Bees?

Remember that Diamondbacks game where a swarm of bees decided that the backstop would be a great place to set up shop? And they had to bring in a local beekeeper to vacuum them all up so the game could start? And then he victoriously threw out the first pitch?

2024 Topps NOW #145 Matt Hilton /16946

That was April 30th of last year.

Feels like ancient history.

But at the time, I was amused enough by this whole saga to be one of 16,946 Topps customers to order the related Topps Now card. Topps spared no expense in cranking out the bee puns front and back, warning us to "Bee very afraid" while "fans swarmed into Chase Field" to see the Dodgers and Diamondbacks "causing some buzz", etc....

The Diamondbacks ran with it, too. Beekeeper Matt Hilton even got a bobblehead later in the season.

At the end of the day, these cards are just toys. Might as well have some fun with it. 

2024 Topps NOW #774 Charlie Blackmon /1348

But it was a more serious atmosphere at Coors Field on September 29th, 2024, the date that career Rockie and four-time All-Star Charlie Blackmon finally decided to hang up the spikes. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Denver, marking my seventh game of the season, and the first time I saw both the home opener and the final game in the same year. I sprung for a Club Level ticket to see Chuck Nazty off, and got there early to catch all the pre-game ceremonies.

Charlie got the honor of taking the field alone in the first inning, jogging out to his usual spot in center field, only this time with his uniform #19 mowed into the grass. He got a hit in his first at bat, left the game, and that was a wrap.

The card documenting the occasion was the third and final Topps Now card I bought in 2024. There's no paragraph on the back, just a photo of #19 high-fiving the fans as the team did their annual farewell lap of the warning track after the game ended. Incidentally, Charlie got a cameo on Ryan McMahon's Topps Now card from the 2024 home opener, bookending the season nicely.

2024 Topps NOW #39 Ryan McMahon /888 (Reverse)

In the little Spring Training action I've seen thus far in 2025, the team does have a different feel. The young guys that have peppered the Top 100 Prospects list are working their way up the farm system, and new fan favorites will emerge. Blackmon is still with the club in a front-office role as "Special Assistant to the General Manager," a title he shares with Vinny Castilla, Todd Helton, and Clint Hurdle.

You may recall that the Rockies gave Todd Helton a real live horse as his retirement gift in 2013. Charlie got his own steed, of sorts, as the team removed the promotional Toyota Tundra pickup truck from near the scoreboard in left field and gifted it to Charlie as a going-away present. There was a whole video on the scoreboard showing a huge crane taking it down the day before, and while I did vaguely note the truck's absence from its usual spot at the ballpark, I didn't quite put two and two together until they drove it onto the field.

I just hope Charlie doesn't run out of gas again, as DJ LeMahieu isn't in town to save him anymore.

2024 was a slow year on the baseball card front for me. I bought a couple blasters, received a few gifts, and picked up the Topps Factory Set, as is tradition. But I did feed a little nostalgia and branched far off the traditional path with one purchase.

Magic: The Gathering - Ice Age: Polar Kraken

To go along with the one Pokémon card in my entire collection, feast your eyes on what is now the one and only Magic: The Gathering card in my entire collection. 

I don't have the slightest idea what any of these numbers or symbols mean, but I do have a couple friends I could ask. And I only paid a few dollars for this on eBay, far below the value of the legendary Black Lotus card.

No, it's just the one particular card I remember seeing in my friend's collection in middle school, and that's about it. And now Seattle has a whole NHL team named after this mythical beast.

 

Back to baseball.

Chris over at Nachos Grande is running another Breaker's Club group, which got underway earlier this week. I didn't see a blog post about it, so those may be exclusively advertised on Discord now. I'm sure it's a lot of work to manage that in more than one place, and I might just be missing recent posts, but it's just another sign of the times that the blog community isn't what it once was. It's not lost on me that I only did four posts during the entire last year. Not that long ago I could crank four out in a long weekend or two. That's only half a Hanukkah!

Anyway, I bought in for the Rockies as I often do. Prior to that, I did have a couple boxes of cards to sort through from past Breaker's Clubs, and that was my main collecting accomplishment of 2024. It felt good to get those organized, as they had been sitting there a while. 

I don't remember anything major jumping out at me, but the one set I wrote down to mention in a future post was 1995 Bazooka. I don't trust Google Search as much as I once did, but I am not seeing any mention of this set on my blog before today. That surprises me, because in looking at the two-plus pages I have of this set in my 1995 binder, a few of these look extremely familiar. 

