1993 is not yet complete

The Colorado Rockies joined Major League Baseball in 1993. I was nine years old, and I was growing up in a city that finally had a big league team.

Everyone was excited. There was memorabilia everywhere. Pennants, souvenir guidebooks, apparel, lapel pins, pocket schedules, and of course baseball cards.

I embraced it fully and without reservation.

There was another wave of enthusiasm when Coors Field opened two years later, another round of pennants and guidebooks and card sets and clipboards and little metal pails, mostly with the Coors Field logo.

The thing is, the novelty has worn off quite a bit, at least according to my fellow citizens. The Avalanche and the Broncos were the ones who won the championships, and the Rockies descended into mediocrity. Other than some brief periods of excitement, like the magical World Series run in 2007 and a pair of All-Star Games, the Rockies are more or less an afterthought in this city. The joke is that Coors Field is one of the best sports bars in Denver.

Be that as it may, what it does mean is that a majority of the Rockies memorabilia I see to this day dates back to that early period. I'm one of the few who still follows the Rockies, and my friends, family, and acquaintances know this. So when they run across some old Rockies object in their travels, they know I'm the guy who would appreciate it. And I do. But it's been a lot of seeing the same guidebooks, the same lapel pins, and very often the same baseball cards over the years. Not to say I don't enjoy it. I do. Nostalgia is a powerful force, no matter how many times you experience it.

Which makes it all the more curious when something new comes my way.

Most weeks, my fiancée and her dad will go to an overflow site for Arc Thrift Stores, a local thrift chain. They're mainly on the lookout for surplus books to share with underserved communities and Little Free Libraries, but once in a while they unearth a gem or two I'd like. A birding guidebook, a vintage Apollo-era book about space, etc.... Recently, she found a small white baseball card album hiding in one of the crates and snagged it for my collection.

You may have seen albums like this. It's significantly smaller than a binder; about 6" x 8", with eight or ten pages inside. Each page only has room for four cards, arranged in a square.

This particular album had a cover printed with the Rockies logo, the 1993 Donruss and Leaf logos, and the Rocky Mountain News logo, a defunct Denver-area daily newspaper. I had seen similar albums, but never one with that exact combination of promotional logos. The album itself was beyond saving, as the clear plastic pages (really more of a vinyl) had started to yellow. 

It did have about forty cards inside from three sets. 1993 Rockies Team Stadium Club, which is one of the more common relics from that era, 1991 Topps, which had no particular connection to the Rockies, and 1993 Donruss, matching the album cover.

As luck would have it, two of the Donruss cards are new to my collection.

1993 Donruss #38 Daryl Boston

Collectors in 1993 had to wait for Series 2 before they got Rockies and Marlins cards. But lots of players that were selected in the expansion draft appeared in Series 1 with their pre-draft teams. That went for Daryl Boston, selected by the Rockies from the New York Mets. He played a single season on the inaugural Rockies as a platoon outfielder, but before that he was a member of the White Sox and then the Mets. He was one of many players whose career ended with the Strike.

As a Met in 1992, he wore a black "S" memorial patch on his left sleeve, which we can see here. This was for the 1991 death of William Shea, the New York lawyer who tried to form a third Major League in the late 1950s. The Continental League was over before it began, ultimately leading to MLB expansion and the formation of the New York Mets. Shea Stadium was named for him.

1993 Donruss #341 Jim Tatum (RC)

The other new quasi-Rockies card in the album was of Jim Tatum, another expansion draftee from the Milwaukee Brewers, who were then in the American League. His position is listed as "IF", as he was a journeyman corner infielder during his career. He'd probably be a guy I wouldn't remember too well, except that he played on the inaugural Rockies, a team I watched and listened to as much as possible.

Tatum was no stranger to Mile High Stadium upon his arrival in 1993, as the Denver Zephyrs were the Triple-A affiliate of the Brewers. Other than his five-game call-up in September, he spent his 1992 season as one of the last Minor League players in Denver. He was a promising enough prospect to earn the coveted Rated Rookie logo on his Donruss card.

