The Trading Post #167: Card Hemorrhage (Part 2: Vintage)

I don't know what feels normal anymore. Back pain is normal. Uncertainly is normal. 

Writing a blog post with an NFL playoff game on in the background used to feel a lot more normal than it does right now. It's nice to still be able to bring that back every once in a while, although this blog is starting to take a back seat to other priorities. I did twenty-three posts in 2021, and while I still haven't missed a month, that is about half of what I was doing around 2017.

Not that I don't have enough material to cover, it's just that there is a lot that steals my attention these days. One example of that would be the Marshall Fire that tore through nearby Louisville, Colorado on December 30th. You may have seen it on the news, but unfortunately I got a much closer look at it. My home is still standing, but I was caught in a smoky highway closure as the fire was spreading, was easily within walking distance of a frightening view of the flames that night, and found myself alarmingly close to the outer areas of the evacuation zone.

Seeing your hometown on the national news for this kind of thing is pretty unsettling. Watching the news crews broadcast from an intersection you've driven through a couple thousand times is quite scary. Trying to go about your workday while not being particularly confident that your home will still be there in a few hours is a very unpleasant experience. Knowing the office building you haven't been to in nearly two years (for obvious reasons) is directly in the path of destruction makes it very personal. That survived, although so much nearby was lost. Two lives. Pets. Homes. Businesses.

So, that has given me a lot of emotions to work through, on top of everything else.

In any case, I was reminded of my collection a week or so ago when I got a direct message on Twitter asking about an old 2011 Topps Opening Day hit. A fellow Twitter user inquired as to whether I still had this Justin Germano autograph from a 2015 blog post, and seeing as how it didn't go up in flames last month (one concern among a thousand others I had that day), I was able to help out his autograph collection. It might have been worth a solid amount in better condition, but Topps quality control being what it is, I shipped it off for $7 and got confirmation yesterday that it arrived safely.

Following that, I still want to review some vintage cards I got from Jay at Card Hemorrhage, which made up the remainder of a shipment he sent my way toward the end of 2021.

1991 Topps Archives '53 #324 Vern Law

Now, this isn't really a vintage card, even though it looks like a '53. Experts of these early Topps checklists (including our favorite Tim Wallach supercollector, who is nearing 1953 set completion) will know that Vern Law never made it into the original 1953 set. Neither did 56 other players who made up "The Cards That Never Were" subset at the end of the 1991 Topps Archives checklist.

Topps really took this theme seriously, writing a paragraph for the card back as though we were in early 1953 looking forward at the upcoming season. We're told, "This strong righthanded hurler rejoins the Pirates this year after spending the 1952 campaign in military service." 

Those who don't know the 274-card checklist of 1953 Topps by heart can use several other cues to place this subset as an revisionist augmentation to the set rather than a pure reproduction of the original. 

First, the images are black-and-white photographs rather than the full-color paintings we'd see on the originals. I have a mostly complete run of this set, and the only exception I could find was Hank Aaron's card #317. He did get a color painting, but it's not nearly up to the more lifelike standard found in the originals. The next clue is the background. It's usually a one of a few plain solid colors like this, or sometimes it might overlay a faint black-and-white background.

On the back, you could just check whether the card number is #281 or above. There's no red-colored facsimile signature behind the write-up like you'd see on an original. And finally, the card back will have "The Cards That Never Were" printed on the very bottom.

1991 Topps Archives '53 #132 Tom Morgan

Here's a reproduction of an original '53, and the difference is quite obvious. The colors are vibrant, and there's even some festive little bunting in the background on the facade of the stadium. 

This card is more of a review of Tom Morgan's 1952 season, as he served in the military during 1953, which the card back mentions. He was back in (baseball) action in 1954, wrapping up his career with the Los Angeles Angels in 1963.

I don't know anyone who would call a 1991 card from the heart of the overproduction era "vintage", although one has to wonder. As disconcerting as this fact is, that was thirty-one years ago. And when I really got my collection going in 1993, I'd have to find something from 1962 to have something as old then as this is right now.

But still, 1991 is not vintage.

Is it?

Or is "vintage" an ever-receding landmark in the rearview mirror, something that became fixed in place at some point, an idea that somehow manages never to keep pace with our world that's rapidly becoming more and more unpredictable?

Maybe let's just not think about that.

1971 Topps #675 Dave Boswell

Here's 1971. This is vintage.

This shouldn't be very surprising, but when I go through cards from this long ago, there are a lot of names I don't know. Tons. Dave Boswell is among them. 

He's pictured here as a Twin, which is where he spent his career from 1964-1970. However, the Twins released him in early 1971. He appeared in a handful of games for the 1971 Tigers and Orioles, but that was the end of his career. It was also the end of the line for his Topps issues, meaning this is his sunset card. He appeared in a few oddball sets after that, but Topps never documented either of his final pair of teams.

1971 Topps #499 Checklist 5

Jay threw in a checklist from 1971, and it's stops just a little short of including Dave Boswell's card #675, ending at #643. Whoever had this before me had a long way to go before completing the black-bordered 1971 set, but they certainly had a few of the big names checked off. Hall-of-Famers like Ernie Banks, Carl Yastrzemski, Roberto Clemente, and quite a few others. It's marked in pencil, and it looks like #531 Mike Torrez was possibly erased. Maybe part of a trade?

1978 Topps #23 Bump Wills

Fast forwarding a few years to 1978, perhaps a bit closer to that blurry vintage/modern dividing line, we come to "Bump" Wills, the son of Dodger great Maury Wills.

