2017 Card of the Year

Apparently, I missed that Tom changed his Cubs-focused blog name back to Waiting 'til Next Year shortly after the 2017 NLCS ended. His blog went by the name "Eamus Catuli!" for about a year, but he just didn't feel that same spark in the year after the Cubs' century-plus drought was broken. So, like any die hard baseball fan, Tom is hoping that Next Year is the year, even if 2016 is a lot closer in the rear-view mirror than 1908. As he puts it, "It was great, it really was, but it has left me wondering, 'Now what?'"

Even if you win, you still want to win again. And maybe that helps explain the perspectives of Yankees, Patriots, and Duke fans. Obviously, my Rockies have never won it all, but in my lifetime, there have been two Stanley Cups and three Vince Lombardi Trophies brought to Denver. You still want to keep the party going.

However, even though his name change flew under my radar, I did not miss that he's running another Card of the Year contest, and I'm entering just a couple days before the deadline.

There's been a lot about 2017 that I'd just as soon forget. But assuming you managed not to pick up a newspaper, there were still plenty of bright spots, like a couple road trips I took, including one to see a particular celestial event back in August. I'll carry the memory of a total solar eclipse with me for the rest of my days. But another important event that occurred in my family this year was the birth of my nephew on May 10th.

2017 Topps Now #132 German Marquez /378

I bought a Topps Now card for that day, and luckily the Rockies performed well enough to get a card in the daily set. The German Marquez card you see above is my official entry into Tom's contest. Obviously, it's a Coors Field card, and I remember it being a rainy, drizzly sort of day. Marquez took a no-hitter into the 7th inning against none other than the Cubs, and even helped his own cause with a 2-RBI single. 

It's interesting that my selection for last year also featured a Rockies pitcher at home. The team or the location shouldn't surprise you, but what is surprising is that the Rockies have a solid rotation and lots of talented young pitchers. Most of the moves the Rockies have made so far this offseason are focused on the bullpen, so 2018's card may not be much different.

I bought this card to commemorate a very important birth in the family, and when I look back years later, this is how I want to remember 2017. 

Maybe I'll even give this to him someday.

The Trading Post #79: Waiting 'til Next Year

The Chicago Cubs are World Champions.

I think we're all finally at a point where that's starting to sink in after their historic roller coaster of a Game 7. I caught the first half of that game at my local Buffalo Wild Wings, and there were plenty of Cubs fans there. I headed home around the 6th inning just in time to see the Indians chip away at the lead, capped off by Rajai Davis' game-tying home run. He was flying out of the box, so it might have been a triple even if it were off the wall. But that game suddenly became an instant nail-biter after the Cubs had taken a lead in the first at-bat.

We all questioned how early and for how long Aroldis Chapman was on the mound, as most fans had for the final few games of the Series. But after a rain delay and some last-minute team building in the Cubs' clubhouse, the Cubs plated two runs in the 10th. Pinch runner Albert Almora Jr. had the presence of mind to put together some brilliant baserunning, Miguel Montero and eventual MVP Ben Zobrist both drove in runs, and even though Rajai Davis smacked an RBI in the bottom of the 10th to terrify Cubs fans again, it wasn't quite enough. The look on Kris Bryant's face said it all.

So I guess that means that my fellow Supertrader Tom at Waiting 'til Next Year can finally change his blog name.

Tom sent a bunch of trade packages out in October hoping to build up some good karma for his Cubbies. I was on the receiving end, and I guess it was enough for the Baseball Gods to smile on the Cubs in 2016.

2012 Topps Opening Day #39 Michael Cuddyer

There were a ton of great cards in here; as usual I had trouble narrowing it down. But it starts off with a bit of unfamiliarity.

I always enjoy Topps Opening Day, but somehow I largely missed it in 2012. It's certainly the one in the last five years I have the least familiarity with. The surfboard design scans much better than cards from the flagship set, as the foil used for the player's last name usually ends up disappearing against that black background. But it shows up fine here, and gives us one of the first looks at Michael Cuddyer in a Rockies uniform. He had just left the Twins at the end of 2011, and began a three-year stay in Denver. He'd go on to win the batting title in 2013, and he made his second All-Star appearance that same year.

He became a well-liked player in Denver, and he got to play with his old teammate Justin Morneau for one of those seasons.