Also tucked away in a clear pocket on the inside cover were a pair of ticket stubs. These were for July 8th, 1993, a day game against the Florida Marlins, the expansion brethren of the Rockies. The holders of these season tickets got to sit in the rows behind the Rockies dugout on the first base side, watching the Rockies win 3-2. Dante Bichette had all three RBIs that game, putting on a winning performance in front of 56,807 fans.

Yes, 56,807 fans for a Thursday afternoon game. That's how you get to nearly 4.5 million fans in a season.

You're going to pay a lot more than $14 for a ticket like this today, but there is a coupon on the back for a $9.99 large 1-topping pizza at Domino's.

Not everything goes up in price.

It's getting more and more difficult to find cards new to my collection, especially from the overproduction era. I reached a point of diminishing returns a while ago, but it's not approaching zero just yet!

Eight Clubby Nights: A Stadium Club Hanukkah (Night 6)

It's usually around the sixth night of Hanukkah when someone remarks about the lit menorah, "It's getting bright!" Seven candles in close (but not too close) proximity will do that. On occasion, two wicks will bend toward each other and create one larger Hanukkah super-flame, but that rarely lasts for more than several seconds. Mostly it's just gotten to be a little bit routine. It's the same prayers each night, the candles all burn about the same length of time, and the dreidel can only land on one of four sides.

So it was with this pack, the sixth in our series, which neither contained anything earth shattering, nor anything particularly unexpected.

2018 Stadium Club #222 Domingo Santana

The first thing I noticed about Domingo Santana's card is that his Brewers uniform is actually in Spanish. The team name reads "Cerveceros", and is worn on the team's annual Latin American-themed Cerveceros Day. Assuming Topps didn't rush a print job out the door, this would have been from July 1st, 2017. And that means this photo is probably of Santana celebrating his two-run home run in the second inning, off of Marlins starter Tom Koehler. Santana hit an impressive 30 homers in 2017, just trailing Eric Thames who had a torrid April that year, and Travis Shaw, who was the first man to cross the plate when Santana went deep.

I even had the chance to see Domingo Santana not long ago, exactly two months ago, in fact. He pinch-hit in the ninth inning of Game 3 of the NLDS, a chilly afternoon Postseason game which I managed to snag some tickets for. Santana drew a walk facing Chris Rusin. He was stranded on the basepaths, but that didn't much matter, as the Rockies were unable to plate a run during that final game of their season.

2018 Stadium Club #285 Mike Piazza

Our third retired star of the blaster, and second Hall of Famer, is catcher Mike Piazza. He entered the Hall in 2016, the same year as Ken Griffey, Jr. Griffey, a first-ballot inductee, is the closest anyone has come to a unanimous selection, but Piazza needed four years on the ballot to get the call. This photo is closer to his 1993 Rookie of the Year season than to his retirement, specifically from 1997. The 50th Anniversary Jackie Robinson patch is a dead giveaway, and can be found all over late-1990s cards. It's rarely seen at this point in the hobby, though.

It's much harder to spot, but the 12-time All-Star appears to be inside the previous Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis, which was torn down in 2005. The series of arches around the top of the stadium were its main distinctive feature, and we can just see one beyond Piazza's prodigious right forearm.

The ballparks in St. Louis do seem to be a frequent setting for Stadium Club cards. I know it isn't explicitly about stadium photography, but I do appreciate seeing the architecture in a set named Stadium Club, such as Target Field last night.

2018 Stadium Club #220 Walker Buehler (RC)

Walker Buehler, on the other hand, could be pitching anywhere. Well, maybe not one of the two remaining artificial turf fields, Tropicana Field and Rogers Centre, because that definitely looks like natural grass and a full-dirt infield. It might even be Coors Field, since two of the five road appearances Buehler made in 2017 were in Denver. This shot is definitely from 2017, which we can tell from his uniform #64, a number he only wore in his debut season.

Compared to some of the other players we've been seeing, it's a little unexpected to see the Rookie Card logo on Buehler's card. While a lot of those other guys are struggling to bat over .200, this young pitching phenom has already started four Postseason games for the Dodgers, including the marathon 18-inning Game 3 of the World Series, many hours before Nathan Eovaldi endured perhaps the least-deserved loss in Postseason history.

So far tonight, we've only seen the teams that made it to the 2018 NLCS, but that's about to change.

