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 Trading Post #161: Chavez Ravining

Over the years, I've never really thought to keep track of the rate at which I win giveaways and contests run by my fellow bloggers. I entered a couple today, and I have my fingers crossed. As expected, my luck is best when there are more prizes on offer, which is what happened with a giveaway that Alex at Chavez Ravining ran this summer. 13th place sometimes brings up the rear, but other times, 13th place is a fine place to be.

 2019 Topps Father's Day Blue #131 Mark Trumbo /50

Of the many prizes on offer, I ended up with a couple low-numbered parallels from 2019 Topps Series 1. This Mark Trumbo card is numbered to just 50 copies, and it's from the Father's Day Blue parallel set. It has a pale blue border color, which works well with the hockey stick design of 2019. Maybe blue and orange paired together appeals to the Denver Broncos fan in me. Compared to the angular 2020 set, this is actually pretty nice. It might even be the best design they've done since they got rid of full borders after 2014.

I used to see Mark Trumbo's name a lot. He began his career as an Angel, and then spent some time on the Diamondbacks. I'll admit that long before we all knew how amazingly good Mike Trout was, I got their names mixed up from time to time. Same initials, same team. Of course, that didn't last long once it became clear that we had a future Hall-of-Famer in our midst. After Trumbo's time with Arizona, when I saw him during his frequent matchups with the Rockies, he sort of fell off my radar. He led the Majors with 47 home runs in 2016, earning a Silver Slugger and his second All-Star appearance in the process. After that, he trailed off due to injuries, and wasn't signed to play anywhere in 2020 even before the chaos that ensued this season. It's unclear whether the pandemic will end his career, which certainly could be the case for many players, not unlike what happened after the 1994 strike.

2019 Topps Mother's Day Pink #219 Martin Perez /50

As you might expect when there's a Father's Day Blue parallel set, there's also an equally rare Mother's Day Pink parallel set. This Martín Pérez card is numbered an even 50/50, which looks so appealing. Any one of them is nice, but knowing you have the very last one is just a little extra cool.

It doesn't look quite pink to me, more of a brick red. With a more uniform background than on Trumbo's card, you can see more clearly how Topps shades the card to make a colored parallel. Presumably, Trumbo's photo is just as blue as this is pink, but it just doesn't stand out much when the backdrop is a bunch of fans sitting in the shade. 

This card is pretty recent, but Pérez has already appeared on two other teams not pictured here. He was part of the Twins rotation in 2019, then moved on to Boston for 2020. He started 12 games, which is effectively a full season when a 60-game schedule is in place. He's a free agent once again, and is looking for a spot to land in 2021.

2020 Topps 206 Wave 1 #26 David Dahl

In addition to these two prizes, Alex found a few Rockies for me, mostly from recent retro sets. As I alluded to a couple months ago, Topps brought back the 206 brand once again. I said at the time that I expected to find some "in the next decade", but I had no idea it would take just a couple months. I'm not sure on the print run, but it's one of the print-to-order sets that Topps offers as an online exclusive, like Topps Now. 

The card back of this mini does tell you that it's from the 50-card Wave 1, but annoyingly, there's no card number on any of these. Beckett calls it #26, I guess because of his uniform number, but building this set would be a frustrating endeavor. Good thing there's a pleasing shade of green on the front.

Dahl won't get to wear #26 when he starts playing for the Rangers next year. The team retired it for former manager Johnny Oates, so he'll need to pick another. Yes, that's where he'll land, since the Rockies decided to non-tender him this offseason. Texas didn't waste any time in scooping him up, and he'll get to play in their brand-new park. Interestingly, because the Rockies had their late-July Opening Day against the Rangers, none other than David Dahl got the first-ever hit at Globe Life Field. He also has his name in the record books for the first strikeout and the first double.

I guess the Rangers liked what they saw on the first day MLB played in 2020.

2020 Topps Turkey Red '20 Series 2 #TR-37 Sam Hilliard

Another retro set Topps decided to resurrect in 2020 was Turkey Red. Unbeknownst to me, Topps last produced this in 2013 and 2014 as an online exclusive, but none of those are in my collection. There was a 2007 set, and I do have a few of those. At that time, it was a main set, but this year, Topps made it an insert set as part of 2020 Topps. They also smoothed the front of the card, giving us that front that isn't quite matte and isn't quite glossy, a lot like what you'll find in recent Topps Archives sets.

Somewhat annoyingly again, Topps restarted the checklist numbering in Series 2, producing a 200-card insert set numbered 1-100 twice. Topps, please don't do that. What's the story with weird card numbering in 2020?

In any case, we're back to full-size, looking straight-on at a posing Sam Hilliard, one of the young Rockies prospects. His September call-up in 2019 went pretty well, but he didn't look great in 2020. Perhaps he'll still need time to develop. He got a card in the 2020 Topps Base set, which has the official MLB Rookie Card logo. As you can see, this insert also has the RC logo, and I'm really not going to even pretend to understand how the RC logo works. Shouldn't it just be on one? Or is it everything for the whole year?

