The Trading Post #110: Summer of '74

If you're not following Summer of '74, a newcomer to the blog community, head on over and take a look. Matt and I have already swapped cards once, and a 1994 Topps-focused post he did in October caught my eye. He showed a bunch of base cards from an unopened box of Series 2, and offered the one-per-pack Topps Gold parallels, which I happily claimed. It and its 1993 predecessor were the first parallel sets I chased, and I enjoy them just as much today.

There's lots of mid-1990s Topps goodness to be found over on Matt's blog, including Tuesday's post about 1995 Topps. There were lots of clouds involved. But in 1994, before the strike, Topps was still sticking with pretty traditional photographs. They dabbled with images on the back in 1992 and 1993, with stadiums and headshots, respectively. But in 1994, they finally followed Upper Deck's lead and gave us action shots on the back, too.

1994 Topps Gold #669 Tim Wakefield

Tim Wakefield's front image in 1994 Topps is more interesting than the back. Before he began his long tenure with the Red Sox, he spent two seasons on the Pittsburgh Pirates. It's an unfamiliar uniform, because Wakefield was getting lots of national exposure when the Red Sox were regularly appearing in high-profile playoff series, often against the Yankees. And he's known for more than just giving up the Aaron Boone home run. He took the victory in Game 5 of the 2004 ALCS, a 14-inning marathon that kept the Red Sox alive and enabled them to finally break their curse.

I've been watching a lot of sports documentaries this off-season, including many episodes of ESPN's 30 for 30. The other night, I saw the Four Days in October episode, chronicling that improbable comeback that the Red Sox made while being down 3-0 to the defending pennant winners. Wakefield didn't have a huge role to play that year, but he won his ring nonetheless. He is, on the other hand, a prime figure in the Knuckleball documentary, his signature pitch. I feel that Topps' photography on this card is appropriate, the slow shutter speed blurring Wakefield's hand and the ball, adding to the mystery and unpredictability of the knuckleball pitch.

1994 Topps Gold #625 Charlie Hough

Charlie Hough threw it too, and we can see the grip much more clearly. It's another unfamiliar uniform, as he spent most of his career with the Dodgers and Rangers, squeezed onto the back in the tiniest of fonts. But he was a Marlin in 1993 and 1994, their equivalent of Bryn Smith, another veteran hurler who kicked off the Rockies' inaugural home opener. As I've said before, I know many other fans never knew of this period in Hough's career, but given when I started collecting, seeing him in the Marlins' early turquoise colors looks a lot more normal to me than to longtime Dodgers and Rangers fans.

Sadly, this was Hough's final Topps card. The shrunken 1995 set didn't have room for him, let alone another line in his career that spanned a quarter-century. It's a sunset card and an unfamiliar uniform all wrapped up in one, along with a highly unusual pitch that only two current players use.

1994 Topps Gold #460 Orel Hershiser

Orel Hershiser had a much more conventional pitching style, and thanks to 1989 Donruss, we know he can juggle. He could actually hit, too, earning the elusive pitcher's Silver Slugger award in 1993. The sentence on the back tells us he was near the .404 Major League record for batting average by a pitcher before settling at a still-impressive .356. His 1988 season has a lot of red on it, the same year he pitched a record 59 consecutive scoreless innings. That helped his season statistics climb as high as 23 wins, 15 complete games, and 8 shutouts, on his way to the NL Cy Young award, not to mention a World Series ring. Surprisingly, none of these players are in the Hall of Fame, but Hough and Hershiser had a decent shot.

By the way, if Topps did then what they do now, just giving us five years of stats, Hershiser's amazing 1988 season would have scrolled off the screen by the time his 1994 card was printed.

1994 Topps Gold #470 Rafael Palmeiro

Rafael Palmeiro holds the dubious distinction of being the first All-Star MLB player suspended for using steroids. Yet, at 53, he's talking about making a comeback. If it does happen, I hope it ends up being more than just a publicity stunt. But it would be interesting to see such a giant gap in his statistics if he gets a 2019 Topps card.