1995 Bazooka #102 Paul Molitor

Paul Molitor running the bases as a Blue Jay on Astroturf.

1995 Bazooka #113 Kirby Puckett

Kirby Puckett wearing a catcher's mitt.

1995 Bazooka #26 Robin Ventura

Robin Ventura on Tatooine, shielding his eyes from the twin suns with his fancy blue shades.

I could practically draw some of these from memory.

1995 Bazooka #83 Andrés Galarraga

But the Rockies look unfamiliar. Maybe the Bichette I already had, but this Galarraga, my favorite player from the Blake Street Bombers squad, doesn't ring a bell. It's probably the card that made me write a future reminder to myself.

It's a pretty basic photo and design for an entry-level set, complete with drop shadows under the lettering. The one unique design element is the position list on the right. It always seems to be on the right edge in this set regardless of whether it fits the photo or not, and the highlighted position comes in a variety of primary and secondary colors. Pitchers had four options depending on their handedness and role, and is likely the first time I ever saw the letters LHSP appear together in sequence.

Any color coding on the position markers appears to be purely coincidental. I saw it appear in purple on Expos, Dodgers, Blue Jays, and several other team cards, but Andrés Galarraga plays first base in green.

I don't make the rules now, and I certainly didn't in 1995.

As a 1995 release, of course these come in a parallel variety.

1995 Bazooka Red Hot #RH-6 Tony Gwynn

It's a partial parallel set called Red Hot, which has a red background and position marker, as well as that most '90s of premium design elements, gold foil. "Red Hot" isn't labeled anywhere on the card; it's just something I remembered from thirty years ago without having to look it up.

This hobby is nestled deep in my brain, truly.

Parallel or not, all varieties allow you to play the "Play Ball" game via a circular grid on the card back. It's meant to pair with a spinning pointer, conveniently included inside packs and awkwardly branded the "ToppSpinner".

This set is only 132 cards, a single Topps printing sheet. It wouldn't be terribly hard to complete or even to make a huge dent in the checklist for a minimal cost.

We'll see what 2025 has in store and whether I'll beat four posts this year.

 

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.

Nearing Closing Day (Part 2: Base)

Following up Part 1, in which I found a nice stack of Coors Field cards in a blaster of 2019 Topps Opening Day, there were several other cards that I wanted to showcase. The photography in 2019 Topps Opening Day perhaps isn't all that different from past years, but there are still some gems to be found, even though it's dramatically reduced in size compared to the full Topps flagship set.

2019 Topps Opening Day #182 Anthony Rendon

Our first player has already punched his ticket to the 2019 World Series, Anthony Rendon of the Washington Nationals. There's a lot of debate about whether Rendon or Nolan Arenado is the better player, and sure enough, the Rockies third baseman is mentioned on the back, the only player to match Rendon's three-year totals for home runs, doubles, and RBI. A quick check of Baseball Reference shows that Arenado was actually slightly behind in doubles, but significantly ahead in both RBI and home runs. Either way, they're both fantastic players, although Rendon is the first one to appear in a World Series.

The All-Star Game was held in Washington, D.C. in 2018, and the patch on Rendon's right sleeve confirms that. As you'd expect, the patch itself contains lots of stars and stripes, as well as the dome of the Capitol building. Bryce Harper won the Home Run Derby in his home park that year, although he won't be joining his former team in the Fall Classic, despite his Spring Training slip-up.

2019 Topps Opening Day #118 Dereck Rodriguez

Dereck Rodriguez came up the other day. I mentioned him as the son of Hall of Fame catcher Ivan from that Toys 'R' Us set, and here he is continuing his father's Major League legacy. He's also continuing Tim Lincecum's long hair legacy for the Giants.

Rodriguez has a commemorative patch, too. There were a lot of them in 2018. This one marks the 60th Anniversary of the Giants' arrival in the Bay Area, a simple black and orange diamond with one tower from the Golden Gate Bridge above the "60". In about a decade, they'll have been in San Francisco longer than they were in New York. They're about as far away as you can get from their old crosstown rivals, or more accurately, cross-river rivals. The Polo Grounds were in Upper Manhattan, right across the Harlem River from Yankee Stadium.

