Joel Kaningher (1947-2023)

My dad passed away earlier this year.

It happened just a few weeks after I penned this post about four new cards I found for my collection amongst the belongings he left behind here in Colorado. It has been a difficult several months to say the least, and is certainly part of why you haven't seen me write anything since then. 

In mid-March, I flew down to Florida to settle his estate. My sister had already planned a trip down there to visit him, so I just tagged along on what we all expected would be a different kind of vacation. An old friend of mine who lives nearby helped me clean out his office and bedroom, and I flew back to Colorado a few days later with a few of his prized possessions. Watches, books, photo albums, things like that. A few fountain pens, which has turned into quite the little addiction, let me tell you.

And yes, baseball cards.

It wasn't much. His card collection from when he was a boy was long gone before I was even born. And most of the few hundred cards he kept from my duplicates box stayed behind in Colorado. But I did find three or four pages of his favorites from recent years.

2010 Yankees Topps 27 World Championships #YC2 Lou Gehrig

Over half of the cards I found came from this complete 27-card set that Topps released in 2010, documenting each of the 27 World Series the Yankees have won in their illustrious history. I remember giving this set to him as a gift, probably for Father's Day. I'm glad he liked it so much that he kept it nearby all this time.

Lou Gehrig was before Dad's time, as was much of the team's success that began with Babe Ruth. The Iron Horse also predated Topps itself, so for all the 1920s, '30s, and '40s guys, Topps simply added their photos to the 1952 design. Later on in the set they did true reprints of actual Topps cards, which you'll see later.

DiMaggio is actually not in this set, surely a rights issue that Topps couldn't resolve.

2010 Yankees Topps 27 World Championships #YC15 Mickey Mantle

But Mickey Mantle is. Three times, actually. 

A reprint of Mantle's mythical 1952 Topps rookie card is #15 in this checklist, already over halfway through the set before The Commerce Comet even makes an appearance. 

Even a casual collector knows this card front very well. But this particular reprint set is a bit different. The back is a dark blue with pinstripes, and it contains a decently long paragraph describing the Series (more or less like the lenticular mini cards found in 1991 Score), along with the overall World Series outcome, and the special championship logo unique to that year.

The 1952 World Series went the distance, with the Bronx Bombers taking the full seven games to defeat their crosstown rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers. My dad was actually born in Brooklyn, but moved to Queens as a child, a decade or so before the Mets came into existence.

It should be obvious by now that my dad was a Yankees fan, through and through. And none other than The Mick was his favorite player.

2010 Yankees Topps 27 World Championships #YC19 Roger Maris

He spoke fondly of Roger Maris, too. Dad would have been fourteen years old during the home run chase of 1961, exactly as old as I was when McGwire and Sosa had their own chase in 1998. I think he felt bad for Maris when remembering how much the media pressure got to him when he hit 61 in '61.

The Yankees did win the World Series that year, a year after their heartbreaking loss to Pittsburgh at the hands of Bill Mazeroski. Topps reprinted Maris's 1961 card, and noted on the card back that the new home run champion hit a World Series home run in Game 3 against the Reds.

2010 Yankees Topps 27 World Championships #YC24 Derek Jeter

I don't think Dad really followed the Yankees that much in the 1970s or '80s, although I did find a picture of him wearing the classic "NY" hat circa 1983. But when the dynasty re-established itself in the late 1990s, he and I were both excited to watch it. Derek Jeter was of course a huge part of that, reprinted here on his 1998 card. It's not quite a perfect reprint, but the only major difference is that the foil is silver instead of gold.

2002 New York Yankees Pocket Schedule

He took my sister and I to Maine and New York City for a vacation in 2002, and he picked up this Yankees pocket schedule somewhere during that trip. One of these games in mid-June says the Yankees played in Colorado. June 19th, to be exact. He splurged on two Club Level tickets for that game, and we got to see the Yankees rout the Rockies in a 20-10 victory. Until last Saturday, that was the most runs I had ever seen an opposing team score against the Rockies.

You'll notice the schedule documents 26 World Championships. The 27th was in 2009, and coincidentally my dad and I went to see them play in Anaheim that year. He lived all over the country, and telling his story through a few baseball games barely scratches the surface of who he was. But, as Terence Mann says in Field of Dreams, baseball marks the time.