2002 Select Rookies and Prospects #42 Jason Romano (AU)

Continuing the theme of unfamiliar, here's a sticker autograph of a player I've never heard of on a set I've never seen. The card is embossed with an "authentic signature" stamp, and not only is it authentic, but it's more or less legible.

He played a handful of games for the Rockies in 2002, and with four other teams in his short career. He didn't make much of an impact in his career, and this set was lost in the glut of sets that existed in the later days of Pinnacle, Leaf, and Fleer.

2012 Bowman Chrome Prospects #BCP73 Will Swanner (AU)

Here's another player that never made in to my internal baseball encyclopedia. Will Swanner, a catcher, briefly progressed as high as Triple-A in 2016, but suddenly was demoted all the way to single-A then released by the Rockies' organization. Sadly, that's true for many players that appear on Bowman cards, though it does look like he took a few moments out of his development schedule to sign this card for a fan. Not sure whether Tom snagged this autograph himself, but it will go in the ever-growing collection of autograph cards.

2001 Topps Fusion #109 Ben Petrick GL

Like that Bowman Chrome card above, Tom threw in a bunch of shiny cards in this package. At first glance, this one of catcher Ben Petrick looks like a Topps Gold Label card, but it's actually from a very strange 2001 release called Topps Fusion. These always confuse me a bit. The set used five designs from Topps' portfolio at the time, including Finest, Stadium Club, Gold Label as you see here, and a couple others. They put a Topps Fusion stamp on them so they wouldn't be confused with the actual sets from those brands. I guess it was a cheap way for collectors to get a look at those higher-end sets without buying a box of each, but fifteen years later they're little more than a red herring.

Needless to say, this concept only lasted a year.

1996 Topps Gallery Players Private Issue #3 Dante Bichette /999

Topps Gallery was one of the sets included in 2001 Topps Fusion, and Gallery itself got its start in 1996. I have a few Gallery cards in my collection, including from that inaugural year. This one of Dante Bichette rounding the bases at Wrigley (that brick wall is easy as pie to spot) is actually a Players Private Issue parallel. This has a gold serial number on the back, but the print run is not given as part of the number. So it's #860 out of something. It's 999 according to Beckett, but the execution of serial numbered cards had not quite matured by 1996.

2000 SP Authentic United Nations #UN6 Larry Walker

Shortly after Bowman introduced their International parallels, where the flag or a skyline from the player's home country is displayed in the card background, Upper Deck did something similar for this 10-card United Nations insert set. Walker was the representative from Canada, selected for this set due to his consistently high batting average, and because he was the first native Canadian to bring home an MVP trophy. You can even see a faint Canadian flag in the background. By the way, that's the post-1965 flag, as the previous flag was a Union Jack on a red background, along with a coat of arms.

Rockies or ex-Rockies made up 30% of the small set, and which highlighted players from all over the world, from the USA to Curaçao, and across the ocean to Japan and Korea.

1998 Topps Gold Label Class 2 Black Label #69 Vinny Castilla

Castilla was Mexico's player in that UD set, but here he's on a Topps Gold Label card, this one of the Class 2 Black Label variety. His name at the bottom is just a bit more sparkly than usual. The Todd Helton card I got via trade from Play at the Plate now has a mate, even from the same Class 2 (out of 3).

1998 was a terrific year for the Blake Street Bomber, as he made it onto his second All-Star team, which happened to be at Coors Field that year. He also hit a career high 46 homers and won a Silver Slugger award.

1996 Pinnacle Aficionado #81 Vinny Castilla

A couple years before that, Pinnacle gave him a card in their Aficionado set. This has raised black printing on the right that makes for a pretty unique-feeling card. It's similar to an insert card from this set that I showed long ago, but it also reminds me a bit of 1998 Pacific Omega.

1996 was the only year for Pinnacle Aficionado, which is too bad. I think it had way more legs than Topps Fusion. Probably was pretty expensive to print, though.

2002 Fleer Ultra Gold Medallion #65 Jeff Cirillo

We're in the middle of a run of horizontal cards within all these shiny cards, and here's a player you don't run across too often. Jeff Cirillo came over to Denver from the Brewers for a couple seasons. He's holding on to a "snow cone" at third base here, which stands out just a bit better than usual on this Gold Medallion parallel. He was a good guy to have at third base, but nowhere near as good as Nolan Arenado's been since 2013, who convincingly won a Gold Glove in each of his four seasons so far.