2019 Topps Gypsy Queen #146 Kyle Freeland

Drifting back one year to 2019, we come to Gypsy Queen, the retro set I generally know the least about. It's helpful that Topps put the year in the upper corners. I'm not great at telling the years apart, even though I've seen this design twice before. 

The card back takes note of Freeland being a Colorado native, pointing out that he needed to just two seasons to earn over 75% of all wins and 67% of all strikeouts by a Colorado-born Rockie. Now, there isn't tremendous competition for that number, as I can't think of anyone else who fits the bill besides Mark Knudson, who had zero wins and three strikeouts as a Rockie. Roy Halladay never pitched for the Rockies, so I'm not sure who else they're referring to.

And on the front, Freeland is clearly pitching in Oracle Park, home of the Giants. This photo is from 2018, when it was still known as AT&T Park. And I'm pretty sure I have the date. It's easier with pitchers, especially starters, who only go once every five days. He played a full season in 2018, and a pretty great one, too. But he only pitched twice in San Francisco. 

Like the Rockies, the Giants have their own manually-operated out-of-town scoreboard in right field, and it's really hard to see clearly in this photo since it's so far outside the depth of field, but I'm pretty sure the matchup we can see is Royals at Brewers, and maybe that's a "4" next to Milwaukee's name. If correct, that would date this to June 27th, 2018, when the Royals beat the Brewers 5-4. The Rockies suffered a heartbreaking loss that day, as the Giants won 1-0 via a walkoff solo home run. Freeland went toe-to-toe with Madison Bumgarner for seven innings, only to see the bullpen lose it to Brandon Crawford.

2019 Topps Gypsy Queen Fortune Teller Mini #FTMNA Nolan Arenado

As little Gypsy Queen as collect, something I see even less frequently is a Gypsy Queen insert card. But Alex found just such a thing for me, a mini of Nolan Arenado. It's the height of a normal card, but narrower, coming in at 1 7/8". Arenado's card is from the 20-card Fortune Teller insert set, which is sort of a steampunk version of 1995 Topps Cyberstats. 

We're told to "Gaze into...THE FUTURE!", and on the card back, Topps has done just that. They tell us, correctly, that Nolan Arenado's 2019 season would be his fifth straight with at least 30 home runs and 100 RBI. We're also told that he was tied at four straight with Chipper Jones and Vinny Castilla among NL third basemen.

Even with the shortened 2020 season, he wasn't on pace for a sixth, so that's about as far into the future as we can look. But what I'd really like to know is whether Nolan Arenado will continue to be a Rockie.

2020 Diamond Kings #149 Nolan Arenado SP

It's a bit of an open question, especially with the opt-out clause he has in his contract coming up at the end of 2021, but for now, he'll continue to get purple cards, with or without an official MLB license, and which may or may not be short-printed. Panini is still making the Diamond Kings set, still making it look like a painting. And I still enjoy how it feels like a playing card.

Panini went a little more in-depth on the back, narrowing Arenado's 2019 season down to several statistics that puts him in a class all by himself. Apparently, Nolan is the first righty to hit .315, score 100 runs, hit 40 home runs, and (of course, since this is Nolan) win a Gold Glove at third base. They didn't specify which lefty has done this, but it's an impressive single-season performance nonetheless.

Thanks to Alex for sending these cards my way! By the rules of his own contest, all I was due were those two 2019 Topps parallels, but he went above and beyond and found all these great retro cards that I was unlikely to otherwise encounter.

Finally, as I finish this post up, I sadly just learned about the death of yet another Hall-of-Famer, Phil Niekro. If he happened to see it earlier this year, I hope he got some joy out of seeing the entire Cardsphere celebrate his birthday using his '88 Score card.

Playing in the Big Leagues (Part 2: Subsets and Beyond)

The days are really starting to blend together. Consider how I opened my blog post with Part 1 of a 2019 Topps Big League blaster:

"It's a sunny but cold day in Colorado, following a few days of snow. And since it's too cold to be able to do much bird photography (another one of my many hobbies), this makes it a good day to look at a blaster of 2019 Topps Big League."

All that remains pretty much true today, same as it was this time last week. We're a few days removed from the last measurable snow, and I did manage to spot a few birds today (including a raven), but one day is pretty much indistinguishable from any other, and they're still getting shorter. At least the insert cards we'll see in Part 2 offer a little bit of novelty, something that's in short supply these days.

2019 Topps Big League #346 Charlie Blackmon / Christian Yelich / Matt Carpenter SK

Even the 2019 Stat Kings subset looks pretty much like it did in 2018. Once again, Charlie Blackmon led the NL in runs scored, though his cast of supporting characters is different. Charlie got top billing again with an even scragglier-looking beard than he had the previous year, flanked by 2018 NL MVP Christian Yelich, who made a cameo on Trevor Story's base card. Elsewhere in the NL Central, Matt Carpenter rounds out the trio.