Wills's true Rookie Card is a four-player card from 1977. This is his first solo card. He finished third in 1977 AL Rookie of the Year voting, losing out to Eddie Murray, but he did earn himself a Topps All-Star Rookie cup, clearly shown on the lower right of the card. It's a nice addition to this posed photo, taken inside the newly-renovated (old) Yankee Stadium.

1967 Topps #76 Jim Barbieri (RC)

Jim Barbieri is another name I don't know, but this 1967 card was the oldest one in this shipment, so up it goes on the blog. The posed photo looks similar to Bump Wills's card, but this checks the box for the always-trusty bat barrel shot.

The card back says that Barbieri threw out the ceremonial first pitch in the 1954 World Series, the very same World Series where Willie Mays gave us "The Catch" in Game 1, so it's very likely that this Dodgers rookie was on hand to witness that legendary defensive play as a thirteen-year-old. The card doesn't specify for which game Barbieri got the honors, but I'll go ahead and believe it was Game 1, because why not? Maybe the ceremonial first pitch used to be exclusive to Game 1 back then, anyway.

Barbieri's career spanned all of thirty-nine regular-season games in 1966, so this Topps card ends up being a combo Rookie Card and Sunset Card. 

There was a 40th game before his career truly ended, though. Apparently no stranger to Game 1 of the World Series, he appeared as a pinch-hitter for the Dodgers in the '66 Fall Classic. He struck out swinging in the 4th inning and that was that.

1986 Negro League Fritsch #19 Martín Dihigo

Jay included a few oddball cards focused on Negro League stars, including Cuban-born Hall-of-Famer Martín Dihigo, "a talented second baseman who was a superior hitter". And despite what you might think from this grainy black-and-white photo, he wasn't a 19th century contemporary of Cy Young or Old Hoss Radbourn. Dihigo played and managed right up through the mid-1940s.

Sadly, by and large, oddballs like this release from Larry Fritsch Cards are about all that's out there for many Hall-of-Famers who played only in the Negro Leagues. Players like Dihigo, Oscar Charleston, Turkey Stearnes, and many others have been as ignored by the card industry as by pre-1947 Major League Baseball itself. For example, Dave Boswell has 28 search results on Beckett. Martín Dihigo has 26. Only one of them is in the Hall of Fame.

Perhaps now that the various Negro Leagues have finally been recognized as Major Leagues, that will start to change. Maybe there would be numerous legal difficulties Topps/Fanatics would encounter if they tried, but I'd buy a retro-themed Negro Leagues set if it were on the market.

Just saying, if there's room for the thousandth Dustin May card, maybe there's room for some Hall-of-Famers that remain far too obscure.

1991 Swell Baseball Greats #9 Joe Black

Another oddball came from the Swell Baseball Greats set, a 1991 release from a brand of the Philadelphia Chewing Gum Corporation. Joe Black, pictured here as a Brooklyn Dodger, joined the National League in 1952, winning Rookie of the Year honors thanks to a 15-4 record. He kept playing through 1957. He got his start with the Baltimore Elite Giants, playing for them from 1943-48.

We'll keep the World Series history going with a fact from the card back, which is that he was the first Black pitcher to win a World Series game. That happened in 1952 versus the Dodgers' crosstown rivals, the Yankees. It was a seven-game battle, as were most of the matchups that decade between the Yankees and Dodgers.

1979 O-Pee-Chee #202 Gary Thomasson

To close, we'll head north of the border. This looks quite like a 1979 Topps card, but look closely inside the little baseball element and you'll see a fun O-Pee-Chee logo! The Canadian brand that licensed and distributed Topps sets for years throughout Canada actually made some noticeable changes to Gary Thomasson's 1979 Topps card.

In the USA set, Topps simply pictured and listed Gary Thomasson as a Yankee, but by the time O-Pee-Chee got around to it, they had time to switch the listed team to the Dodgers, as well as provide the date that Thomasson was traded. The Dodgers acquired Thomasson for catcher Brad Gulden, who bounced around the league until 1986.

I learn a lot when I get stacks of vintage cards. So many of these guys I've never heard of, but there's always a wealth of knowledge to uncover, from small offseason trades to World Series history.

 

All-Star Weekend

It has been a very long time since I've blogged about cards the same day I acquired them. But we can restart that clock, because I swung by the Topps booth at the Play Ball Park earlier today and picked up a few packs of 2021 Topps Series 2.

The Play Ball Park is basically what MLB used to call FanFest. To coincide with All-Star week, they filled the huge Colorado Convention Center in Downtown Denver with all sorts of baseball-related activities and exhibits. It's running for several days until the All-Star Game itself occurs on Tuesday. Tickets were free, and I happened to snag one a few weeks ago. It was quite an experience for me, because I haven't been in a crowd even approaching that size since long before the pandemic started.

Some of the highlights of the Play Ball Park included a display from the Hall of Fame, which had historic items ranging from Hank Aaron's 714th home run ball to Jose Canseco's batting helmet to Larry Walker's Spongebob shirt. A separate exhibit gave us a look at some of the various trophies bestowed upon star players, like the Silver Slugger bat and the Roberto Clemente award. The Negro League Hall of Fame had an exhibit too, with glassed-in "lockers" for legends like Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson, and two-way player Martín Dihigo. All sorts of kid-friendly activities like a softball diamond, batting cage, and more were there too.

But the main highlight for me and my first destination was the Topps booth. They had lots of Series 2 for sale, along with an offer of an event-exclusive card if you bought three packs at $4 each and turned in the pack wrappers. As I was slowly reminded of how expensive it can be to venture into public, I was greeted by the shiny 70th Anniversary seal on each of the base cards. But before we get to that, let's have a look at that exclusive card.