2016 Topps #93 Charlie Blackmon

The rest of the cards I found were more stowaways from my duplicates box, like this 2016 base card of Charlie Blackmon. Dad retired to Florida in early 2016, so I'm not quite sure how he got this card. I don't remember mailing it to him, but maybe it was a duplicate I gave him from my very first pack or two of 2016 Topps Series 1. If that's what it was, he moved to Florida very soon after.

In any case, he enjoyed the local teams here, and we watched plenty of Rockies games both on TV and in person together. He knew how much of a baseball fan he raised. He taught me how to keep score, he (and my mom) drove me to little league games and practices, they bought me cards for holidays and birthdays, they took me and my sister to the ballpark.

I remember he got home from work early one summer afternoon, and he said, "I drove by Mile High Stadium on the way home and the seats were starting to fill up. There's probably a game on." And I immediately turned on the stereo to find that he was right. And surely, surely he knew that I stayed up past my bedtime listening to the Rockies on my little clock radio.

2014 Stadium Club #17 Michael Cuddyer

After all he gave me, I'm glad I at least got to share my love of Stadium Club with him. He picked this one out, and while he was never a Rockies die-hard like me, he knew a good card when he saw it.

I noticed the 20th Anniversary patch on Michael Cuddyer's sleeve on this 2014 Stadium Club card, the year the brand returned from a long hiatus. And this year the Rockies are wearing a 30th Anniversary patch. 

Which means that memory I have of turning on the radio is either 29 or 30 years old. Not sure how I feel about that.

2015 Topps First Pitch #FP-01 Jeff Bridges

Dad picked out a fun card or two, such as this well-liked First Pitch insert card of Jeff Bridges. Along with baseball, my dad liked movies. And chess, and physics, and cooking, and a thousand other topics. But during those years when our interest in baseball waned a little bit, he introduced me to plenty of movies. Blade Runner, Midnight Cowboy, Little Big Man, other movies with and without Dustin Hoffman. Later in his life, he just enjoyed watching his favorites over and over again. Charlie Wilson's War was a particular favorite of his, and I think I remember him mentioning Crazy Heart, which would explain why he liked this Jeff Bridges card.

1993 Yankees Team Stadium Club #5 Wade Boggs

But it always came back to the Yankees. That was his team no matter what. I asked him once who he would root for if it ever came down to Rockies vs. Yankees in the World Series. Without much hesitation, he told me the Yankees. I like them too, thanks to him, but I'd have to say the opposite. Mainly I grew to like New York because I wanted a horse in the race when the Postseason came around, and the Rockies, as we all know, are usually wrapped up by the end of September.

Losing 25-1 like they did on Saturday doesn't bode well for this year, either.

But those pinstripes are timeless, and they look good on this Wade Boggs Team Stadium Club card.

2011 Topps Lost Cards #60YOTLC-6 Whitey Ford

It's sad that 2009 was the last Yankees championship Dad got to see. But being alive for seventeen of them is pretty cool. He was still keeping an eye on them in these Aaron Judge years, and I think he would have liked Joe Posnanski's recent feature in Esquire about the new Captain of the Yankees.

I'm wrapping up with this insert card of Whitey Ford, from "The Lost Cards" Topps insert set. Due to rights issues, Ford was never actually in the 1955 set, but this is what it would have looked like.

Whitey Ford, it so happens, is one of the later Yankees connections I had to my dad. During that awful year of 2020, Whitey Ford was one of the many Hall of Famers we lost. I talked to my dad not long after that, asking about more of his old baseball memories. The main thing I remember was him repeatedly using Ford's nickname, "The Chairman of the Board", and I'm sure he saw him pitch at the old Yankee Stadium. 

Dad went to many Yankees games when he was young (somehow nearly always against the White Sox, he told me), and he idolized Mickey Mantle. I can't imagine how special it must have been for him to watch such a legendary superstar play just up the street. It's sad though, because we all know how much knee pain Mantle endured during his career, how "it about killed him", my dad said, when Mantle finished with a .298 lifetime batting average, how even though he's undoubtedly one of the greatest of all time, the knee injury The Mick suffered as a rookie made his career a what-if.