2019 Topps Big League #350 Freddie Freeman / Anthony Rendon / Nick Markakis SK

Nolan Arenado led the NL in doubles during the 2017 season, but didn't even crack the top three in 2018. That honor went to Freddie Freeman, who won both the 2020 NL MVP award and the NL Hank Aaron Award, which is given to the top offensive player in each league. He's only the second Brave to win the award, after Andruw Jones. He's joined on this three-player card by Anthony Rendon, who actually tied Freeman's 44, followed by fellow Brave Nick Markakis, who was up to bat during one of the funniest (slightly NSFW) broadcasting moments in Red Sox history.

Interestingly, Anthony Rendon had every right to be the featured player here. I guess he just lost out alphabetically. But he hit an identical 44 doubles in 2019, and managed to tie once again for the NL lead, deadlocking with Corey Seager. I didn't pull the NL Doubles leaders card in 2020 Big League, but it appears that Rendon was listed first that time. We'll eventually see some 2020 Big League, but that's for another day.

2019 Topps Big League Wall Climbers #WC-9 Mookie Betts

I don't remember exactly how many packs were in this blaster. Probably nine or ten. But it was enough to encounter plenty of inserts, such as this Mookie Betts card from the 10-card Wall Climbers set. He was Yelich's MVP counterpart in 2018 over on the AL side, and has racked up five consecutive Gold Gloves by now. Of the many Mookie Betts highlights that belong in this set, Topps chose July 21st, 2018, as noted on the card back. Careful observers will note that the play in question took place in Detroit's Comerica Park, while the photo on this card is clearly in Fenway Park.

In any case, the wall in this part of Fenway isn't particularly high, certainly not high enough to have to "climb". But now that he's a Dodger, he still needs to put those acrobatic skills to the test in Dodger Stadium and elsewhere in the National League. Perhaps you saw him during the NLCS.

2019 Topps Big League Blast Off #BO-10 Giancarlo Stanton

Of course, robbing home runs wouldn't be such an amazing highlight if it happened often. Usually they sail far, far over the wall, especially when they come off the bat of a slugger like Giancarlo Stanton. That leads to his appearance in Blast Off!, fifteen cards showing some of the best power hitters in the game. Joey Gallo is indeed featured in this set, the player who at various points in his career has had more home runs than singles. As of the end of 2020, his singles count is ahead by two.

Stanton is the main event on this card, though, complete with a rocket launch theme. The card back tells us that the longest one of Stanton's 38 homers in 2018 went a whopping 458 feet, and it was the first one he ever hit wearing the Yankee pinstripes. At home, that is.

Back when he was a Marlin, one of his shots to straightaway center featured the single most perfect crack of the bat I've ever heard. Bonus Marlins Home Run Sculpture if you click on that one.

2019 Topps Big League Players Weekend Nicknames #PW2 Jose Altuve

Topps got some good photos on Players Weekend in 2018. We saw Edwin Diaz, aka Sugar, wearing his Players Weekend jersey in Part 1, and they used this photo of Jose Altuvé from the same weekend for a 30-card insert set. The diminutive Astros second baseman is simply known as "Tuve". I saw him play in person once, and the main thing I remember is that he got picked off of first base.

Speaking of the Astros, Family Guy gave us a particularly hilarious take on the team's cheating scandal in a recent episode.

All these Big League insert sets are generally pretty plain. No flashy banners, no foil, not even many bright colors. It's sort of a flat look, like iOS 7 when they got rid of all the shading. I do like the little motion lines they put near the Big League logo and the bat in the lower right. 1982 Donruss could only dream of such things.

2019 Topps Big League Blaster Box Cards #B3 Mike Trout

As in the 2018 set, Topps turned the blaster box itself into a card. Unfortunately, I think I did an even worse job cutting this one out than the Bryce Harper card I tried the year before. I might invest in a paper cutter if they keep doing this sort of thing. It's basically the same as a normal base card, other than a dark brown border and actual cardboard rather than paper stock. Trout is one of four possible options, and it's clear to see which one you'll get when you buy the blaster itself.

I didn't pull Trout's normal base card, but I'm assuming the card back is basically identical, other than the card number. On it, Topps recognizes Trout's talent and how his name alone singularly identifies him as the best player in baseball. With rare exceptions, he's been either #1 or #2 in AL MVP voting his whole career. 2020 was an off year for him, as he only finished fifth.

He's so good, in fact, that all you really have to do is follow which legendary Hall of Famers he passed in WAR in any given month and simply tweet "Mike Trout". That is acceptable as a complete tweet. You may have even arrived at this post from just such a tweet.

2019 Topps Big League Star Caricature Reproductions #SCR-CA Chris Archer

Star Caricature Reproductions is the last insert set I found in this blaster. I'm only missing an example of Ballpark Oddities, a small and intriguing-sounding set. This is a set I've seen before, as Trevor sent over Charlie Blackmon's card in a PWE last year. The artwork on Blackmon's card always struck me as a little strange, and I think Chris Archer's card is a little more like what I expect. The design has the same dotted line border as the Nicknames set, but they replaced the ball and bat with a pennant and a slightly modified Big League logo. It's sort of like a little Easter egg hunt, finding where the crossed bats logo pops up on a design.

