Mom's 6-for-6 Day at the Thrift Store

Mom is always on the lookout for cards for my collection. When she's not simply referring to my Eight Men Out list, she's unearthing some gems at a card show. This past spring at my nephew's first birthday party, she presented me with a small envelope of cards obtained at a local thrift store. Surprisingly, even amazingly, each and every one of them is brand-new to my collection. That's not usually a feat even I can pull off. It's never been as bad as getting five copies of the same card at one show, but I inevitably end up with a few I already had.

Not so when Mom is shopping for me.

I had the good fortune to witness Charlie Blackmon go 6-for-6 at the Rockies' Home Opener in 2014, the very first day The Rooftop deck at Coors Field was opened to the public. Mike Trout had a 5-for-5 day yesterday, so let's take a look at what a perfect day at the plate looks like.

1997 Upper Deck #479 Jaime Bluma DD

First up is a subset from 1997 Upper Deck, a Diamond Debuts card of Jaime Bluma. I'd never heard of this reliever before, and it's actually a bit tough to tell which team he's on. The stack of golden diamonds on the right each contain a small "KC" (which scan better than they look), but I never really noticed them while this card was sitting on my side table all summer.

Bluma was a late-season call-up for the Royals in 1996, converting five saves in 17 relief appearances. He held promise, and the card back tells us all about those five saves, but Bluma didn't return to the big leagues in 1997 or any year after. Also on the back is a 1995 Fleer-esque thermal image of the front photo, as well as what ended up being his complete MLB stats.

It's unfortunate when your rookie card is also your sunset card. But those two months in late 1996 must remain unforgettable for Jaime Bluma.

1997 Upper Deck #381a Ruben Rivera CF

Clearly, Mom found a rich vein of 1997 Upper Deck subsets. This gold nugget, with a conspicuous absence of copper, UD's favorite metallic element, documents a key pinch-hit that Ruben Rivera delivered during the 1996 pennant race for the Yankees. His efforts helped them (and his cousin, Mariano Rivera) win their first World Series since 1978, even though he didn't end up on the ALCS or World Series roster.

Rivera did end up playing a World Series game at the old Yankee Stadium in 1998, but he came up on the losing end that year as a member of the San Diego Padres. After that, he wrapped his career up as a Giant, but not before going down in history by executing one of the worst displays of baserunning ever seen. Despite that TOOTBLAN, the Giants still managed to salvage a win in 13 innings, although the very next game would be the final one of Rivera's career.

Quite the contrast to his cousin's Hall of Fame-worthy career.

1997 Upper Deck #280 Greg Norton

More 1997 Upper Deck gives us a subset I was at least familiar with already, the shiny Star Rookies set. As with Bluma's card, there's a small shield in the lower left with the date of Greg Norton's debut with the White Sox, and it's less than two weeks after Bluma's. He earned an interesting distinction in that debut game, becoming just the second-ever Major Leaguer to get his first two hits in the same inning.

Some real star power coming up in the AL Central in August 1996, right?

Pardon my sarcasm, but if I had to pick a least-favorite Rockie of all-time, it would be Greg Norton. He was a nice enough guy, and looking back, his stats aren't that bad, but he didn't start a ton of games, and when they did put him in as a pinch-hitter, he always seemed to strike out at the worst possible times. I do recall a grand slam, which was so uncharacteristic that I still remember Greg Norton once hit a grand slam.

2000 Upper Deck #241 Fred McGriff

That taps out 1997 UD, but there's a bit more of that familiar copper to ease us into the new millennium with their 2000 set. We also get to see a much more familiar player in Fred McGriff, not quite a Hall-of-Famer, but an MVP, World Series champion, and five-time All-Star.

Tampa Bay kept the "Devil Rays" name for so short a time that it's quite strange to see their early cards. By now, they've been the Rays longer than they were the Devil Rays, so it's definitely a case of a team still trying to find their identity. Getting out of Tropicana Field would help, and they do have a proposal for a new stadium, which would open in 2023.

Mom told me she was hesitant to give me this card at first, due to what she called an "unflattering" pose. I told her it was fine; action sports sometimes generate slightly awkward positions. Just a little extra reassurance that I am happy to have this card in my collection, adding to a very small stack of 2000 UD.

1997 Pinnacle X-Press #21 Vinny Castilla

I have an even smaller stack of 1997 Pinnacle X-Press, and now I get to add another Rockie to it, the first one of this post.