2021 Topps Big League All-Star FanFest #ASFF-3 Trevor Story

Unless you've seen the sell sheets, I'm assuming this is your first look at the delayed 2021 Topps Big League design. They picked a half-dozen upcoming Big League cards to make this special set, and I picked the lone Rockie on offer, Trevor Story. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, to be honest. These aren't even on Beckett yet. I'll try to get a blaster once these actually hit the market, but it's appealing at first glance. It's not too overdone, and vaguely reminds me of something like 1993 Donruss or 1993 Pacific.

The back specifically mentions Story's two previous All-Star appearances, which included a home run in his 2018 All-Star debut. He didn't get selected to the roster this year, although he will be participating in the Home Run Derby on Monday evening. He's matched up with Joey Gallo in his bracket pairing, and it's sure to be a great show. They're not using the humidor at Coors Field for the Derby, so we can expect at least a few baseballs to be put into orbit. 

Around Jupiter, that is.

Unfortunately, the card back has a bit of damage. There's a strip a couple millimeters wide across the whole back that looks like heat damage or something. Like the gloss was melted. I've heard Topps has been having some quality control issues lately, and maybe this is a similar example of what other collectors have been seeing. 

2021 Topps #541 Corey Dickerson

At least the base cards themselves looked fine. As expected, the design is basically the same as Opening Day, except the Opening Day banner is replaced with a seal of silver foil in the upper left. Topps has been at this for seventy years, which sounds like quite a bit more than the forty they were commemorating on the 1991 set nearer the start of my collecting career. 

Trevor Story might not be an All-Star, but Germán Márquez is, and he's the lone Rockies representative. Márquez made his way to the Rockies via a trade with the Rays, and Corey Dickerson was the primary return piece. He's been a journeyman since, playing for both Florida teams, both Pennsylvania teams, and was traded to the Buffalo/Toronto Blue Jays a couple weeks ago.

2021 Topps #616 Alex Dickerson

Corey Dickerson is not to be confused with Alex Dickerson, the Giants outfielder. No relation between the two, and only Corey has an All-Star appearance. Both have had great games in Coors Field, though. Corey played for the Rockies for three seasons, and Alex has spent his whole career in the NL West, frequently getting chances to use the Coors Field launching pad. As the card back tells us, he did just that on September 1st, 2020, hitting three home runs for sixteen total bases during a 5-for-6 day at the plate.

As you might imagine, the Giants won that one, 23-5.

2021 Topps #641 Nick Markakis

As the Dickerson not-brothers continue their Major League careers, Nick Markakis decided to end his. He retired after fifteen seasons with the Orioles and Braves, getting up to 2,388 hits. That makes this 2021 Topps card a sunset card, showing us his complete career record going back to 2006 with Baltimore. He wasn't known for great power, and dropped into single-digit home runs for several of his later seasons. But he was a reliable player, a one-time All-Star, a Silver Slugger, and a three-time Gold Glove winner.

And fans will never forget that time he took strike one.

2021 Topps #582 Dwight Smith Jr.

We're very much in the age of second-generation Major Leaguers. Tatis, Guerrero, Bichette, Biggio, Bellinger, Gordon, and many more. I recently found out that Ke'Bryan Hayes is the son of former Rockies third baseman Charlie Hayes. And anyone who completed an overproduction-era set would probably also recognize the names McCullers, Varsho, Romine, and Mondesí. 

I guess it's always been this way, with the Boones and the Alous and the Griffeys and so on, but following this game long enough to see two generations come through feels a little unsettling.

Dwight Smith, Jr. is also on that list, the son of former Cubs outfielder Dwight Smith (Sr.). I haven't followed his career much, but he did get a good Tatooine card in 2021 Topps. I noticed a few of these in just a small stack, including Eric Hosmer's card. This generally requires the photographer to have a higher angle on the field of play, and that's something you'll probably see a bit more often on cards with 2020-vintage photos. Teams across the league didn't allow photographers in the well next to the dugout in 2020, instead stationing them five or so rows up in the seats.

Of course, Dwight Smith, Jr.'s face mask makes this an obvious relic of the 2020 season, but knowing what was happening behind the lens that year gives further confirmation if you know what you're looking for.

2021 Topps #486 South Side Strength / Yoán Moncada / Yasmani Grandal / José Abreu / Eloy Jiménez

Once upon a time, Topps used to cram 132 card numbers, an entire sheet's worth, onto a single checklist. They've trimmed that down significantly, fitting just 33 onto the back of this one. That's basically a fourfold increase in the number of checklists needed, approximately 21 cards in a 700-card set. I enjoy these fun photos as much as the next guy, but that's half a team worth of players that aren't represented in the main set. Couple that with almost 100 fewer cards in the set, and four more teams than we had prior to 1993, that squeezes a lot of players out of having their own card.

In any case, this four-player card shows (left to right) Yoán Moncada, Yasmani Grandal, Eloy Jiménez, and José Abreu. Both sides of the card tell us that these four guys hit four consecutive home runs, which happened on August 16th, 2020. That date was a purple visited hyperlink for me on Baseball Reference, and I had previously looked it up because of Carter Kieboom's commemorative Negro Leagues patch from his Opening Day card. You'll notice that these White Sox are wearing that same patch, pinpointing this to the actual date of the feat. The only slight inaccuracy is that Jiménez and Abreu should swap places to match the actual batting order that day.

2021 Topps #341 Franmil Reyes

That checklist pretty much has to have a horizontal orientation, but this one of Franmil Reyes could go either way. This photo looks like he might have just hit a walkoff home run, and in fact he did just that a couple days ago, a long shot over the tall left field wall in Cleveland.

I saw him play during his last few weeks as a Padre when I visited San Diego. The (loud) fan near me announced his "Franimal" nickname before each at bat. July 2019, the first series after the All-Star break. That was the last time I was on a plane or outside my home state of Colorado. At the end of that month, Reyes was traded to the Indians, which is where he's been ever since.