As you can see, these Topps Gold cards didn't survive almost 25 years in a pack unscathed. Most are fine, but a handful, like this one, show clear signs of being stuck together. It's not too bad, and Matt told me as much when we were talking specifics. It's clear enough that it's possible to see the number 22 on his right batting glove, meaning he might have borrowed it from teammate Will Clark. But it looks like he's wearing the same one on the card back in a home jersey, and I doubt he made a regular thing of it. The Cuban superstar could surely afford his own batting accessories.

1994 Topps Gold #612 Jim Thome

About the only sure-fire Hall of Famer in this illustrious group so far is Jim Thome. His 612 home runs are likely to buy him a ticket into Cooperstown any day now. But in 1994, he had yet to play a full season, and was just getting his career going. The back of this moderately damaged card still has minor league stats going back to 1989, and mentions his 1993 MVP award in the Triple-A International League. 

Coincidentally, just like Palmeiro, Jim Thome wore #25 for most of his career. And his batting gloves match.

1994 Topps Gold #690 Mo Vaughn

I can't think of Mo Vaughn without remembering him tackling George Bell as he charged Aaron Sele on the mound. Sele was clearly throwing at Bell, who was having none of it. But as he, um, went to the mound to have a word with the opposing pitcher, in comes Mo Vaughn like a Mack truck and body slams Bell like a bowling pin.

Tempers were hot in 1993. That clip took place just a month or so after the legendary Nolan Ryan / Robin Ventura brawl, and I clearly remember the benches clearing not once, but twice at my first Major League game on June 15th, 1993 between the Rockies and Dodgers.

Years later, during another Dodgers visit to Denver, none other than Jeff Kent was hit by a pitch and both teams rapidly ended up on the field. That game, July 4th, 2005 was a fireworks game, and I'm sure that many fans in attendance just wanted the extra-innings affair to conclude so their kids could see the pyrotechnics. I enjoyed that part, sure, but I'm sure I was in the minority of fans who were excited about those final two nail-biting innings.

1994 Topps Gold #397 Tim Salmon

I haven't said much about the design. 1994 Topps never climbs very high on the Topps set countdowns, but it always holds a special place in my heart. Lots of people seem not to like the home plate shape that makes up the photo frame, but it reminds me of the baseline frames that UD frequently used in their first few sets. And it gives us that lovely patch of green at the bottom, set behind the player's name in a script font. In Topps Gold, that's much easier to read in 1994 than in 1993. And once in a while, the Topps Rookie Cup graces a card with its presence.

Tim Salmon was the 1993 American League Rookie of the Year, sharing the honor with Mike Piazza on the NL side. The first fishy Angels star hit a couple more home runs in 1993 than noted slugger Mo Vaughn. And one fateful day that year, he'd play a game in Baltimore.

1994 Topps Gold #477 Arthur Rhodes

Arthur Rhodes was the starter for the Baltimore Orioles on April 17, 1993. The Rockies and Marlins were just infants, but elsewhere in the league, Rhodes had faced the Angels before, early in his 20-year career that lasted until 2011. Tim Salmon was getting his first taste of the Big Leagues, nearly being nabbed by the lefty on a pickoff attempt, but making it to second on an error. He'd walk twice that day, first in the third, and again in the ninth by the late Todd Frohwirth. Following the Orioles' third error of that day, Salmon made it to third base, which brought up the the Angels' own third baseman, Rene Gonzalez.

With Salmon at third and Gary Gaetti at second, Rene Gonzales hit one weakly toward the third base side.

1994 Topps Gold #664 Jeff Tackett

And that resulted in a play at the plate. Salmon was out, but the Angels still had the lead, and they'd hold on in the bottom of the ninth to win it.