And my dad watched his childhood hero go through that, and the aftermath. I hardly ever saw him upset or bothered by anything he saw in the news, especially over something as inevitable as a celebrity death. But one of the few times I saw him shaken up was in 1995, when the newspaper came one morning and he learned of Mickey Mantle's death. It got to him.

I'll never know what it was really like to watch Mickey Mantle play, but I think at least maybe a little of how much time and effort my dad put into cultivating a love of baseball in his only son was to try to share some of that magic that he (and my grandfather) got to witness all those decades ago in the Bronx.

Thanks, Dad.

Hammerin' Hank

When Al Kaline died in April 2020, I wrote these words: "Given the current state of the world, these kinds of posts might sadly become a bit more common in the months ahead." 

Sadly, that prediction has continued to prove all too true, and far too many times since then. The number of baseball greats who have passed on since Don Larsen died on New Year's Day 2020 is truly staggering. Kaline, Seaver, Brock, Gibson, Ford, Morgan, Niekro. And those are just the Hall-of-Famers. Jimmy Wynn, Dick Allen, Larsen, Johnny Antonelli, fan favorites at least, and maybe even borderline Hall-of-Famers.

Hell of a lineup, though.

2021 has given us no reprieve, as we've lost Dodger greats Tommy Lasorda and Don Sutton, and it's only the third full week of January.

And today, I woke up to the news that Henry Aaron died at 86.

1994 Topps #715 Hank Aaron 715 HR

We know him for much more than his most famous moment, when he hit his 715th home run on April 8th, 1974 off of Al Downing, breaking Babe Ruth's home run record. Vin Scully had the call that day. His 4th inning shot was the culmination of a long marathon of chasing Ruth's record, a period in his career when he both guaranteed his place as an all-time baseball great and suffered awful hatred and racism for doing so.

For the occasion of the 20th anniversary of this feat, Topps gave him card #715 in the 1994 set, which is easily one of my favorite cards released that year. As I've mentioned before, it was the first complete set I ever bought, twenty-seven years ago. And what's really interesting to think about is that only twenty-seven years separated Jackie Robinson's debut and Hank Aaron's record-breaking home run. It really isn't that much time.

Aaron went on to wrap up his career with the Brewers a couple years after this, finishing with 2,297 RBI which remains the best in history, 6,856 total bases which remains the best in history, 755 home runs, and 3,771 hits. A Reddit user today pointed out that even if Aaron never hit a single home run, he'd still have over 3,000 hits, practically guaranteeing a spot in the Hall of Fame. 

A stat like that puts him right up there with an all-time hockey great, Wayne Gretzky. Gretzky had so many assists in his career that even if he never scored a single goal, he'd still be the all-time NHL points leader. Sure enough, Aaron finds himself as #5 all-time in position player bWAR, with an incredible 143.1.

He truly was a legend.

And he's a legend in my baseball card collection, too.

Let's go back to 1994, shall we? I was ten years old, and frequently found myself in the card aisle at my local Wal-Mart. I had been collecting for a little over a year, and had kind of had my fill of the 1991 Topps, 1992 Fleer, and 1993 Fleer Ultra that seemed to perpetually be available. I had a year of collecting under my belt, plus that fancy 1994 Topps Factory set. Right around then, Topps released the 1994 Archives '54 set, one of my dad's favorites since it took him back to his own childhood. Wal-Mart had this product for sale, and I had enough money from my weekly allowance to buy a pack or two. 

Pack selection was a very important thing when buying a whole box was entirely out of the question. I must admit that I wasn't above the strategy of pressing the translucent cellophane against the top card to try to see what was inside. To this day, I've never tried bending, weighing, or otherwise manhandling a pack, cardinal sins in the card aisle. But I do realize the cellophane trick does stray somewhere into the neighborhood of pack searching.

Judge ten-year-old me as you will, but I was able to discern a card inside one particular pack of Archives '54.