2021 Topps Rainbow Foil #421 Mark Mathias

Three packs, three inserts. On average I did just fine. I pulled this Rainbow Foil parallel of Brewers outfielder Mark Mathias, whom I have never heard of. It is his Rookie Card, and who knows, maybe in a decade this will be worth thousands of dollars, just like Mike Trout's 2011 Update parallels. 

Or not.

He actually hasn't played in 2021 yet, but this is a really shiny card. Even shinier than these rainbow cards are inside the Bunt app.

2021 Topps '86 Topps Autographs #86A-NN Nick Neidert S2 (AU)

My biggest hit of these three packs was a Marlin. It's an on-card autograph of rookie pitcher Nick Neidert. He pitched as recently as Thursday, so he's still getting his feet wet in the Majors. I hadn't heard of him either, but I have now.

The card back only congratulates me for pulling an autograph, but the front is very true to the 1986 Topps design. It's the logical evolution of the 35th Anniversary insert set that we saw in the previous post, and this color scheme works well for the Marlins. If Topps keeps this cycle up, next year will bring us back to the iconic 1987 set. I'm not sure how they'll handle that, since they featured that set heavily in 2017 when they decided a 30-year anniversary was more to their liking than 35.

2021 Topps 70 Years of Topps Baseball Series 2 #70YT-40 Bryce Harper

In any case, the Topps designs of my childhood are still fairly common in current packs. For their 70th anniversary, Topps felt that it was time to do another retrospective of all their base designs one-by-one to make a 70-card insert set. If you remember the 60 Years of Topps set from 2011, it's basically that again. A year-by-year look at each of the main sets Topps has released, some featuring current players and some retired stars. This one has Bryce Harper on the 1990 Topps design, and the card back tells us about the set itself rather than the player. 

This set "ushered in a new decade with pizzazz", explaining the various color schemes and gradients, and I can confirm that these green and white borders are period-correct. It also mentions that 792-card checklist that sounds so correct to me, along with some Nolan Ryan highlight cards and the famous Frank Thomas rookie. There is no mention, however, of the even-more-famous Frank Thomas error card. It's a card so famous my mom knows about it, and has bought 1990 Topps packs for me to check.

Trevor Story has his work cut out for him in the Home Run Derby. Tune in to ESPN Monday night at 6pm Mountain to see how he fares against Ohtani, Gallo, Mancini, and the rest. And if you find yourself at a Topps booth at a future Play Ball Park, open some packs! It's fun for all ages.

The First Update of the Decade (Part 1: Base Cards)

2020 brings us to a new decade. The Roaring Twenties are back. But first, I have some 2019 Topps Update to review. I purchased a hanger box at Target last year, and while I was confident it hadn't been searched, the way it was packaged deprived me of the pleasure of opening individual packs. The whole stack of cards emerged from the box tightly wrapped in a single layer of clear plastic. In all honestly, that's marginally better from an environmental perspective, because I do find myself a bit horrified at the waste generated by a box of packs.

And if the new decade has anything to teach us, this is the decade where we need to rapidly figure that sort of thing out.

2019 Topps Update #US5 CC Sabathia HL CL

The horizontal cards in this set are a beauty, and they all came grouped together in that single brick, sort of how the factory sets are packaged. And for this checklist card of CC Sabathia's 3,000th career strikeout, we see him on the mound with the expanse of a big league ballpark before him. I spent far too long trying to determine which stadium this photo depicts, squinting at all the banners. I thought I made out an ad for Gila River Casino on the upper deck, placing this in one of the western stadiums like Arizona or Anaheim.

That was before I glanced down and saw the Diamondbacks logo painted on the back slope of the mound, staring me right in the face, plain as day.

Chase Field. There, I solved it.

That day back in April, Carsten Charles Sabathia became just the third lefty in baseball history to reach that illustrious milestone, fanning John Ryan Murphy of the Arizona Diamondbacks and earning a spot on the first checklist card of 2019 Topps Update. I didn't pull Vladimir Guererro, Jr's Rookie Card, but at least I pulled the checklist referencing it.

2019 Topps Update #US47 Pete Alonso AS

Topps Update has long been known for All-Star Game cards, and 2019 is no exception. One day after winning the Home Run Derby in Cleveland, Pete Alonso came to the plate in the actual game, much better protected against an errant pitch. You can even see his "Polar Bear" nickname on the upper segment of his elbow guard.

Alonso had two at-bats in the exhibition game, so it's unclear exactly when this was taken. He struck out his first time up, then hit a two-RBI single in the 8th inning, driving in David Dahl and bringing the National League to within one run. It wouldn't be quite enough, as the American League prevailed yet again, just as they've done in all but four of the last twenty-three. And that's counting that ridiculous tie in 2002.

2019 Topps Update #US128 Gio Urshela

CC Sabathia was on the road when he got his 3,000th strikeout, so here's a look at a Yankee in full pinstripes.

You know I have an eye for commemorative and memorial patches on uniforms, but the Yankees rarely play that game. Instead, they usually just wear a black band on their sleeve, this one in memory of Mel Stottlemyre.

There were a few Yankees in this pack, but I picked third baseman Gio Urshela for the blog. The Yankees hit a ton of home runs last year (well, most years), and I've become quite fond of announcer John Sterling's clever home run calls. "That Gary is scary!" "Like a good Gleyber, Torres is there!" And, perhaps my favorite of all, "Gio Urshela, the most happy fella!"

2019 Topps Update #US181 Scott Oberg

In just his second appearance on Infield Fly Rule, reliever Scott Oberg was the only Rockie in the box. His first card here was an early Bowman prospects card, but he now has plenty of Major League experience under his belt. He signed a three-year extension with the Rockies, pretty much the only significant move the team has made all offseason.

