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.

I didn't pull the Pat Neshek card

This year's Topps Heritage begins a new decade, opening up the '70s with the gray-bordered 1970 set. I found a value pack at Target not long ago, and while I didn't pull the famed Pat Neshek card, where the sunglasses-wearing Phillies reliever pays homage to Lowell Palmer's card in '70 Topps, I did find one of the other cards from this set I had my eyes on.

2019 Topps Heritage #214 Todd Frazier

Todd Frazier, now on the Mets, got a fantastic card this year, showing him signing autographs in none other than Coors Field. It's rare for a card to show the upper portions of its distinctive architecture, but this wide-angle shot did it well. I'm pretty sure this is the first card out there that shows a glimpse of The Rooftop deck, which replaced a few thousand seats in upper right field in 2014. Even without knowing the look of the stadium, that fan with a Rockies cap just to Frazier's left is a dead giveaway.

Pat Neshek wasn't the only one to give us a throwback to the 1970 set. Topps pointed out on Twitter that this one is reminiscent of Bud Harrelson's card, though that photo was taken in Shea Stadium, long before Coors Field was a figment of anyone's imagination.

Coincidentally, the first-ever Rockies game occurred in Shea Stadium, on April 5th, 1993, though they'd need to wait for their first home game later that week to get their first win.

2019 Topps Heritage New Age Performers #NAP-23 Trevor Story

I didn't pull anything earth-shattering in this pack, but I was pretty happy with the lone insert. Luckily, a Rockie found its way to me, and it's Trevor Story, one of the few bright spots in this year's season. Things have not been going well for them, as they are way down in last place already with a 5-12 record. Sunday's game was a gem, a one-hit shutout that also saw Nolan Arenado hit his first home run of the season, followed up by another one tonight. Story, on the other hand, has been flashing plenty of power since the beginning, already with four on the year.

The New Age Performers insert set carries on for another year, and looks even more early-'70s than before. Topps compares the power-hitting shortstop to Rico Petrocelli, "an anomaly as a fence-busting shortstop" for the Red Sox, who hit 29 homers in his '70 campaign. That was actually a significant drop from 40 in 1969, his second of three All-Star years.

Plenty of shortstops have proven to be power hitters since then, and Fernando Tatis, Jr, the hot-hitting rookie Padre squaring off against the Rockies this week, is rapidly adding his name to that list.

2019 Topps Heritage #165 Jorge Soler

Most Americans know April 15th as Tax Day, but those of us who are baseball fans take the day to celebrate Jackie Robinson Day. Everyone wears #42 on the field, forcing you to really know your team to know what's going on out there. They're also wearing a commemorative patch on the right sleeve today, a diamond with crossed bats surrounding the number 42.

Jorge Soler has a team-specific patch on his uniform, worn during the 2018 season to commemorate the 50th season of Royals baseball. I know him better as a Cub, when he was a member of the team that finally broke the curse. His time on the Royals hasn't been as successful, but he's been healthy so far this season.

2019 Topps Heritage #97 Rich Hill

Rich Hill also wore a special patch last year with the Dodgers, marking their 60th anniversary of moving to Los Angeles. The veteran has statistics on the card back dating back to 2005, leaving no room for a cartoon or paragraph. He'll be adding another line to that resume shortly, but he still has a rehab start to make before he returns to both the Dodgers and my Fantasy team, the Lucky Numbers.

2019 Topps Heritage #59 Mike Clevinger

The 2019 season is still quite young, but plenty has happened already. The Rockies have dug themselves quite a hole, the Mariners have an amazing home run streak going (which may end shortly), and Mike Clevinger has been bitten by the injury bug. He's expected to miss at least two months, which opens up a spot for Carlos González on the Indians' 40-man roster.

The set might be using a 49-year old design, and Topps is definitely going for a certain look with the photos, but there are a few things that show unmistakable progress. Major League Baseball in Denver, for one thing, and more Cuban players like Soler in the league. There may have been a handful of players with long-ish hair in the carefree days of 1970, but tattoos like Clevinger has are a much more recent development.

There are Topps Heritage collectors that examine every aspect of the set in minute detail. Font size and placement, color shades, whether certain words are abbreviated or spelled out, and so on. The only thing I really noticed is that some cards have a little vertical white bar (a "pipe" in techno-speak) between the name and position, and others, like both these pitchers, don't.

