The Annual Stadium Club Appreciation Post

Year after year, I keep coming back to the most beautiful set on the market, Topps Stadium Club. I didn't go with a blaster or a box this year, just a 12-card pack off the rack at Target. But what a great pack it was.

2019 Stadium Club #112 Michael Conforto

I wrote myself a little note about this card, as I pulled it right around the same time Michael Conforto smashed a walkoff hit over the head of Adam Eaton on August 9th. I wanted to be sure to include that highlight, because it looks an awful lot like Conforto is celebrating another key hit on this card. It can't be a walkoff due to that road uniform, but road teams can certainly find some magic in visiting ballparks.

Anyone who watched either NLDS game yesterday can attest to that. And Adam Eaton, though Michael Conforto got the better of him on August 9th, celebrated the Nationals' first-ever playoff series win yesterday, not counting the Wild Card game a week prior.

The Mets were pretty close to having a turn in the postseason this year, and were in the mix right up until the final few days. They were three games out of a wild card spot. Disappointing, but great to build on. And it certainly helps to have Pete Alonso, who just set the all-time rookie home run record.

2019 Stadium Club #159 Noah Syndergaard

Noah Syndergaard is another key part of a well-rounded Mets team, a talented righty who threw his first career shutout to close out the 2018 season.

Stadium Club for 2019 is another full-bleed design, and the lettering this year is somewhat similar to the 2017 design. The font is quite readable, and the only demerit is the drop shadow, which looks a little amateurish on such a light background like this pristine pitching mound.

My eyes are drawn to the white number 10 on the back of the Citi Field mound, and I believe that is a memorial to Rusty Staub, a Hall of Famer and fan favorite who passed away on Opening Day 2018. Staub spent nine seasons as a Met across two stints and was one of the first stars of the newly formed Montreal Expos.

2019 Stadium Club #43 Carlos Santana

Shifting over to the American League, here's Carlos Santana giving us a posed bat barrel shot. Like the Mets, the Cleveland Indians finished three games out of the second Wild Card spot, despite winning a whopping 93 games. They shared a division with two of the four worst teams in the Majors this year, so that probably padded their win count a bit, but that's still a disappointing outcome, and one more win than any Rockies team has ever amassed.

Santana signed with the Phillies for the 2018 season, but found himself right back in Cleveland for 2019, earning his first All-Star selection in the process.

2019 Stadium Club #37 Carlos Carrasco

One of the bigger stories to come out of Cleveland this year was Carlos Carrasco's sudden trip to the Injured List, after which it was revealed he was battling leukemia. Fortunately, he responded well to treatment and pitched out of the bullpen throughout the month of September.

It is fortunate that these players are surrounded by such talented medical staff. Micah Bowie has been battling serious medical challenges for quite some time, and has found relief thanks to B.A.T., the Baseball Assistance Team. Danny Farquhar suffered a brain aneurysm in the White Sox dugout, a scary and potentially lethal situation, but recovered well enough to briefly appear in the Yankees organization before announcing his retirement this summer.

These guys are tough.

As far as Carrasco, I wish him a continued strong recovery, and hope to see him appear in lots of Stadium Club sets yet to come.

2019 Stadium Club #132 Rickey Henderson

This year's Oakland A's team did better than the Mets and Indians, but didn't manage to win the Wild Card game against the Rays. As a Rockies fan, I've been on both sides of that, watching the team lose in 2017 and win in 2018. But the poor Oakland A's have lost three of them, one of just two teams to lose more than one, and the only one without at least a win in another year.

Needless to say, Oakland is not a fan of the Wild Card game.

But when Rickey was there? Well, he played plenty of postseason games with the A's, won the ALCS MVP in 1989, and helped bring home a trophy to Oakland that year, the year of the earthquake.

Rickey Henderson appears on his 2019 Stadium Card with fellow Hall of Famer Eddie Murray, who is fielding a throw from a very wise pitcher trying to check the runner. I'd surely try the same against the best base stealer in the history of the game.

Lots of collectors, myself included, notice and occasionally complain about recycled photos on baseball cards. I don't recall seeing this one before, but how would you feel if Topps were to use this on an Eddie Murray card at some point in the future? It's a great picture and I don't think there are nearly enough Eddie Murray cards out there.

