This is all because of my Dad

As much as I've written about baseball cards over the years, I have to admit that my interest in collecting didn't start out of nowhere. It was something that was introduced to me and nurtured by my parents, particularly my dad. While mom is continuing to carry the torch these past few years, my dad is the one who kindled it.

It began when I was quite little. I got a pack of 1987 Topps, which lived in a prominent corner of my desk drawer for years. A few years later, a pack of 1990 Fleer went right on top of them. It wasn't much, but it was enough to forge some strong connections in my young brain. My collection exponentially grew when the Rockies began play in 1993, and I haven't looked back since.

All this to say that it should come as no surprise that my dad collected cards when he was a kid, too. He remembers the TV cabinet design of 1955 Bowman in particular, and also tells a story of flipping (and losing) some cards with cars on them, which I assume came from the 1961 Topps Sports Cars set. 

I can afford blasters and visits to the LCS on my own now, but in those early days of my collection, he was usually the one to drive me around to various card stores and mall card shows. My little sister often came along, and I remember one time we were given a few piles of cards by another card show attendee (mostly hockey and football, as I recall), who had no interest in "commons" and only was looking for the special "hits".

At the time, this was a truly inexplicable turn of events. Why would someone just...not want cards they had paid for? It made no sense.

In any case, my dad would occasionally take the opportunity to buy a few cards for himself. He stocked up on 1994 Topps Archives (based on the '54 set), and some nice shiny ones of his favorite Yankees here and there.

Anyway, that was all a long time ago. He has since retired and moved to Florida, but he did leave behind some possessions in a self-storage unit here in Colorado. He decided to let the contents go recently, and I cleaned it out last fall. Among many other family heirlooms, I found a binder full of baseball cards, as well as a couple other stacks tucked away in toploaders for safe keeping.

Despite being mere meters away from total incineration in the Marshall Fire, they all survived in fine condition. As I looked through the piles and pages, I recognized nearly all of them as coming from my perpetually overflowing duplicates box, which I invited him to raid many years ago to build his own collection.

Emphasis on "nearly".

I found close to five hundred cards, and I was virtually certain that all of them were already in my collection. But I did check just to be sure.

Four slipped through.

2003 Topps Opening Day Stickers #5 Josh Beckett

First up is a very young Josh Beckett, who had recently begun his career as a Florida Marlin. This card is a miniature, measuring a neat 3" x 2". The photo matches the full-size version in the main 2003 Opening Day set, but the card back is actually a scratch-off contest thing, which expired May 30th, 2003. I don't often keep that sort of stuff in my collection, especially when it's just an advertisement card on both sides. This one is a bit more like a real card, but I'm not surprised I tossed this one into the duplicates box. I guess my dad liked the mini size.

Beckett (the price guide, not to be confused with this player himself) says this is a sticker, part of a 72-card partial parallel set. It's unnumbered, so I have no idea how Beckett decided it is card #5. Maybe that comes from a long-forgotten sell sheet somewhere.

The back remains unscratched, and will perpetually live in a superposition of maybe once being a winning card and having much of its original value eroded by the passage of time.

2003 Topps Opening Day Stickers #11 Eric Chávez

Here's another card from the same set, featuring Eric Chávez of the Oakland A's. He's a player that shows up around here surprisingly often for a non-Rockie. His card back also remains unscratched.

I used to have quite a few of those early-'90s Panini stickers that were about this size. I let them go a long time ago, and can't say I really miss them. I'm not really a sticker guy. Despite what Beckett says, I'm not convinced these are actually stickers anyway, and I'd prefer not to wreck the paperboard to find out. But I'm glad these survived, especially now that I have binder pages that fit them.

1996 Select #124 Wally Joyner

This one's presence is far more baffling. Despite all the baseball we watched together in my childhood, I don't think my dad ever once uttered Wally Joyner's name. I doubt he had an affinity for this particular player. I have no choice but to assume he liked the gold foil mixed with the woodgrain look on the left-hand side of the card, perhaps a reminder of that '55 Bowman set he liked so much.