Chris Archer has spent some time as a Pirate, but he missed the entire 2020 season for reasons beyond the pandemic. There's talk that he'll end back up with the Tampa Bay Rays, and judging by how far they went in the 2020 Postseason, that looks like the place to be right now.

2019 Topps Big League Blue #150 Albert Pujols

Time for a few parallels before we wrap things up. It's back to the base card design, and this Albert Pujols card is given a nice shade of blue on the border, a color found only in these blaster boxes. The photo is obviously a ceremony of some kind, and it happens to be from June 2nd, 2018, the day that the Angels honored Pujols's accomplishment of reaching the 3,000-hit milestone. Pujols threw out the first pitch to Adrián Beltré, another member of the exclusive club, and that's what's pictured here. 

As you can see on the left side of the card, he was presented with a special portrait for the occasion, and to my eye, it would not look out of place as a Star Caricature Reproduction card. Even the card back mentions this major accomplishment, which is essentially a lock for gaining entry to the Hall of Fame. Of these few players, only Pete Rose, Alex Rodriguez, and Rafael Palmeiro haven't punched their ticket for Cooperstown, and they all have special circumstances keeping them out. Among recently-retired and still-active players, I have no doubt that Ichiro, Pujols and Beltré will make it in once the requisite five years after retirement have passed. 

As for potential upcoming members to the 3,000 hit club, Miguel Cabrera might make it; he has 134 to go. Beyond that, it might be a while before we see anyone else get to 3,000 hits. Robinson Canó is relatively close, but he's been suspended for the entire 2021 season. And after him, Nick Markakis is the next active player on the list, but he's not even at 2,400. It's not an easy thing to do.

2019 Topps Big League Blue #327 Cody Bellinger

An hour's drive up The 5 and you'll come to Southern California's latest World Series Champions. The Angels held that title for nearly two decades until the Dodgers finally put all the right pieces in place. A lot of those pieces are happily celebrating in this photo, surrounded by another Blue border. The border color works great on a Dodgers card. The main event here is 2017 NL Rookie of the Year Cody Bellinger, who clearly just did something excellent, and we can also see Max Muncy in the background, wearing #13.

2019 Topps Big League Gold #183 Victor Robles

Our final card is of the Gold variety, a one-per-pack parallel that can be found even outside blaster boxes. The border color isn't tremendously different from the light brown found on normal base cards, but I guess it's about as close to "Gold" as it can get at this price point.

Victor Robles has been with the Washington Nationals since his rookie debut in 2017. He earned a World Series ring in 2019, and is shown here wearing the team's special 4th of July jersey. Notice the curly W/quasi-Walgreens logo has a stars-and-stripes motif. I'm guessing he's celebrating hitting a triple, judging from his position on the diamond. That was before they implemented Baby Shark celebrations, with increasing degrees of intensity for hitting a single, double, or triple.

Alternately, "The fish I caught was thiiiiis big!", which I totally would have submitted to Beckett's funny captions column when I was a kid.

Topps Big League just puts you in that frame of mind.

Making It to the Big Leagues (Part 2: Subsets and Beyond)

It's shortly after 5pm Mountain Standard Time as I begin writing this, and I have Part 2 of a Topps Big League blaster to finish. Part 1 looked at a handful of base cards from 2018 Big League, and now it's time for a few subsets, parallels, and inserts.

The news will be there when I'm done.

What we do know is that Charlie Blackmon had an impressive season in 2017. Good enough for a fifth-place finish in NL MVP voting, in fact.

2018 Topps Big League #303 Charlie Blackmon / Giancarlo Stanton / Paul Goldschmidt SK

Because of that, he got first billing on a whole slew of cards in the Stat Kings subset, which are essentially three-player League Leader cards. This white-bordered card for NL Runs Scored is still part of the base set, but it fits better here in Part 2. Blackmon occupied the top spot, earning a bigger photo than Giancarlo Stanton and Paul Goldschmidt. He crossed the plate 137 times in 2017, which in fact led the entire Major Leagues. Even Aaron Judge's first full season didn't eclipse Blackmon in Runs Scored.

As the card back tells us, Larry Walker still holds the team record, scoring 143 in his MVP 1997 season. Stanton and Goldschmidt are briefly mentioned as well, and interestingly, they were both still on their original teams at the time. Like many elite sluggers, Stanton eventually joined Aaron Judge on the Yankees, and Goldschmidt signed with St. Louis. All three are appropriately shown at the plate on the card front. Unlike a League Leader card from the Topps flagship set, we only get stats for these three players, as opposed to the ten or so players listed you'd see on the back of one of those cards. More photos, fewer stats. It was a winning strategy for early Upper Deck sets, in general.