2019 Stadium Club #86 Johnny Bench

This isn't a recycled photo, but it is extremely similar to Johnny Bench's card in 2017 Stadium Club. It's still a great image, and looking at the two side-by-side gives you a great look at the evolution of the catcher's mask.

As the card back tells us, of all the members of the Hall of Fame, only 18 were catchers. I won't go into ranking them, but Johnny Bench finds himself toward the top of a very short list.

2019 Stadium Club #245 Lou Gehrig

By many measures, Babe Ruth is the best baseball player of all-time. But his teammate Lou Gehrig is right up there in a number of statistics. If his life had not been tragically cut short, he would have unquestionably been in the 500 home run club and reached 2,000 RBI, very likely would have been the first Yankee with 3,000 hits, long before Derek Jeter, and would have made it that much harder on Cal Ripken to break the consecutive games played streak. When Gehrig removed himself from the game with his streak at 2,130, that was the very last time he'd play.

Despite all that, he is third all-time in slugging percentage, seventh all-time in RBI (and Barry Bonds edged him by one), and is in the top-10 in a slew of modern Sabermetric stats, like Win Probability Added and OPS.

And one more thing. He was the first baseball player to have his uniform number retired.

There's just no way you can't be excited by pulling a Lou Gehrig card out of a pack.

2019 Stadium Club #257 Ken Griffey Jr.

With all this talk of Division Series Game 5s (which I am watching as I write this), it's worth remembering the first-ever Game 5 in the current Postseason format. That was in 1995 (it should have been 1994, but that's another story), when the Mariners beat the Yankees in extra innings. SBNation recently did a great video about that ALDS, and just how important that win was to the Mariners as a whole.

Spoiler alert, none other than Ken Griffey, Jr scored the winning run in the 11th inning, thanks to a double off the bat of fellow Hall of Famer Edgar Martinez.

This card shows The Kid looking pensively out of the dugout, likely on the visitor's side, as you're unlikely to need eye black and flip-down shades inside the Kingdome. And we get enough of a close-up here to see that those ubiquitous flip-down sunglasses we've seen for decades are made by a company called Gargoyles.

You learn something new every day.

2019 Stadium Club Red Foil #109 Khris Davis

For a simple pack, this one was one of the better ones. I found a Red Foil parallel of another Oakland Athletic, Khris Davis. I mentioned him yesterday in the context of extreme consistency when talking about Vinny Castilla's mid-'90s stats. Khris Davis's streak ended this year, but he hit .247 four seasons in a row. It got to be a running joke for a while on Reddit, especially as it became clear that streak was coming to an end. "If he goes 28 for his next 31 he'll keep the streak alive" or something to that effect.

It's right there on the card back in his 2018 stats, .247, right below the paragraph that Topps included about this odd feat of consistency. The only thing they missed was making that the card number. According to Beckett, a Khris Davis card #247 does not exist yet.

Topps, please make that happen.

2019 Stadium Club Power Zone #PZ-5 Mark McGwire

This turned into an Oakland A's hot pack, didn't it? The Power Zone insert set makes another return, this year with a background that looks straight out of an iPhone ad. Mark McGwire gives us his philosophy on hitting on the card back: "I don't know of anybody that makes a big living hitting pitches that are off the plate."

And that's how you hit 70 home runs in a season.

McGwire once held the record for most home runs by a rookie, but Aaron Judge beat that record two years ago, and Pete Alonso beat that record just weeks ago, with 53. Interestingly, both Judge and Alonso won the Home Run Derby in their Rookie years. McGwire participated in the '87 Derby, his rookie year, but only hit [checks notes] one?

Must have been a different format.

2019 Stadium Club Chrome #SCC-21 Chipper Jones

And that brings us to our final card, Chipper Jones on a Chrome parallel. The switch hitter stepped in from the left side for this particular plate appearance, and the card has the usual look of what we expect from the Chrome brand. The card back compares him to another switch hitter, Mickey Mantle. We're told that Chipper is the son of an avid Mickey Mantle fan. I, too, am the son of an avid Mickey Mantle fan.

While the NLDS didn't go Atlanta's way this year, Chipper Jones managed to cleanly snag a foul ball as a fan during Game 1. He has come a long way since that high school Rookie Card in 1991 Topps. I've never been much of a Braves fan, but I have plenty of respect for great switch hitters and franchise players.

