The Trading Post #154: Topps Cards That Never Were (Part 1: Older Rockies)

For nearly a year, I've had a stack of cards on my shelf from Topps Cards That Never Were. Jeremy offered a card from my Eight Men Out list along with some assorted Rockies, and upon receiving them, I immediately knew that what he ended up sending would take several posts to properly cover. There was so much here, and I hope you'll enjoy this journey as much as I did. My current plan is to divide this up into four posts, but who knows, it might require five.

To start things off, we'll look at some Rockies from earlier in the franchise's history, split roughly around the time of their only World Series appearance in 2007.

1996 Select Team Nucleus #4 Dante Bichette / Andres Galarraga / Larry Walker

A three-player acetate insert card from a Pinnacle insert set is as good a place to start as any. The important thing is to start. We all know the mid-'90s were weird, and mid-'90s inserts were even weirder. I have never even heard of this sciency-sounding Team Nucleus insert set, let alone seen one. It's 28 cards in total, one for each team. I imagine there's a Griffey from this set worth as much as a used car.

Each card depicts three of the team's top players, in this case Bichette, Walker, and Galarraga, as noted on the back. Well, actually, it's noted on the back in reverse order, since it's a mirror image on that side. 

Something about this bothers me though. The one in the middle, Walker, well, that doesn't really look like Larry Walker to me. I could be wrong, and the wraparound sunglasses make it hard to be sure, but that looks a little more like Vinny Castilla, if I had to guess. Walker didn't usually go clean-shaven, and his hair color is lighter than this. On the other hand, the crease above his chin might mean it's Walker after all, but it's the least Larry Walker-looking photo of Larry Walker I can remember.

Either way, they were the core of the Blake Street Bombers circa 1995, but this might be an error card that's been hiding in plain sight all these years.

1998 Topps Tek Pattern 54 #34 Larry Walker

Here's another acetate card, and this one unambiguously shows Walker. Maybe it's just how the last photo was lit, but his goatee, which he usually wears, is pretty light-colored. 

Topps Tek was the acetate king of the late-'90s, and this is its inaugural 1998 set. Good old Pattern #54, for you Topps Tek experts. There are all sorts of rainbow reflective bits, applied quite inconsistently on the card front. Flip it over and you'll find the expected mirror image, along with a close-up and the card number telling collectors what this fractured set was up to.

Also on the back, we get a few of Walker's upcoming milestones. Topps projected the 1999 season would see him pass 200 stolen bases, and that the 2001 season would get him to 300 homers and 1,000 RBIs. Topps hit the home run and RBI milestones right on the money, but it took him a couple more years to cross 200 SBs, making 2001 a milestone-heavy season for the Hall-of-Fame lefty, a year that also marked his final All-Star appearance.

1996 Emotion-XL #175 Andres Galarraga

We've seen 1996 Emotion-XL (simply renamed to E-X in later years) twice on this blog, once with the Confident Jason Bates, and again with Mile High Ellis Burks. This time it's the Big Cat Andres Galarraga.

I was about to say that Big Cat is not an emotion, but did you see that profanity-laced video yesterday of the trail runner in Utah who spent six minutes backing away from a mountain lion? I was out for a hike myself yesterday and didn't see anything on the trail bigger than a squirrel. It would be an amazing photographic opportunity to run across something more, uh, predatory, but I'd prefer not to have an encounter like that four miles deep on a US Forest Service trail. It's a very real possibility, though.

I'll just let 1996 Emotion-XL take care of the Big Cat emotion.

1997 Score Reserve Collection #332 Bruce Ruffin

Back to the realm of the baseball diamond, we're going to shift away from the Blake Street Bombers and into some of the less-famous pitchers that spent some time in Denver. Bruce Ruffin goes all the way back to the inaugural 1993 season. The ex-Phillie began his time in Denver as a starter, but was later shifted to the bullpen and took over as closer. 1997 was his final season, but he never got a true sunset card in 1998. This is as close as he got.

Clearly, this is a parallel, as the original 1997 Score cards didn't contain this gold seal. Beckett calls it the Reserve Collection, but the seal itself has a monogram representing "Hobby Reserve by Score". Longtime readers might recall the Series 1 version of this parallel, known as Premium Stock. The Reserve Collection is just the Series 2 iteration, which has thinner card stock, a white border, and a different gold seal. It's reminiscent of what Donruss did with the 1991 base set: Series 1 borders were blue, while Series 2 was green.

And we all love 1991 Donruss, don't we?

1995 SP #15 Juan Acevedo (RC) FOIL

One would think that you're more likely to find a base card before a parallel enters your collection. But with '90s cards, or really ever since the '90s, any one of the many varieties might come your way before you find the most common variety. In this case, just the opposite happened, as I got the Silver parallel of this die-cut Juan Acevedo card from Big Shep before this base version arrived.

Last time, I mentioned that the card back contains a photo of Acevedo bunting. Unexpectedly, we didn't get to see any of that for real in 2020, so I'll flip this one over on the scanner for you.

1995 SP #15 Juan Acevedo (RC) FOIL (Reverse)

I'm pretty sure he's wearing the Big Cat's helmet in this photo, #14. This elicits a lot of Emotions, pardon the obvious pun.