2018 Topps Big League Gold #305 Charlie Blackmon / Dee Gordon / Ender Inciarte SK

Unless you have an elite eye, are intentionally walked regularly, or somehow manage to generate catcher's interference plays at a superhuman rate like Jacoby Ellsbury, you have to get hits before you can score those runs. And Charlie Blackmon did just that, with a whopping 213 hits. That, too, led the Majors. This time his cardmates are Dee Gordon and Ender Inciarte. Gordon has moved on to the Mariners and is now a free agent, but Inciarte is still with the Braves. Blackmon remains top dog, and got a picture at his home park this time. 

They're tiny on this photo, but both Gordon and Inciarte are both wearing special patches. Gordon, as a Marlin, wore the #16 memorial patch for José Fernández, who died in 2016. Of all the celebrity deaths that year, Fernández's hit me pretty hard. The Marlins also hosted the All-Star Game in 2017, as you can see by the patch on his right sleeve.

Inciarte has one too, which you can just barely see. The Braves wore this patch in 2016 to commemorate their final season in Turner Field, a very short stay. They followed it up with a similar one in 2017, and I can't tell which one this is. In any case, the Braves are in Truist Park now, which has already been renamed once in its short life, thanks to yet another bank merger.

Anyway, back to the card. Getting 213 hits in a 162-game season requires you to have multi-hit games, and Blackmon had 68 of them. That's a team record he did beat, according to the card, outpacing Dante Bichette's 66 in 1998. He had only 36 "o-fers" in 2017.

All base cards in 2018 Big League got some colored parallels, though they aren't serial numbered. This looks pretty similar to the mustard yellow color used in the 2002 Topps base set (and again in 2020 Archives, which we'll get to someday), but they call this one-per-pack variety "Gold".

Hey, it's a budget set and this isn't 1996 anymore.

2018 Topps Big League Blue #315 Charlie Blackmon / Daniel Murphy / Justin Turner SK

Getting 213 hits in a season puts you in a pretty good position to challenge for the batting title, and Blackmon won that, too. José Altuve had a better mark over in the AL, but Blackmon's .331 edged out future teammate Daniel Murphy and longtime division rival Justin Turner, both with .322. 

Actually, they had to split hairs on that one, per the card back. It was a close race, so they had to go to an additional decimal place. Murphy finished with .3221, just beating Turner's .3217. Murphy did even better in 2016 with a .347 average, but lost the batting crown to another Rockie, DJ LeMahieu.

This is obviously another parallel, the accurately-named Blue version, available in blasters only. The dark blue doesn't contrast well with the statistic being featured, and the same goes for the Topps logo. There's one more color yet to come, but we have some more ground to cover before we get there.

2018 Topps Big League #307 Nolan Arenado / Daniel Murphy / Odubel Herrera SK

Back to the off-white borders of the base set, we finally get a different Rockie in the #1 photo. Nolan Arenado led the NL in Doubles in 2017, although a half-dozen American Leaguers had more.

Topps did Arenado and Rockies collectors a favor on this card, as Daniel Murphy and Arenado both had 43 doubles. There's certainly no splitting hairs there. A fractional double is just a single (and a great analogy for electron energy levels, as I suddenly experience a flashback to high school chemistry). Maybe Murphy should have gotten the nod here, as the card back says than Murphy had ten more doubles than Nolan over the prior four seasons. Odubel Herrera, not currently a Major Leaguer, rounded out the top three.

We are all aware of a major political event tonight, but one minor thing we just learned is that Nolan Arenado won his eighth consecutive Gold Glove award, and well deserved! It's nice to see that streak stay alive.

2018 Topps Big League Players Weekend Photo Variations #287 Alex Bregman

We're used to seeing nickname variation cards on some recent Panini sets, and Topps decided to get in on the fun. This card of Alex Bregman lives somewhere between a skip-numbered parallel set and an insert set. It's considered a photo variation, and it has the same card number as his base card, but it has an entirely different design both front and back. 

A-Breg wore that nickname on his Players' Weekend jersey in 2017, which used much better colors across the than in 2019. It was a delightful splash of color in the inaugural year of 2017, so much more fun than the plain black and white uniforms worn in 2019. You couldn't tell the all-black uniforms apart from the umpires, and it wasn't well-received. Players' Weekend didn't happen in 2020, so here's hoping that occasion returns in 2021.

2018 Topps Big League #356 Swimming Pool

I like this Big League set. It puts these unique and fun cards right in the main checklist rather than relegating them to an insert set. It's a lot like the early Triple Play sets. This is another subset, called Ballpark Landmarks. Only half the stadiums were included, and Coors Field was sadly omitted. Their division rival Diamondbacks did make it in thanks to the swimming pool beyond right-center. This isn't as interesting a photograph as we saw on Zack Godley's card in 2018 Stadium Club, and is obviously the exact opposite of social distancing, but it would be a great place to catch a game.