2019 Topps Opening Day #142 Eddie Rosario

With the Washington Nationals finally having some Postseason success, their predecessors, the Washington Senators, have been getting some airtime recently. The 1933 World Series, Walter Johnson, that sort of thing. Neither participant from '33 remains in their original city. The New York Giants won that in five games over the Senators, and that initial iteration of the Senators moved to Minnesota in 1961. Oddly, the second Washington Senators began play that same year as an expansion team, and have since become the Texas Rangers.

The decision of the Dodgers and Giants to move to the West Coast kicked off some real chaos in the Major Leagues. It was clear there was a market for expansion, and New York wanted to bring the National League back to the city quickly. There were attempts to move an existing NL team to New York, but those efforts didn't bear fruit. The next idea, courtesy of New York attorney William Shea, was to form a third major league, the Continental League.

The Continental League rapidly made plans to start their own eight-team league, matching both the NL and AL of the time. I knew even less about this proposed league than the dead-ball era Federal League, but apparently numerous cities that now have a team were on the list. Atlanta, Dallas, Toronto, and even Denver. Of those eight, only Buffalo remains without a team today. Obviously, the Continental League never got off the ground, and once the NL agreed to form the New York Mets, William Shea was satisfied. The Mets even named Shea Stadium after him.

Meanwhile, Denver remained without a team, and Bob Howsam, the Denver Bears owner who was due to get Denver's CL franchise, was left in the lurch. He had a massively-expanded Bears Stadium on his hands and suddenly no major league team to put there. His solution? Use the lessons learned in forming the failed Continental League to join the American Football League (AFL) and bring the Denver Broncos to life.

The Rockies history books mention the Continental League only in passing, but Denver's favorite pro team, the Broncos, can trace their roots to early attempts to make it a Major League Baseball city.

Anyway, all that to point out that Eddie Rosario is on the Twins, who used to be the Senators. And he got a great Tatooine card in 2019 Topps Opening Day.

2019 Topps Opening Day #50 Mike Clevinger

Unlike the rest of the teams thus far, the Cleveland Indians have stayed put for much longer. Their franchise briefly played in Grand Rapids, Michigan before moving to Cleveland for good in 1900. They've undergone a few name changes, and more recently, logo changes, but they've been part of Cleveland history for well over a century.

Mike Clevinger, who also carries on Tim Lincecum's long-haired tradition, has been a solid part of the Indians rotation for a few years now. The main thing that caught my eye on this card wasn't his hair, nor was it his tattoos. Actually, it's the pitch grip. Even with all the pitcher close-ups we've been getting on cards for most of this decade, a clear view of the pitch grip isn't terribly common. I remember a Darryl Kile card from a while ago which shows his circle change quite well. This one of Clevinger shows the old classic, the four-seam fastball.

2019 Topps Opening Day #154 Sean Doolittle

Joining Anthony Rendon in the World Series this year will be relief pitcher Sean Doolittle, with an appropriately high relief pitcher uniform number. His unique pitching stance hides any commemorative patch we might otherwise see, so good thing Rendon has it on his card. No pitch grip to see here, but it looks a lot like he's letting the Opening Day logo dangle out of his hand.

2019 Topps Opening Day #46 Clayton Kershaw

Surely you've seen this Clayton Kershaw card by now. Looks like another four-seamer, but the main feature on this card, unfortunately, is that Kershaw's fly is down. They fixed this in post by the time Chrome was released, but that's an embarrassing oversight. It's not quite as bad as Billy Ripken's infamous 1989 Fleer card, of course.

After so many Postseason disappointments, Clayton Kershaw is developing quite the reputation for having the yips in the month of October. He's thrown some gems, but has been the goat more than a few times, and that's a lower-case goat, if you get my drift. Most recently, he surrendered two solo home runs and the lead late in Game 5 of the NLDS against the Nationals, setting them up to take the series in extra innings. Looking at it more closely, he seems to be the victim of poor managerial decisions more often than not, and has been thrown out there on short rest quite often. People already seem to have forgotten that he got a key strikeout to end the prior inning, and if a different member of the Dodgers bullpen had been brought in, the narrative could be a lot different.

2019 Topps Opening Day #49 Willson Contreras

Like Eddie Rosario's card above, the horizontal cards in this set look great. They work well with the design, i.e. not too much of the card design encroaches on the photo. The photographer managed to capture Willson Contreras at just the right angle not to include the umpire or the batter. Just a catcher behind the plate, all alone in Wrigley, pacing his pitcher for the next throw.