Gary Gaetti was on third base when all this was happening, and he had his own play at the plate card in 1993 Topps. The Angels were playing lots of small ball in this era, apparently. There were seven stolen bases in this game, over half by Chad Curtis. They were then known as the California Angels, but they had a brand new logo for the 1993 season. Also visible on Jeff Tackett's left sleeve is a small commemorative patch, marking the year the Orioles hosted the All-Star Game in their shiny new retro park, Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

Topps must have been really proud of this card. In the 1993 factory set, they included a 9-card pack of 1994 preproduction cards. The colors were a little different, and as I recall they changed one photograph selection, but it's more or less accurate. In that set, you could find major stars like Nolan Ryan, Kenny Lofton, Juan Gonzalez, and also this Jeff Tackett card. The official version added his 1993 stats, and removed the Studio-like paragraph about Jeff's hobbies and family, replacing it with the inning he pitched in Detroit on August 11th, 1993, and his cameo in the movie Dave, which Topps tells us was a TV show.

TV shows and movies have been elevated to a similar plane in 2018, but in 1993, not so much.

Also, Tackett seems to have grown an inch in the 1993-94 offseason. His preproduction card had him at only 6'1".

1994 Topps Gold #586 Brent Gates

There were a few other cards that caught my eye, like this one showing a post-hustle Brent Gates giving a forearm bump to a fellow teammate. There's a tiny Minnesota Twins cameo in the lower right, but I can't tell who that is, nor the recipient of said forearm bump. That might be a coach or batboy on the left, and Gates may have just slid into home, which could identify the unknown Twin as catcher Brian Harper.

The green patch that's already on 1994 Topps goes particularly well with the A's color coding. Some of the color choices are a little odd, like yellow for the Red Sox lettering. But the green and yellow works well, even if the shades are ever so slightly different from the actual photo.

1994 Topps Gold #784 Gabe White / Rondell White

I often had a tough time deciding where to put these two-player cards when alphabetizing them by team. Would I use the player on the right or left? Was that consistent with the top or bottom on the card back? What if the right and left varied from front to back? Would a featured Rockie take precedence even if he was in a less-preferred location? Four-player cards were even harder. These were all very important decisions to make when organizing my first-ever factory set.

These cards are now quite rare, so it doesn't come up as much. And every so often, I go through my old factory sets and organize them by the players who ended up making more of an impact. Rey Ordonez over three guys you've never heard of. That sort of thing.

But I always appreciated this Expos card for giving me two guys with the last name "White". Either way, it would fit. Gabe White had an 11-year career, including two as a Rockie, and his only postseason appearance was with the 2003 Yankees. Rondell White had an even longer career at 15 years, making it to the postseason twice, and the All-Star Game once, in 2003. During that Midsummer Classic on the South Side of Chicago, he pinch hit for Barry Bonds and promptly grounded into a double play on the first pitch he saw from Mark Mulder.

1994 Topps Gold #155 Todd Stottlemyre

Last up is Todd Stottlemyre, a Blue Jays pitcher that was one of the first American League players I saw on TV. There was no interleague play in 1993, my first year watching the sport. So other than that All-Star Game in Baltimore, where the announcers bantered about nothing while Andres Galarraga had the first-ever Rockies All-Star at bat (and was flirting with a .400 average), I didn't really see any American League play until the postseason. A couple names stick out in particular, Wilson Alvarez and Todd Stottlemyre. Their two teams battled it out for the AL pennant that year, with the Blue Jays beating the White Sox. I probably didn't see Game 1 or Game 2, as Game 1 was on a school night, and Game 2 was a Wednesday day game. Early in 4th grade, I was unlikely to see either of those.

