Another Year, Another Hanukkah

Sometimes I wonder how I used to have time to write forty posts a year. 2022 was by far my lowest post total since the inception of Infield Fly Rule, where I managed to get a mere nine posts done. I’m not even sure I can play the “quality over quantity” card, but I'll let you be the judge of that. It's not for lack of material, I assure you, as there are piles of cards continuing to grow, including a recent blaster of 2022 Stadium Club that had some nice parallels inside. 

I also see that Beckett has changed their site significantly since my last post.

In any case, I still have that Eight Men Out wishlist on my blog header, and it continues to pay dividends each holiday season, thanks to Mom. This year, she picked a couple going back to the very early days of the Colorado Rockies franchise.

1993 Triple Play #127 Mile High Stadium

When the Rockies joined Major League Baseball for the 1993 season, they didn't quite have a permanent home yet, though Coors Field was already under construction. They played their first two seasons at Mile High Stadium, home of the Denver Broncos, just a few exits down I-25. It has since been replaced by what is now known as Empower Field at Mile High, but while it was still standing, it saw millions and millions of fans filter through to see the first MLB team in the Mountain Time Zone.

Officially, 4,483,350 fans attended home Rockies games in the inaugural 1993 season, filling the cavernous Mile High Stadium to the brim. I counted for two of those. In fact, the team's per-game attendance was averaging even higher in 1994, but the strike had other ideas, cutting short our fan base's chance at beating its own record. The 1993 count still remains the single-season record across the big leagues.

Triple Play included a nighttime panorama shot of Mile High in the 1993 set, mentioning the stadium's past role as home to various Denver-area Minor League teams on the card back. The stadium was built in 1948, and the Denver Bears and later the Denver Zephyrs called it home.

I don't know the actual release date of 1993 Triple Play, but unless it was toward the end of the 1993 season, I would guess this photo is actually from a 1992 or earlier Zephyrs game. The individual player Rockies cards in this set used the old team logo, which tells me they produced it in the narrow window between the expansion draft and the start of the 1993 season.

Still, the place is pretty packed for a Minor League game. I did go to a couple Zephyrs games as a young child, and I don't remember it being so full. It might be that this is a fireworks game, as you can see the right field seats (also known as the "South Stands" in Broncos parlance) are empty, which was done for safety on the few fireworks nights the Rockies put on for their fans. I'm just guessing, though. There isn't enough detail in this print job to really tell.

In case you were curious, the Florida Marlins got a similar card in the 1993 Triple Play checklist, a very orange card of what was then called Joe Robbie Stadium. Though it has since been renamed many times over, the structure currently known as Hard Rock Stadium remains standing, and still plays host to Miami Dolphins home games.

Longtime Colorado residents still lament the loss of old Mile High, and the orange and blue seats that used to fill the stadium are now scattered across various basements and man caves throughout the Denver area. It's a bygone relic.

1998 Pacific Platinum Blue #425 John Flaherty /67

So, too, is the idea of pitchers running the bases. With the arrival of the Designated Hitter in both leagues, the opportunity for a pitcher to be involved in a play at the plate is now as rare as hen's teeth. That makes this 1998 Pacific card of Padres catcher John Flaherty all the more special, as Rockies starting pitcher Roger Bailey got a cameo while sliding into home. 

Even in 1998 when the DH was strictly an American League thing, that was a pretty rare play. Rare enough that it should be reasonably easy to pinpoint this card to an exact date.

In the 1997 season, Roger Bailey started two games in San Diego. That would have been at Qualcomm Stadium, as long as we're bringing up defunct ballparks. The first of those was on June 19th, 1997. After building a 5-3 lead, Bailey led off the 5th inning with a full-count walk. He advanced to second on an Eric Young sacrifice bunt, then tried to score on an Ellis Burks single. That's this play.

Out at the plate! Bailey was cut down by Greg Vaughn via an outfield assist, a four-time All-Star who concluded his career with a very short 22-game stint with the Colorado Rockies in 2003.

At first the result of this play struck me as an odd photo selection, then I remembered this is actually John Flaherty's card, not Bailey's. It's too bad he didn't stop at third, because the next batter was Hall of Famer Larry Walker, who easily drove in Burks with a double to right. In another universe, Pacific would have had to pick another photo for this card.