Not a bad pack when you pull 50% Hall of Famers. Yes, I am counting Mark McGwire, because he should be.

Going Clubbing (Part 1: Base Cards)

This just in: I still love Stadium Club.

The midsummer release of the premium set is as good as ever, and I was fortunate to find a blaster at my local Target recently. I scored some nice hits, as you'll see in part 2 of this post. But the key aspect of this set is the stellar photography, lovingly selected by Sooz herself.

While all you Chicago-area dwellers are having a grand old time at The National, (I know Nick picked up a few cards for me at the show), I'm just soaking in the glory that a $10,000 camera setup can capture.

2017 Stadium Club #231a Giancarlo Stanton

Horizontal cards look particularly good in a full-bleed design like this, and Giancarlo Stanton, the 2016 Home Run Derby champion, is shown grabbing one at the wall in Marlins Park, the same wall he clears so many times with his bat. Stanton is now sitting at 33 home runs this season, tied with Aaron Judge, who hasn't done much since the break.

Stanton hit a home run earlier this year that just cleared the center field wall at his home park, and it's about the sweetest sound you ever heard a bat make while contacting the ball. Have a listen.

Capturing a sound like that on cardboard is about all they could do to improve this set. Unless they slashed the price a little. Granted, these photos aren't cheap to license, but it is a pricey set to collect.

2017 Stadium Club #170 Ryne Sandberg

As beautiful as it is, another plus to this set is all the retired stars that make appearances, often with photos we haven't seen before. A relatively young-looking Ryne Sandberg is shown in the ageless Wrigley Field, with what looks to be a Phillies catcher off to the side. Pretty tough to say for sure, but assuming this image is from Sandberg's MVP year of 1984, which is the subject of the paragraph on the back, that could be Ozzie Virgil with a cameo.

The Phillies, of course, was where Sandberg spent his rookie season in 1981, playing in just 13 games before being traded to the Cubs. He finished his career in the Windy City, retiring in 1994, then returning in 1996 to play two more seasons.

Interestingly, I have a very specific memory of Sandberg's first retirement announcement, which happened on June 13th, 1994. That was the day I purchased my very first factory set, 1994 Topps, after calling every card shop in the Denver area Yellow Pages to find the best price. That was an all-day project back then, as opposed to about a five-minute task today. Anyway, on the car ride back after transacting the astronomical sum of $45 for a box of cardboard awesomeness, Sandberg's retirement was mentioned on the radio.

Judging by the late spring date of June 13th, I wasted no time that summer vacation in lining up a baseball-related activity to keep me occupied. And while it is nice for $45 not to feel like the jackpot on a game show anymore, having three straight months of perfect weather and no obligations sure sounds nice right about now.

2017 Stadium Club #49 Masahiro Tanaka

Even though Sandberg looks great in Cubbie Blue, they're not the only team to wear pinstripes. The Yankees are probably the team most associated with that, and Japanese pitcher Masahiro Tanaka displays them perfectly. Tanaka was the winningest Yankees pitcher last year, and seems to have found his groove following some elbow problems earlier in the decade. He even took a perfect game into the 6th inning yesterday, helping the Yankees take first place in the AL East. It's like my dad always says, "You don't have to check where the Yankees are in the standings until about August."

2017 Stadium Club #17 Didi Gregorius

Didi Gregorius concurs, and is clearly thrilled to be following in the footsteps of great Yankee shortstops like Phil Rizzuto and Derek Jeter, both of whom are mentioned on the back of this card. It's a bit unusual to read "Rizzuto" and "Wins Above Replacement" in the same paragraph, but Didi had 2.7 last year. And he's been way better than Brandon Crawford on my fantasy team since I picked him up, helping me squeak out a 10-point victory in an extended week following the All-Star break.

The Dutch-born player has a long way to go to stay in the same breath as the Monument Park legends, but if the Yankees hold on to first place, he's sure to get a chance to play some October baseball, just like so many of his predecessors.

