logo like David Dahl's card did last year. What it does have is center fielder Charlie Blackmon underneath a fly ball in left-center at Coors, the deepest part of the ballpark. The design of this card looks a lot like a graphic you'd see on MLB Network or ESPN, so if that's what they were going for, I'd say they nailed it.

1998 Pacific Omega #80 Ellis Burks

Pacific, that rascally sort-of-oddball company, was definitely going for a baseball theme here. There are supposed to be three photos, but I wonder if this card may have been misprinted a bit, since the foil area on the right has very little detail, at least when you look at it. It's hard to say, though, since the few other cards I have from this set look about the same. It's just that the scan shows more detail, and we all know how hard it is to scan shiny cards.

2002 UD Piece of History #89 Todd Helton

A bit more horizontal goodness, this time from Upper Deck. 2016 is the third season since Todd Helton's retirement, and his cards are starting to become fewer and further between as newer product hits the market. There are lots of exciting young players to carry the torch, but Helton is still missed, as is his prodigious production of doubles. At least I can get a Helton Burger at his eponymous burger stand behind the left field bleachers.

In a few years, we'll start to hear some Hall of Fame talk around Helton. His 592 career doubles, good for 18th all time, should help his case. With very few exceptions, virtually everyone above him is in the Hall of Fame, save for a couple active players, Luis Gonzalez, and the obvious snubs of Pete Rose and Barry Bonds.

The Rockies have yet to send someone to the Hall, or even sign someone who ended up going. Whether they used steroids or not, both Larry Walker and Todd Helton are linked to rumors of steroid use, though nothing definitive like Bonds and McGwire. Plus they have the "Coors Field effect" to contend with, even though Walker played nearly half of his career elsewhere. With the deliberate exclusion of known and even rumored PED users from Cooperstown, it may still be a while before a Rockie gets in, though Mike Piazza's nearing induction is a promising step in the right direction.

2007 Donruss Elite Extra Edition Signature Turn of the Century #9 Brian Rike /500

Of course, for every Hall-of-Famer, there are countless players who never make it to the big leagues. Lots of them can be found in sets like Bowman and Donruss Elite, sometimes even with an autograph attached. That's the case for Brian Rike, a Rockies draft pick that didn't progress past Double-A. He went in the 2007 draft, just a few spots above a guy named Giancarlo Stanton. If that name sounds familiar, it's because he just hit a Roger Maris worth of home runs on his way to winning Monday's Home Run Derby.

Can't win them all.

2003 Sweet Spot #230 Clint Barmes SB P2 (RC) /1200

Clint Barmes had a few good seasons with the Rockies, and played for various NL teams until his retirement last year. For his rookie season, he got this manufactured patch relic, serial numbered to 1,200. This is in the running for the thickest card in my collection, and it's got quite a bit of heft to it. Coincidentally, Barmes played in just short of 1,200 career games, and game number 333 would have been right in the middle of the 2008 season. A bit of Baseball Referencing pinpoints his 333rd game to July 29th, 2008 against the Pirates, the team he'd spend the second-longest with after the Rockies.

2001 Topps Gold #761 Colorado Rockies TC /2001

gcrl was kind enough to throw in a Rockies team card from 2001 Topps Gold, back when the serial numbers were gold instead of the black they use now. Commemorating the 2000 season, this card also mentions Brent Mayne's win from the dugout, plus Todd Helton taking a .400 batting average into late August. The team barely squeaked over .500, winning 82 games but still finishing in fourth place.

1993 Topps Gold #825 Mike Walker (UER)

That about does it for the Rockies cards, but the fun doesn't stop there! gcrl took a look at my Eight Men Out list and sent a record-setting three cards from it! Now, I'll be honest. I know pretty much nothing about Mike Walker, other than that he played for the Mariners. He was very briefly in the rotation for Seattle, and in fact didn't play in the Majors beyond 1992. In fact, this card has a slight error on it, as the last row of stats on the back say his time with the Mariners was in 1993, rather than the correct year of 1992.

But what is really interesting about this card is that it only exists as a Topps Gold card. If you happen to recall the size of the 1993 Topps set, it's a huge 825 cards, the largest in Topps Flagship history, except when they numbered the 1981 Traded set sequentially, rather than starting back at 1 and adding a T.

Anyway, I busted a fair bit of 1993 Topps in my younger days, and I always wondered why I never found a Topps Gold checklist. As it turns out, Topps picked six players that didn't make it into that giant set and gave them Gold cards, rather than printing gold-parallel checklists. Mike Walker had one of those cards.

1993 Topps Gold #394 Bernardo Brito

And Bernardo Brito had another. Brito also had a brief time in the Majors, then bounced around the minors and Japanese leagues for a while. Keith Brown of the Reds was yet another checklist substitution, a card I pulled in around 1993, which first made me aware of these non-checklists.  As it turns out, Topps did the same thing in both 1992 and 1994, though I didn't realize it until I saw a '94 card on Wrigley Roster Jenga just a few days ago. Topps printed Gold sets from 1992 through 1994, so I'm not sure why I thought the practice was exclusive to 1993. Current Topps sets don't make these changes; we just have a dozen colored parallels of checklists now, but at least they're also season highlight cards.

Walker and Brito were both on my Eight Men Out list in an effort to snag a few more of these relatively rare cards, but that wasn't the last from gcrl!

1994 Fleer Update #U110 Karl Rhodes

Several years ago, I bought a couple medium-sized Priority Mail boxes on eBay full of assorted cards. I got gobs of duplicates from 2005 Topps Update in one, which is why so many of my trading partners see cards from that set as filler. Another yielded a complete set of 1993 Topps Traded, minus the Helton Rookie, a card I later purchased from my favorite card show dealer. And in one of those boxes came a near-complete set of 1994 Fleer Update, missing only this card of Karl Rhodes, another Eight Men Out need.

The Helton rookie I can understand. In fact, the star rookies are often missing from various Traded and Rookies sets I've purchased as new from various sources. Griffeys, Madduxes, Palmieros have all been missing. But why Karl Rhodes (aka Tuffy) would be the lone card missing is beyond me. Perhaps a young Cubs fan set it aside for an autograph session, or it just got lost in the shuffle somewhere. But that's another complete set I can put on my blog tab, the last thing Fleer would do before they all dropped acid and gave us the 1995 set.

Hey, what else is there to do when there's no World Series?