Please don't trade Nolan Arenado.

Update comes out so late in the season that Topps often has time to use a photo from the same year the set is released. CC Sabathia's card would be one example, from late April 2019. But judging ("All Rise! Here comes the Judge!" Ok I'll stop) by this photo, it's from 2018, as we can see the Rockies 25th Anniversary patch on Oberg's hat and a sliver of it on his right sleeve. On that same hand, Oberg is about to fire in a four-seamer through the thin Denver air.

2019 Topps Update #US33 Josh Harrison

More horizontal goodness comes to us with Josh Harrison's card, who's now a member of the Detroit Tigers. This is a Stadium-Club worthy card, showing Harrison sliding headfirst into home plate, framed between the legs of a Tiger teammate. It might even be Jordy Mercer, his former Pirates squadmate, who both signed as free agents with Detroit prior to the 2019 season.

I didn't know that off the top of my head. It's on the card back.

Whoever he is, he's doing his job of temporary home plate coach, guiding his trail runner what to do when he arrives at the plate. You don't see many headfirst slides, so I doubt there's a signal for that. I'm sure speedster Josh Harrison decided to do that all on his own.

2019 Topps Update #US22 Ian Kinsler

I wasn't overly amazed by this particular photo, although I can spot Petco Park somewhat easily now that I've visited it. I selected this card in honor of Ian Kinsler's career, the veteran second baseman who recently announced his retirement. He finished with four All-Star selections, two Gold Gloves, a World Series trophy with the 2018 Red Sox, one inning pitched, and 1,999 hits.

Congratulations to Ian Kinsler on a great career!

2019 Topps Update #US29 Tommy La Stella

Action shots aren't reserved for horizontal cards. Double-play cards lend themselves quite well to either orientation, with Walt Weiss's 1991 Topps card coming to mind. This time, it's an AL West showdown between Tommy La Stella and Marcus Semien of the Oakland A's. Semien played the full 162-game schedule last season, and led the AL with a whopping 747 plate appearances.

The card back says that La Stella made a tweak to his batting stance upon his arrival in Anaheim, and was quickly rewarded with a flurry of home runs, more than he'd hit in his career up to that point. That improvement led to his first All-Star selection.

2019 Topps Update #US245 Mike Yastrzemski (RC)

With longtime fan favorites like CC Sabathia and Ian Kinsler retiring, the literal next generation of baseball players are taking center stage. We saw a Carl Yastrzemski card a few months ago. Now here's Mike, his grandson. Mike was far behind Pete Alonso's record-breaking rookie home run count, but still swatted 21 in just 107 games last year. With Madison Bumgarner moving to the Arizona desert, Yaz could be the bright spot in the Giants lineup in 2020.

He's displaying good form running the bases, and that dirty uniform shows that he plays hard. The cleaner parts of his uniform show a pair of memorial patches, honoring #44 Willie McCovey and Peter McGowan, a former Giants executive. Add to that the MLB 150 logo, and the right sleeve of the Giants uniform was a crowded piece of real estate last season. Which is quite appropriate for San Francisco.

2019 Topps Update #US39 Cavan Biggio (RC)

With the demise of every other card company, Topps Update has become the place to go for rookie cards. Mike Trout's 2011 Update card commands exorbitant prices, and Charlie Blackmon's rookie card can be found in that set as well. 2013 gave us RCs of Nolan Arenado, Christian Yelich, Gerrit Cole, and Anthony Rendon. I believe I have all but Rendon. 2017 had Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger as the main attractions. Vlad Jr. is card #1 in this year's set, and Yaz and Cavan Biggio could also become coveted cards in the coming years.

Cavan, of course, is the son of Hall of Famer Craig Biggio, and along with Vlad, Jr. and Bo Bichette, is part of an exciting young Blue Jays team with plenty of familiar names. If their careers blossom the way their fathers' did, we're sure to see them follow up these Rookie Cards with plenty of All-Star Game cards in Update sets yet to come.

The Pinnacle of Affordable Group Breaks (Part 1: Rockies)

They might not be a chance to add the latest and greatest to your collection, but any time Colbey at Cardboard Collections runs one of his affordable group breaks, you know they're an opportunity to take a walk down memory lane for just a few dollars. In late January, he decided to order up some 1995 Pinnacle products, and I bought the usual two-team slot. As usual, part one includes the Rockies, who are on a three-game winning streak, and the randomizer decreed this time that part two will consist of Philadelphia Phillies.

1995 Sportflix #9 Charlie Hayes

Pinnacle Brands put out quite a few products in 1995, including the penultimate year of the lenticular Sportflix set. This set has quite a bit going on. Not only are there two photos of third baseman Charlie Hayes to be found when you tilt the card, but also his last name appears to rush out at you on the right side. Even more than that, the logo on the right side alternates between the Sportflix '95 logo and the Rockies team logo.

These never come across that well in scans, but I don't really expect them to. What you can see anyway is Charlie Hayes' special face guard, which was such a curiosity that it appeared all over his 1995 cards. It pre-dated the C-flap by over twenty years.

There aren't too many stats on the back, but Pinnacle did highlight a few career totals in the Triple Crown categories. Seeing a .267 average isn't too jarring, but above that are his 367 career RBIs, an oddly huge and in-progress number that isn't usually featured on a card, which tend to focus on single-season accomplishments. He finished his career in 2001 with 740 RBIs and a surprisingly consistent .262 average.