Fair enough, but where did he get it? I only have a page or two of 1996 Select in my own binders, and this card isn't among them, nor is any other Padre. I suppose he might have bought it on his own at a card show while he was keeping me company, but if so, why just this one? More likely this was a stowaway into my duplicates box. Maybe it stuck to another card.

I'm glad to have a new addition to my collection, but I find this disconcerting.

1997 Pinnacle Inside Club Edition #122 Mike Mussina

Even more curious is this Pinnacle parallel of Mike Mussina. The former Oriole later joined the Yankees, which is my dad's favorite team. So the player selection makes a little more sense to me, but I still don't know the provenance of the card itself. 

Well, since it's the Pinnacle Inside set, we know it came from a steel can. But I still don't know how Dad got hold of it.

Pinnacle was nearing the end in 1997 (probably at least in part because of canning baseball cards), but they were still printing shiny cards like this a year before their bankruptcy. I'm no expert on this set, but the foilboard finish did stand out to me. I have very little in my collection to compare it to, but the base cards just had a normal front. This one is the shiny Club Edition parallel, noted in vertical lettering on the card back.

This design actually reminds me a bit of 1994 Upper Deck. It doesn't show up well in the scan, but the proportions are about the same, and the one narrow monochrome photo squeezed onto the left size certainly has similarities to that UD set. Of course, there's no copper foil, something that UD seemingly cornered the market on.

So we know it's a parallel, but that only raises the question of why it was in my duplicates box at all? I don't have Mussina's base card from this set, so I don't see how I would have made that mistake of thinking this was a second base card. And of course I didn't have the Club Edition already (who would have two of these, anyway?), nor the die-cut Diamond Edition parallel.

Again, maybe he bought it on his own, but this project ultimately raised more questions than answers. 

In fact, finding these four cards that almost certainly came from my duplicates box makes me wonder whether absolutely everything in that 5,000-count box is truly a duplicate.

Only one way to find out.

Another Year, Another Hanukkah

Sometimes I wonder how I used to have time to write forty posts a year. 2022 was by far my lowest post total since the inception of Infield Fly Rule, where I managed to get a mere nine posts done. I’m not even sure I can play the “quality over quantity” card, but I'll let you be the judge of that. It's not for lack of material, I assure you, as there are piles of cards continuing to grow, including a recent blaster of 2022 Stadium Club that had some nice parallels inside. 

I also see that Beckett has changed their site significantly since my last post.

In any case, I still have that Eight Men Out wishlist on my blog header, and it continues to pay dividends each holiday season, thanks to Mom. This year, she picked a couple going back to the very early days of the Colorado Rockies franchise.

1993 Triple Play #127 Mile High Stadium

When the Rockies joined Major League Baseball for the 1993 season, they didn't quite have a permanent home yet, though Coors Field was already under construction. They played their first two seasons at Mile High Stadium, home of the Denver Broncos, just a few exits down I-25. It has since been replaced by what is now known as Empower Field at Mile High, but while it was still standing, it saw millions and millions of fans filter through to see the first MLB team in the Mountain Time Zone.

Officially, 4,483,350 fans attended home Rockies games in the inaugural 1993 season, filling the cavernous Mile High Stadium to the brim. I counted for two of those. In fact, the team's per-game attendance was averaging even higher in 1994, but the strike had other ideas, cutting short our fan base's chance at beating its own record. The 1993 count still remains the single-season record across the big leagues.

Triple Play included a nighttime panorama shot of Mile High in the 1993 set, mentioning the stadium's past role as home to various Denver-area Minor League teams on the card back. The stadium was built in 1948, and the Denver Bears and later the Denver Zephyrs called it home.