1994 Topps Archives '54 #62 Eddie Robinson

That was this card. Eddie Robinson, a New York Yankee. I didn't really know him, but I could see he was a Yankee, and being the son of a Yankee fan, this was the pack I picked. 

Eddie Robinson, by the way, has outlived all these guys, as he recently celebrated his 100th birthday. He's the oldest living MLB player. A four-time All-Star, he won a World Series with the 1948 Cleveland Indians. He was on site to watch Cleveland play in the 2016 World Series.

I don't remember which other cards were inside this pack, but I did find something special. Really special.

1994 Topps Archives '54 Gold #128 Hank Aaron (AU)

A gold foil parallel of Hank Aaron's 1994 Archives '54 card, signed on-card in the lower right.

It is the crown jewel of my collection.

I've never shown this card on the blog before, but I did share it many years ago as part of Nachos Grande's Better Know a Blogger series, so longtime followers might have seen it once or twice.

I can unequivocally say that this Hank Aaron autograph is the greatest pull of my life. It will never be topped. Pulling a card like this from a pack you bought at Wal-Mart at the age of ten is an amazing experience. This was a Golden Ticket, and I felt just like Charlie Bucket. I can't imagine anything I could realistically pull out of a pack ever again that would dethrone the Home Run King.

A Hank Aaron autograph!

I still have the pack wrapper. 1:1,263 odds.

RIP, Henry Aaron. You'll always be #1 in my collection.

 

The Trading Post #157: Topps Cards That Never Were (Part 4: Inserts)

Little did I know when this trade arrived from Topps Cards That Never Were that it would keep me company throughout the 2020 League Championship Series. It's been three parts so far, and this will be the fourth and last before we move on to the next trade. If you need a break from Rockies cards, this one won't have any. There will be a lot of Yankees and American Leaguers in general, and everything here is a Topps insert.

2015 Topps Eclipsing History #EH-3 Sandy Koufax / Nolan Ryan

Right off the bat is a hit for my Eight Men Out list, a card from 2015's Eclipsing History insert set. I didn't have a particular card in mind from the ten on offer; any one would do. I first became aware of it over three years ago thanks to one of Peter's posts shortly after the 2017 total solar eclipse, and I knew it would be perfect for my collection. Jeremy found card #EH-3 for me, a dual-player card of Nolan Ryan and Sandy Koufax.

Every record holder out there passed someone else along the way. In the strikeouts per 9 IP category, Sandy Koufax was the leader in that statistic until Nolan Ryan came along. In 1973, Ryan compiled his 1,000th inning pitched, and by that milestone, he eclipsed Koufax's mark of about 9.3, setting his mark at about 9.7. Ryan remained the record holder until Randy Johnson came along, whose K/9IP is about 10.6. These are rounded somewhat, and it shouldn't be that surprising to see strikeout leaders like Ryan and Johnson on the leaderboards for such a statistic.

Witnessing the total solar eclipse in 2017 was one of the great moments of my life. I did a vintage-heavy post shortly thereafter, and I am happy to add a newer card around this theme to my collection. This card doesn't really look much like a real solar eclipse, but then again, nothing really does. It's something you have to see for yourself.

2016 Topps The Greatest Streaks #GS-10 Lou Gehrig

One year later, Topps made another 10-card insert set called The Greatest Streaks. I feel like ten cards is a good size for an insert set. It offers some hope of completion. One could also make a fantastic argument for nine cards, which would perfectly occupy a nine-pocket page without obscuring any backs.

Anyway, Lou Gehrig was included in this set, but not for the reason you might think. We all know about The Iron Horse's record of 2,130 consecutive games played, but Cal Ripken, Jr. ended up eclipsing that, earning himself card #1 in this set. Gehrig, during his own streak, put together another. As part of a fearsome Yankees lineup, he had 100 RBI in 13 straight seasons, something only Jimmie Foxx and Alex Rodriguez have done otherwise. 

Sadly, both streaks were cut short by Gehrig's illness, as it was going strong right up to the end. He batted in one lone run in 1939, and that would be his last.