No, we're not counting Greg Norton.

Pinnacle didn't have much time left in late 1997, but they were still putting out nice sets. The border of this card is a bit fragile, but I like the design, color coding, and slightly different shade of gold that Pinnacle often used compared to Topps and Upper Deck.

There's a nice action shot on the back of Castilla applying a tag at third base to #4 on the Montreal Expos, who happens to be Mark Grudzielanek. In my constant vigilance for Coors Field cards, the 1997s tend to feature a lot of Expos. I'm not quite sure why, especially because it crosses over lots of card brands. You'll see plenty once I finally manage to complete my Coors Field frankenset.

1995 Ultra #373 Marvin Freeman

The final card is another Rockie, and this is the only one I even thought might be in my collection already. I bought a handful of 1995 Ultra when it was new, or at least some was purchased on my behalf. It was a bit spendy for an 11-year old. But I knew I had most of the Rockies from this set.

For that matter, I opened plenty of 1997 UD, but that's just been Series 1, and the three at the top of the post are all from Series 2. Mom managed to find just the right ones across two different sets. 2000 UD and '97 Pinnacle X-Press were wide open, though.

Rockies jerseys haven't changed much throughout the years, but back in the early days of the franchise, especially when they shared Mile High Stadium with the Denver Broncos, they didn't have the uniform number below the letters on the left side, as they do now. I'm looking right at them on the TV now, although a lefty is on the hill as I write this. If the uniforms looked then like they do now, we would see a "44" near Freeman's gloved hand. Its a bit less informative, but a slightly cleaner look, especially on this properly cropped full-bleed card.

So there you have it. Six brand new cards that I didn't go looking for, without a single duplicate to omit or toss in the extras box.

That's what we call batting a thousand.

The Trading Post #102: The Collector

It's always a bittersweet day, the last day of the regular season. 162 games throughout the spring, summer, and fall, with few days off. And more often than not, unless you're the Yankees, that's the end. Time to pack your bags and wait for spring.

But not this year.

This year, the Rockies are heading to the Postseason for just the fourth time. They've still never won the NL West, but the existence of the Wild Card has given us Coloradans a few tastes of October baseball, or as we like to call it in these parts, Rocktober.

1994 Flair #372 Marvin Freeman

A bespectacled Marvin Freeman was a member of the Rockies when they first made the playoffs in 1995, but he had elbow surgery right after the season ended, so he missed their first Wild Card appearance against the Braves, his former team. He still made his mark on the Rockies, starting the game the first time the Rockies pitched a combined shutout at Coors Field (I think my dad was there that day), and he remains atop the single-season leaderboard for ERA, with 2.80.

As usual with 1994 Flair, there's gold foil for days, and it'll go really nicely with that Frank Thomas card my mom picked out. And it was part of a stack of 50 cards that Chris from The Collector sent as part of a 50/50 swap offer he made in mid-August. He already got my half of the trade, and this is the second time he's sent me cards.

I know Jaybee's blogroll is dwindling a bit, but it's nice to see newcomers keeping our community fresh.

1998 Topps Chrome #310 Ellis Burks

New shiny cards also keep my collection fresh, and I got a nice, flat, Chrome card of Ellis Burks. Burks, an ex-Red Sock, made up a pretty large portion of what I sent Chris, as he lists "former Red Sox" on his wantlist. My duplcates box is running a bit thin these days, so other than a few recent cards, former Bostonians who later suited up for the Rockies is about all I could find.

In my opinion, 1998 Topps looks way better in this shiny silver than the gold border and foil the normal cards had that year. It's not quite as imposing as the oversized Super Chrome cards Topps released in '98, but it shows Burks rounding the bases after hitting one out at Candlestick Park, with a dejected Giants infielder returning to his spot on the diamond. That makes me think this might be a late-September game, because the Rockies regularly heated up in September, regardless of where they were in the standings, and beat up on the Giants to spoil their playoff hopes as the season drew to a close.

I'm telling you, you can set your watch to the cycle of a Rockies season.

1997 Finest #28 Jamey Wright B

Jamey Wright, despite pitching six seasons for the Rockies over two stints, has only appeared on this blog once before. That card came from Cards from the Quarry, who has since dropped from the active blogroll, leaving just Rosenort and me to cover our region of the NL West.