Roger Bailey's story is actually quite a sad one. He was a top prospect for the early Rockies, and appeared in many 1992 and 1993 Minor League sets as an amateur draftee. Most other card companies ignored him for a few years, but Topps put him in multiple sets as a Rockie during 1993. 

He debuted in 1995, appearing in the second-ever game at Coors Field. Over time, he worked his way into the rotation, and actually put up a respectable ERA in pre-humidor Coors. His 1997 season was his best yet, finishing with a 9-10 record, including two complete game shutouts. He was on track to be a key member of the Rockies rotation. 

Sadly, during spring training in 1998, Bailey was a riding in a car with fellow Rockies pitcher Mike Munoz when it was rear-ended. Just like that, his back was injured and he never recovered well enough to pitch again.

Pacific, ever the unappreciated innovator, was known for lots of colored foil parallels in their time. I have little idea which one is which, but there were lots of golds and silvers and blues and reds out there. In the 1998 base set, gold foil was the base variety, and then some of the parallels were silver. That seems backwards to me. But anyway, the foil on this one is a pale blue color, sort of the color of aquamarine.

I only had the base card on my list, which would have been fine. I knew upon first looking at this that the blue foil made this some kind of parallel, which is also fine, as my primary desire for this card was for the Roger Bailey cameo. But, not being an expert in 1998 Pacific, I had no idea until sitting down to write that this is actually the Platinum Blue variety, which had a stated print run of just 67 copies. 67! Way back in 1998!

There's no serial number on the card, so I had to find out about this by checking Beckett.

Yes, indeed it does make me wonder whether I have any other hidden gems in my few Pacific pages that are far more rare than I thought.

1998 was a weird year for cards.

It was also 25 years ago, which is deeply unsettling.

Happy New Year! 

It's Early This Year

There have been the slightest of dustings in parts of town, but as of today, Denver has yet to record its first measurable snowfall of the winter. We've blown past the prior early 1930s record of November 21st, and there's nothing in the forecast that shows any sign of this changing soon.

So with Thanksgiving over and December looming, the fact that Hanukkah starts at sundown tonight (Sunday) caught me a bit off guard. I do have potatoes on hand for the appropriate seasonal treat, but it just doesn't feel like I'm quite ready for the holiday to appear so early this year.

Mom, on the other hand, had this all squared away and ready for takeoff. As usual, she found a card from my Eight Men Out want list and presented it to me inside a greeting card. 

I know she always worries about whether she got me "the right card". Frankly, the fact that she frequently takes the time to check my specific want list in the first place is plenty generous all on its own. And getting baseball cards in general is no small feat in this supply-constrained era.

So is it "the right card"?

1994 Stadium Club First Day Issue #372 Roberto Kelly /2,000

Well, technically no, but (and I told her this), it's way better. All I did was put an overproduction-era Stadium Club card on the list, and she goes and finds me a First Day Issue parallel. They're quite scarce for the era, having a stated print run of 2,000. They aren't serial numbered, but as overproduction-era parallels go, this is a needle in a haystack. In checking my 1994 binder, this is is the fifth one I've been able to add to the collection after all these years, and it remains one of my favorite parallels of the entire era.

My main motivation for wanting this card was the cameo. That's Vinny Castilla on the left, covering second base in an inaugural-year Mile High Stadium. I did see the Reds play the Rockies in 1993, but that was the final home game of the season. Unfortunately, Roberto Kelly, the main subject of this card, suffered a separated shoulder in mid-July and missed the rest of the season. That would mean this photo couldn't have been from a game I attended, but that does at least narrow it down to one particular series in June.

Roberto Kelly and his Reds had back-and-forth slugfests that week with the young Rockies, and I believe this photo is from the third and final game of the series, a 15-5 blowout win for Colorado. In the top of the 4th on June 23rd, 1993, Kelly stole 2nd base with Chris Sabo at the plate. Castilla was playing short that day, and it looks like Kelly beat the throw quite easily. There might not have been a throw at all, actually. The speedy center fielder stole third base a few pitches later, but was stranded there.