2016 Topps Back to Back #B2B-12 Babe Ruth / Lou Gehrig

Generally speaking, Gehrig batted after Babe Ruth in the batting order, so a huge portion of his RBI count meant Ruth crossed the plate. Gehrig's only RBI in 1939 was actually Tommy Henrich, the player who was up to bat when the most famous dropped third strike in history occurred in the 1941 World Series. But these two were the core of the Yankees for a long time (though not long enough, it must be said).

This card in particular, also from 2016, comes from a fifteen card set called Back to Back. That's exactly what happened in the 1932 World Series. Everyone knows about Babe Ruth's "called shot" in Game 3, arguably the most famous home run in history. What's often overlooked, this card tells us, is that Lou Gehrig hit one out immediately after.

No one disputes that Ruth hit that historic home run back in 1932. But over the years, there has been much debate about whether he "called" it. Joe Posnanski wrote about it in The Baseball 100, and it remains inconclusive. Interestingly, some previously-unheard audio recently surfaced, giving us none other than Lou Gehrig's view on the event.

This photo, at least of Gehrig, isn't from 1932. It's actually from 1938, and we can tell because of the commemorative patch on Gehrig's left sleeve. The Yankees, Dodgers, and Giants all wore that patch in 1938 for the upcoming 1939 World's Fair. Those shapes on the patch are the Trylon and Perisphere, the iconic temporary structures built in Queens for the occasion. I have a pressed penny that my grandparents took home as a souvenir from the event, dated 1940.

2014 Topps Upper Class #UC-27 Robinson Canó

Our next set is one I've seen before. This is the fourth card out of a possible fifty to enter my collection, and every time, the "Upper Class" name throws me off. I see "Upper" and "2005" at the top of this fancy gold border, and I immediately think it's something from Upper Deck. I wasn't buying boxes of UD at the time, so at a glance, this could be one of any number of sets from the mid-2000s. 

It's indeed a Topps product, though, and Robinson Canó is still going strong. Matt Holliday, whose card I showed last time, retired after the 2018 season. Canó will turn 38 on Thursday, so his career is likely coming to a close soon.

2014 Topps Update Power Players #PPA-MTA Masahiro Tanaka

Today's last Yankee is still with the team. Masahiro Tanaka pitched twice in the 2020 Postseason, earning a record of 0-1 and putting up a frightfully high ERA. He has many years of MLB experience under his belt by now, but when this card was printed, he had just joined the MLB after a lengthy career in Japan for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles. The card back on this one is more of a scouting report, letting us know about his various pitches and high strikeout count in his then-limited MLB performance.

I've seen this insert set too, getting both Rockies from it already. 2014 Topps Update made this one 25 cards, but numbered them with letters only. Of the four cards I now have from it, the background is yellow and blue on all but Carlos González's. Side note, the former Rockies outfielder is celebrating his 35th birthday today!

2018 Topps Update Don't Blink #DB-7 Ichiro

October 22nd used to be a big day in Mariners land. Ichiro and Robinson Canó happen to share that birthday. It's a shame that they never got to play as Mariners in the Postseason to celebrate it together. Regardless, it was always a joy to watch Ichiro play, especially that day when I witnessed his 3,000th hit. That hit was a triple, so it's appropriate for this speedy outfielder to be included in this 2018 Update insert set, Don't Blink.

Speed is becoming less valued in today's game, so you can probably guess who's in the 25-card set. Mike Trout, Trevor Story, Whit Merrifield, Dee Gordon. I guessed all four of those before glancing at the checklist, and I was only wrong on Story. In my defense, I was unaware that the checklist included a mixture of retired and current players, meaning that Henderson, Robinson, and Brock are in here.

I probably should have guessed Trea Turner, though.

The streaking horizontal lines on this card really give a sense of speed, but it's artificially added. It is definitely possible to do something like this in-camera, not counting the streaking on Ichiro's outline. Ideally you'd do a panning shot with a tripod, although certain lenses have an optical stabilizer mode that allows you to do it handheld. That's not what the photographer did here, because we can see the player in the dugout isn't streaked the same way the lines are.

2018 Topps Heritage '69 Topps Deckle Edge #1 Mike Trout

We're almost two decades into Topps Heritage by now, and they've always had insert sets. However, it wasn't until the brand reached the mid-1960s designs that they had real insert sets to use as inspiration. This Deckle Edge card of Mike Trout is just such a set, modeled after a 35-card insert set from 1969. They trimmed it to 30 for the 2018 version, but kept the same rough borders and even gave us a period-correct blue facsimile signature.