I don't know the actual release date of 1993 Triple Play, but unless it was toward the end of the 1993 season, I would guess this photo is actually from a 1992 or earlier Zephyrs game. The individual player Rockies cards in this set used the old team logo, which tells me they produced it in the narrow window between the expansion draft and the start of the 1993 season.

Still, the place is pretty packed for a Minor League game. I did go to a couple Zephyrs games as a young child, and I don't remember it being so full. It might be that this is a fireworks game, as you can see the right field seats (also known as the "South Stands" in Broncos parlance) are empty, which was done for safety on the few fireworks nights the Rockies put on for their fans. I'm just guessing, though. There isn't enough detail in this print job to really tell.

In case you were curious, the Florida Marlins got a similar card in the 1993 Triple Play checklist, a very orange card of what was then called Joe Robbie Stadium. Though it has since been renamed many times over, the structure currently known as Hard Rock Stadium remains standing, and still plays host to Miami Dolphins home games.

Longtime Colorado residents still lament the loss of old Mile High, and the orange and blue seats that used to fill the stadium are now scattered across various basements and man caves throughout the Denver area. It's a bygone relic.

1998 Pacific Platinum Blue #425 John Flaherty /67

So, too, is the idea of pitchers running the bases. With the arrival of the Designated Hitter in both leagues, the opportunity for a pitcher to be involved in a play at the plate is now as rare as hen's teeth. That makes this 1998 Pacific card of Padres catcher John Flaherty all the more special, as Rockies starting pitcher Roger Bailey got a cameo while sliding into home. 

Even in 1998 when the DH was strictly an American League thing, that was a pretty rare play. Rare enough that it should be reasonably easy to pinpoint this card to an exact date.

In the 1997 season, Roger Bailey started two games in San Diego. That would have been at Qualcomm Stadium, as long as we're bringing up defunct ballparks. The first of those was on June 19th, 1997. After building a 5-3 lead, Bailey led off the 5th inning with a full-count walk. He advanced to second on an Eric Young sacrifice bunt, then tried to score on an Ellis Burks single. That's this play.

Out at the plate! Bailey was cut down by Greg Vaughn via an outfield assist, a four-time All-Star who concluded his career with a very short 22-game stint with the Colorado Rockies in 2003.

At first the result of this play struck me as an odd photo selection, then I remembered this is actually John Flaherty's card, not Bailey's. It's too bad he didn't stop at third, because the next batter was Hall of Famer Larry Walker, who easily drove in Burks with a double to right. In another universe, Pacific would have had to pick another photo for this card.

Roger Bailey's story is actually quite a sad one. He was a top prospect for the early Rockies, and appeared in many 1992 and 1993 Minor League sets as an amateur draftee. Most other card companies ignored him for a few years, but Topps put him in multiple sets as a Rockie during 1993. 

He debuted in 1995, appearing in the second-ever game at Coors Field. Over time, he worked his way into the rotation, and actually put up a respectable ERA in pre-humidor Coors. His 1997 season was his best yet, finishing with a 9-10 record, including two complete game shutouts. He was on track to be a key member of the Rockies rotation. 

Sadly, during spring training in 1998, Bailey was a riding in a car with fellow Rockies pitcher Mike Munoz when it was rear-ended. Just like that, his back was injured and he never recovered well enough to pitch again.

Pacific, ever the unappreciated innovator, was known for lots of colored foil parallels in their time. I have little idea which one is which, but there were lots of golds and silvers and blues and reds out there. In the 1998 base set, gold foil was the base variety, and then some of the parallels were silver. That seems backwards to me. But anyway, the foil on this one is a pale blue color, sort of the color of aquamarine.

I only had the base card on my list, which would have been fine. I knew upon first looking at this that the blue foil made this some kind of parallel, which is also fine, as my primary desire for this card was for the Roger Bailey cameo. But, not being an expert in 1998 Pacific, I had no idea until sitting down to write that this is actually the Platinum Blue variety, which had a stated print run of just 67 copies. 67! Way back in 1998!