Tom really found some good stuff for me!

1996 Leaf All-Star Game MVP Contenders #9 Dante Bichette

Horizontal shininess continues with another Bichette card, this one from a 1996 Leaf insert set. This is what I'll call a conditional redemption card, much like Upper Deck's You Crash The Game cards. In other words, it only becomes a redemption card if the player depicted does what he's supposed to do when he's supposed to do it. In this case, Bichette was one of 20 players selected by Leaf as one of the possible MVP winners in the 1996 All-Star Game. If Bichette got the honors, then this card could be redeemed for a full 20-card gold set of MVP Contenders, with a stated print run of 5,000.

Bichette did end up with a double and a run scored in the 1996 Midsummer Classic, but the MVP ended up being Mike Piazza, thanks to this early home run. I'm about 20 years too late on the redemption anyway, but maybe someday I can find a gold parallel of this card. Piazza, by the way, won that award in his hometown of Philadelphia. He never played for the Phillies, but won a pretty impressive award in their old park.

1998 Topps Gallery #107 Larry Walker

The frame was always an important part of Topps Gallery, sort of a non-retro precursor to Gypsy Queen. This is an exceptionally sturdy card, and has a slight texture on the front that's trying to go for an oil painting, I think. It looks a bit more like paint that's bubbled due to a fire, but it's still a neat card. Mets shortstop Rey Ordóñez makes a cameo wearing a white hat as Walker slides into second in the very blue Shea Stadium. It's not quite as obvious as the brick walls at Wrigley, but pretty much everything at Shea looked like that.

2000 Topps Chrome New Millennium Stars #NMS5 Todd Helton

Todd Helton shows up in a lot of discount boxes around here, but I'm pretty sure I've never run across this shiny number before. "Millennium" was quite the buzzword in 1999 and 2000, and Topps didn't miss a chance to give Helton and that word the shiny treatment. The background reminds me of an Art Deco style, and amazingly for a Chrome card, isn't curled!

2000 Black Diamond Rookie Edition #88 Todd Helton

I am not sure if I have this card, but it's one of the few sets so far that I clearly recognize. 2000 Black Diamond Rookie Edition, with its distinctive red and black colors, has appeared here before. The colors are so striking that I never really noticed the gold pattern in the background, which looks like a chain link fence with giant sections cut out of it. Or maybe a hockey net. They have a weave about like that.

2000 Topps 21st Century #C10 Todd Helton

Here's another millennium-themed card of Helton, who was not far removed from his rookie season when these were all printed. He was clearly recognized as a budding star, having led NL rookies in all three Triple Crown categories. Kerry Wood ended up with the Rookie of the Year award in 1998, edging out Helton by a few votes. It's been an elusive award for the Rockies, Jason Jennings being the only one to win it in 2002. Tulowitzki wasn't far behind in 2007, and Trevor Story was a strong contender this year until injury sidelined him shortly after the All-Star break.

This is a mesmerizing card. The grid has thick, bold lines, but that big baseball toward the top (see it?) is the focal point. If you tilt the card back and forth along the horizontal axis, a circular rainbow pattern appears to expand and contract, like you're travelling through a wormhole.

Not that I know what that looks like. But it might look something like this card.

1999 Upper Deck Century Legends #77 Andres Galarraga

Upper Deck got into the Y2K celebration too. Before Upper Deck Legends, the short-lived set was called Upper Deck Century Legends. I have maybe 15 cards from this set, one of the first to combine retired legends with current stars. Though he was a Brave at this time, and is pictured as one on the back, the front shows him as a Rockie (again at Wrigley), the team on which he became a genuine star. Upper Deck still had a fascination with copper foil in 1999, which became a real signature for them. With all the sets out there in the late 1990s, it was probably a good idea to have a recognizable feature, which they moved further and further away from as casualties started mounting in the card industry.

2016 Stadium Club #251 Jon Gray

Yes, a current player or two did make it in here. After all this past Rockies greatness, I figured I'd end with one of the bright stars of the Rockies rotation. This is one of the best Coors Field shots I've ever seen on a card, as we get a great look at some full sections on the third base side (right where I like to sit), and a glimpse of a sunny Colorado sunset through the concourse. I've waited out a rain delay in that exact spot, and can point you to a couple excellent pre- or post-game spots just beyond.