1995 Sportflix #10 David Nied

So many pitcher cards show them mid-delivery, with their elbows, arms, and faces contorted into frightful positions. The ghostly half of this lenticular card is no different, but the alternate image shows a rarely-seen shot of this Rockies ace calling a popup. Pitchers seem to do this less often these days, but it's still surprisingly rare to see on a baseball card of any era.

On the back, Pinnacle kept the same theme of including full career statistics through 1995. There's also a small mention of Nied's "first full Major League season" in 1994, blatantly disregarding the strike that shortened both the '94 and '95 seasons. The career stats selected for these card backs mirror the Pitching Triple Crown, the lesser-known cousin of position player greatness. Those stats are wins, strikeouts, and ERA. It's a bit more common for pitchers to lead all three categories than batters to hit for average and power, but it's still quite rare. It hasn't been done since 2011, when both Justin Verlander and Clayton Kershaw pulled it off.

Anyway, looking at the back of Nied's card shows what would pass for a fairly decent single-season performance: a 17-6 record, 139 Ks, and an alarmingly high but Rockies-esque 4.58 ERA. Unfortunately, those are his stats from 1992-1994, and while his win-loss record looks quite impressive, Pinnacle made a significant error. His career record to that point was actually 17-16, meaning they dropped a full ten losses from his career count. When you feature a number that prominently, you really should get it right.

Sadly for David Nied, he'd never win another game, wrapping up his career in 1996 with a 17-18 record.

1995 Score Summit #45 Larry Walker

The next set is one you've seen a lot of around here, 1995 Score Summit. It's arrived in a few trades and even a Nachos Grande group break. I don't believe I've shown the Larry Walker card from this year, though. These cards always surprise me in how thick they are, and the photo reproduction is really quite sharp. The gold medallion team logo is a bit hard to discern, but it catches the light well enough.

1995 Score Summit Nth Degree #105 Dante Bichette

The primary hit I got in this break was Dante Bichette's Nth Degree parallel, which is one of the most sparkly parallels out there. It's not new to my collection, arriving once upon a time from everyone's favorite French trader, to whom I send my condolences for the destruction suffered by the Notre Dame cathedral this week.

I've shown the card before, but wanted to give my scanner another shot at it to have it turn out less blue than before. Success.

1995 Zenith #20 Dante Bichette

Unlike Summit, 1995 Zenith is a rarity in my collection, occupying only two 9-pocket page slots in my vast collection. Dante Bichette got a card in this set too, and given the small size of all three of these sets (200 cards or less), there is quite a bit of player repetition. They might all even be from the same photo shoot, as Dante is shown in a black spring training jersey with an away uniform on both his Summit and Zenith cards. Summit and Zenith pretty much mean the same thing anyway, as does Pinnacle. The set names in 1995 probably came from a thesaurus. There was no Acme, but that would have worked as well.

Gold foil was the name of the game in 1995, even hitting Topps flagship base cards for the first time. Pinnacle used the normal shade of gold for the various foil elements in this set, but I quite like the shade they used for the brick pyramid element in the background. It's a lot darker of a shade, more like honey, which manages to stand out among all the other gold sets of the era.

1995 Zenith #129 Juan Acevedo (RC)

The Rookie subset in Zenith didn't use the same shade, giving us lots more gold to look at, as well as a duplicated image as a backdrop for the main photo. The card back gives us a nice write-up of Juan Acevedo's prospects on a baseball stadium-themed design, complete with an artificial shadow of the player's head being cast over the outfield. There's even a cute scoreboard with his statistics.

1995 Zenith #129 Juan Acevedo (RC) (Reverse)

It's more cartoony than 1993 Fleer Ultra, which had a similar theme, but Bichette's main set card makes great use of this layout, showing his spray chart to the various fields against both lefties and righties. Bichette managed one opposite-field home run in 1994, long before the phrase "oppo taco" came into use.

1995 Zenith #NNO Chase Programs Checklist

Colbey even included one of the checklists for 1995 Zenith, showing the full breakdown of the three insert sets. Looking over these names reminds you of a few you haven't heard in a while, like Carlos Baerga and Raul Mondesi. Plenty of others are now in the Hall of Fame.

One of the three sets is "Rookie Roll Call". As usual with a set like that, it's peppered with now-legends like Derek Jeter and Chipper Jones, a few minor stars of the day like Todd Hollandsworth and LaTroy Hawkins, plus a few prospects that didn't especially pan out, such as Benji Gil and Bill Pulsipher. Only one Rockie made it into any of these insert sets, and that was Larry Walker.

Given these small set sizes, it looks like I did pretty well as far as pulling full team sets. Summit was pretty far along already, but Zenith is going to need a few more pockets in the 1995 binder.

Post #100 and a giveaway!

Hard to believe that this is the one hundredth post of Infield Fly Rule. When I started this just under two years ago, I had no idea it would be so successful, and no idea that I'd have found so many awesome trading partners all over the country.

That averages out to about a post a week over that time, although if you look at my archives, it's a lot streakier than that. I have plenty of post ideas, and a couple stacks of trade posts and card show pickups from months ago. Ideas are there, but time, of course, is always at a premium. How Matt at Bob Walk The Plank has done six times as many posts in two fewer weeks is beyond me.

Anyway, since the human mind really enjoys nice, round numbers, I've been saving up some cards for an appropriately-themed giveaway.

1990 Upper Deck #100 Checklist 1-100

Checklists!

These could be found in most sets during the overproduction era, but they became few and far between as the years progressed. They evolved into insert cards rather than actual base cards, then to the back panel of factory set boxes, then disappeared altogether. Topps resurrected checklists a few years ago by combining them with highlight cards, but they're pretty tough to spot at a glance.

With websites like Beckett and BaseballCardPedia out there, printed checklists are less a necessity and more of a legacy item. Sort of like cabooses. But I know of more than a few collectors that love the things, and even more that lament their relative absence in today's collecting world.