2003 Topps Total Award Winners #AW13 Mike Hampton

We'll keep things shiny with 2003 Topps Total. That's not hard to do, really. But we'll have another pitcher hitting, which is pretty hard to do. It just so happens that Mike Hampton won a Silver Slugger in 2002, earning him this (slightly miscut) light green insert card. It's a good follow up to his 2002 Topps Total base card, which showed him bunting.

And before you shout "COORS!" at me, please flip this card over and know that Mike Hampton won the Silver Slugger award as a pitcher four years running, with three different teams. He'd follow that up with a fifth in 2003 as an Atlanta Brave, keeping that streak going for as long as the Dodgers had their Rookie of the Year streak in the mid-'90s.

No Rockie has ever won a Cy Young award, which is represented by the white outline at the top of the column of icons on the right, but the Silver Slugger award has been won by a Rockie three times. As you see here, it was won twice by Hampton, and once by Germán Márquez in 2018.

If and when the National League adopts the designated hitter, cards like this will likely be a thing of the past.

2001 Bowman's Best #79 Mike Hampton

I'm seeing a lot of Bowman's Best these days, but those have been from recent years. This is from 2001, much closer to the brand's inception. We're staying with Mike Hampton for one more card, this time showing him pitching. As good as he was at the plate, pitchers are at home on the mound. This textured card isn't quite as shiny as you'd think, given all that gold on the left. But it has the usual rainbow background you'd expect of a premium brand like this.

What makes Hampton worthy of inclusion in the Best set, according to the card back? Well, this was only a few years removed from the 1998 home run chase between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. Thus far in his career, Hampton had held both those players to a combined 10-for-63 (.159), surrendering just one home run each to the famed sluggers. Topps also threw in the 0-for-14 Mickey Morandini, one of the random players that shows up here surprisingly often.

2003 Fleer Double Header #112 Jason Jennings

The last of today's pitching rotation is Jason Jennings. As long as we're talking about awards, he's the only Rockie to win Rookie of the Year. He also has the only mini of this post, coming in at 2 1/4" x 3" on 2003 Fleer Double Header. Unlike the short-printed Flip Cards, this is just a flat piece of cardboard with nothing to unfold.

Despite his 2002 accolade, either this set was developed before his Rookie of the Year award was announced, or Fleer just didn't think it was worth mentioning. The paragraph on the back goes as late as August 2002, mentioning his one-hit quality start on August 1st. I know Fleer knows about it, because they gave him a subset card in 2003 Fleer Tradition. At least both cards show the 10th Anniversary team patch.

This is a weird set. It's slightly smaller than a 1975 Topps Mini, and whatever they're doing to the background of the photo looks very artificial. No lens will blur the background like that. I do like the cute little team cap in the lower right, though. It was definitely inspired by the key design element in 1981 Topps.

2002 Absolute Memorabilia Team Tandems #TT-11 Todd Helton / Larry Walker

Let's return to the standard size, shall we? Here's a shiny two-player insert set featuring Todd Helton and Larry Walker, printed by what was then the Donruss-Playoff company. It's the real Larry Walker, for sure, the only star player to bridge the team from the Blake Street Bombers era well into the Helton years.

This design element with a baseball surrounded by three circles would really be perfect for that Team Nucleus card, but this time it's Team Tandems. The card number begins with "TT", not to be confused with Tools of the Trade, another 2002 Playoff Absolute Memorabilia insert set which used the same prefix. 

I wasn't really collecting at this time, so I missed the drama that led to Donruss being purchased by Pinnacle in 1996, followed shortly thereafter by Pinnacle's bankruptcy in 1998. After that, Donruss became affiliated with the Playoff brand, leading to sets like this with "Playoff Corporation" in the fine print. Later on that of course led to Panini.

I've always thought of Panini simply as a continuation of Donruss, so it's weird to see them release what I think of as Pinnacle brands too, like Score. They've just snapped it all up, other than Upper Deck which ended up with Fleer, who is still doing its thing with the NHL. It's not unlike what happens with the phone companies, which you can get a feel for when I write about Pac Bell Park / SBC Park / AT&T Park.

You'd think Topps would acquire some of these brands once in a while. I mean, that's what Bowman is. It just happened so much longer ago.

2002 Donruss Originals #202 Larry Walker 84

Larry Walker appeared in a nearly-identical pose on this 2002 Donruss Originals card. That's how the greats do it, consistency. Just watch that 60-second Mike Trout montage of his 300 home runs.

The fine print on this card has "Donruss Trading Card Co.", despite being from the same year as that Playoff set. Were Donruss and Playoff two separate but simultaneous brands for a while? Was it sort of a sub-brand like Fleer did with Skybox? I'm not sure, but after reading up on all this, suddenly it makes a lot more sense as to why there's no Donruss section in my 1999 or 2000 binders.

Can we really blame the 1990s for being such a crazy time to collect? The ownership of most of these companies was in total upheaval. Don't forget Pacific either.

Anyway, once Donruss was back on shelves, they released this Originals set. It's sort of an equivalent to Topps Archives, where they dipped into their past designs to use with then-current players. They used four designs for the only year of the Originals brand, 1982, 1984, 1986, and 1988. Clearly, what you see here is the 1984 design. At first, I thought there was a weird printing error underneath the Donruss logo, but after looking past the curves, I realized it was actually Walker's left foot, and those are the Adidas stripes.