There's no serial number on the card, so I had to find out about this by checking Beckett.

Yes, indeed it does make me wonder whether I have any other hidden gems in my few Pacific pages that are far more rare than I thought.

1998 was a weird year for cards.

It was also 25 years ago, which is deeply unsettling.

Happy New Year! 

The World's Champions (Part 2: Minis and non-Baseball)

The stage is set. 

2021 Topps Allen and Ginter Mini Black Border #149 Ian Anderson

For the 2021 World Series, the Atlanta Braves will be facing the Houston Astros, beginning Tuesday night. Former Astro (and Ray) Charlie Morton will be taking the mound for the Braves in Game 1, but we can expect that rookie Ian Anderson will toe the rubber at some point during this best-of-7 series.

We're all familiar with how Allen & Ginter has all the numbers written out on the card backs, but when it comes to a Rookie Card, like this one, it's not quite so eye-crossing. Games: Eighty. Wins: Seventeen. That's easy to digest at a glance, although Three Hundred Seventy Seven and Two Thirds career innings pitched still needs a second look to really understand. And when it comes to advanced stats, A&G must be the only place in history where a pitcher has a WHIP of "One Point Twenty Three".

Anderson's Black Bordered Mini parallel leads off Part 2 of this Allen & Ginter blaster, a card I had once set aside for its parallel-ness but not necessarily for any expectation it would be relevant for the World Series.

2021 Topps Allen and Ginter Mini #316 Yu Darvish

In fact, even as late as the All-Star Break, it certainly looked like the San Diego Padres would be well on their way to a Postseason berth. They experienced quite an epic collapse, and will have to try again next year, although they did finally get their first no-hitter in franchise history. Yu Darvish is in a good place, teammates with veteran talent and one of the most exciting young players in the game, but he remains in a tough division. Time will tell whether he'll ever get to play in the World Series again, or if he'll fall just millimeters short like his two near-perfect games.

2021 Topps Allen and Ginter Mini A&G Back #30 Rickey Henderson

Throughout his long career, Rickey Henderson managed to get much closer to those elusive milestones. Of course, he became the career leader by a tremendous margin in Stolen Bases, and also got to hoist the Commissioner's Trophy twice. That first one, as pictured on this A&G parallel, came with the Oakland Athletics in 1989, and then again in 1993 with the Blue Jays.

We're long past the days of Rickey Henderson swiping bases left and right, but it's been good to see the Stolen Base (or Caught Stealing) make an occasional clutch appearance throughout this year's Postseason.

2021 Topps Allen and Ginter Mini A&G Back #30 Rickey Henderson (Reverse)

It may not look like a parallel, but longtime A&G collectors know that back variations can come into play. Because, you know, there aren't enough ways to turn the front into a parallel.

2021 Topps Allen and Ginter Mini A&G Back #110 Daulton Varsho

Daulton Varsho's rookie card has the same back variation, although his Diamondbacks finished tied for the worst record in the league. There's definitely no postseason magic in the forecast for Arizona's near future. The RC logo blends into the overall brownish-gold design, and it looks a little busy on this narrow-cut mini. These tobacco-style cards measure a very precise 2 11/16" by 1 1/2".

Daulton Varsho is part of the current crop of second-generation Major Leaguers along with Tatis, Guerrero, Bichette, and so on. He's the son of former National Leaguer Gary Varsho, whom I mainly remember as a Pirate. Gary signed with the Phillies for his final season in 1995, teaming up with catcher Darren Daulton. You'd be correct in assuming that his late former teammate is his son's namesake.

2021 Topps Allen and Ginter Mini Rookie Design Variations #MRD-1 Casey Mize

It doesn't seem like that long, but Allen & Ginter has been with us since 2006. Not counting the original 19th century product, of course. But that's long enough for Topps to bring back the original 2006 design as a 20-card insert set. Casey Mize of the Tigers led it off with card #1, reminding us of how minimal this brand used to look. And more colorful, somehow, at least as far as the Rookie Card logo goes. 