On the card back, flanked by a lovely coral color scheme, we're told that Contreras erupted for an offensive onslaught against the Cubs' South Side rivals, the White Sox. That was last May during a weekend series at Wrigley, which happened to be the best two-game hitting performance by a Cub since Billy Williams in 1968.

2019 Topps Opening Day #132 Kevin Pillar

If you watch the baseball highlight reel regularly, then seeing Kevin Pillar in a position like this is quite normal. He's one of the most fun outfielders to watch in the whole league, and frequently makes catches you wouldn't think are possible. Though he's pictured with the Blue Jays, he was traded to the San Francisco Giants just days after the 2019 season began. That means I got the chance to see him play at Coors Field this year, and while I don't remember any great catches in particular, he did hit a two-run home run that chilly evening of May 7th. It should be right there on my mom's scorecard.

Year after year, Opening Day is known for its insert sets. We got a taste of the Mascots set a few posts ago, and part 3, the final one of this series, will feature the usual insert goodies from this inexpensive Topps brand.

Todd Helton: A Collecting Cutch Contest Entry

When you visit Coors Field, you'll find three retired numbers mounted above the visiting team's bullpen in right center.

The first, of course, is #42, once worn by the great Jackie Robinson, which is retired across the league. The second is a set of initials, KSM, to honor the memory of Keli McGregor. McGregor was the president of the Rockies baseball club until his untimely death from a rare viral infection in 2010. The Rockies wore a memorial patch on their uniforms for the remainder of the 2010 season. The third and final number is #17, belonging to Todd Helton, the career Rockie and fan favorite who spent, coincidentally, seventeen seasons in Denver.

2005 Leaf #69 Todd Helton

He was a fixture at first base from 1997 through 2013, as shown on this rainy Leaf card from 2005. Helton is ready for a throw from a fellow fielder, although his mitt is partially cropped out of the photo. Fans in the Coors Field seats are sheltered under plastic ponchos and umbrellas. It's not the most enjoyable way to watch a ballgame, but at least the sun isn't in their eyes.

Though I'm a bit late to the party, I thought the Rockies deserved an entry into Collecting Cutch's contest. I'd have liked to pick Arenado, but I don't really have that many cards of him, and he's only been playing since 2013. Todd Helton seemed like a better choice to get the top-10 treatment, not only because I have many more of his cards, but also because his career spanned a few eras of the post-strike baseball card industry.

Collecting Cutch promised "this is going to be an easy and fun one." Fun, yes, but narrowing this down to just 10 cards was pretty tough. That it was well after midnight when I made the final selections probably didn't help, but Helton had quite a few great cards throughout his career as a Rockie.

2005 was Leaf's final year of existence, a set that Panini hasn't brought back yet. There was a gap or two, but they had a solid run during the '90s, produced some beautiful sets, and gave us perhaps the rarest main set of the whole overproduction era in 1990.

2000 Stadium Club #193 Todd Helton

Most of these cards are from Helton's pre-goatee days, not that you can tell from this shot. Stadium Club can always be counted on for awesome photography, but they have an even more inconsistent history than Leaf. Helton was always better known for his abilities at the plate, but he took home three Gold Gloves to go along with a few Silver Sluggers.

Apparently I like horizontal cards more than some of my contemporaries, and I'll take a little asymmetry in my binder pages for a card like this any day. Watching Helton dig out a slightly errant throw to nail a runner (crossing the baseline in the process) against an all-dirt background earns it a spot in the top-10.

Arenado already has Helton beat when it comes to Gold Gloves, but this card reminds me of a rocketing one-hopper that Nolan speared in last night's game with a little extra flourish. The Gold Glover's version of a bat flip, if you will.

2004 Playoff Honors #73 Todd Helton

These aren't ranked in any particular order, they're just what seems to flow when I thumb through the stack. Most of my posts are like that to a degree. The cards tell me what to write, in a sense. And I did make an effort to not just pick my ten favorite sets. That's partly why 2004 Playoff Honors is on here, a single-year set you probably haven't seen in the Cardsphere in ages, if at all.

It's a shot from a recognizable AT&T Park (or rather Pacific Bell Park, as it was called when this photo was taken), but it shows Helton in a very familiar spot. Second base. Yes, he played first defensively, but he was a machine when it came to hitting doubles. Those doubles, coupled with his lifetime totals of homers, hits, and other stats, put him in the same company as Stan Musial.