2018 Stadium Club #162 Brad Ziegler

Even though he's pictured as a Marlin, Brad Ziegler benefited from the Marlins fire sale, returning to the Arizona Diamondbacks in a July trade, the team he spent most of his career with. The submariner decided to call it a career just a couple months ago after eleven seasons. He saved over a hundred games in his career, and even played in the Postseason twice, though he totaled just a single inning pitched across three appearances. He closed out an inning for the Red Sox in the 2016 ALDS, but things didn't go well in the 2011 NLDS against the Brewers. He had two appearances that year, but somehow managed to record only 0.1 innings pitched. Game 1 went fine, but he was rocked for four earned runs in Game 2 without recording an out. That led to an astronomical ERA of 108.0, something his regular season stats massively improved upon.

The Postseason may go on for a month, but for the few players that ever get there, it can be over in a real hurry. Regardless, I do appreciate that Topps selected a photo of this pitcher's unorthodox delivery.

2018 Stadium Club #139 Garrett Cooper (RC)

The Marlins have to be getting somebody for all these trades, right? Well, Garrett Cooper is one of those somebodies. He was originally drafted by the Brewers, but he didn't come over in the Yelich trade. He played for the Yankees in 2017, but he didn't come over in the Stanton trade. According to Baseball Reference, which is where I get most of my information about this bevy of rookies, he was basically just traded for a minor leaguer and what is known as international bonus slot money. Signing amateur foreign players works a bit differently than collegiate or high school drafts, so the Yankees might as well have some money to get those guys, too.

This switched from being a Nationals-heavy blaster over to being heavy on the Marlins. Most players in this pack played for the Marlins, including Mike Piazza's 5-game layover in 1998. Even Domingo Santana was playing against the Marlins in the first card. Bryce Harper has yet to make an appearance to complement his early Nationals teammates, but maybe the insert cards will pick back up in the final two packs. This one, careful readers will note, consisted of five straight base cards, without even a parallel in the mix, let alone a variation.

Hanukkah is winding down, but it will get brighter still before the final candle burns itself out. Or before I run out of things to say about the Miami Marlins.

Antique Mall Mystery Pack: Brewers

We're nearing the end of the Mystery Packs that came from my trip to the antique mall last year. Like the Yankees, this one consists of 1970s cards that were sold in a binder page. I didn't get any ninja Orioles, but the interesting history of the Brewers does have shades of another team.

1971 Topps #516 Ted Kubiak

1969 saw more expansion in Major League Baseball. The Montreal Expos began play that year, as did their National League counterparts, the San Diego Padres. In the American League, the Kansas City Royals started, along with a team called the Seattle Pilots that few people other than hardcore baseball fans have heard of.

The Pilots experienced the usual expansion team woes in their only 1969 season, and a lot more. Their repurposed Minor League stadium wasn't nearly up to par for a big league setting, and the team quickly fell into bankruptcy after poor attendance and high ticket prices. Recently retired Commissioner Bud Selig bought the team and moved them to Milwaukee to become the Brewers.

The City of Seattle didn't like this one bit, and ended up suing the American League. Everyone was happy by 1977 when the Mariners brought Major League Baseball back to Seattle. That was also the first year of the Blue Jays, ensuring there remained an even number of teams.

Anyway, in the midst of all that drama, the now-Brewers didn't really have time to come up with their own branding. The move wasn't made official until just before the 1970 season, and their uniforms hastily had "Brewers" sewn over where "Pilots" used to be. What you see here is essentially a Seattle Pilots jersey and helmet, which is given away by that unique striping on the sleeve, meant to resemble an airline captain's uniform.

Jim Bouton, author of Ball Four, and perhaps the only reason anybody at all remembers the Seattle Pilots ever existed, hated the uniforms. With all the stripes, colors, braid on the caps, and little ship's wheel logos, his feeling was that "We look like goddamn clowns."

1978 Topps #595 Sixto Lezcano

By the late 1970s, the Brewers, though they kept the blue and yellow of the Pilots, at least toned down the uniforms a bit. Lezcano had a more-or-less average 12-year career, though he does hold quite a specific record. He is the only player in Major League history to hit a grand slam on Opening Day more than once. It happened in 1978 and 1980, the seasons that sandwiched his only gold glove award.