I'm not sure how they made these in 1969, but having seen enough cards from the '90s, I assume this is what we'd consider a die-cut today.

2015 Topps Update Whatever Works #WW-2 Tim Lincecum

Here's a fun one. Whatever Works is from 2015 and selected fifteen players and their superstitions. Tim Lincecum's particular quirk is that he likes to keep old hats to wear, a practice he did all the way back in high school. Others in this set are Nomar Garciaparra and I assume his batting glove routine, Joe DiMaggio for something other than his bat polishing, and a few various pitchers. Who knows what they were up to?

Apparently, the baseball world recently learned, Freddie Freeman wears a lucky shirt under his jersey, and has done so ever since 2012. He'd better hope that luck holds out in Game 7 of the NLCS on Sunday.

2018 Stadium Club Never Compromise #NC-RD Rafael Devers

We'll take a quick pop over to Stadium Club and their Never Compromise insert set. The Boston Red Sox haven't been great since winning the World Series in 2018, and part of that is due to the departure of Mookie Betts. Betts, a former teammate of Rafael Devers, weighed in on the back of this card, saying that "We just kind of sit and admire his work", speaking about Devers.

There's a little bit more foil on this card than on most others we've seen today. It's held back for Stadium Club, though. Usually we get things like Power Zone and Beam Team.

2016 Topps Update First Pitch #FP-2 Jake Gyllenhaal

Devers debuted for the Red Sox in 2017, so he wasn't on hand to see Jake Gyllenhaal throw out the ceremonial first pitch at Fenway. That happened in April 2016, where the famous actor was on hand along with Jeff Bauman, a victim of the Boston Marathon bombing whom Gyllenhaal portrayed in the movie.

Topps kept this celebrity-heavy insert set going for a few years, I believe 2015-17. Jeff Bridges was my first card from 2015, and I have McKayla Maroney's card in a stack from a card show I went to ages ago. I'm pretty sure that stack is from the same show at which I got that Joe DiMaggio Pinnacle set, and I keep telling myself that I'll finally do that post when I get caught up on everything else. After this, I only have one trade post left. And a couple LCS visits. And about seven blasters.

Someday.

2011 Topps Opening Day Mascots #M-20 Mariner Moose

In the meantime, we'll wrap up this four-post marathon with what I will confidently say is my favorite insert set of all: Opening Day Mascots.

I've said before that Mariner Moose is one of my most frequently-pulled mascots when it comes to Opening Day. I see Dinger a lot, too, but that's usually via trade. I didn't get him in my 2020 Opening Day purchase (one of the seven blasters I mentioned above), but I will add these to my collection any chance I get. 

One of these days I'd like to make it to Seattle for a game and see this "funny, neat, and friendly" mascot. I've never seen a moose in the wild before. From what I hear, they are not friendly at all. I've never seen one at a ballgame either, for that matter. But they're a frequent sighting when it comes to Opening Day.

Thanks to Jeremy for this amazing batch of cards, and thanks to all my readers for continuing to stick around for my sporadic posting sprees.

 

Eight Clubby Nights: A Stadium Club Hanukkah (Night 3)

Hanukkah is not a holiday for those with little patience. You're in it for the long haul, a week and then a day. This leads to the fun chronology of it always ending on the same day of the week on which it began, in this case Sunday. The actual celebration is quite ritualistic, and it differs from Christmas in that it doesn't have weeks or even months of buildup, suddenly followed by an abrupt end. December 26th always felt like the most anticlimactic day of the entire year. Hanukkah is a nice, slow burn, and by the end of the eighth night, you feel like you've gotten your fill.

By the third night, you've got the rhythm down again. You probably remember the prayers without having to look them up. You've also perfected your dreidel spin. And the more candles you have, the more fun it is to watch them dance in varying ways, even just a centimeter apart.

Something else where your muscle memory comes back quickly is opening packs of cards. I might go months without opening a pack, but partway through a blaster, I have that little tear of the back flap of cellophane just perfect.