2004 SkyBox LE #70 Larry Walker

It's been a lot of Larry Walker in this post (depending on who's really on that Team Nucleus card), but one more did catch my eye. It's another die-cut, and it's the first card from 2004 Skybox LE to enter my collection. LE, which clearly stands for Limited Edition, adds a few thin border lines, uses selective color to make the primary subject pop out of the background, and even gives us the player's uniform number on the left.

On the card back, which leaves a lot of empty space as Fleer did on many of their sets at the time, we're given a single line of statistics with Walker's career totals, and a short paragraph. In it, we're told that "Larry Walker is the name you'll see most often in the Rockies record book." Todd Helton has since taken over many of the offensive categories, especially the ones that are simply counting stats, but Walker is still in first place in quite a few average-based and Sabermetric categories like OPS+. He remains the career leader in batting average, hit by pitches, on-base percentage, and others. This card gives us his 2003 OBP of .422, which was actually a few points lower than the .426 he racked up during his entire Rockies career.

2005 Upper Deck ESPN Web Gems #WG-22 Todd Helton

Upper Deck joined forces with ESPN in 2005 to make a small 90-card set, complete with ESPN-themed insert sets. There was an ESPY insert set, a SportsCentury insert set (sort of a precursor to 30 for 30), this Web Gems insert set, and a few others. It's also brand-new to my collection.

I don't watch ESPN regularly enough to know whether they ever utter "Web Gems" on-air anymore, but it used to be their name for the segment showing each day's best defensive plays. Hunter Renfroe of the Rays would be on it at least twice tonight in ALCS Game 3. If they don't use it anymore, they should. In a game where the three true outcomes are becoming increasingly common, I'd watch a Web Gems video every day, especially since I know Nolan Arenado will be on it every day.

Everyone knows that Nolan Arenado is the best defender to ever play for the Rockies (he's already the career leader in defensive WAR), but Todd Helton was pretty good too. Helton had his share of Web Gems, and you don't win three Gold Gloves without plenty of them. He had a career .996 fielding percentage, good for eighth all-time among first basemen.

2002 Upper Deck Ovation #129 Jay Payton

If you thought that Bowman's Best card contained a lot of texture, just wait until you see 2002 Upper Deck Ovation. The entire team logo is raised, and it takes up about half the card. Of course, since this is Upper Deck, there's lots of copper foil. 

I haven't shown this set on the blog since the early days of Infield Fly Rule, and that was before I changed my scanner settings to make the images look a little more realistic. I think the copper comes across a little better this way.

That was so long ago, I wouldn't have thought anything of it if I saw Jay Payton wearing #27 back then. That's Trevor Story's number now, and one of the easy ones to get in the stadium trivia games.

2001 Topps Gold #266 Terry Shumpert /2001

Concluding Part 1 but still early in this journey through Jeremy's trade is Terry Shumpert, who spent five seasons as a Rockie. He began his career with five seasons as a Royal, and I still think of him that way because of how many Terry Shumpert Royals cards I saw in my early days of collecting. Look it up though. He played more career games with the Rockies.

This is a parallel from 2001 Topps, back when Topps Gold really meant it. Granted, the Topps logo, the nameplate, and a thin part of the border would have been gold anyway, but making the whole border gold really adds a lot. Of course, it doesn't scan that well. On the back, the serial number is giant and gold, #1553 out of 2001. I've long lamented that Topps changed the Topps Gold serial numbers to black many years ago, and you'll see some examples of that in Part 2.

2001 Topps Gold #266 Terry Shumpert /2001 (Reverse)

That's how a serial number should look on a Topps Gold card.

The end.

The Trading Post #143: Padrographs: Abner to Zimmer (Part 2: Topps)

My previous post was on May 25th. Turns out that was a pretty big day in U.S. history. For obvious reasons, I haven't been focused on baseball or my collection, as my attention has turned to much more important matters. I've learned so much these past few weeks, and there's so much left to learn. While Infield Fly Rule will be keeping its baseball focus, feel free to head over to my personal Twitter account if you'd like to continue the conversation.

In the meantime, I owe a lot of fellow bloggers trade posts, and Nick just added himself to that list again with a PWE that arrived yesterday. I still have plenty of cards from Rod at Padrographs: Abner to Zimmer to cover, so here's Part Two, the non-Stadium Club Topps products that caught my eye.

2019 Topps Franchise Feats #FF-10 Todd Helton

Part one of this three-part series was something of a love letter to Coors Field, a place that is still sitting idle. But it has been home to the Rockies since 1995, and many of the events documented on this card took place, in part, at Coors. Franchise Feats is a 30-card insert set, one for each team. Topps picked some really big names for the well-known teams, players like Babe Ruth, Stan Musial, Hank Aaron. Todd Helton got the nod for the Rockies entry in this insert set, and he was responsible for one of the eleven batting titles mentioned on the front.

What other claims to fame do the Rockies have? Well, they've made the playoffs five times, always via the Wild Card, which is the nice way to say that they've never won their division, but boy did they come close in 2018. They're a high-scoring NL team, which everyone already knew. They have won eleven total batting titles, but what might be surprising is how many different players have contributed to that haul. Most of the big names are there: Galarraga, Holliday, Blackmon, González. But the only one to win multiple batting titles as a Rockie was Larry Walker.

Also, they're the first team in the Mountain Time Zone. One could put the Diamondbacks in that category, kind of, but during the long summer months, most of Daylight Saving Time-resistant Arizona is on Pacific Time.