Interestingly, the card back mentions that Kelly, a two-time All-Star, stole third base nine times in his injury-shortened 1993 season, but doesn't quite manage to tell us that one of those SBs came mere moments after this photo was snapped. 

That's the value I'm adding here at Infield Fly Rule.

That's all to report for today, a quick one-card post (thanks, Mom!) and the weather forecast. Thank you for stopping by!

Gold Medal Club (Part 2: Inserts)

I wouldn't have to split my posts up into multiple parts if Topps didn't pack their blasters so full of blog-worthy cards.

Or if I didn't find myself writing at least 1,500 words every time I put a stack of cards together.

Either way, Stadium Club kept me interested for another year with fun inserts, new and old.

2021 Stadium Club Greats #SCG-23 Roger Clemens

If you dig out your old 1991 Stadium Club box, you'll find a card of Roger Clemens that looks nearly identical to this. The photo on this Stadium Club Greats insert is the same as on the 1991 original. The only difference you'll find is gold foil instead of silver, although it's less likely to be centered quite as well. That was a common issue with early TSC, the foil not lining up all that well with the rest of the design elements. This is a sample size of one, but it appears that they've made great strides in that department over the past thirty years.

Thirty years, yes, that's how long it's been since Stadium Club first hit the shelves. It's been on-again off-again since then, but I continue to enjoy its renaissance.

This isn't a straight reprint, as the card back has an entirely new theme. Instead of the green back with the so-called BARS System and a little image of the player's first Topps card, we get a lengthy write-up of the Red Sox portion of Clemens's career. It mentions three Cy Young awards, four times he led the league in ERA, and his massive career strikeout total that has him in third place behind only Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson. It skips over additional awards earned during rest of his career with the Blue Jays, Yankees, and Astros, and makes no mention of his lengthy campaign to get into the Hall of Fame.

2021 Stadium Club Virtual Reality #VR-7 Ronald Acuña Jr.

For the 1995 set, Topps debuted a partial parallel set called Virtual Reality. It attempted to project the final full-season stats for 1994, which was cut short by the infamous strike. Sadly, the current state of the world gave Topps an opportunity to trot this theme out one more time, although that's one aspect of Stadium Club I would have preferred to never see again.

According to the Topps prognosticator, if the 2020 season hadn't been pandemic-shortened, Acuña would have finished with 124 runs scored, 38 homers, and a .250 average. His actual numbers during the 60-game season were 46 runs, 14 homers, and still a .250 average.

By running a bit of math, it appears that Topps really didn't forecast anything beyond multiplying his actual stats by 2.7, which is simply the rate of how much longer a full season would have been than the shortened season. There was no factoring in a hot spring, a late-season surge, a midsummer slump, or the actual difficulty of schedule the Braves would have faced if they played the rest of the divisions. It's an interesting exercise, but take these numbers with a grain of salt.

1995 Stadium Club Virtual Reality #94 Joe Girardi

The 1995 Virtual Reality set didn't take things quite so linearly. In looking at the back of Joe Girardi's '95 VR card, Topps had some faith that Girardi would bump up his average with a "late-season rush", and would put together a nice four-game hitting streak in an alternate-universe Labor Day weekend of September 1994. Which, as we know, is quite typical of how Rockies seasons go.

They also thought Barry Bonds would tie Roger Maris's single-season home run record of 61. Clearly they put some thought into this project back in the mid-'90s rather than just put =[cell]*2.7 into a spreadsheet and filled down.

2021 Stadium Club Sepia #43 Evan White (RC)

My haul of colored parallels was right in line with stated pack odds. I felt like I got a nice mixture of what was on offer, starting with Evan White's rookie card in Sepia form. The young first baseman already has a Gold Glove to his name, but his promising career is on hold for right now while he recovers from hip surgery.

2021 Stadium Club Black Foil #183 Joc Pederson

Back to the world of full color, here's Joc Pederson pictured (very briefly) as a Chicago Cub. Pederson only spent the first half of the 2021 season in the Windy City before becoming an early casualty of the Cubs rebuilding program. He was traded to the Braves in mid-July, shortly before most of his more well-known teammates were sent elsewhere.