The card back gives us a fun fact, telling us that Mark Grace was the first player to get a Splash Hit in the pool. Of all the games I've watched where the Rockies visited Phoenix, that one has never come up. Topps did get something wrong on the back, telling us that the pool was built in 2011. That's not the case; it's been there since the ballpark opened. And even so, Mark Grace retired long before 2011. That one probably should have been caught.

2018 Topps Big League Gold #362 Stan Musial Statue

Back to the Gold parallel set, here's the Stan Musial Statue outside of Busch Stadium. This statue predated Musial's election to the Hall of Fame by a year, and has been a landmark outside both versions of Busch Stadium. This entered Cardinals lore in 1968, the same year that Bob Gibson gave us one of the best pitching seasons of all time. I don't remember seeing it in an establishing shot during ESPN's Long Gone Summer episode of 30 for 30, but it might have been in there somewhere. Incidentally, there is a fan sporting a Mark McGwire jersey, if you look closely.

2018 Topps Big League Blaster Box Bottoms #B2 Bryce Harper

I promised one more colored border, and here it is. There aren't many with this green border, as it was one of just four possible options collectors could find as part of the blaster box itself. I didn't do a fantastic job of cutting this Bryce Harper card out, as is common with box cutouts that have entered the hobby over the years. It wasn't a "Box Bottom", anyway. It was on the side and at a bit of an angle. It was tricky to get a pair of scissors in there perfectly.

2018 wasn't really that long ago, but already lots of these players have gone on to other teams. Harper is with the Phillies now. He didn't make it into the coveted four-card Box Bottom set in 2019, although he did return there in 2020.

2018 Topps Big League Ministers of Mash #MI-6 Bryce Harper

A few of these cards defy categorization. They're not really inserts, not really main set cards. This Ministers of Mash card of Bryce Harper is the first indisputable insert card I've seen, and we're nearing the end of this post. This ten-card set gave us each player's career home run count through 2017, and Harper already had 150. That ties in to the back of his Box Bottoms card (and presumably his base card, which I didn't pull), which told us that he was the third-youngest active player to reach 150 home runs. Stanton and Albert Pujols were slightly younger, and apparently Mike Trout was exactly the same age, to the day, when he reached the 150 milestone.

If you continue that comparison to Mike Trout, however, Harper has slowed significantly. Through 2020, Harper's "only" at 232, while Trout has screamed to (and a couple past) 300.

2018 Topps Big League Star Caricature Reproductions #SCR-CK Clayton Kershaw

Neither Trout nor Harper have a World Series ring, but as of last week, Clayton Kershaw finally got that monkey off his back. As a Rockies fan, I'd prefer not to have seen those division rivals win it all, but they've been an extremely good team for a long time, no doubt. I guess Mookie Betts was the last key piece to making that work.

In any case, Kershaw went 4-1 in the 2020 Postseason, including two wins in the World Series. His greatness is now without question or reservation. Regardless of his past October struggles, he was a star player to begin with, which meant that Topps included him in this 30-card insert set, which looks a little cartoony but not quite as much as the set's 2019 follow-up. It was also a slight annoyance to count how many cards are in this checklist, because the card numbers are of the alphabet soup variety, rather than the numerical variety.

These Star Caricature cards are from the final insert set of 2018 Big League. One blaster certainly isn't enough to complete it, but it is enough to see a little of everything. I'm glad I finally got around to looking at this, and I didn't expect to like it so much. At such an affordable price, I'll have to be on the lookout for more.

The First Update of the Decade (Part 2: Inserts)

When I was born, the 1984 Topps set was on shelves. It's famous for Rookie Cards of Don Mattingly and Darryl Strawberry. Topps brought it back for one of their Anniversary insert sets, which happens to coincide with with my age-35 year. The 1987 Anniversary cards have appeared around here with regularity, and the following year's 1983 Anniversary cards have a place, too. Topps kept the theme going for 2019, and in Update, I found a quasi-Rookie Card of Will Smith.

2019 Topps Update '84 Topps #84-37 Will Smith

Not that Will Smith, the one with an award-winning TV, film, and music career. Not the other Will Smith, either, the All-Star Giants closer. This is Will Smith, the young Dodgers catcher who already has Postseason experience under his belt and is a divisional rival of Closer Will Smith.

This Anniversary insert has the Rookie Card logo, but isn't considered by Beckett as a true RC. I really don't know what the rules are on the use of that logo. It does have a nice silver seal in the upper right, and it's consistent with Anniversary cards of the past few years. The card back is pretty accurate to the original 1984 design, just more vibrant since 1984 cards were still printed on cardboard. Just picture a Traded card and you'll get the idea. There is a "Dateline" paragraph, mentioning that Smith debuted on May 28th, 2019, and just a few days later hit a walk-off home run in Dodger Stadium.

Lots of players go their whole careers without a walk-off homer. Smith did it in his first week.