2018 Stadium Club #59 Yonder Alonso

First out of Night 3's pack is Yonder Alonso, the Cuban first baseman who has played on three teams in two seasons. He spent all of 2018 with the Cleveland Indians, which means he made it to his first Postseason in October. All those years on the Reds and Padres didn't afford him a taste of October baseball until now.

This card shows the rapid recent evolution of the Cleveland Indians uniform. Red and dark blue are becoming more prominent, and the Indians are gradually moving away from the Chief Wahoo logo, which is barely visible on Alonso's left sleeve. Starting in 2019, the longtime logo will not be used on-field anymore.

2018 Stadium Club #266 Alex Verdugo (RC)

I'll spare you any political opinions about the Indians' logo and move right along to the first of two rookie cards in this pack. Alex Verdugo has mainly been a September call-up for the Los Angeles Dodgers these past two years, and the Dodgers haven't chosen to add him to a Postseason roster yet. He's only 22 years old, and the Dodgers show no signs of slowing down. That will continue to make it difficult on the rest of the NL West, and gives this 22-year old plenty of time to improve his game.

This card has the general look of those 1970s cards everyone loves so much. Other than the massive amount of ink on Verdugo's forearm, the chain link fence and various parked vehicles in the background just scream "retro". That's also one of the better examples of a bat's woodgrain that I can recall.

2018 Stadium Club Never Compromise #NC-MT Mike Trout

This pack's insert arrived exactly in the middle, and it's another new one called Never Compromise. Perennial MVP candidate Mike Trout is the subject this time, who was named the AL Rookie of the Year in 2012. He's reached that age of 27 where most players either finally figure out the big leagues or fade into obscurity. Trout, on the other hand, is a two-time MVP, seven-time All Star, and would be a guaranteed first-ballot Hall of Famer if he retired tomorrow. Instead, he's sure to score a gigantic payday once he hits free agency.

I'm not sure what the point of this set is, other than an excuse to make another card of Mike Trout. The paragraph on the back mostly talks about Trout's clubhouse demeanor, including a quote from former Angel Howie Kendrick.

I am a frequent Redditor, and things get quite different around the /r/baseball subreddit during the offseason. There are plenty of highlights and game recaps during the season, but between November and March, people are grasping at straws a little bit. One offseason post pointed out that Shohei Ohtani was the first Angel not named after a fish to win Rookie of the Year, after Mike Trout and Tim Salmon.

Sometimes April is a long way away.

2018 Stadium Club #280 Harrison Bader (RC)

We're rotating to landscape orientation for the final two cards, starting with our second rookie card of the pack. It's outfielder Harrison Bader of the St. Louis Cardinals, just barely off the ground in a picture-perfect dive, though the ball is still nowhere to be found. It can be a little lonely out there in the outfield, and your ability to dive for fly balls is the only thing standing between an out and an inside-the-park home run. A play like this can spectacularly turn against you very quickly, but professionals like this make the SportsCenter highlight reel more often than not.

Back when I was a young Beckett subscriber, they'd occasionally run a feature where fans would write amusing captions for their cards and send them in. Gloves on heads, dugout shots, Bip Roberts, that sort of stuff. Upper Deck cards were frequent candidates. Anyway, I always wanted to send a card like this in to Beckett, and caption it, "Hurry up and take the picture! I can't hold this pose much longer!"

I may have stolen that from my dad. It was a long time ago.

2018 Stadium Club #300 Hideki Matsui

Closing out the third night is our first MLB retiree of the blaster, Hideki Matsui as a Yankee. The Japanese star spent most of his American career as a Yankee, though he did wrap things up with a few other AL teams in the early 2010s. He was named the 2009 World Series MVP in the Yankees' defeat of the Philadelphia Phillies, and I had the good fortune to see him in late 2009 in Anaheim, the only regular-season MLB game I've attended outside Denver. Matsui went 0-3 that day, with a walk and a run scored.

There is definitely some funny business going on with the background of this card. The umpire, catcher's head, and fans nearer the third base dugout are much blurrier than the fans on the other side, leading me to believe that either Topps applied some weird artificial bokeh effect to the upper right quadrant of the photograph, or else an image processing algorithm got confused. I speak from experience when I assure you that light does not work this way.