2019 Topps Heritage #372 Kevin Newman (RC) / Kevin Kramer (RC)

The two-player Rookie Stars cards are faithfully reproduced in this year's Heritage. Vida Blue's and Thurman Munson's rookie cards both appeared on this design. Kevin Newman, on the other hand, might not be mentioned with names like that given his early defensive performance. He committed three errors in a single inning against the Cubs a week or so ago. He's had a bright spot in his young career though, an extra-innings walk off a few days before.

Newman shares a card with another Kevin, Kevin Kramer. His fellow middle infielder hasn't appeared yet in 2019, but did play a few September games with the Pirates last season.

2019 Topps Heritage #368 Nick Markakis AS

Nick Markakis, who surprisingly didn't have an All-Star selection until 2018, appears on the properly-named The Sporting News subset. None of that "The Topps News" knockoff anymore. He's certainly been worthy of a selection before, but it took him this long before fans recognized his talent, giving him the opportunity to appear on this All-Stars-only subset.

There are no stats on the card back, just a large drawing of Markakis, his name, a small cartoon, and a mention that he has the all-time highest fielding percentage for right fielders, at .994.

The card front shows him appearing to burst out of the newspaper in the background, and just to give you an idea of how I think, this reminds me of how the label looks on bags of Krunchers potato chips. They're so good. I haven't found them around here more than once or twice since I was a kid, though.

2019 Topps Heritage #386 Willians Astudillo (RC) / Stephen Gonsalves (RC) / Kohl Stewart (RC)

Some teams have enough promising rookies to warrant a three-player card. I haven't heard of Stephen Gonsalves or Kohl Stewart, but Willians Astudillo is a 27-year-old utility player that's fast becoming a fan favorite. "La Tortuga" (the turtle) hit his first home run of the year in Philadelphia, but he's not really a power hitter. He's just that lovable guy who plays with a tremendous amount of heart. Even better, he pretty much never strikes out. He has exactly as many big league home runs as strikeouts. Four.

Just look at that grin.

This is a bit of a late post, but that's how the schedule tends to go for us fans out west. Both the Colorado Avalanche and Rockies had games starting at 8:00 pm Mountain tonight, and it'll probably be around 11 by the time I finish scanning and proofreading. The West Coast games are late for nearly everyone, but when I was in South Carolina for work last September, some of those Dodger games didn't wrap up until well after midnight.

If you can tolerate that surprisingly few people on Eastern time have any idea how time zones work, Mountain time is really a nice compromise, even for a night person like myself.

Mom's 6-for-6 Day at the Thrift Store

Mom is always on the lookout for cards for my collection. When she's not simply referring to my Eight Men Out list, she's unearthing some gems at a card show. This past spring at my nephew's first birthday party, she presented me with a small envelope of cards obtained at a local thrift store. Surprisingly, even amazingly, each and every one of them is brand-new to my collection. That's not usually a feat even I can pull off. It's never been as bad as getting five copies of the same card at one show, but I inevitably end up with a few I already had.

Not so when Mom is shopping for me.

I had the good fortune to witness Charlie Blackmon go 6-for-6 at the Rockies' Home Opener in 2014, the very first day The Rooftop deck at Coors Field was opened to the public. Mike Trout had a 5-for-5 day yesterday, so let's take a look at what a perfect day at the plate looks like.

1997 Upper Deck #479 Jaime Bluma DD

First up is a subset from 1997 Upper Deck, a Diamond Debuts card of Jaime Bluma. I'd never heard of this reliever before, and it's actually a bit tough to tell which team he's on. The stack of golden diamonds on the right each contain a small "KC" (which scan better than they look), but I never really noticed them while this card was sitting on my side table all summer.

Bluma was a late-season call-up for the Royals in 1996, converting five saves in 17 relief appearances. He held promise, and the card back tells us all about those five saves, but Bluma didn't return to the big leagues in 1997 or any year after. Also on the back is a 1995 Fleer-esque thermal image of the front photo, as well as what ended up being his complete MLB stats.

It's unfortunate when your rookie card is also your sunset card. But those two months in late 1996 must remain unforgettable for Jaime Bluma.