2017 Stadium Club #70 Ken Griffey, Jr.

Albert Pujols recently reached the rarefied air of the 600-home-run club, leaving him perhaps a season or so short of passing Ken Griffey, Jr. on the career home run list. Pujols is also the next in line to reach the 3,000 hit club, which Adrian Beltre just joined today. But the next group of active players have hundreds to go to tie Griffey, so we might not see another player join the 600-homer club for a very long time.

I'm guessing that this is a pre-Interleague photo, right when Griffey and Frank Thomas were dominating the Beckett Hi/Lo columns. But I can't figure out which stadium Griffey is playing in. The yellow railings are distinctive enough, but it's not ringing any bells. Before interleague play, I pretty much never saw an AL game other than during the playoffs.

2017 Stadium Club #283 Willie McCovey

Stadium Club is a treasure trove for mini-collection hits, and those who like the batting practice shots ought to track down this one of Willie McCovey. He's leaning on a particularly narrow bat behind the cage, which is really little more than a chain-link backstop. The game has certainly changed, as my sister and I both played on fields about like this. Patchy grass in front of the plate, the grass by the fence in need of a weed whacker, bats lying around, etc.... It's almost like we have a glimpse into a Hall of Famer's little league career. The 1959 Rookie of the Year and 1969 NL MVP played almost his entire career in the National League, save for an 11-game stretch in Oakland at the end of 1976. What a great unfamiliar uniform card that would be.

2017 Stadium Club #99 Paul Goldschmidt

Autograph seekers are after Paul Goldschmidt in another mini-collection candidate, including one fan holding a slightly creepy poster off to the right. I don't go to great lengths to seek them out, but I've only gotten one autograph on the sidelines, and that was Rockies pitcher Kevin Ritz, a starter who is 7th on the Rockies all-time Wins list. I came pretty close to getting Ben Petrick, too, but he headed back to the dugout just before my spot in line came up. A friend of mine got Edwin Jackson before a Cubs game a couple years ago, and if there's one thing I've learned, it helps to have your own pen.

2017 Stadium Club #175 Mark McGwire

There's not a lot of Mark McGwire love in the Cardsphere these days, as he's pretty much the poster child for steroid use in baseball. Still, the 1998 home run race made for a pretty exciting season, PEDs or not. There always seem to be asterisks attached to that record, whether it was McGwire's PED use, Barry Bonds' PED use coupled with his elbow armor (I can't blame him—getting hit on the elbow hurts!), or Roger Maris taking 162 games compared to Babe Ruth's 154, coupled with hitting just ahead of Mickey Mantle. And I've written about this before, but as part of Ken Burns' The Tenth Inning follow-up to his Baseball documentary, Chris Rock pointed out that Babe Ruth had 714 "affirmative action" home runs, noting that Babe Ruth didn't play in an era when guys like Torri Hunter were "snatching home runs out of the sky."

It's definitely a feat, hitting over 60 home runs in a season. When you think about it, of course there will be unusual circumstances surrounding it. Otherwise it would be a lot more common.

Asterisk or no, it's still a great mini-collection card on a couple fronts: dugout shots, and throwback uniforms. I wish I could nail down the date of this card, and if the lineup card posted on the dugout wall was legible, I'm sure that would have been a much easier task. Maybe McGwire even hit a home run on that day.

2017 Stadium Club #9 Greg Maddux

As powerful as he was, belting a home run was never known as "hitting a McGwire". But Greg Maddux has an unofficial stat all his own, a complete game shutout with 99 pitches or less. Maddux threw 13 of those in his career, and may have been on his way to one here. He was a master on the hill, and it was a sign of doom when he was slated to start against your team. You always hoped Maddux's spot in their five-man rotation skipped your three-game series. And the Braves, more than any other team, gave the Rockies fits in their early days. You don't hear the phrase "season sweep" very often, but that's exactly what the Braves did to the Rockies in 1993.

I guess the font on all the Stadium Club cards this year have a little extra flourish on the final letter of the last name, but I didn't really notice it until Maddux's card. The "E" on McGwire's card looks a bit overwrought, but it works very well with the unusual "X" on this card.

2017 Stadium Club #245 Chris Sale

This looks like a modern interpretation of a Studio card to me. With image stabilization, ultra-fast telephoto lenses, and ever-improving low-light performance, not to mention improved printing methods, action shots are relatively easy to obtain these days. Outside of retro sets like Heritage and Allen & Ginter, posed shots are pretty uncommon on cards. That makes this one of Chris Sale, bathed in the warm red glow of his new team in Boston, stand out even from the rest of these cards. It's just another reason why I keep reading bloggers who say they're considering abandoning Flagship entirely and just pursuing Stadium Club.