He was part of the trade that sent Ozzie Smith from San Diego to St. Louis, and like many of Topps' 1970s American League cards, this photo was taken in Yankee Stadium. That black armband on Lezcano's sleeve was worn as a memorial to the death of teammate Danny Frisella, who died in a dune buggy accident in 1977. It was worn throughout the Brewers' 1977 season.

1979 Topps #24 Paul Molitor

This isn't Paul Molitor's rookie card. That goes to a four-player card in the 1978 set. This is, however, his first solo Topps card, and it also marks a change in the Brewers uniforms. They still kept the blue and yellow colors, but with a fancy new logo. Cleverly, though it just looks like a ball in a baseball glove, it is actually made up of the letters "M" and "B". This was a fan-submitted design, and is one of those things you can't unsee. Like the arrow in the FedEx logo. Or the little arrow going from A to Z in the Amazon logo.

But the Expos logo still looks like a JB to me.

This 1979 card is the newest one from the whole page, and the only Brewers jersey that looks familiar to me. The 1979 set didn't have cartoons, but there are on-this-date trivia questions. Try this Baseball Dates question out: What happened on October 15th, 1960?

Coincidentally, it was something I wrote about just a couple weeks ago in a book review. Taken verbatim from the card, "Bill Mazeroski's 9th-inning Homer gave Pirates the World Series championship over Yankees."

Paul Molitor was present for another World Series-ending home run, as he signed with the Toronto Blue Jays in 1993. Joe Carter won it for the Jays with a Game 6 walkoff. Molitor won his only World Series that day, and was named Series MVP. He'd continue to play through 1998, finishing up as a member of the 3,000-hit club, and being enshrined in the Hall of Fame.

1975 Topps #337 Kevin Kobel

Another 1970s card, another Yankee Stadium photo. I still have trouble telling the 1970s sets apart, but 1975 I can recognize. The telltale two-tone design (say that ten times fast) can be spotted a mile away, even if it's a player I've never heard of.

1977 Topps #406 Tim Johnson

The remainder of these cards are from 1977, which is primarily what I found in these pages. There are quite a few batting cage shots in that set, but at least it's a different backdrop than the left field seats at Yankee Stadium.

1977 Topps has cartoons! Tim Johnson's card has one depicting Cookie Rojas, and a note that Rojas has hit two extra-inning grand slams in his career for the Royals. Between this post and that doubleheader with the Dodgers last month, there's been a lot of talk about grand slams lately. The cartoon is slightly incorrect, as the line score shows the 12th inning on the scoreboard, but Rojas' grand slams were in the 10th and 11th.

1977 Topps #498 Sal Bando

Sal Bando came over from the A's for the 1977 season, and is welcomed onto his Brewers card with a very airbrushed photo. Bando played for Oakland when they dominated baseball in the early 1970s, winning three consecutive World Series from 1972-1974. No one besides the Yankees have put together such a streak.

Topps reached way, way back into the history books for Bando's cartoon. We're informed that Claude Elliott of the Giants earned a whopping six saves in 1905. That's a few weeks' work for a modern closer, but it led both leagues by far in 1905. The next player down only had three, and no one in the AL managed more than two.

If you told someone in 1905 that we'd have such a thing as a Closer in today's game, and that the all-time leaders have over six hundred, they'd probably stare in a state of amazement at how close games must be in the future.

Also they'd probably be surprised about the whole Cubs thing. But the Postseason is fast approaching, and this year could get interesting, especially with the Indians in the mix, who haven't won since 1948.

1977 Topps #159 Bernie Carbo

Bernie Carbo knows World Series droughts about as well as the Cubs and Indians. He was a key player for the Red Sox in Game 6 of the 1975 Series, tying it up with a three-run shot, and setting the stage for Carlton Fisk's 12th inning heroics. Still, the Red Sox couldn't get it done in Game 7, and would have to wait another 29 years and for a lunar eclipse to break the curse.

The Brewers haven't reached the Fall Classic within my lifetime, and this year definitely won't be it. But for an expansion club, they've seen a lot of great players and have one of the most interesting genesis stories in the entire league. These cards from their early days were a great find!