2019 Topps Update Gold #US252 Austin Riley RD /2019

Home runs are more a part of the game than ever, so it should be no surprise that the rookies emerging into the league are great at hitting them. Aaron Judge's rookie home run record didn't last but two years before Pete Alonso broke it. And Austin Riley of the Braves came pretty close to challenging Trevor Story's 2016 debut performance. Riley launched nine homers in the first eighteen games of his career, including a home run for his first big-league hit. His Rookie Card is one of many in the 2019 Update set, and you might notice this one is of the Gold variety.

For all I know, he's hitting one right in this photo.

2019 Topps Update 150th Anniversary #US16 Martin Maldonado

To go along with the "MLB 150" patch that I keep pointing out, Topps made a special parallel set to match. This one has gold foil instead of the usual silver, plus a "150 Years" logo inside a home plate shape. No serial number on this one, but it takes me back to the days of the original Topps Gold. Come to think of it, why hasn't Topps been using gold foil on the actual Gold cards these past several years? Austin Riley's card would be that much better, and in this era where the border is taking more and more of a back seat in Topps designs, it would go a long way in signifying what you're actually holding in your hands.

Martin Maldonado has been on a whirlwind journey since mid-2018, and Topps Update can't come close to keeping up. He was traded to the Astros in July 2018, just in time to help them to the Postseason. He signed with Kansas City during the offseason, giving us this Royals card. That didn't last long, as he was traded to the Cubs straight-up for Mike Montgomery. Just a couple weeks later, he found himself right back in Houston for another Postseason run as part of another 1-for-1 trade deadline deal.

If Topps had just given him an Astros card in 2019 Series 1, it would have ended up being correct. He re-upped with the Astros shortly before Christmas, so look for actual Astros cards of Maldonado in 2020.

2019 Topps Update Perennial All-Stars #PAS-43 Yadier Molina

Unlike Maldonado and many other of his Major League colleagues, Yadier Molina has stuck with the same team his whole career. He's profiled here in the 50-card Perennial All-Stars set, one of the most patriotic-looking sets ever to come out of Topps. He's been to nine Midsummer Classics, although was not picked in 2019. Not precisely "Perennial", but still a regular participant.

This particular photo is from his 8th All-Star Game (check the service star!), held in Miami. The colorful logo can be seen on Yadi's right sleeve, a Marlins-themed logo that already doesn't match their current color scheme just a couple years later.

2019 Topps Update Perennial All-Stars #PAS-40 Roy Halladay

The All-Star patch isn't visible enough on this card to tell which of Roy Halladay's eight All-Star selections this is from. He spent most of his career with Toronto, so it's clearly from one of his first six.

It's a nice set, and I always enjoy the All-Star Game, but it's quite soon after Halladay's tragic death to really enjoy this card.

2019 Topps Update 150 Years of Baseball #150-40 Thurman Munson

Not that a tragic death really ever becomes any less tragic; it just fades from memory as time passes. Like Halladay, Thurman Munson perished in an aircraft accident. It's a tragedy that's affected the Yankees organization multiple times, most recently with Cory Lidle.

I suppose this is also a good place to mention the passing of Don Larsen, the famous Yankee who pitched a perfect game in the 1956 World Series. He was 90. He and Roy Halladay stand as the only two players with a Postseason no-hitter, and Larsen the only one to do so in Perfect fashion. I expect the Yankees to honor him with a black armband that seems to so frequently accompany the pinstripes.

Returning to this insert card, it's in the same vein as the 150th Anniversary parallels, this one known as 150 Years of Baseball. Even though they've given us some enormous insert sets in recent years, Topps decided to cap this one at 100. Of all the 150-card insert sets they've produced, this one seems like it would be the best candidate.

Munson didn't appear in the Perennial All-Stars set, but he easily could have, as he was elected seven times in just eleven seasons.

Topps Update has existed as a de facto Series 3 for quite some time, but it still maintains its own identity to a degree. As each successive baseball season winds down, I may look for this brand more often than I have in past years. There are enough exciting rookies these days to warrant a regular look, and as much as I like Opening Day inserts, no one is ever going to call something from that set a true Rookie Card.

Thanks, as always, for reading, and Happy New Year!

Last Year's Opening Day (Part 2: Inserts)

In my annual examination of a blaster of Opening Day, we already saw some of my favorite base cards. Now, it's time for the fun stuff, the insert sets that consistently keep me coming back year after year.

2018 Topps Opening Day Mascots #M-14 Rally Monkey

Chief among that fun stuff are mascot cards, although Topps is reaching a little bit here. The Angels are one of just three teams without an official mascot, the others being the Dodgers and Yankees. The Rally Monkey is just a fan favorite, but isn't officially part of the team. It began in 2000 during a come-from-behind win the Angels put together on June 6th, 2000. The Rally Monkey was just a graphic on the Jumbotron, but the Angels pulled of a win, forever immortalizing itself in Angels lore.

That win came against the Giants, setting the stage for the Rally Monkey to gain national popularity when those two teams met in the 2002 World Series, and giving Topps another card in their long-running Mascots insert set. There's even a little cartoon on the card back showing a monkey swinging a bat, but he is way, way too late on the pitch since the ball is already in the frame.