For the most part, this was a rookie-heavy batch of Minis. Several appearances of the Rookie Card logo are going to be scattered across the page once I get these in a binder. And I'm sure we can expect to see at least some of these guys in the league for a long time to come.

But compared to the last Mini I found, they're all younger. So much younger.

2021 Topps Allen and Ginter Mini Far Far Away #FFA-2 Caldwell 5

Eleven million years younger, to be approximate.

We keep coming back to A&G for all the fun non-baseball topics, and this blaster delivered as promised. Here's an image of the spiral galaxy Caldwell 5, discovered in 1892, not long after the original release of the Allen & Ginter set in 1887.

Part of the Far Far Away insert set available only in the mini size, this is one of fifteen cards that are cut far too small to truly display these wondrous celestial objects. This particular galaxy, as we're told on the card back, is known as "The Hidden Galaxy" due to all the cosmic dust obscuring its view. Fortunately, we have a new space telescope scheduled to launch before the end of the year, and its capabilities should help reveal Caldwell 5 a bit more thanks to its infrared-sensitive instruments.

2021 Topps Allen and Ginter #206 Sarah Spain

Returning back to the familiar 3.5" x 2.5" size, I did find a couple of non-baseball full-size cards. First is Sarah Spain, an ESPN host and reporter. I don't watch a whole lot of ESPN's news shows, so I can't say I'm familiar with her. I still watch a good deal of their other programming (such as Monday Night Football when I wrote most of this), along with their excellent 30 for 30 series. But for sports news, I get that mostly from The Athletic and now Joe Posnanski's Substack page, since he's no longer writing for them.

2021 Topps Allen and Ginter #249 Rose Lavelle

The other non-baseball but still sports-related card is of Rose Lavelle, a member of Team USA women's soccer, as well as an athlete in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). She helped the national team to its 2019 Women's World Cup championship, and earned a bronze medal at the Tokyo Olympics. 

A&G has included a few other members of the dominant US Women's Soccer team over the years, including early stars Mia Hamm and Michelle Akers, along with more recent members like Megan Rapinoe and Carli Lloyd.

Our final few cards are from a variety of nature and wildlife-heavy insert sets, something that is right up my alley these days.

2021 Topps Allen and Ginter Birds of a Feather #BOF-8 Green-Wing Macaw

Birds of a Feather is a ten-card insert set of birds. Beautiful, feathery, colorful, mostly tropical birds. And anyone who knows me well knows that I love birds. These are far from your backyard sparrows and wrens; you'd quite literally have to travel to the other side of the world to see them in the wild. Fortunately, Topps brought them a little closer with this insert set, and it's certainly a set where I'd consider chasing down the other nine.

This one is a Green-wing Macaw, also known as a Red-and-Green Macaw. It's a parrot native to South America, and is among the most intelligent birds found in the world. Lego enthusiasts will probably recognize this as the Parrot part, although that could possibly be a similar-looking Scarlet Macaw (also found in this insert set).

2021 Topps Allen and Ginter Rallying Back #RB-7 White Rhino

Ten more animals are found in the Rallying Back insert set, a collection of endangered or threatened species. The White Rhino is featured on card #7, or more specifically the Southern White Rhino subspecies. Poaching and hunting decimated its population last century, but protections put in place have allowed the species to recover to around 20,000 individuals. 

No mention is made of the much unluckier Northern White Rhino subspecies, which is down to a mere two female individuals left in captivity. None are known in the wild. Not doing much better is the more distantly-related Black Rhino, which has a few thousand individuals remaining among several subspecies.

There are success stories in this insert set, like the bald eagle which has rebounded to well over 100,000 individuals, and humpback whales, which currently number around 80,000. But sadly, the state of the animal kingdom is far from secure.