The first game Pederson played as a Brave was against the Tampa Bay Rays, but that was a home game. He never played the Rays as a Cub, so I'd guess that this shot of him with a Mike Zunino cameo was actually taken during the 2020 World Series when he was still a Dodger, then given the Photoshop treatment.

This card is one of the Black Foil parallels, which is somehow even less shiny than you'd expect.

2021 Stadium Club Red Foil #38 Cal Ripken. Jr.

The Red Foil is much more striking, and is reminiscent of early Stadium Club sets like 1994. Of course, both Cal Ripken, Jr. and cameo player Wade Boggs were in that set, and between the two, we're looking at two Hall of Fame plaques, thirty-one All-Star appearances, sixteen Silver Sluggers, and more. Add to that a Rookie of the Year award for Boggs, and two MVP awards for Ripken, which is mentioned on the card back.

2021 Stadium Club Red Foil #77 Jesús Sánchez (RC)

Jesús Sánchez is clearly amazed by those accolades.

2021 Stadium Club Autographs #SCBA-JM Julian Merryweather (AU) (RC)

I was lucky enough to pull an autograph in this blaster, an on-card signature of Toronto Blue Jays rookie Julian Merryweather. He's appeared in twelve Big League games thus far, but has been recovering from an oblique strain for most of this year. When he does return, he'll pitch in Toronto for the first time. His home games thus far have only been played at his team's temporary homes in Buffalo and Dunedin, FL.

He's on the older side for a rookie, as he'll be turning 30 in just a couple months.

2021 Stadium Club Oversized Master Photos #OBPDG Deivi García

Concluding this 2021 Stadium Club blaster is the first card I found in it, the Master Photo box topper. It has unusual dimensions of 3 3/8" x 3 3/4", and is significantly smaller than past Master Photos I've seen from older Stadium Club sets. Compared to that, I'm unsure what makes this "Oversized".

I don't know much about Deivi García, who is probably the least well-known name in the entire collection of Master Photos, but it is nice to see an unfamiliar player on the 1993 Stadium Club design. There isn't much to be found on the back. It's mostly white like an old photo print. One of the corners is a little dinged, and there's also a little damage on the back of Sánchez's card. I escaped the worst of it, but I definitely heard some tales of woe regarding quality control of this beautiful set. I'm sure this not-quite-square thing would have gotten damaged eventually wherever I found a place to store it, but it's concerning.

I'm continuing to keep an eye on Target's website for Topps product, and it's actually somewhat consistently available. You have to be quick, but not as quick as when flippers were running rampant in the card aisle. They have A&G, Gypsy Queen, and Series 2 blasters available as I write this, so act fast if you want some!

And keep your fingers crossed for good quality control.

The Start of a Strange Season (Part 1: Base)

Max Scherzer looks like he's seen some stuff.

2021 Topps Opening Day #182 Max Scherzer

As have we all the past year or so.

It's been a while since I've picked up the proverbial pen to write about baseball cards. Things have gotten, uh, a bit out of hand lately. A few days after my previous post, Google decided that continuing to support email subscriptions in Feedburner was just too much trouble for a multi-trillion dollar company to bother with, so that led to an hours-long project of migrating all five (5) of my email subscribers onto a new platform.

That led me down a lengthy path of other computer projects, such as transitioning more of my digital life off of the Google platform. I know all too well who owns Blogspot and I won't be the least bit surprised if I need to do a sudden migration to Wordpress one of these days. That was followed by reorganizing my bookmarks, cleaning up old photos, tagging the last year or so of my Photoshop library, and so on. Pair all that with gingerly venturing back out into the world.

And then the back pain got bad. But that's a different story.

Suffice to say, it would be difficult to find time to write about cards even if it were easy to acquire them. Which, as you know, they no longer are, and that was before Target pulled the plug on the whole thing. So I ended up ordering my annual Topps Opening Day blaster from an eBay user. I paid the same price as Dave & Adam's is currently charging, and got free shipping. So it goes, I guess.

All that to explain why Max Scherzer's expression is just so appropriate, even if the photo isn't quite sharp enough to spot his heterochromia. 