Of course, there are more feats on the back, mainly the Rockies improbable Pennant-winning run in 2007, of which Todd Helton was a big part. Helton wrapped up the Part One post, and I had intended for this card to be a transition into the rest of the Topps cards, but that post would have been five thousand words.

2019 Topps Total #49 Chad Bettis

In 2019, Topps Total made a comeback. I skipped it entirely. It bore little resemblance to the first Topps Total sets of the early 2000s. Yes, it was a huge 900 cards like the early sets, but rather than being an affordable and easy-to-build set like what Topps Total originally was, it was an online-exclusive print-on-demand offering at $10 per 10-card pack, more or less putting the Topps Now distribution model into pack form.

They released it in nine waves, an explanation of which is half the write-up on the card back. Not much room is left for player statistics or anything like that. Worse, these waves all had varying print runs, so completing a set like this would be an exercise in frustration. And even if you did, you'd get to read the same blurb about how the set features "a wide range of superstars, rookies, rising youngsters, and veterans" 900 times over.

Bring back Score.

To be fair, Chad Bettis didn't get many cards in 2019, although he was in Topps Series 1. A lifetime Rockie, which the card back also tells us, this card from Wave 1 has a print run of 584, according to Beckett. Scarcity has its place, but not with Topps Total. The whole idea of Total is to ensure middle relievers and bench players get cards too, but when they get a print run that makes Heritage short prints look downright plentiful, it defeats the purpose.

2019 Topps Total #159 Chris Iannetta

And another thing. At a buck a card, spell the guy's name right. It's Iannetta with two Ns.

Topps certainly expected these to have an element of scarcity, and I'm basing that on the fact that they decided to put some microprint under the Topps logo on the back. It's way tinier than the Pinnacle Authenticator rectangle you used to see in the 1990s, and you need a powerful magnifying glass to read the repeating word "TOPPS" in all capital letters.

I'm guessing this photo is from Spring Training. Looking at the team name on the dugout railing, they're playing the Oakland Athletics. But unless Topps dug very deep in the photo archives back to Iannetta's first stint with the Rockies, circa 2009, this would have to be from a Cactus League game.

2019 Topps Pro Debut Ben's Biz #BBB-BE BenEverywhere

I at least had an awareness that Topps Total was a product again, but a five-card insert set from Topps Pro Debut? This is brand new to me, as is Ben Hill, a sportswriter who covers Minor League Baseball. That number one on the back of Hill's jersey represents the number of Minor League parks I've visited, but he's been to all 159, wrapping up with Suplizio Field, home of the Pioneer League Grand Junction Rockies. That's the subject of this card, along with the hashtag #BenEverywhere. You can even see the interlocking "GJ" on the baseball in his right hand, which matches the style of the "CR" Rockies logo you're more likely to be familiar with.

I can't say I've ever seen the GJ Rockies in action, and it's been a while before I've been that far west in Colorado. It and Fruita are the last large-ish cities in Western Colorado before you reach the vast expanse of the Utah desert. Definitely top off your tank before proceeding.

Sadly, things don't look good for the state of Minor League Baseball, and it's likely that over a quarter of those 159 parks and their associated teams and players will suffer from the proposed contraction. Even the Majors are having a hard time getting a plan together right now, and Minor Leaguers are criminally underpaid even in the best of times.

2018 Topps Archives #129 DJ LeMahieu

Finally arriving at something I'm more familiar with, here's 2018 Topps Archives. I did a fairly deep dive of some recent Archives sets a few months ago, but I didn't run across many Rockies then. Now-Yankee DJ LeMahieu, yet another NL batting champion (mentioned on the card back), appeared on the 1977 Topps design, unfortunately without much purple. I suppose I don't mind the red color used for the Rockies team name, but the white-on-yellow text in the pennant is nearly unreadable. I had to look pretty closely to see that it has him listed as a second baseman.

What grabbed my attention the most is that he's not holding his own bat in this posed shot. He wore #9 for the Rockies, clearly visible behind his thick facsimile signature. But he's holding Trevor Story's bat, #27.

Retro card backs mean cartoons, and this one shows us a comic-book version of Fred Lynn hitting the first Grand Slam in an All-Star Game. We're not given a date for that, but it happened in 1983.

By the way, DJ had to give up #9 when he joined the Yankees, as that number was worn by Roger Maris and retired in 1984.

2018 Topps Gallery #117 Trevor Story

In Topps Gallery from the same year, Trevor Story has his own bat back and is even holding it so the label on the knob isn't upside-down. I haven't seen many of the recent Topps Gallery sets, although the brand was resurrected back in 2017. The earlier sets simply used photographs, but later on Topps channeled their inner Diamond King and went with painted images. This artwork was created by artist Dan Bergren.

I know even less about Project 2020 than Topps Total, but apparently this idea of artwork cards has gone completely crazy. I've seen enough on Twitter to know that some of the artist proof versions of Project 2020 are going for truly insane prices. That Michael Jordan documentary coupled with COVID-19 have teamed up to have done some wild things to the card market. Am I supposed to dig up all my 1987 Topps and sell them on eBay now? And I saw that Nachos Grande flipped an ungraded Trout Rookie Card for almost a grand?

I don't know. I'm probably just going to enjoy this Topps Gallery. It has gold foil, you know.