Baseball season has only been over for a couple weeks, but already I'm hungry to head back to Coors Field, especially when I see it on a Stadium Club card.

Bud Black was just announced as the new manager, the rotation and lineup remain strong, and the Rockies are reportedly talking to Mark Melancon, who could provide an invaluable boost to a perennially weak bullpen.

That Cuddyer card at the beginning ended up being the dullest one of the whole post. I almost had to wear sunglasses to look at these. And if this kind of a generous trade package helped the Cubs finally win it all, then I'm fully on board.

The Trading Post #64: Waiting 'til Next Year

Tom from Waiting 'til Next Year and I have exchanged cards a few times since last year. As the Cubs #Supertrader, he's certainly kept up his end of the deal, and maybe, just maybe, this is the year for him and his long-suffering fellow fans. The Cubbies are off to a 17-5 start so far, with two of those losses coming against the Rockies at Wrigley.

But you don't come here for Cubs talk. Or maybe you do, in which case you're probably highly disappointed after two years of all this Rockies stuff.

2015 USA Baseball Stars and Stripes Longevity #29 David Dahl

Tom included numerous cards from 2015 Panini Stars & Stripes, a set focused on prospects and minor leaguers. This is a typical modern set, loaded with inserts, relics, autographs, and too many parallels to count, like the card above. A few of the players featured have already made it to the big leagues, like Corey Seager and Michael Conforto, along with lots of Cubbies, such as Kris Bryant, Addison Russell, and the out-for-the-season Kyle Schwarber.

This is my first time seeing this unlicensed set, and they're quite a step up from the Team USA cards that popped up in Topps Traded sets every few years. Helton's Rookie Card came on just such a card, along with plenty of other well-known names like Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi, Nomar Garciaparra, and Jason Varitek.

I can only hope that David Dahl adds himself to that list in the next decade or so.

2015 USA Baseball Stars and Stripes Fireworks #12 David Dahl

Though it looks like one, this is not actually a parallel. It is from an entirely separate insert set, despite using the same photos as the base card, front and back. We're still months away from Independence Day, but this one would be worth taking out of the binder for the 4th.

2015 Bowman Draft #95 Jack Wynkoop

The Rockies have been around long enough that some of their draft picks weren't even born yet when they began play in 1993. Jack Wynkoop is barely out of college and is pitching with Single-A Asheville right now, so there's not a lot to report on as far as his career yet. But thanks to the Up Close section on the back, I know that he once went surfing in Indonesia and that he likes sushi.

I, too, like sushi.

2013 Bowman Prospects #BP96 Shane Broyles (AU)

Shane Broyles was drafted a few years earlier, and has made it as high as Triple-A. For now, he's pitching for the new Rockies Double-A affiliate, the Hartford Yard Goats.

Here we go Yard Goats, Here we go! [Clap, clap]

2013 Bowman also has an Up Close section, and it turns out that Broyles is a fan of the Breaking Bad TV show. Shades of 1992 Studio, right there. Sounds like I'd get along pretty well with these guys.

One interesting thing about this card is the autograph you might have noticed. This card isn't sporting any type of Topps Certified seal (or a sticker, for that matter), leading me to believe this was signed in person. I don't know whether that was obtained by Tom, but based on the cards he's sending me, he seems to be a bit of a prospector. And I can certainly understand that from a Cubs fan, especially since they might have the strongest farm system in the game.

2008 Topps #402 Taylor Buchholz

It wasn't all prospects, though. A few of these players have played in The Show before. Taylor Buchholz was a member of the pennant-winning 2007 Rockies, and he got one of the best cards in 2008 Topps, featuring a photobomb from the Pirate Parrot mascot. More than any other Rockies card, this is probably the one most frequently featured on non-Rockie blogs. It's a fun card, and Topps had the brilliance to make it the base card instead of some rare photo variation.

2011 Topps Update #US231 Charlie Blackmon (RC)

I don't usually go after Topps Update, which means I often miss out on the major Rookie cards. Charlie Blackmon got his RC in 2011 Update, a bit before he became a regular starter and grew his epic beard. I can't imagine how uncomfortable it must be for him standing out there in the outfield all summer long. Hockey beards I get. But in the summer it can't be much fun.