2002 Upper Deck Vintage #262 Todd Helton

Helton followed the Stan Musial school of thought for getting yourself into scoring position, rather than Rickey Henderson's. He wasn't much of a base stealer, but sometimes he could be seen diving back to second base, trying to avoid the tag of the Expos' Orlando Cabrera like he is here. The out-of-town scoreboard is out of the frame, so I don't have enough information to date this card, but the horizontal layout against a black border earned it a spot in the top-10, even if it is a pretty blatant knockoff of 1971 Topps. The back calls him "One of the best players in the game today," and also calls out his stellar .999 fielding percentage the previous season. That translates to just two errors all year.

I doubt there's been a baseball card set with that kind of accuracy.

2000 Finest #71 Todd Helton

When I first started thinking about this post, 2000 Finest was one of a few that immediately came to mind. Other than the gigantic shiny silver baseball, the photo of his post-swing pose is pretty common on many of his cards. That's what makes things like the rainy day at Coors and the fielding a short hop stand out so much. It's a set that I've shown a couple times, and I'm sure I've purchased this card a couple times over in error. Helton is in a lot of discount boxes around here.

These cards are all pretty thick. You can always count on Finest for that. The thinnest one so far is the Leaf card at the top. But this is the shiniest one.

2001 Ultra #97 Todd Helton

Speaking of Helton's swing, this Fleer Ultra card is the best one I found in my whole collection. He's back in Pacific Bell Park, with a cameo of (I think) catcher Bobby Estalella, a future Rockie. The extension is textbook, and while I never liked pinstripes on their road uniforms, Helton's swing reminds me a bit of Mickey Mantle's. 2007 Topps illustrated that maybe a little better, and it was one of the last to miss the cut in favor of this gorgeous full-bleed card.

2008 Stadium Club #4 Todd Helton

There were other candidates from Stadium Club, and this post wasn't that far off from being a "top-10 Todd Helton cards from Stadium Club" post. And we're not done yet. This one is from the poorly-received 2008 set, which still hits the Coors Field mini-collection quite well. The luxury suites and Club Level rarely make it onto a card. Helton had grown his goatee by this point, and was still honing his craft daily at batting practice. You don't become a fan favorite and the face of the franchise by slacking.

In addition to his #17 retired number plaque, there's a "Burger Shack" named after him behind the left field bleachers, just under the giant scoreboard. It's not far from where a group of die-hard fans unfurled a white banner with Helton's name on it during all his at-bats. The Helton Burger is one of the best snacks in the ballpark, but it competes with the Oskar Blues-branded CHUBurger found in the Rooftop.

And yes, I realize I just called a burger a "snack". No further comment.

1993 Topps Traded #19T Todd Helton USA (RC)

This wouldn't be much of a list without Helton's Team USA Rookie Card from 1993 Topps Traded. It's the headliner in that 132-card set, one that featured many newly-minted Rockies and Marlins who didn't make it into Series 2. Little did Helton know he'd eventually take over at first for Andres Galarraga, card #31T in that set.

The aluminum Easton bat takes me back to my little league days, and in looking closely at this card, Helton can be seen wearing a Topps patch on his left sleeve. The card back gives us some of his baseball stats at the University of Tennessee, and mentions that he "also plays college football." Famously, he was briefly the starting quarterback for the Volunteers until he experienced an injury and a guy named Peyton Manning took the job. Both became legends in Denver sports history.

1999 Topps #52 Todd Helton

There's not much overlap between my top-10 Helton cards and my top-10 overall sets. 2000 Finest stands a chance, though, as does the final set. But if nothing else, this list list should give you a pretty good idea about what I like in a card. Thick card stock, full-bleed printing, a bit of foil but nothing crazy (2000 Finest obviously excepted), a horizontal layout, and if none of those boxes are checked, at least an interesting photograph.

This card from 1999 Topps is the second card that popped into my head before I even checked the binders. The overall design isn't going to win any awards, but Helton shielding himself from the rain with a white towel is somehow extremely memorable. The red wheelbarrow and tarp add a bit of uniqueness to the card, and I had forgotten that this one also included the Topps All-Star Rookie trophy.

The back of this early Helton card hit the nail right on the head, by wrapping up the paragraph with the following: "Statistically, Todd's season was also a success - but likely just an appetizer for a banquet of feats to come."