I haven't played with new smartphone features like Portrait Mode much, but they can get confused when a background is encircled by a foreground object. Someone with their hands on their hips, for example, or a chair arm. The enclosed area might not be digitally blurred like the rest of the background in the same focal plane. For my money, a fast lens with a wide open aperture is still the best way to get a nice bokeh effect, but I'm a purist.

It's a good photo selection, as is usual with Stadium Club. But the strangeness of how it was manipulated knocks it down a few pegs in my book. However, this is the final card in the set, #300, so that raises it back up a little bit.

Our streak of Washington Nationals has come to an end, but it's never too late to begin a new one.

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.

Two Men In

Another holiday celebration, another card from my Eight Men Out list. Actually, two cards. I had barely placed the Tony Gwynn insert card my mom gave me for Hanukkah into my overflowing 1995 binder before Christmas rolled around. Yes, I grew up in a multi-religion household, so two December festivities were on the calendar. And if that means that three-eighths of my Eight Men Out list were delivered by the Hanukkah Fairy and Santa Claus (both played by my mom), then I'll take it.

2001 Upper Deck Victory #540 Jeff Cirillo

One of these days I'll properly take stock of how well my Coors Field frankenset is coming along, but this one will be a perfect candidate for slot #540. UD Victory was halfway through its five-year lifespan in 2001, depicting Jeff Cirillo in 2000, his first season as the Rockies' third baseman.

This UD brand shows us a sliver of how Coors Field has changed over the years. The white circle on the outfield wall is where Jackie Robinson's retired number resided for many years, until it was moved onto the base of the right-center seating deck, just above the bullpens, joining Todd Helton's #17 and Keli McGregor's "KSM" initials. Another change, slightly more recent, was the raising of the outfield wall. The yellow line that turns downward past the out-of-town scoreboard is no longer, and the wall is now flush with where the upper yellow line is in this photo.

The changes don't stop there, though. If the camera were to pan dramatically upwards, you'd get to see The Rooftop deck, instead of a few thousand more green and purple seats. And finally, though I'm not sure when it happened, they're no longer using lower-case letters on the out-of-town scoreboard. I think. I only recall seeing capital letters there for the past several years, but I'm not 100% sure that I'm not just imagining this. I'll have to do further research this season.

I know that Opening Day is still almost three months away, but I'm so eager for baseball to return that I already have the 2018 schedule pinned up in my cubicle at work.

1997 Upper Deck #442 Charlie Hayes

The final out of the World Series is always a bittersweet moment. Well, sometimes it's just bitter. But when the champion is finally crowned, it begins a long, dark season without any baseball. In the words of the great Rogers Hornsby, it's the time when we "stare out the window and wait for spring." Or perhaps read a bit. But many of those final plays in the World Series are historic, or at least memorable. And I remember this one.

Former Rockie Charlie Hayes was a third baseman for the Yankees in 1996, sharing duties with Wade Boggs. Joe Girardi was behind the plate, long before he would don the pinstripes as manager. The Yankees were playing in their first World Series of my lifetime, facing the Atlanta Braves, the team that loved to give the Rockies nightmares. So you can guess who I was rooting for.

I had only been watching baseball on a regular basis for four seasons, but that was enough time for me to develop a pretty good memory of past plays. And the way that Charlie Hayes squeezed the final out of Game 6 in foul territory looked exactly, to my eyes, like the final home out of the Rockies 1993 season.

Despite my attendance at Mile High Stadium on September 26th, 1993, I don't recall the hit by pitch that I identified on Girardi's 1994 Upper Deck card. But I do remember that final out, and it was caught by Charlie Hayes in a shadowy foul territory. I don't think it was quite as near to the wall as shown on this 1997 Upper Deck card (complete with copper and specific date), but it certainly jogged my 12-year-old memory.

It would be many more years before I had my first Budweiser, but at 12 years old, I already had a wealth of firsthand baseball knowledge to draw on.

As always, thanks to my mom for continuing to cultivate my love of baseball.

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.