2021 Topps Allen and Ginter Deep Sea Shiver #DSS-15 Silvertip Shark

Sixteen more cards dive into the shadowy world of sharks, and near the end of the checklist is this fearsome-looking Silvertip Shark. Maxing out at about ten feet long, they generally live in shallow waters along continental or island shelves. They're apex predators and are clearly not to be trifled with. Unless, of course, you're a confident little Remora fish that likes to hitch a ride, which we can see on the shark's left pectoral fin.

Like most sharks, this is a species that is viviparous, meaning it gives live birth. Most other fish and a few shark species lay eggs, scientifically known as oviparous.

2021 Topps Allen and Ginter Arboreal Appreciation #AA-13 Holly

Moving over to a different kingdom on the tree of life, we'll wrap up this blaster with the alliteratively named Arboreal Appreciation. It's fifteen cards depicting various trees, something I'm quite a bit less familiar with than birds. I'm learning, though. 

We all know the Holly plant from its festive association with Christmas, thought that's just one or two species among hundreds. The bright red berries you're accustomed to seeing in Christmas wreaths are actually known to be rather toxic, perhaps fatally so for children and pets. Contrast this with another Christmastime plant, the poinsettia, whose alleged toxicity is merely an urban myth.

A&G may have given us a fairly similar-looking set every year for a decade and a half, but the variety found in the non-baseball topics is truly limitless. Next year I hope to see a set showcasing the great variety of crustaceans in the ocean.

It's also worth noting in light of the Fanatics deal that Topps could very much keep the spirit of this set going after their MLB license expires.

Thank you for reading, and enjoy the World Series!

All-Star Weekend

It has been a very long time since I've blogged about cards the same day I acquired them. But we can restart that clock, because I swung by the Topps booth at the Play Ball Park earlier today and picked up a few packs of 2021 Topps Series 2.

The Play Ball Park is basically what MLB used to call FanFest. To coincide with All-Star week, they filled the huge Colorado Convention Center in Downtown Denver with all sorts of baseball-related activities and exhibits. It's running for several days until the All-Star Game itself occurs on Tuesday. Tickets were free, and I happened to snag one a few weeks ago. It was quite an experience for me, because I haven't been in a crowd even approaching that size since long before the pandemic started.

Some of the highlights of the Play Ball Park included a display from the Hall of Fame, which had historic items ranging from Hank Aaron's 714th home run ball to Jose Canseco's batting helmet to Larry Walker's Spongebob shirt. A separate exhibit gave us a look at some of the various trophies bestowed upon star players, like the Silver Slugger bat and the Roberto Clemente award. The Negro League Hall of Fame had an exhibit too, with glassed-in "lockers" for legends like Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson, and two-way player Martín Dihigo. All sorts of kid-friendly activities like a softball diamond, batting cage, and more were there too.

But the main highlight for me and my first destination was the Topps booth. They had lots of Series 2 for sale, along with an offer of an event-exclusive card if you bought three packs at $4 each and turned in the pack wrappers. As I was slowly reminded of how expensive it can be to venture into public, I was greeted by the shiny 70th Anniversary seal on each of the base cards. But before we get to that, let's have a look at that exclusive card.

2021 Topps Big League All-Star FanFest #ASFF-3 Trevor Story

Unless you've seen the sell sheets, I'm assuming this is your first look at the delayed 2021 Topps Big League design. They picked a half-dozen upcoming Big League cards to make this special set, and I picked the lone Rockie on offer, Trevor Story. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, to be honest. These aren't even on Beckett yet. I'll try to get a blaster once these actually hit the market, but it's appealing at first glance. It's not too overdone, and vaguely reminds me of something like 1993 Donruss or 1993 Pacific.