Wright's second appearance comes on an unpeeled Finest card from 1997, part of a stack of pristine cards from the same set. I'll get to peeling right after I publish this. It's what I do. Nick liberates graded cards from their plastic enclosures, I peel shiny cards.

The back of this card, clearly not important enough to ship with a protective coating, talks about Wright's ability to generate ground ball outs. Even after just a couple years of Coors Field's existence, it was obvious that fly-ball pitchers were going to have trouble. That's partly what's made Jon Gray so successful, and he's who the Rockies will send to the mound on Wednesday for the Wild Card game in Phoenix to face Zack Greinke.

2002 Topps Ten #84 Todd Helton RUNS

After having never seeing the Topps Ten set before, it's shown up in two consecutive trades. Helton made it further up the Runs leaderboard than Pierre climbed the Triples list, just one run behind Alex Rodriguez, but still a dozen behind Slammin' Sammy Sosa, who hit a not-league-leading 64 in 2001.

Science nerds among you may have heard of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, where you stumble across a particular thing or fact, then you suddenly start seeing it everywhere. That's not exactly what's going on here, as I truly never had this set in my collection before, but it's oddly coincidental that a set from 2002 just started appearing repeatedly with no warning.

2008 Upper Deck Timeline #24 Matt Holliday

Helton and Matt Holliday were both part of the Rockies when they made their magical run to the World Series in 2007, and Helton was still around the next time in 2009. Those two and Troy Tulowitzki were the faces of the Rockies the last time the Postseason came to Denver.

Thanks to that playoff run, the Rockies got a lot of cards in 2008. Upper Deck did an especially good job, slotting Matt Holliday into the one-hit-wonder UD Timeline set. Holliday led the NL in RBIs in 2007, and also won the batting title, an award the Rockies have practically monopolized ever since they became a franchise. None other than Charlie Blackmon will walk away with that award in 2017, just a year after DJ LeMahieu edged out Daniel Murphy.

This card makes no mention of his NLCS MVP award, but does mention a 17-game hitting streak he put together in August 2007. I also see quite a few similarities on the card back to UD Masterpieces, just a bit more modern-looking.

2015 Topps Triple Threads #36 Carlos Gonzalez

Besides a couple guys from the broadcast crew, only Carlos Gonzalez remains with the team from their previous Postseason appearance. Matt Holliday, Ubaldo Jimenez, and a few others are still in the league, but the rest of the roster will be experiencing Rocktober for the first time as players.

This ultra-fancy and ultra-thick Topps Triple Threads card made me laugh just a bit when they tied his "CarGo" nickname to something that could also describe his flashy Lamborghini. It's a cute pun, but perhaps something better suited to Bunt or an Opening Day insert set than something like Triple Threads.

By the way, Topps, you can have that idea of a "Players and their cars" insert set. I'd collect the heck out of that one.

2017 Topps Heritage #258 David Dahl / Raimel Tapia (RC)

For the most part, this post has looked back at past Rockies glory, but guys like this could play a huge role in helping the Rockies to success in future years. Most of the pieces were there last year, but it took a new manager and a beefed-up bullpen to finally crack the secret to success and the third-best record in team history. Dropping two out of three to the Dodgers this weekend doesn't bode well for the NLDS if they win the Wild Card game, but they did give a lot of playing time to the young guys on Sunday.

It's hard to see a Rookie Stars two-player card on the 1968 burlap design without thinking of the famed Nolan Ryan / Jerry Koosman rookie card. Both Dahl and Tapia got semi-regular playing time this season, and while they're not necessarily known to casual fans yet, they'll ensure the Rockies will have a strong outfield for years to come.

2016 Topps #661B DJ LeMahieu SP (42 Jersey)

Finally, last year's batting champion appears facing the Giants yet again, although this short-print was taken on Jackie Robinson Day in 2015. Candlestick Park was no more, instead taking place in AT&T Park right on the bay. The Rockies won that contest by an appropriate score of 4-2, and while its a bit tricky to tell who's who when everyone wears the same uniform number, the label on the runner's batting helmet gives him away as Angel Pagan. That's enough information to pinpoint this play to the bottom of the 6th, when Buster Posey grounded into a 5-4-3 double play.

I almost never deliberately chase short-prints, but I'm happy when I happen to run across one. Thanks to Chris and this 50/50 swap, I found one that is specific enough to find the actual play. I didn't even have to shell out for a $10 Topps Now card to do that, but I hope there are several more of those to come in the upcoming Postseason.