2017 Stadium Club #254 Maikel Franco

And I can't say I blame them. I'm pretty far from that point, but I do wish it was easier to find this set in larger quantities. Despite my obvious fanboy feelings about this set, I've yet to complete any of the four in this latest rebirth. I did find a full 900-card set of 1992 Stadium Club at a card show, and I completed Series 2 of the inaugural 1991 set thanks to a hobby box and a few Eight Men Out successes, but unlike Bowman, this brand tends not to show up in discount boxes.

Maikel Franco has been putting up some pretty consistent performance for the Phillies the last few years. Not great, but consistent. And whatever happened on this card, it looks like he made quite a defensive play. Probably not like what Nolan Arenado does on a daily basis, but anytime you end up on the tarp, you can safely assume you went above and beyond.

What particularly caught my eye in this photograph are the three young fans watching this play unfold right before their eyes. I've never had front-row tickets down the line before, and even after a two-hour rain delay in a 10-1 game, the best I could find was somewhere in the fourth. But these young ladies look quite curious about the play that just transpired, and don't seem to be shielding themselves from a potential impact. And that curiosity about the game doesn't seem to be terribly common among kids anymore. When I hear about what kids are up to, whether its Minecraft, fidget spinners, slime, or Snapchat, baseball doesn't seem to be high on the list.

2017 Stadium Club #159 Johnny Bench

All-time great Johnny Bench, perhaps the best catcher to ever don the gear, looks rather alarmed in this close-up. It was one of my favorite cards in the whole blaster (notice the lack of a throat guard), but I can't help but tie it to my concern about the future of baseball.

It's no secret that the current baseball card hobby is pretty much made up of middle-aged white men, myself included. But not that long ago, I was trading cards with the neighborhood kids and my schoolmates, playing on a little league team, watching the Rockies most Friday and Saturday nights, riding my bike to Wal-Mart to buy trifold hanger packs of 1993 Fleer (and Micro Machines), and getting 89-cent packs of 1991 Score at Toys R Us, whose card backs were practically short stories.

Of course, there are many more ways to nurture a love of baseball than through cardboard, but I don't know that the current game is translating that well among kids. Having a star like Griffey helps, and there isn't necessarily a fan-friendly superstar like that in the game today. Bryce Harper, for example, seems to be much better at losing his temper and getting ejected than engaging with fans. And Mike Trout, as good as he is, comes off as rather dull.

Distribution is a big part of it too. When I was growing up, all the Rockies games were on broadcast TV, Denver's channel 2. They shifted to cable many years ago, and with the growing rise of cord-cutting, being able to watch your local team is a whole lot tougher these days, and reserved only for those families who are both willing and able to pay the ever-growing prices for TV packages. Sure, there is MLB.TV, but you're still blacked out of watching your hometown team's live games, regardless of where they're played.

And I think this has a lot to do with why the NFL is so popular. Concussion risks aside, you can tune to your local CBS or Fox affiliate and see your city's football game every Sunday in the fall. And all the playoff games too. Monday and Thursday night games have migrated to cable, so it's a little tougher to see what's going on around the league, but your local affiliate will carry the feed if your city's team is playing in a cable-only game. Bottom line, it's free to follow your local NFL team, assuming you have a digital TV and an antenna. All else equal, why would fans pay extra for hometown baseball when what's already the nation's most popular sport is a channel flip away? I do, but that's partially because I could watch it for free when I felt like Scrooge McDuck spending my $45 at a baseball card shop.

MLB's recent move to broadcast games on Facebook, blackout free, is one of the smartest things they've done, distribution-wise, in a long time. This week's matchup between the Phillies and Braves wasn't fantastic, but its a step in the right direction. And if they're not blanketing Snapchat with top plays from the highlight reel, they're missing an entire genertaion.

I'll hop off my soapbox and enjoy these beautiful cards. I'm just saying, in a sport that still sort of feels like it's being played in black-and-white at Ebbets Field, it seems like they're taking the current level of interest for granted.

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!