The back specifically mentions Story's two previous All-Star appearances, which included a home run in his 2018 All-Star debut. He didn't get selected to the roster this year, although he will be participating in the Home Run Derby on Monday evening. He's matched up with Joey Gallo in his bracket pairing, and it's sure to be a great show. They're not using the humidor at Coors Field for the Derby, so we can expect at least a few baseballs to be put into orbit. 

Around Jupiter, that is.

Unfortunately, the card back has a bit of damage. There's a strip a couple millimeters wide across the whole back that looks like heat damage or something. Like the gloss was melted. I've heard Topps has been having some quality control issues lately, and maybe this is a similar example of what other collectors have been seeing. 

2021 Topps #541 Corey Dickerson

At least the base cards themselves looked fine. As expected, the design is basically the same as Opening Day, except the Opening Day banner is replaced with a seal of silver foil in the upper left. Topps has been at this for seventy years, which sounds like quite a bit more than the forty they were commemorating on the 1991 set nearer the start of my collecting career. 

Trevor Story might not be an All-Star, but Germán Márquez is, and he's the lone Rockies representative. Márquez made his way to the Rockies via a trade with the Rays, and Corey Dickerson was the primary return piece. He's been a journeyman since, playing for both Florida teams, both Pennsylvania teams, and was traded to the Buffalo/Toronto Blue Jays a couple weeks ago.

2021 Topps #616 Alex Dickerson

Corey Dickerson is not to be confused with Alex Dickerson, the Giants outfielder. No relation between the two, and only Corey has an All-Star appearance. Both have had great games in Coors Field, though. Corey played for the Rockies for three seasons, and Alex has spent his whole career in the NL West, frequently getting chances to use the Coors Field launching pad. As the card back tells us, he did just that on September 1st, 2020, hitting three home runs for sixteen total bases during a 5-for-6 day at the plate.

As you might imagine, the Giants won that one, 23-5.

2021 Topps #641 Nick Markakis

As the Dickerson not-brothers continue their Major League careers, Nick Markakis decided to end his. He retired after fifteen seasons with the Orioles and Braves, getting up to 2,388 hits. That makes this 2021 Topps card a sunset card, showing us his complete career record going back to 2006 with Baltimore. He wasn't known for great power, and dropped into single-digit home runs for several of his later seasons. But he was a reliable player, a one-time All-Star, a Silver Slugger, and a three-time Gold Glove winner.

And fans will never forget that time he took strike one.

2021 Topps #582 Dwight Smith Jr.

We're very much in the age of second-generation Major Leaguers. Tatis, Guerrero, Bichette, Biggio, Bellinger, Gordon, and many more. I recently found out that Ke'Bryan Hayes is the son of former Rockies third baseman Charlie Hayes. And anyone who completed an overproduction-era set would probably also recognize the names McCullers, Varsho, Romine, and Mondesí. 

I guess it's always been this way, with the Boones and the Alous and the Griffeys and so on, but following this game long enough to see two generations come through feels a little unsettling.

Dwight Smith, Jr. is also on that list, the son of former Cubs outfielder Dwight Smith (Sr.). I haven't followed his career much, but he did get a good Tatooine card in 2021 Topps. I noticed a few of these in just a small stack, including Eric Hosmer's card. This generally requires the photographer to have a higher angle on the field of play, and that's something you'll probably see a bit more often on cards with 2020-vintage photos. Teams across the league didn't allow photographers in the well next to the dugout in 2020, instead stationing them five or so rows up in the seats.

Of course, Dwight Smith, Jr.'s face mask makes this an obvious relic of the 2020 season, but knowing what was happening behind the lens that year gives further confirmation if you know what you're looking for.

2021 Topps #486 South Side Strength / Yoán Moncada / Yasmani Grandal / José Abreu / Eloy Jiménez

Once upon a time, Topps used to cram 132 card numbers, an entire sheet's worth, onto a single checklist. They've trimmed that down significantly, fitting just 33 onto the back of this one. That's basically a fourfold increase in the number of checklists needed, approximately 21 cards in a 700-card set. I enjoy these fun photos as much as the next guy, but that's half a team worth of players that aren't represented in the main set. Couple that with almost 100 fewer cards in the set, and four more teams than we had prior to 1993, that squeezes a lot of players out of having their own card.