But what could be better for a 100th-post contest than the once-crucial checklist? Upper Deck and Donruss both reserved their hundredth card numbers for checklists (as you can see above), while Topps just stuck them any old place. But Topps reserved those special card numbers for superstars, clearly showing us that the 100, 200, 300, etc... card number was an important spot.

So if you want to win a team bag full of checklists, just leave a comment below! I'll close the entry period at 11:59pm MST on Friday, November 27th and randomize to determine the winner.

I'm not the only one doing a giveaway right now, so if you're in the mood for some free cards (or if mine doesn't interest you), head over to Brad's Blog and help take some of his collection off his hands before his move. You also have a few hours left to enter Matt's contest at Bob Walk The Plank.

Good luck!

The Trading Post #41: Baseball Cards Come To Life!

Bo from Baseball Cards Come To Life! "loves big trades".

1993 Leaf #120 Checklist

All the way back in April (before the Rockies drifted down the NL West standings and Tulo was still wearing the purple pinstripes), Bo and I swapped medium-sized flat rate boxes full of baseball cards. The box I sent him wasn't quite as full, but after I unpacked what Bo mailed, the cards took up two entire rows of a 5,000-count box.

So I didn't quite know how to tackle this one.

I thought about splitting up this post into Topps and Non-Topps as I've done before, but there was significantly more UD, Pinnacle, Leaf, etc... than Topps, so it wouldn't have been balanced. Instead, much like getting a heavy parcel full of cardboard, I'm just going to give this to you in one giant, heaping spoonful.

Sharp-eyed readers will notice the late Ken Caminiti in that checklist card above, and given that he was part of the monster 12-player trade between the Astros and Padres in 1994, I figured any one of those players on a checklist card would be a perfect metaphor for this trade.

It's an interesting photo, because if one didn't know the rules of baseball, one might think that Caminiti were lunging for that ball as though the championship depended on it. Unlike most team sports that feature a constant battle for the ball, when you think about it, the fact that the offense pretty much wants the ball as far away from any human (especially baserunners) as possible once it leaves the bat is quite unusual.

Of course, that card is from the well-loved 1993 Leaf set, which Bo sent over in pretty darn close to complete form. I needed around 20 cards from series 2; I probably have that half complete now.

1993 Stadium Club #458 Alex Cole

1993 Stadium Club wasn't quite as complete, but I still received at least 400 cards from it, and all in numerical order, a huge help! Of course, 1993 was the first year Rockies and Marlins started making regular appearances on cardboard, and Alex Cole, with his trademark goggles, was an easy player to spot on the field. For the same reason, so was Chris Sabo on the Reds, a player that was mentioned during the Rockies' broadcast last week.

1991 Stadium Club #81 Chuck Finley

There was plenty more Stadium Club to be found, like this great action shot of Chuck Finley from the inaugural 1991 set, when they touted their use of Kodak film in obtaining their images. The shallow depth of field focuses on Finley's delivery, but the downside is that I have no idea who's at the plate, making it difficult to date this card.

1994 Stadium Club #100 Joey Cora

Here's a bit of a different view of the common double play shot. Oakland catcher Terry Steinbach is trying to break up a double play, and you can even see the base bending underneath Joey Cora's nameplate. It's a crowded area around second base, as Ozzie Guillen is in on the action as well, just under a decade before he'd go on to manage the White Sox to a World Series win.

1998 Stadium Club #192 Dante Bichette

Of course, the Rockies are still in the hunt for their first-ever World Series win, but at least they've been there, something many other expansion teams are not lucky enough to claim.

Dante Bichette was one of the Blake Street Bombers, and here he's casually sitting around on a cart for his 1998 Stadium Club photo shoot. I always liked the embossed baseball stitching on the corner of this set, and I think this is the first year of the updated Stadium Club logo.

I am guessing that this was shot during spring training. You can see the letters "HI" on the front of the cart, probably the property of Hi Corbett Field in Tucson, Arizona. Up until recently, that's where the Rockies held their spring training games, and my sister and I even made it down for a game in 2008.

That's about it for Topps, but there's still lots more to come.

1992 Classic/Best #286 Andy Pettitte

Bo included a few oddballs among all these cards, like a few from the minor league Classic brand. Most of them were no-namers that never made it to The Show. A few did, like Joey Eischen and Mark Sweeney, but there were a couple of real superstars in there, like Jim Edmonds and Andy Pettitte.

I saw him pitch at Coors Field once, back in 2002. The Yankees beat the Rockies that day in a 20-10 slugfest. Pettitte came a long way between wearing a minor league uniform and pitching the Yankees to numerous World Series wins.

1995 Signature Rookies Tetrad #58 Todd Helton

Like another Denver sports superstar, Todd Helton went to the University of Tennessee. He was proficient in both baseball and football, even serving on the same football team as Peyton Manning. Surprisingly, Helton is listed on this oddball card as a pitcher. It's true; he was quite a proficient closer before making the switch over to first base.

In fact, he's not the only multi-sport player the Rockies have targeted in the draft. Russell Wilson, current quarterback of the Seattle Seahawks, was picked by the Rockies and even played in the minors for a year or two. He still shows up for spring training as a Texas Ranger, but at this point, he probably ought to stick to the NFL.

1993 Pinnacle #521 Darren Holmes

Darren Holmes was much more baseball-focused than Wilson, and he leads off a few Pinnacle cards, this one from 1993. This was one of the first Rockies cards, sneaking its way into Series 2 like most of the 1993 releases. The logo on the front is from the 1992 expansion draft, while the Rockies logo on the back is an old version that was tweaked just a bit before they began their first season.