But Wilson Alvarez started Friday night's Game 3, and Stottlemyre in Game 4 the next day. It was likely my first taste of AL baseball, the Designated Hitter, and names I'd only seen on the occasional card instead of on TV regularly. It was also the only World Series I'd see until 1995 for obvious reasons. Todd Stottlemyre started Game 4 of the 1993 World Series, but thanks to a 15-14 roller coaster, did not remain the pitcher of record for long. By now, though, we all know that Joe Carter came through with a historic home run in Game 6, helping Stottlemyre and the rest of his Blue Jay teammates earn their second ring in as many years.

Thanks to Matt for sharing these 1994 parallels! Clearly this set is a special one to me. To a card collector, there's nothing quite like your first factory set, and more broadly, to a baseball fan, there's nothing quite like your first season.

The Trading Post #107: Summer of '74

We've probably seen the two biggest transactions occur already during this MLB offseason. Japanese star Shohei Ohtani has chosen to hitch his wagon to the Angels, and the Yankees just took a nine-figure obligation off the Marlins' hands in Giancarlo Stanton, becoming the first team since 1919 to lead the Majors in home runs and then acquire the individual home run leader. The Yankees acquired Babe Ruth almost a century ago, though it would be a few more years before that turned into a championship.

The trades that occur in the Cardsphere have far fewer zeroes in the value column, but they are still appreciated, especially when there is a new face in our community. Summer of '74 is a newcomer as of this past April, and Matt P has already established himself as a trading partner with many veteran bloggers.

This won't be a two-part post, but Matt sent me a stack of 1994 Topps Gold cards before I could even blog about this first shipment. Watch for that in the near-ish future, but for now, let's start things off with a double play/cameo card:

2000 Topps #306 Mike Lansing

2000 Topps doesn't get a lot of love. The gray border and vertical back are often cited as demerits, but it's one of my favorites of the long period that Topps moved away from white borders. It has generally good photography, and I particularly like the "Topps 2000" lettering, something that really taps into the turn of the millennium craze that was happening at that time.

Mike Lansing is shown turning two over top of Brian Giles, center fielder of the Pirates. At first, I thought this player was an Oakland Athletic, thanks to the yellow outline on his uniform numbers. It took a bit of digging to find out that neither Brian Giles nor his brother Marcus ever played for Oakland, and what's more, #24 is retired by Oakland, as Rickey Henderson wore it for much of his career. I mistook the black for a shadowy dark green.

This was a tricky one to pinpoint. The Pirates hosted the Rockies twice during the 1999 season, but Lansing only played in the first series. There's no clear situation where Giles was the first out in a double play, so the best guess I have is May 1st, 1999. Giles was forced out at second base in the bottom of the first inning, and it looks like the Rockies may have tried turning a 5-4-3 double play but couldn't pull it off, allowing a run to score. This high slide of Giles', which does not look entirely Kosher to me, may have had an effect. The inning deteriorated from there, as the Pirates batted around and plated three.

I'm not as confident in this detective work as usual, so take it with a grain of salt. But it's a good shot, regardless.

2014 Topps Upper Class #UC-30 Matt Holliday

In 2014, when Upper Deck was several years removed from the baseball card market, Topps was bold enough to name an insert set "Upper Class", and this is my third card from it. There's plenty of gold foil and a nice frame, as well as a posed shot of a youthful-looking Matt Holliday. This 50-card insert set focuses on the player's rookie year, and Holliday's was full of power, including a grand slam. The back also mentions a few other rookies that joined the league the same year, in this case David Wright, Joe Mauer, and Adrian Gonzalez.

None of those players made a dramatic impact last season; in fact Wright didn't play at all. They may have a few years left in them, but their careers are definitely winding down.

2010 Topps Update #US-56 Matt Holliday

Matt Holliday's time in Denver had come to an end by the time the 2010 Home Run Derby was contested, where he represented the Cardinals. He didn't make it out of the first round, and it looks like this particular swing counted as one of his ten outs. But as this card tells us, he did have the longest shot of the night, 497 feet out of Angel Stadium (of Anaheim).