This all looks quite official to me, so maybe the Angels should look into turning the monkey into an actual mascot and join 27 other teams in the trend.

2018 Topps Opening Day Mascots #M-18 Phillie Phanatic

The Phillie Phanatic is the textbook example of a baseball mascot, although I think Orbit really doesn't get the credit he deserves. Still, the Phanatic is a favorite year after year, maybe even the GOAT when it comes to mascots. This card mentions that he likes to "play practical jokes on broadcasters." Have a look at an example to see what Topps is talking about.

This mascot seems to have an outfit for every occasion, such as this red raincoat, which presumably comes out to keep the fans entertained during rain delays.

With Bryce Harper joining the Phillies, I can't wait to see what antics they get up to in the next thirteen years.

2018 Topps Opening Day Stars #ODS-KJ Kenley Jansen

This blaster yielded a nice variety of the many insert sets Topps put out last year. I didn't find all of them, but there was a good sampling. Opening Day Stars is still being printed, but it's changed a lot from past years. It used to be an example of 3-D lenticular awesomeness, but no longer. It's now a rather plain set, printed on flimsy card stock, and not much is happening on the back besides an oversized Opening Day logo and Kenley Jansen's name and team. I'm not 100% certain this isn't a sticker.

I'm not sure where Jansen is pitching in this game, but he appears to be playing in front of a whole mess of empty seats. I'm guessing it's a save situation, since Jansen is the Dodgers' closer, and my best bet is that it's not a Freeway Series against Anaheim, as there is no Rally Monkey in sight. Only an umpire in the lower right and a few diehard fans.

I know he pitches for a rival team, but I'm sending my best wishes to him following his heart surgery over the winter. He's recovering well, and all signs point to him being ready for the start of the 2019 season.

2018 Topps Opening Day Before Opening Day #BOD-MB Mookie Betts

We know of several athletes that excel in multiple sports. Baseball and football tend to go together frequently, a combination that instantly reminds us of players like Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders. Some NFL players' baseball exploits are lesser known, like Russell Wilson and Tim Tebow. There are some more unexpected combinations out there, like Lolo Jones in both track & field and bobsledding.

This Before Opening Day insert card shows Betts in the clubhouse playing a little table tennis, but his real talent is bowling. The card back tells us that the 2018 AL MVP bowled a perfect 300 in the World Series of Bowling, so if his baseball career falls on hard times, or a strike occurs in a year or so, Betts will have something to fall back on.

2018 Topps Opening Day At The Ballpark #ODB-TR Texas Rangers

Night Owl sent me the Rockies card from the At The Ballpark insert set not long ago, and I have the Rangers card to add to it. Rougned Odor, whose base card had that nifty bat barrel shot in Part 1, is clearly extremely excited about his most recent play. If this shot is really from April 3rd, 2017, the Rangers '17 season opener, it's probably following his three-run homer in the second inning off of Corey Kluber.

The Rangers had the luck of opening their season at home. The Rockies almost never do, instead usually beginning their home season the following Friday. The season takes a little while to get going, but Lower Downtown Denver has really embraced opening weekend as an occasion for a big party. The last time I went to one was in 2014, the first time The Rooftop was open for business. That also happened to be the day that Charlie Blackmon went 6-for-6, one of the rarer baseball feats I've witnessed.

2018 Topps Opening Day Team Traditions and Celebrations #TTC-TF The Freeze

Just like players find ways to keep themselves occupied in the offseason, stadium operators find ways to keep fans entertained between innings. That's certainly part of the Phillie Phanatic's job description, but there are plenty of other things to keep the attention of fans during the many two minute breaks. One such example can be found at Braves home games, an exciting footrace between a usually hapless fan and a former college track star nicknamed "The Freeze". Despite the fan having a massive headstart, The Freeze almost always wins.

His real name is Nigel Talton, and he's also part of the Braves' grounds crew. It's way more interesting than a t-shirt cannon, and every once in a while, a fan manages to leg out a win. But usually not.

The only trouble is that "Team Traditions and Celebrations" set name is an awkward mouthful. "Ballpark Fun" from a few years ago did the trick just fine, in my opinion.

2018 Topps Opening Day Blue Foil #64 Byron Buxton

Last up is one of the un-numbered Blue Foil parallels with a limited print run. Topps did the same fountain shape in the background as they did in Chrome, developing a way to make a colored parallel out of a full bleed set. The date of "March 29th 2018" remains the only place you'll find foil in Opening Day.

Twins outfielder Byron Buxton had a rough go of it in 2018, having trouble living up to his top-prospect billing. The center fielder has excellent speed, stealing 29 bases in 2017, and from the looks of it, he would have a real shot at beating The Freeze.

That about does it for 2018 Opening Day. 2019's Opening Day product is on sale now, and I may even find one before the 2019 season begins on March 28th. You'll probably see a similar set of posts before long. I like this set too much to let it sit for a whole year again.