2021 Topps Opening Day #189 Kyle Lewis

For the aforementioned reasons, I haven't bought a pack of this year's Topps base as I usually do by now. This is my first in-person look at the new design, and it's not my favorite. I wholeheartedly agree with the readability issues collectors have pointed out with the player's name. As a collector who grew up in the '90s, that's not entirely unfamiliar. Lots of the early gold foil sets among the Studio and Flair-type brands suffered from this, but it was usually easy enough to just flip the card over and see it on the back in a much more readable typeface.

That is not the case here. It's the same typeface on the back, just a tiny bit larger.

And in the Topps Bunt app, where the actual size on screen can be smaller than a postage stamp? The whole readability situation is quite a bit worse. I do like the hexagons, but they take such a back seat to the many other design elements, and I didn't notice them until leafing through the stack quite a few times.

The familiar Topps Rookie Cup gets a spot on Kyle Lewis's card, and deservedly so for the 2020 AL Rookie of the Year. This is a good photo selection, as we can see Lewis about to rob a home run.

2021 Topps Opening Day #205 Trent Grisham

It's been a strange season so far. We've seen a no-hitter basically once a week. We've seen unexpected injuries, a league-wide average lower than it's been in decades (with the Mariners scraping the bottom of the sub-.200 barrel), and young guys dragging MLB kicking and screaming into a new age, all while Tony La Russa puts more stock in the old unwritten rules than the new actual written ones.

Also, these guys all seem to be wearing these little sliding mittens while they run the bases, meant to shield their hands from hard tags and jammed fingers and accidental spikes. I'm pretty sure that's what's sticking out of Trent Grisham's back pocket as he lays out to make this outfield catch, about to land on the Future Stars banner that is larger on the card than his actual name.

2021 Topps Opening Day #102 Nick Solak

Topps says Nick Solak is a Future Star too, but what I really noticed on this and a lot of other cards in this blaster was the sheer volume of commemorative and memorial patches. A lot of teams had something special (or somber) on tap for 2020, such as the inaugural season of the new Texas Rangers park, Globe Life Field. It's where the Rockies began their shortened 2020 season, and where the whole thing wrapped up as a neutral site for the 2020 World Series. The patch on Solak's right arm shows the new stadium and its retractable roof.

2021 Topps Opening Day #104 José Berrios

Powder Blue uniforms are continuing their comeback, as we see José Berríos sporting the Twins alternate jersey in front of a largely empty stadium. In general, Topps went to great lengths to avoid showing empty seats with their photo selection this year, but a few cards do show the undeniable strangeness of the 2020 season. 

You have to look a little more closely to spot the patch on this one, as it's actually on the hat, not the jersey. It was the 60th Anniversary of the Minnesota Twins, marking a surprisingly long time since the first Washington Senators franchise migrated northward in 1960.

2021 Topps Opening Day #210 Chadwick Tromp (RC)

This one's a bit harder to spot, but on Chadwick Tromp's right sleeve, part of the "20 at 24" patch is visible, which marks the two decades the San Francisco Giants have spent at Oracle Park. 24 has nothing to do with Oracle or the many telecom companies that once held the stadium's naming rights, but rather it's an homage to Willie Mays. The Say Hey Kid wore #24 during his career, and the street address of Oracle Park was set to 24 Willie Mays Plaza in San Francisco.

2021 Topps Opening Day #22 Keston Hiura

Other anniversaries around the league included the 50th Anniversary of the Milwaukee Brewers, as shown on Keston Hiura's right sleeve. They began play in 1970, and yes, this calculation does omit the one year the franchise spent as the Seattle Pilots.

2021 Topps Opening Day #152 Dylan Carlson (RC)

2020 also represented the centennial of the Negro Leagues, or at least the centennial of when they reached a certain level of organization and talent with the formation of the Negro National League in 1920. Regrettably, segregation in organized baseball goes back basically as far as the game itself, to the mid-1800s, so saying 1920 really doesn't paint the full picture. In any case, Dylan Carlson of the Cardinals wore a special patch when he took the field one day last year.