Maybe one of these years I'll buy some Topps Update at retail. It just seems to find its way into discount boxes so quickly, though I did miss out on Mike Trout's rookie card in 2012 2011 Update. My dealer did offer it to me as part of a complete set, but it was way more than I wanted to spend.

If there's one part of my collection that's a bit lacking, it's rookie cards. I don't have Griffey's from 1989 Upper Deck, nor Trout's, nor Pujols' from 2001 Update. I purchased Helton's Team USA card from 1993 Topps Traded from that same dealer, and I have plenty of RCs from the overproduction days (Thomas, Palmeiro, Weiss, I think Mattingly, and of course Barry Bonds), but it's never been my focus.

2010 Topps #398 Carlos Gonzalez

The Topps base card parade rolls on to 2010, and a shot of Carlos Gonzalez likely celebrating a walkoff hit. He looks quite a bit younger here, but this shot is from seven years ago, a reminder of the ever-increasing perceived speed of passing time. It's also been that long since we've been back to a Topps monopoly, at least on MLB-licensed products.

2013 Topps Heritage #245 Jordan Pacheco

There were a few Heritage cards in here, but this 1964 design stood out. The card looks right, but the surface is more like an Archives card with a smooth matte finish rather than just regular cardboard that is more common on Heritage. Maybe they just did that for 2013 and changed it back for subsequent years, since more recent Heritage cards again use thicker, rougher cardboard than this.

2012 Topps Opening Day Elite Skills #ES-14 Troy Tulowitzki

Tulo seems to be showing up on fewer and fewer cards since the Blue Jays trade, but there are still plenty of them out there. This is from the same insert set as this Ivy and CarGo card, naturally from Opening Day, always a treasure trove of great insert cards. Tulo's tip for fielding a grounder is partially in the posture, but also in using your momentum to assist your throw over to first base. And he's sporting his favorite glove, one he still uses to this day.

1993 Cardtoons #85 Andres Colorado

Last up is this oddball, not of Andres Galarraga, but of "Andres Colorado". This is so unlicensed that it doesn't even have MLBPA approval, so they had to parody all the names. Looking through the checklist is pretty amusing, with names like "Toad Stottlemyre", "Shawon Tungsten", "Frankenthomas", and my personal favorite, "Rambo Canseco". The back of the card has various made-up state facts, like a founding date of 1993, a peak batting average of .392, a state bird of long flies, and the only useful piece of information on the whole card, that it's important to drink lots of water and take rest breaks to avoid being affected by the thin air.

Everyone wanted in on the card industry in 1993, and according to BaseballCardPedia, there was a lengthy court battle around the existence of this set. Cardtoons was probably a bit fed up by this, and they couldn't resist another pun, creating an insert set called Field of Greed, a chronicle of all the labor disputes in baseball history.

As oddballs go, this one is pretty odd. I've never run across it, and I have no idea how scarce it is, but pricing on eBay is nothing out of the ordinary. It reminds me a little of Upper Deck Fun Pack, and I sure got a good laugh out of it!

The existence of oddballs seems to correlate with the health of the industry. And though there was a long dry spell, the rise of Panini and even those Topps cards found only in frozen pizza boxes at Wal-Mart just might be a sign of strength.

The Trading Post #47: Waiting 'til Next Year

Spoiler alert: there are no pitchers in this post.

2003 Topps #97 Todd Zeile

There are, however, plenty of hitters. Like this great horizontal shot of Todd Zeile, a journeyman third baseman who holds the dubious distinction of having played in the most games without ever being selected for an All-Star team. He was off the Rockies by the time this 2003 card was printed, but the Rockies purple works pretty well with the blue borders of Topps 2003, probably my favorite Topps base set of the years I wasn't collecting.

Zeile's was one of the cards I got in trade from Tom at Waiting 'til Next Year. He's one of several bloggers that I've traded with for the first time in the last couple months. It took me a while, but I finally got a return package shipped out Monday.

2004 Bazooka Red Chunks #166 Jay Payton

Jay Payton stealing second leads off a trio of red-bordered cards, this one a surprisingly thick parallel from 2004 Bazooka. Like Zeile, Payton was no longer a Rockie by the time this card was released (they always seem a year behind, don't they?), but that doesn't detract from the awesomeness of this action shot. It seems more like a TV screen capture than most other cards.