In any case, this four-player card shows (left to right) Yoán Moncada, Yasmani Grandal, Eloy Jiménez, and José Abreu. Both sides of the card tell us that these four guys hit four consecutive home runs, which happened on August 16th, 2020. That date was a purple visited hyperlink for me on Baseball Reference, and I had previously looked it up because of Carter Kieboom's commemorative Negro Leagues patch from his Opening Day card. You'll notice that these White Sox are wearing that same patch, pinpointing this to the actual date of the feat. The only slight inaccuracy is that Jiménez and Abreu should swap places to match the actual batting order that day.

2021 Topps #341 Franmil Reyes

That checklist pretty much has to have a horizontal orientation, but this one of Franmil Reyes could go either way. This photo looks like he might have just hit a walkoff home run, and in fact he did just that a couple days ago, a long shot over the tall left field wall in Cleveland.

I saw him play during his last few weeks as a Padre when I visited San Diego. The (loud) fan near me announced his "Franimal" nickname before each at bat. July 2019, the first series after the All-Star break. That was the last time I was on a plane or outside my home state of Colorado. At the end of that month, Reyes was traded to the Indians, which is where he's been ever since.

2021 Topps Rainbow Foil #421 Mark Mathias

Three packs, three inserts. On average I did just fine. I pulled this Rainbow Foil parallel of Brewers outfielder Mark Mathias, whom I have never heard of. It is his Rookie Card, and who knows, maybe in a decade this will be worth thousands of dollars, just like Mike Trout's 2011 Update parallels. 

Or not.

He actually hasn't played in 2021 yet, but this is a really shiny card. Even shinier than these rainbow cards are inside the Bunt app.

2021 Topps '86 Topps Autographs #86A-NN Nick Neidert S2 (AU)

My biggest hit of these three packs was a Marlin. It's an on-card autograph of rookie pitcher Nick Neidert. He pitched as recently as Thursday, so he's still getting his feet wet in the Majors. I hadn't heard of him either, but I have now.

The card back only congratulates me for pulling an autograph, but the front is very true to the 1986 Topps design. It's the logical evolution of the 35th Anniversary insert set that we saw in the previous post, and this color scheme works well for the Marlins. If Topps keeps this cycle up, next year will bring us back to the iconic 1987 set. I'm not sure how they'll handle that, since they featured that set heavily in 2017 when they decided a 30-year anniversary was more to their liking than 35.

2021 Topps 70 Years of Topps Baseball Series 2 #70YT-40 Bryce Harper

In any case, the Topps designs of my childhood are still fairly common in current packs. For their 70th anniversary, Topps felt that it was time to do another retrospective of all their base designs one-by-one to make a 70-card insert set. If you remember the 60 Years of Topps set from 2011, it's basically that again. A year-by-year look at each of the main sets Topps has released, some featuring current players and some retired stars. This one has Bryce Harper on the 1990 Topps design, and the card back tells us about the set itself rather than the player. 

This set "ushered in a new decade with pizzazz", explaining the various color schemes and gradients, and I can confirm that these green and white borders are period-correct. It also mentions that 792-card checklist that sounds so correct to me, along with some Nolan Ryan highlight cards and the famous Frank Thomas rookie. There is no mention, however, of the even-more-famous Frank Thomas error card. It's a card so famous my mom knows about it, and has bought 1990 Topps packs for me to check.

Trevor Story has his work cut out for him in the Home Run Derby. Tune in to ESPN Monday night at 6pm Mountain to see how he fares against Ohtani, Gallo, Mancini, and the rest. And if you find yourself at a Topps booth at a future Play Ball Park, open some packs! It's fun for all ages.