2021 Topps Opening Day #61 Carter Kieboom

That patch was actually worn league-wide on August 16th, 2020, and you can see the same patch in the same spot on Carter Kieboom's uniform, placing him in Baltimore and Carlson on the South Side of Chicago. Kieboom being on base allows us to pinpoint this to the 5th inning that day. You can also get a better look at one of those sliding mittens on Kieboom's left hand.

2020 Topps Opening Day #118 Yoan Moncada

The patches continue with this period-correct throwback uniform worn by the White Sox. That patch on Yoan Moncada's left sleeve isn't very recognizable, but under magnification, it's the 1983 All Star Game patch, which the White Sox hosted that year. In fact, that's the same All-Star Game that we all wrote about back on April Fool's Day. I love the attention to detail necessary to make these throwbacks that perfect.

2021 Topps Opening Day #57 Santiago Espinal (RC)

Sadly, it wasn't all celebration and anniversaries last year. Quite a few of these patches were of the memorial variety, honoring those many baseball personalities who are no longer with us. Rookie Santiago Espinal has a black 1 on his sleeve, the number worn by Blue Jays All-Star Tony Fernández, who passed away at just 57. None of us are getting any younger, but it's especially tragic when a guy who was in all the overproduction sets dies, a guy whose contemporaries are still in managerial roles throughout baseball.

2021 Topps Opening Day #159 Dane Dunning (RC)

Dane Dunning of the White Sox, who's wearing a more contemporary Sox uniform, has a little diamond "Farmio" patch on his right sleeve, clearly visible in his follow-through motion. That's the nickname of Ed Farmer, who spent some time as a closer in Chicago, but was much better known as part of their broadcast team, spending almost thirty years behind the microphone.

2021 Topps Opening Day #155 DJ LeMahieu

These memorials cover off-the-field losses, too. DJ LeMahieu has an "HGS" included with his iconic pinstripes. That's for Hank Steinbrenner, part owner of the Yankees. In the Bronx, they usually wear a black armband for this sort of thing, but that honor may just be reserved for players.

2021 Topps Opening Day #142 Salvador Pérez

With the amount of loss we suffered last year, I'm sure there are more black patches to be discovered in this checklist, but the last one I found is the DG patch, worn by one of my favorite catchers, Salvador Pérez of the Kansas City Royals. Those are the initials of David Glass, the former Wal-Mart executive who owned the Royals and ran the team in much the same way as the stores. Lightning did strike in 2015 with a World Series championship, but winning seasons were few and far between during his ownership tenure.

In any case, Salvador Pérez in full catcher's gear makes for a great baseball card.

2021 Topps Opening Day #101 Andrew Benintendi

As is common with Topps cards released early in the year, players are often pictured with their previous year's team. Andrew Benintendi is now sharing the field with Salvador Pérez in Kansas City. Jackie Bradley, Jr., the cameo player in the dugout, is now on the Brewers for their 51st year. Their days of playing in an empty Fenway Park appear to be over.

2021 Topps Opening Day #69 Trevor Bauer

Bauer is on a new team, up to his usual antics as a Dodger.

2021 Topps Opening Day #5 Yu Darvish

Darvish is on a new team, and if he doesn't throw a no-hitter as a Padre this year, maybe it just won't happen for him.

2021 Topps Opening Day #42 Charlie Blackmon

Blackmon is still a Rockie, but that foreground cameo player, uh, isn't anymore. Nor is the GM that traded him away.

2021 Topps Opening Day #89 Albert Pujols

And finally, not that Topps had any way of knowing this in advance, Albert Pujols was unceremoniously DFA'd by the Angels in the final year of his contract, and is now playing for the injury-riddled Dodgers. He now has a home run in Dodger blue, inching ever closer to the 700 mark which he's unlikely to reach.

Pujols has seen more Opening Days than any other active player, whose career goes all the way back to his Rookie of the Year-worthy 2001 season, the same year that Cal Ripken, Jr. retired. I saw him play as a Cardinal, and though his performance has dropped off precipitously in recent years, he's one of the greatest players ever, and certainly one of the greatest to play in my lifetime.

I don't dare to guess what else this year has in store, but I'm fairly confident we'll see another no-hitter. Saying "I hope my back heals before the next no-hitter" doesn't sound quite as hopeless in 2021 as it would in almost any other season.