There are logos plastered all over this card, from the huge National League logo in the curve where the team logo is usually found, down to the Home Run Derby logo, which incorporates State Farm, the MLB logo, and a little architectural feature found in the Angel Stadium (of Anaheim) parking lot, which also makes an appearance on Billy Cowan's famed 1972 Topps card.

2013 Topps Emerald #638 Andrew Cashner

Andrew Cashner hasn't been able to take part in any All-Star Game festivities, but he was promising enough a prospect to get a base set card in 2013 Topps. That means there is an Emerald parallel, which is what you see above. The retro Padres uniform clashes somewhat with the design, but in my mind, that's what a Padres uniform should look like. Also notice the camo t-shirt that Cashner is wearing under his jersey, frequently a staple at Petco Park.

This was one of about a half-dozen Emerald cards that Matt threw in, and the retro jersey caught my eye enough to use it in this post. And I'll give a little love to the Padres, a team that the Rockies usually share a similar spot with in the NL West standings. Interestingly, Cashner didn't begin his career as a Padre. He was drafted by a few teams, including the Rockies, but didn't sign until the Cubs came knocking a second time. The Cubs eventually swapped him for Anthony Rizzo, a move that surely helped the Cubs break their curse.

2017 Topps Salute #S-191 Jeff Hoffman

Speaking of big trades, Jeff Hoffman joined the Rockies as the "key return in the Troy Tulowitzki trade". He's young, has performed reasonably well both in the rotation and out of the bullpen, and he may be more of a later-innings guy in the 2018 season, as the Rockies have some work to do in rebuilding their bullpen.

Topps Salute is a rather forgettable insert set that spans a gigantic 250 cards across the two Series and Update. I'm pretty sure I've seen this set before on some of the blogs, and it jumps out at me enough to include in a post, but not nearly enough to make me want to chase the other 249 cards.

1995 Upper Deck #265 Juan Acevedo (RC) (AU)

I remember Juan Acevedo as one of the many pitching prospects that the Rockies fielded before it became clear how difficult it is to pitch in Coors Field. Alphabetically, at least in my collection where the Rockies are first, he was at the top of the stack in most of the 1995 sets I collected. I have his rookie card from 1995 Upper Deck already, but certainly not a signed copy! This was a nice surprise to get from Matt. I have no idea if this was signed during his rookie year, or perhaps during his brief second stint with the Rockies in 2001. He played with numerous other teams in his eight year career, even closing games for the Cardinals and Tigers.

This has the look of a rookie card to me. His uniform is tucked in just so, his glove looks like it just came off the rack at a sporting goods store, and he's got a touch of his own style in leaving the top button on his road jersey open. He has a more youthful-looking photo on the back, where he appears in the familiar Rockies pinstriped home jersey, which is inset next to a paragraph detailing his Minor League accolades. His big-league debut came in a 3-1 loss played in the Astrodome, a few days after Dante Bichette's historic home run.

2017 Topps Heritage #357 Mark Reynolds

Just like 2000 Topps, 1968 Topps and 2017 Heritage gave us vertical backs. Fortunately for Mark Reynolds, there is plenty of space to have a Home Runs column, but not enough for a Strikeouts column. Those counts have gotten better since he was on the Diamondbacks, but he still struck out 175 times last year. It's amazing that you can hit for power, get away with putting up a .198 batting average in a full season, and still be playing toward the end of the same decade.

The Rockies roster is set to undergo some major changes in 2018. Chris Iannetta will be returning to Denver, making it unlikely that Jonathan Lucroy will stick around. Also hitting the free agent market are Carlos Gonzalez, Greg Holland, and this guy, Mark Reynolds. Do the Rockies keep the veterans around a while longer with some short-term contracts, or do they commit to their solid pipeline and start calling up their prospects like Ryan McMahon and Brendan Rodgers? Ohtani and Stanton are off the market, but there are tons of players out there for the Rockies to fill their 25-man roster.