Spoiler alert: there are no pitchers in this post.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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).
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