2014 Stadium Club Members Only #31 Todd Helton

That "banquet of feats" came to its end on September 25th, 2013, Helton's final home game. The Rockies got trounced by the Boston Red Sox that day, but Helton's 2nd inning home run and farewell lap (as pictured) are more likely to stand out in fans' memories. He did play a final weekend series on the road to conclude the 2013 season, but this one is what Rockies fans remember.

I found no card of Helton's triumphant pose to close out the 2007 NLCS, which surely would have made the cut, but this Members Only parallel from 2014 Stadium Club concludes the top-10 list, one that I knew had to be on it. Julie of A Cracked Bat sent me this rare specimen, and it shows that final lap around Coors Field. It's in foul territory down the third base line, as we can see by Todd reaching over the tarp to high-five (side-five?) a fan.

Upon the conclusion of his storied career, Helton found himself atop the Rockies career leaderboard for hits, home runs, games played, RBIs, walks, doubles (592, almost twice Larry Walker's total), runs scored, and, well, pretty much everything else that doesn't involve speed. 2000 was his best single season, where he led the National League in a slew of statistics, including, yes, doubles.

And don't forget the horse.

Whether he'll be the Rockies' first representative in Cooperstown remains to be seen, but he gave Denver fans a wealth of memories, years of solid performance, a trip to the World Series, and more than enough cards to make a top-10 list.

Happy National Baseball Card Day!

If you've ever glanced at trending hashtags on any of the major social networks, you've likely run across something like "National [product] Day". National Popcorn Day is in mid-January. National Scotch Day was toward the end of July, as was National Chicken Wing Day to wrap up July.

You're darn right I had wings that day.

Next month, we have Talk Like a Pirate Day on the 19th, and Elephant Appreciation Day on the 22nd. Something to look forward to. You may or may not "celebrate" these holidays, and you're unlikely to be getting a paid day off for any of them, but if you're reading this, you ought to know that today is National Baseball Card Day!

This probably explains why the Rockies TV team were talking cards during the game yesterday in the bottom of the 5th. They opened and compared their haul from a few packs of 2016 Topps, and play-by-play announcer Drew Goodman regaled us with tales of pulling Willie Mays cards, "flipping" cards, and learning back in the early '80s that a prized Ozzie Smith rookie card was worth much less than he and his friends thought it was. Color analyst and former Rockie Ryan Spilborghs reminisced about stale gum, and his unopened Upper Deck set with Ken Griffey, Jr.'s rookie card, which he incorrectly said was 1991.

So in honor of this momentous occasion, there's no better time to see the highlights from a blaster of 2016 Stadium Club, making a strong case for the best Topps product three years running.

2016 Stadium Club #167 Micah Johnson

Awesome photography remains a staple of Stadium Club, and here that means bunting! Over time, this card of Micah Johnson will surely find its way into the many bunting mini-collections in the Cardsphere, including mine that Jeff from 2x3 Heroes kickstarted for me.

Pretty much everyone has compared this year's Stadium Club to 1997 Fleer, and at a glance, it is very similar. The fonts are a little different, Stadium Club uses silver foil instead of gold, and 1997 Fleer lists the position.

1997 Fleer #339 Jeff Bagwell

1997 Fleer also has those cool little foil seals above the last name, denoting for Jeff Bagwell that he was both an All-Star and a League Leader in 1996. I'm not sure in what, though. I had to look that one up, and his 48 doubles led the NL that year.

The difference mainly comes in on feel. 1997 (and 1996) Fleer used an unusual matte finish that's very distinctive. Stadium Club cards are at least twice as thick, and while in a page or display case these might be hard to tell apart, when it's in your hand, it couldn't be easier.

2016 Stadium Club #146 Johnny Bench

There are a lot of horizontal cards in this set, and many of them are terrific! Like he did in 2014, Hall of Fame Reds catcher Johnny Bench makes an appearance, here guarding the plate against the Mets in Shea Stadium. I have to wonder if this is from the same game as his 2014 card, a card I believe was also taken in Shea based on the memorabilia he's signing.

Autograph shots and an imminent play at the plate? No wonder this brand is so great.

2016 Stadium Club #294 Jackie Robinson

As in past years, black-and-white photos of old-time players make a stunning appearance. Jackie Robinson appears in Ebbets Field in a photo that I can't ever recall seeing on a Topps card. Robinson seems to suffer the most from recycled photos, as Night Owl has repeatedly pointed out. In fact, after looking at that post, I recognize this photo in a much more closely-cropped and colorized format from 2010.