2019 Topps Gallery #79 Kyle Freeland

Gallery looked even more elegant in 2019. That script lettering at the bottom looks great, perhaps like one of the first Flair sets, and the urge to display it in something other than a 9-pocket page isn't something that crosses my mind for most sets. The very fine texture lines on the border are one of the most beautiful and precise features I can remember seeing on a card.

Neither Kyle Freeland nor Trevor Story are veterans yet, which means that the "Gallery Notes" sections on both their card backs mention some Minor League accolades, as well as some key events so far in their young careers. One of Story's is of course his barrage of seven home runs in his first six Major League games, and Freeland's is his near-no hitter in 2017, one of several major Rockies events that I missed by a day, another being Troy Tulowitzki's unassisted triple play.

We have Carlos Cabaleiro to thank for this artwork.

2019 Topps Gypsy Queen #89 Ian Desmond

I was sent a green parallel of 2019 Gypsy Queen last year, but this and a few others in the stack represent my first normal base cards from the 2019 release. As I said then, it's a busy design. Maybe it's me, but I feel like recent GQ sets are just trying a little too hard. Just above the position in the lower right is a tiny label that says "slated at". I definitely did not notice that when I first saw the set last year.

I'm not sure how much helmet flinging Ian Desmond does, but this looks like a happy occasion since all the fans are up on their feet. My first instinct was that the disappointed player in the visitor's dugout was a Padre, and sure enough, that's the very team that Ian Desmond hit a walkoff 2-run homer against on August 23rd, 2018. If I have the right moment, I missed this by two days.

I'm not sure exactly how Topps adjusts photos for Gypsy Queen, but whatever they do, it really makes shadows and dark areas stand out, especially pinstripes. This photograph would have a much different look if it were in the 2020 set, because last year the Rockies decided not to wear pinstripes with this alternate jersey anymore. I haven't yet seen many cards showing this new uniform, although a few have trickled into the market. I was expecting to have seen more 2020 Rockies cards by now with the new look, and I've been curious about how it will come across on baseball cards, but 2020 has had other plans.

2018 Topps Gypsy Queen Missing Blackplate #83 Mark Reynolds

It doesn't seem that long ago that Mark Reynolds was getting regular playing time with the Rockies. He was a frequent starter in 2016 and 2017, and while this Gypsy Queen card is from 2018, he was with the Washington Nationals that year. He came back to the Rockies for 2019 and even had a pitching appearance, but decided to retire a couple months ago.

The card back of this sepia-look parallel, which deliberately didn't use the black printing plate, says that the power-hitting Reynolds was only 19 homers away from hitting the 300 milestone. Sadly, he didn't quite reach that level, retiring with 298.

It might be obvious in retrospect, but he was on the leading edge of the three true outcome game we have today, putting up truly atrocious batting averages (below .200 multiple times), leading the league in strikeouts four years running (fantastic, if you're a pitcher), yet still finding himself among the top-150 home run hitters of all time when all was said and done.

2019 Topps Heritage #248 Gerardo Parra

Like Mark Reynolds, Gerardo Parra also spent some time with the Washington Nationals and even had a pitching appearance with them. But he electrified the nation during the World Series last year, and everyone's favorite Baby Shark-loving hugger became a true fan favorite. He signed a one year deal in Japan, and he's likely the only Washington National from 2019 who is actually playing games right now.

I opened plenty of 2019 Heritage last year, but Parra was not among them. I did see enough to recognize that we're probably seeing the same dusting of snow by the fence as we saw on Ian Desmond's 2019 Heritage card, although Parra looks significantly warmer, and he's also giving us our best look yet at the team's 25th Anniversary patch.

2018 Topps Heritage #200 Pat Neshek

Pat Neshek was a Rockie only briefly in 2017, but he still got a card in 2018 Topps Heritage, which was based on the 1969 set. He famously recreated the 1970 Lowell Palmer card in 2019 Topps Heritage, a card that has still evaded my grasp, but he got a hero card number of 200 in the 2018 set. The pose doesn't really match, but he shares a card number with the game-changing Bob Gibson, fresh off his record-setting 1968 season.

There's a little cartoon on this one too, documenting Neshek's two All-Star appearances in 2014 and 2017.

2019 Topps Chrome Refractors #183 Trevor Story

There have been a lot of retro cards so far in this post, but I can't resist a shiny object. This one of Trevor Story, using a different bat than he posed with for his Topps Gallery portrait, is a refractor, and Topps helpfully labeled it as such under the card number. It's one of the least-curled chrome cards I've seen in a while, and I really like how the 2019 design looks when given the shiny treatment.

2018 Topps #534 Germán Márquez

I didn't like the 2018 design quite as much as 2019, but I'll be honest, going down a waterslide sounds completely awesome right about now.

For his 2018 Topps base card, Germán Márquez was honored with the Topps Rookie Cup, and had a very similar shot appear in one of his 2018 Topps Now cards. It's a good high-number candidate for my Coors Field frankenset. But you might notice that this one is rather miscut. There's nowhere near enough overlap to tell what card was next to him on the sheet, but it's somewhat of a rare sight these days. It's more noticeable on the back, and that's probably because this is a full-bleed card. With no true border, it's pretty hard to figure out centering unless you have a literal slice of another card encroaching on the photograph.

That does make me wonder about how PSA and BGS and so forth come up with a centering grade on a full-bleed card.