1997 Upper Deck #381a Ruben Rivera CF

Clearly, Mom found a rich vein of 1997 Upper Deck subsets. This gold nugget, with a conspicuous absence of copper, UD's favorite metallic element, documents a key pinch-hit that Ruben Rivera delivered during the 1996 pennant race for the Yankees. His efforts helped them (and his cousin, Mariano Rivera) win their first World Series since 1978, even though he didn't end up on the ALCS or World Series roster.

Rivera did end up playing a World Series game at the old Yankee Stadium in 1998, but he came up on the losing end that year as a member of the San Diego Padres. After that, he wrapped his career up as a Giant, but not before going down in history by executing one of the worst displays of baserunning ever seen. Despite that TOOTBLAN, the Giants still managed to salvage a win in 13 innings, although the very next game would be the final one of Rivera's career.

Quite the contrast to his cousin's Hall of Fame-worthy career.

1997 Upper Deck #280 Greg Norton

More 1997 Upper Deck gives us a subset I was at least familiar with already, the shiny Star Rookies set. As with Bluma's card, there's a small shield in the lower left with the date of Greg Norton's debut with the White Sox, and it's less than two weeks after Bluma's. He earned an interesting distinction in that debut game, becoming just the second-ever Major Leaguer to get his first two hits in the same inning.

Some real star power coming up in the AL Central in August 1996, right?

Pardon my sarcasm, but if I had to pick a least-favorite Rockie of all-time, it would be Greg Norton. He was a nice enough guy, and looking back, his stats aren't that bad, but he didn't start a ton of games, and when they did put him in as a pinch-hitter, he always seemed to strike out at the worst possible times. I do recall a grand slam, which was so uncharacteristic that I still remember Greg Norton once hit a grand slam.

2000 Upper Deck #241 Fred McGriff

That taps out 1997 UD, but there's a bit more of that familiar copper to ease us into the new millennium with their 2000 set. We also get to see a much more familiar player in Fred McGriff, not quite a Hall-of-Famer, but an MVP, World Series champion, and five-time All-Star.

Tampa Bay kept the "Devil Rays" name for so short a time that it's quite strange to see their early cards. By now, they've been the Rays longer than they were the Devil Rays, so it's definitely a case of a team still trying to find their identity. Getting out of Tropicana Field would help, and they do have a proposal for a new stadium, which would open in 2023.

Mom told me she was hesitant to give me this card at first, due to what she called an "unflattering" pose. I told her it was fine; action sports sometimes generate slightly awkward positions. Just a little extra reassurance that I am happy to have this card in my collection, adding to a very small stack of 2000 UD.

1997 Pinnacle X-Press #21 Vinny Castilla

I have an even smaller stack of 1997 Pinnacle X-Press, and now I get to add another Rockie to it, the first one of this post.

No, we're not counting Greg Norton.

Pinnacle didn't have much time left in late 1997, but they were still putting out nice sets. The border of this card is a bit fragile, but I like the design, color coding, and slightly different shade of gold that Pinnacle often used compared to Topps and Upper Deck.

There's a nice action shot on the back of Castilla applying a tag at third base to #4 on the Montreal Expos, who happens to be Mark Grudzielanek. In my constant vigilance for Coors Field cards, the 1997s tend to feature a lot of Expos. I'm not quite sure why, especially because it crosses over lots of card brands. You'll see plenty once I finally manage to complete my Coors Field frankenset.

1995 Ultra #373 Marvin Freeman

The final card is another Rockie, and this is the only one I even thought might be in my collection already. I bought a handful of 1995 Ultra when it was new, or at least some was purchased on my behalf. It was a bit spendy for an 11-year old. But I knew I had most of the Rockies from this set.

For that matter, I opened plenty of 1997 UD, but that's just been Series 1, and the three at the top of the post are all from Series 2. Mom managed to find just the right ones across two different sets. 2000 UD and '97 Pinnacle X-Press were wide open, though.

Rockies jerseys haven't changed much throughout the years, but back in the early days of the franchise, especially when they shared Mile High Stadium with the Denver Broncos, they didn't have the uniform number below the letters on the left side, as they do now. I'm looking right at them on the TV now, although a lefty is on the hill as I write this. If the uniforms looked then like they do now, we would see a "44" near Freeman's gloved hand. Its a bit less informative, but a slightly cleaner look, especially on this properly cropped full-bleed card.

So there you have it. Six brand new cards that I didn't go looking for, without a single duplicate to omit or toss in the extras box.

That's what we call batting a thousand.