The photo looks way better in its original form, capturing the essence of Ebbets Field in one of its final years. There's an ad for 1956 Chevrolet on the outfield wall, so the move to L.A. was just a few years away. Chevrolet still maintains an advertising relationship with Major League Baseball, giving away shiny new GM products to MVPs of both the All-Star Game and World Series. Other car and gasoline ads line the wall, and something that you won't see at ballparks anymore, a tobacco ad.

2016 Stadium Club #6 Brandon Phillips

This behind-the-batter shot is a common photo in recent Stadium Club sets, and it's a tough shot to get with the batter's box and baseline so perfect. Those chalk lines get destroyed after just a few batters, so this one of leadoff hitter Brandon Phillips in an away uniform is clearly the first batter of this game. Maybe even the first pitch.

2016 Stadium Club #3 Matt Kemp

Here's a similar photo of Matt Kemp, then with the Padres. He became a Brave just before this year's trade deadline, his first time playing away from the NL West. I can't tell quite what's going on here (he might be rounding third), but it's a perfect all-dirt "Tatooine" card, a prime candidate for a mini collection, one that Daniel collects.

2016 Stadium Club #113 Andrew McCutchen

McCutchen has another one of these horizontal beauties, and the batter's box line is already pretty disrupted. It could still be the first inning, though. To my eye, McCutchen looks abnormally small here. I guess it's just a weird angle, but you'd expect to see more grass in this photo, and maybe part of the catcher. That seems to be the dirt path back to the dugout behind his head, a feature found in PNC Park. I still think this was taken with a weird focal length or something, since it's unusual to see a batter so alone yet inside the batter's box.

2016 Stadium Club #142A Corey Seager (RC)

There are vertical cards, too. I just got a little caught up with all that infield dirt. Rookie of the Year candidate Corey Seager is showing off his maple bat in the locker room, and he gets the "RC" logo just under the Stadium Club logo in the upper left. Seager's birthdate of 4/27/94 makes him just a couple weeks younger than Dinger, who was "hatched" at Mile High Stadium on 4/16/94.

2016 Stadium Club #93 C.J. Wilson

The photos get weird for a bit, so brace yourselves. C.J. Wilson is doing some sort of karate move in the infield without his hat on. He's holding his blue glove between two fingertips in his right hand, and under the magnifying glass, I think that's a baseball card in his left hand. Maybe even his own.

Pitchers.

2016 Stadium Club #227 Robin Yount

That makes Hall-of-Famer Robin Yount leaning on a dirt bike next to a saguaro cactus seem, well, still rather weird. But it just adds to the charm of Topps Stadium Club.

Good to see he has a helmet by his side. That sport can be dangerous otherwise.

2016 Stadium Club Contact Sheet #CS-7 Miguel Cabrera

Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera had the only insert card in this $20 blaster, one of ten cards to be found in the Contact Sheet insert set. Clearly, it has a filmstrip theme going on, though not quite as literally as those 1994 Leaf Slideshow inserts. Still, a photography-themed card fits with the ethos of Stadium Club perfectly.

Allow me to nitpick a bit. If this really were a set of negatives from a roll of film, the colors would be inverted. I do like the checkmark over the bottom photo, as though that were the one selected from the roll. But that's not actually the photo used on Cabrera's card in the main set, which would have really tied this insert set in to the master product better.

2016 Stadium Club Gold #98 Ian Kinsler

In addition to that insert card, I pulled a couple parallels. This one of Kinsler (to go along with his silver-foil base card) is the Gold parallel. Though you might not find a batting cage shot in 1997 Fleer, the gold parallels would be a bit easier to confuse. Despite the similarity, I still think there's a low likelihood of confusion, way less likely than a reprint from a Topps set like Cards Your Mom Threw Out, or even something like Donruss Originals.

2016 Stadium Club Black #229 Babe Ruth

Finally, here's a Black parallel, seeded 1:8 packs. On average, you'll find one of these in each blaster, but not necessarily of The Sultan of Swat, Babe Ruth himself. As huge an influence as he was, it's surprising that he's not found on more cards. Photos of him seem to be somewhat rare, but getting my Black parallel on a monochromatic card is perfect. I don't know if the black lettering would look quite as good on a full-color card. I'll just have to keep my eyes peeled for one next time I'm at a card show.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy your National Baseball Card Day!