2019 Topps Walmart Holiday #HW188 David Dahl

We'll close with one of the festive Holiday parallels from Wal-Mart. This one is cut accurately, or at least I think so. There's a nice border of holly and ivy, the accent colors are changed to red and green throughout (even on the back), and there's a stencil-like border surrounding the photograph itself. I rarely see these, but somehow they're always a little more interesting than the usual colored borders that Topps inundates us with. It's a fun stocking stuffer, and an opportunity to experience a little baseball in the dead of winter when these are released.

Of course, we have just as much of a lack of baseball right now as we do on Christmas Day, yet we're a week away from the longest day of the year. It's staying somewhat light until after 9pm right now. And I have tickets for June 22nd to see a game that will not happen.

2020 is one for the history books, and who can possibly imagine what will happen by this year's holiday season? To paraphrase Terrence Mann in Field of Dreams, America continues to roll by like an army of steamrollers, although Major League Baseball isn't marking the time so far in 2020, at least not on the field. And in the grand scheme of things, perhaps that's best. I've written about Mike Hampton at least three times in the history of this blog, a pitcher who spent just two seasons with the Rockies. But it wasn't until a couple weeks ago that I learned the name Fred Hampton. I learned neither of those names in school. Point being, it's up to us to educate ourselves.

Rockin' Retro Group Break the Second (Part 2: Mets)

Just when I think I'm staying ahead of trade packages from Nachos Grande, he sends another one. Trade Stack 93 arrived in my mailbox yesterday, and I haven't even had a chance to cover Part 2 of the second Rockin' Retro Group Break. So let's waste no time in getting to that. Part 1 covered the Rockies and lots of Larry Walker cards, and in Part 2 we'll meet the New York Mets, starting with the always-shiny Topps Gold Label.

2001 Topps Gold Label Class 1 #86 Todd Zeile

There were a lot of sets in this break, and I figured I might as well show them in the same sequence as Part 1. There is still lots of shininess to come, and this was my favorite from the several Class 1 cards from Gold Label. The Mets color scheme makes the stitching-and-cloth appearance on the lower portion of the card a little easier to see than on the Rockies versions.

Appropriately for this journeyman's career, this is his third appearance on the blog, and with his third team. He first showed up here as a Rockie, then a little while later as a Marlin. That type of career often means you wear whichever uniform number they'll give you, but he did favor #27. He had that number in 2004 as a Met, his final year in baseball, but they gave him #9 during his first stint from 2000-2001, when he also saw his only trip to the World Series.

No awesome relics on the NL East side of things, but that's fine; I already had a "hit" this break.

2002 Topps Total #419 Jay Payton

Next on the list of Mets who were also Rockies is outfielder Jay Payton, lunging into Wrigley Field's ivy in left-center field. There really is no such thing as a bad baseball card featuring the ivy, and there's even a little bonus when you can see the basket above it.

Payton and Zeile were teammates on both the Rockies and Mets in the early 2000s, but I did not know that Payton actually wound his career up as a Rockie with a brief second stint in 2010. No cards exist of that, but there are plenty of him as a Rockie. Maybe even some of him back in Wrigley.

2002 Topps Total #174 Jason Bay (RC)

When 2002 Topps Total was released, Jason Bay was still a prospect, albeit a "legitimate" one, according to the card back. It took another year for him to get to the big leagues, followed in 2004 by Rookie of the Year honors as a Pirate. Many of us remember his big free-agent deal with the Mets that was largely a bust, and I had him as a Fantasy player when he was still a Pirate. But he did briefly spend some time in the Mets' farm system before being traded to San Diego, where he began his career.

I would consider this rookie card a zero-year card, since Bay didn't play for the Mets within many years of this card's printing. But it wasn't entirely wrong. It was just early.

There is a tiny bit of damage on the front of the card, as it must have been stuck to another card after so long in the pack. But that gorgeous woodgrain in his bat makes up for it.

2002 Topps Total Total Topps #TT35 Mike Piazza

When I showed Larry Walker's card in Part 1, the 2019 Hall of Fame class had yet to be announced. Walker ended up with 54.6% of the vote, far below the required 75%, but still trending in the right direction with one year left. He shared a spot in this shiny 50-card Topps Total insert set with Mike Piazza, and I am still holding out hope that they'll soon share a spot in Cooperstown.

The card back heaps praise upon Piazza, calling him "one of the most decorated catchers and feared hitters in history." He put together quite a string of .300 seasons, impressive for a catcher. He was a regular fixture in the All-Star Game, and this card is sure to mention his 1996 All-Star MVP award, which invalidated a particular Dante Bichette redemption card. It was one of many things that led to Piazza's Hall of Fame induction, and he'll soon be joined by Mariano Rivera, Roy Halladay, Mike Mussina, Edgar Martinez, Lee Smith, and, ah, Harold Baines.

Congratulations to the winners, especially to Mo, the first-ever unanimous selection.

1998 Paramount #208 John Olerud

Pacific clearly had Wrigley Field staked out in 1997, snapping plenty of photos for use in their 1998 sets. Bichette and probably Jeff Reed's cards from Part 1 were taken in Wrigley, as was this one of John Olerud. This is Olerud's third appearance on the blog, and it's always been as a Met, despite his tenure with the Blue Jays, Mariners, and a couple other AL teams. His card from 1998 Collector's Choice is one of my favorite Coors Field cards of all time.