During the 1994 strike, we had a little family outing to a mall-anchor department store to get Darren's autograph. He signed several items for me, most of which I still have. The baseball is a bit faded, but the cards and 8x10 photo are as sharp as ever.

1993 Select #77 Luis Sojo

You'd think with as much as I go on about green cards, you'd have seen some 1993 Select by now, but the set just never grew on me. Somehow the green isn't as vivid, maybe because of the two-tone design they use.

I like this picture of Luis Sojo. The Angels' second baseman probably looks like I did playing second base in little league, squinting his eyes and just hoping that the baseball gods would guide the ball into his glove. While I'm sure a few liners ended up over my head, the back of this card tells a different story.

1993 Select #77 Luis Sojo (Reverse)

That might be the best snow cone I've ever seen on a card.

1995 Pinnacle #208 Bo Jackson

How's that for a sunset card? Nevermind the guy's baseball career; that is an awesome awesome Blue Angels F/A-18 Hornet!

By the time this 1995 card was printed, Bo Jackson had played his last game. He spent a year with the California Angels (before all that "of Anaheim" nonsense) as a Designated Hitter. The reverse only has his 1994 and career total stats, plus a rarely-seen line of "Career Highs"—the baseball card version of those little bars that stay elevated on a stereo equalizer.

It's a very 1990s card.

1995 Ultra #155 Mike Kingery

Mike Kingery was one of my mom's favorite players during the early years of the Rockies. He was an unassuming, yet capable, center fielder. Not a Jim Edmonds by any means, but he made plenty of clutch plays in the cavernous outfield of Coors Field.

This is a play at the plate, although not the usual dusty, sliding affair we're used to. That's definitely a Giants' catcher (probably Kirt Manwaring) unceremoniously tagging Kingery on the leg for an unfortunate Rockies' out.

Fleer went a little nuts with the foil here, using both gold and silver foil, different letter styles for the first and last name, plus the team logo for good measure. The photography still works well in spite of all that.

1998 Fleer Tradition #471 Scott Brosius

Honestly, Fleer got pretty darn good with the photography in the post-strike era, although the designs always felt like they were trying too hard. They broke with tradition in 1998 and 1999, calling their flagship set "Fleer Tradition". Again, the photography is sharp and action-packed, and we even get a cameo of Rafael Bournigal, an under-the-radar Major Leaguer you've probably never heard of. His offensive stats are mediocre, but he had a stellar career fielding percentage of .988.

1996 Donruss #78 David Segui

Besides that stack of 1993 Leaf, there wasn't much Donruss in this huge box. There were a few from the 1996 set, known in collector circles as "the loincloth set" for the rather obstructive placement of the square jumble containing the logo, city, team, position, brand, and uniform number. There was no room for the player's name in all that, so we find that in a color-coded ribbon toward the top.

Almost everyone was following Stadium Club's lead by now, offering a full-bleed design with some interesting photography. This on-deck photo must be from the always-windy Candlestick Park, based on that San Francisco ad on the stadium facade.

1995 Collector's Choice SE #246 Mike Stanley

I'll wrap up with a bit of Upper Deck. Here's a slightly more conventional play at the plate, with Yankees catcher Mike Stanley bracing for an impact with Tino Martinez. I thought this might have been Edgar, the other Martinez, the one who spent his whole career in Seattle, the one who has a left-field bar area named for him at Safeco Field, but no. It was the soon-to-be Yankee Tino.

1995 Collector's Choice #442 Curt Leskanic

Here's another spring training photo, similar in design to Stanley's card, but from a set entirely separate from the blue Special Edition cards.

Curtis Leskanic was a strange guy. He was a pitcher's pitcher, not quite Turk Wendell-level, but still plenty odd. He claimed that he put more juice on his fastball by shaving his right arm to cut down on wind resistance. And for all I know, that's his Social Security number on his name sticker. I hope he hasn't suffered a lifetime of identity theft due to this card. But Baseball Card Bust has a different theory.

1994 Upper Deck #399 Terry Mulholland

1994 Upper Deck was well-represented, and it'll fit nicely into an already-large collection I have of that set. But I don't think I had this card. The dugout shot makes it interesting, and I'm guessing that this was not taken on a day he started. He looks relaxed enough to know that he's not climbing the mound that day.

I remember him as a Philadelpha Phillie, partly because he was on that team at the height of the baseball card bubble, but also since he pitched in the 1993 World Series, the first I ever watched. He played for a lot of teams in his long career, though surprisingly never for the Rockies.

1996 Upper Deck #27 Gary DiSarcina

Here's a double play card, always a blogosphere favorite. While the action is great, and I have an appreciation for middle infielders, perhaps the best aspect of these is the cameo. You're sure to find a baserunner, and occasionally the other middle infielder (like in that Joey Cora card way up at the top). 2B Damion Easley is nowhere to be found here, but we do get a cameo of Chris Gomez, a Detroit Tiger at the time.

DiSarcina makes it look easy. I played second base in little league, and I could never pull this off.

2007 UD Masterpieces #8 Lou Gehrig

This has been a hugely long post, certainly my longest, so thanks for hanging in there. I know that 1990s overproduction cards aren't everyone's cup of tea, but I would have been beyond ecstatic to get a box like this in my elementary school days. Even all these years later, I'm still pretty stoked and humbled that I've found such a generous community of like-minded bloggers, and that 48 people are even subscribed to this thing.

This box included enough cards to tell a bit of a story, leading off with Ken Caminiti, and wrapping up with a humble and appreciative Lou Gehrig, from a set that was one of Upper Deck's literal masterpieces.

Thank you, Bo, for all these great cards, and thanks to each and every one of you who takes the time to read my blog.