And he's not a pitcher. Which I bring up because the Rockies signed a few Relief Pitchers I Have Actually Heard Of, getting Chad Qualls and Jason Motte. You may not have heard of them, but this is big news for the Rockies bullpen. Qualls, incidentally, was on his second stint as an Astro, a team I thought he'd been on all this time. Turns out he's been bouncing all over the league for years.

2006 Topps Turkey Red Red #553 Kazuo Matsui

In fact, the Rockies and Astros have done a fair bit of dealing over the years, as Kaz Matsui went there following the Rockies' World Series appearance in 2007. More recently, Jordan Lyles and Dexter Fowler were dealt between Denver and Houston. But (unrelated) I'm still not really used to the Astros being in the American League, although the 2015 Postseason helped me out quite a bit on that.

Like that Bazooka card, this Turkey Red insert is a red parallel (Turkey Red squared?), but this has that odd faux-vintage textured look, almost like a piece of leather. The back is slightly off-white, and the back uses that 19th-century spelling of "Base Ball" more than once. It's an odd set, and Turkey Red Red reminds me of saying PIN Number or ATM Machine.

2008 Topps Opening Day #35 Garrett Atkins

And this one is from when Opening Day took better efforts to differentiate itself from the Topps base set. All the Opening Day base cards were red that year, and featured lots of gold foil. I've found that they chip pretty easily, but this one seems to be in pretty good shape, even if that Topps logo is intruding on the photo area, a common gripe about the 2008 design.

2015 Bowman Chrome Prospects #BCP12 Emerson Jimenez

That's it for the red cards, so up next is a nice shiny Bowman card of a prospect I've never heard of.  He's still a single-A guy, so it'll be quite some time before we see him in the Majors. But you heard it on Bowman first.

2009 Bowman Prospects #BP58 Wilin Rosario

Every so often, though, a Bowman Prospect stays in the Majors. Like Emerson Jimenez, Rosario hails from the Dominican Republic, a real gold mine of baseball stars. And Rosario has one of the most legible signatures I can recall on one of these cards with a facsimile autograph. He'll be starting his sixth year as a Rockie in 2016, so he's got quite a bit of seniority already.

2013 Finest #35 Troy Tulowitzki

I'm pretty sure I've seen some variety of this card before (probably the refractor), but it wasn't until now that I noticed the tiny baseball on Tulo's belt. I can't quite tell what it is, a patch or possibly a sticker. Maybe you get a little shiny baseball sticker on your belt after each home run, sort of like an Axis flag you'd find on a P-51 Mustang.

2015 Donruss #82 Corey Dickerson

With Donruss, the logo-less Panini brand, we don't get anywhere that level of detail. Because the Rockies have fairly unique colors, it's not hard to spot them without the "CR" on hats or helmets. I imagine this would be much tougher with one of the red or blue teams, of which there are plenty. Maybe being a Rockies fan means I tend not to find issue with Panini sets that most others despise, like Prizm (or even Donruss, for that matter).

2007 Topps Wal-Mart #WM38 Matt Holliday

A couple posts ago, I mentioned that Matt Holliday cards don't seem to be that common. Tom sent over a couple, including this Topps 205 card (actually part of a Wal-Mart exclusive insert set), whose frame looks an awful lot like this year's Gypsy Queen. Holliday's baby-faced appearance originally made me think this was more like 2004-2005, but it is from the same year that Holliday won NLCS MVP honors, just a couple weeks after misjudging a fly ball in Game 163 against the Padres to send it to extras, then scoring the winning run in that same game.

2005 Topps Opening Day #136 Matt Holliday

Though he was (and remains) a fairly subpar outfielder, his talent at the plate can't be denied. His baserunning is known to be...iffy, but I'd say he's safe at second in Wrigley on this Opening Day card. The blue foil at the top looks striking, but the same color gets lost in the black bar at the bottom, at least in person. Amazingly, the scan picks it up better.

2000 Topps #53 Dante Bichette

Wrigley Field comes across even better in this Dante Bichette card from 2000 Topps. Tom threw in a good number of 2000 Topps, which might even be the whole team set. It was a small set that year.

We've seen Bichette near the ivy before, but this time it looks more like spring than autumn. At least he doesn't need long sleeves. And a couple of Wrigley Field cards from one of the bigger Cubs fans in the cardsphere makes for an extra-appropriate conclusion to his trade post.

And not one pitcher to be found.