Flip it over and you can see Olerud's trademark batting helmet, the older style without ear flaps or the extra plastic in the back to protect the base of the skull. Olerud always wore a helmet in the field after experiencing a brain hemorrhage and aneurysm during his college career. He had a highly successful Major League career after that, something that should bring comfort to Danny Farquhar, who suffered a similar (and serious) health scare with the White Sox a couple years ago but is ready to make a comeback with the Yankees organization.

1998 Paramount Copper #209 Rey Ordoñez

Olerud's card was the base silver foil, but I also got a copper parallel for the Mets as well as the Rockies. Pacific made the trek out to Shea Stadium for this one of Rey Ordoñez, complete with a tilde on the foil. Don't worry, though, The photo on the back is still in Wrigley. Both photos clearly show his uniform #0, something guys with "O" last names seem to like. Adam Ottavino, for example, is about to become the first player in Yankees history to wear the number 0. But their crosstown rivals checked that box a while ago, actually in 1991 with Terry McDaniel.

1998 Paramount Team Checklists #25 Todd Hundley

Pacific always did die-cuts pretty well, and this Team Checklist insert card is no exception. Olerud and Ordoñez are listed right there on the card back, concluding ten total Mets pleasingly arranged in both alphabetical and numerical order. Fleer used to arrange cards that way too, and I absolutely loved when sets did that. It made sorting so easy.

Blue foil is always pretty cool, especially when it's nice and readable on a black background like this. And that woodgrain in the crossed bats is almost as cool as on Jason Bay's card. A neat little detail is that Todd Hundley's name and position are "embossed" (really just printed) on one of the bats when you flip it to the back. And the photo on the back even shows the two-time All Star catcher holding his own bat.

1995 Score Summit #76 Bobby Bonilla

Moving down the list of sets, we arrive at 1995 Score Summit, the strike-shortened set that breaks out 1994 stats by month. The card back has one of those fun baseball-glove-as-hat photos. And at least Bobby Bonilla got a little playing time in August 1994, unlike Andres Galarraga. But the front is a different story, as he looks like he's grimacing on this card, clearly displeased by whatever ball he just hit.

Regardless of the outcome of that play, he's got to be happy about his annual payment from the Mets every July 1st, also known as Bobby Bonilla Day. The infamous deferred payment structure has ties to the Bernie Madoff scandal and everything.

1995 Score Summit #106 Bret Saberhagen

It's been a while since we've seen Bret Saberhagen around here. but several years ago, he was popping up left and right. He had yet to sign a free-agent deal with the Rockies, and I sometimes wonder what would have happened to guys like him and Hampton and Swift had the humidor been in place earlier in Coors Field's existence. He might not have won a third Cy Young award, but his time in Colorado maybe wouldn't have been a blemish on his career.

I do have to appreciate this design. It works pretty well with the Mets' pinstripes, and it sort of has that 3D effect since he isn't constrained by the photo's background.

1995 Score Summit #135 Edgardo Alfonzo

Another card from the Rookie subset turned up, although the left half of the card makes it a little hard to read the top of the card. A little white outline might have helped, but that could spoil the simplicity of this design. The Venezuelan infielder stayed in the NL nearly his whole career, except for a handful of games in the AL in 2006 before his retirement.

You don't see flip-down sunglasses much anymore, so bonus points to this card for that.

2016 Donruss #170 David Wright

We're skipping over the 1953 Archives set, since there were no Mets to be found, and the only card I landed in the break we saw in Part 1. But don't worry, there were a few in the trade stack that began my weekend, so we'll see more someday.

Returning to the near-present with 2016 Donruss, we can see that David Wright eventually took over uniform #5 from John Olerud. It's even factory-labeled on the bottom of his bat, rather than hastily scrawled on with a sharpie like Ordoñez'. Wright was a career Met, and one of their best-ever, so I expect they'll retire his number one day in Citi Field. His final two games at the end of the 2018 season made for an emotional occasion.

David Allen Wright (come on, Donruss, put that middle name on the back) did his best to stage a comeback in 2015 and 2016, but after being diagnosed with lumbar spinal stenosis, the same ailment that cut Lenny Dykstra's career short, he decided to retire early.

2016 Donruss '82 #D82-39 Jacob deGrom

The Mets haven't dominated the Rookie of the Year list like the Dodgers have, but there are a few, like last year's Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom, who won it in 2014. So did Tom Seaver, who is mentioned on the card back. Both deGrom and Seaver struck out 13 batters in a postseason game, Jacob doing so on October 9th, 2015.

Panini gave us some great photo selections on these 1982-themed inserts. Nolan Arenado's card has him at the bat rack, and here we see the lanky pitcher at the plate. He throws right-handed, but bats from the left side. Further investigation of the card back reveals that he hails from DeLand, Fla., the same town as Chipper Jones.

deGrom had an amazing year last year, one of the best pitching seasons of all-time. Yet he only built a 10-9 record off of a microscopic 1.70 ERA and an amazing 24 straight quality starts. Good pitching beats good hitting, but you need at least a shred of run support to get the W.

2016 Donruss Studio #S10 Michael Conforto

Donruss also revived the Studio brand for a small 10-card insert set. They used black-and-white photography as with the first couple years of the brand, but there's no fun interview on the back where we get to learn the player's favorite sports announcer and hobby. We are told, however, that Conforto's mother is Tracie Ruiz, a three-time Olympic medalist in synchronized swimming.

The Studio brand would be a great set for Panini to develop further in this monopolistic era, since there are fewer logos to have to cover up in a non-action shot like this.

1998 Fleer Tradition #492 Carlos Baerga

Carlos Baerga is best known as a Cleveland Indian, but he was involved in a trade for Jeff Kent, joining the Mets in 1996. The card back tells us about his game on June 24th, 1997 against the Braves. He tied the game in the 8th with a two-run shot, then the next time through the order, he drove in Todd Hundley for the game-winning run.

This card photo is not from that game, as that cameo is a Royal, not a Brave. I believe that is Hal Morris, who signed a one-year deal with the Royals before returning to the Reds, his longtime team.

Fleer undoubtedly used photos from the 1998 season in series 2, making me more confident in my guess about Dante Bichette's card in Part 1. At first, I thought this was some early evidence of interleague play, but the Mets and Royals never squared off during the 1998 regular season. It's likely another spring training shot from when the Royals still shook the rust off in Florida. They and the Rangers both moved to Arizona for spring training in 2003.

Spring training box scores are a bit tough to come by, so I'm not sure of the specifics, but this is definitely around March 1998. Regardless, it's also a preview of the 2015 World Series, even earlier in advance than Jason Bay's zero-year card.

1998 Fleer Tradition #537 Bernard Gilkey

The last time I mentioned Bernard Gilkey, it was for a six degrees of Kevin Bacon blog-bat around. Then, he was a Cardinal, which is the team I most associate him with. That's my biggest takeaway of all these late-'90s cards. I doubt players moved around much more than they do now, but their overproduction-era teams are just so cemented in my brain.

Anyway, in case you missed that blog bat-around, Bernard Gilkey was the Mets outfielder who observed a UFO passing over Shea Stadium toward the end of 1997's Men in Black as a fly ball hit him in the head, Jose Canseco-style. An even smaller detail from the movie is that the Braves were the visiting team on that fateful day when galactic war was narrowly averted, maybe even the same day as Baerga's heroics.

It was one moment when Gilkey was not depicted as "an outstanding defensive player", which Fleer tells us on the back. He also had a great arm and was a team leader in outfield assists, one of the most exciting plays in baseball. I haven't found a baseball card that mentions his movie cameo, so Fleer really missed an opportunity on this card.

No word on whether he was ever neuralyzed.

1998 Fleer Tradition Vintage '63 #106 Rey Ordoñez

The '63 parallels also arrived in Mets form, giving us a second look at Rey Ordoñez. We can barely see that the Mets put the tilde on Ordoñez' jersey, but Fleer simply omitted it entirely. MLB has embraced the tilde for a while, but there's been a push by Latino players to also include accent marks. I'll admit that I have been bad about doing that on this blog, but I try to be mindful of the true proper spelling.

The inset player's outline that varies by position (see Darryl Kyle's card in Part 1) is pretty detailed, and while it's something we associate with 1973 and 2004 Topps, it looks like Fleer came up with that idea a decade before Topps.

1998 Fleer Tradition Vintage '63 #97 Mike Piazza

Mike Piazza's outline is different still, and the card back proves what an incredible player he was. We're told that while he was still a Dodger, he accounted for over 30% of all the Dodgers runs in 1997. He also had the Rockies' number with his power stroke, as he hit a home run completely out of Dodger Stadium off of short-time Rockie Frank Castillo. He also once held the record for longest home run at Coors Field, a 496-foot monster (probably longer) hit less than a week later off of current bullpen coach Darren Holmes. Giancarlo Stanton holds that record now, but let's just say that Piazza's trade to the NL East was a good thing for the Rockies.

There's no mention of his five-game stint with the Florida Marlins. For more on that, the 30 for 30 episode on sports radio hosts Mike and the Mad Dog has a segment on it.

1997 Donruss Limited #72 Scott Rolen / Edgardo Alfonzo C (Reverse)

We're down to the final set, 1997 Donruss Limited. I had much better luck on the scarce subsets with the Rockies, but a couple base Mets cards turned up. Edgardo Alfonzo had passed his rookie status by this time, and was a regular fixture in the Mets lineup. As this card tells us, the utilityman started at three different infield positions throughout 1996, which translates to everything but first base. He's primarily listed as a third baseman.

I didn't intentionally pick third basemen in both parts of this post to show Counterparts cards, it just sort of happened that way. But now that we've already seen Vinny Castilla and Matt Williams, any guesses as to who Alfonzo is playing second fiddle to?

1997 Donruss Limited #72 Scott Rolen / Edgardo Alfonzo C

It's Scott Rolen, then a "Rookie Slugger" for Philadelphia. Donruss picked well here, as Rolen went on to win the 1997 NL Rookie of the Year award. The 7-time All Star and 2006 World Series champion was just getting his career off the ground back then, which lasted until 2012. He's in his second year on the Hall of Fame ballot, and he earned a few more votes than Todd Helton. We'll still be hearing his name for a while, but all those guys got their starts somewhere.

Posts with this many sets to cover tend to turn into beasts, but I quite enjoy these trips down memory lane. And despite covering a similar era as the Mystery Packs from years ago, there wasn't a whole lot of player overlap. Nachos Grande, if you have another one of these planned, I'll buy a slot!