The Start of a Strange Season (Part 2: Inserts)

It wasn't that long ago that I was regularly pulling three or four Blue Foil parallels out of a single blaster of Opening Day. Unless my luck has changed, I'm more likely to just find one with today's level of production. 

2021 Topps Opening Day Blue Foil #177 Gleyber Torres

And here it is.

No need to hit the panic button just yet. We're still far away from the days of 1991 Donruss Elite, an insert set which you'd be lucky to find within four cases, despite a 10,000 print run. But still, it's getting harder and harder to find what you're looking for. And I'm not even sure these have a limited print run anymore.

In much the same way, the Yankees are having a hard time finding wins this season. They're in a tough division (and they usually are the ones making it a tough division), so their 31-28 record is only good enough for fourth place. The twice-no-hit Mariners have scored more runs this year. 

Gleyber Torres isn't really to blame for that, since he missed some time due to COVID protocols, but he has since returned and I'm sure he's just aching to play a few games against Baltimore to get his bat going. The card back shows his full professional statistics, so there's no room for a fun paragraph, but it would be a perfect spot to mention his 13 home runs against the Orioles in 2019.

For the first time in a while, the date listed on the front of these Blue Foil parallels was truly Opening Day, league-wide. No overseas exhibition games a week early, no big-market rivalry matchup the day before. Everyone simply began April 1st at the starting gate, as it should be.

2021 Topps Opening Day Mascots #M-3 Mr. Met

The actual Opening Day has been in flux for a while, as have the insert sets found in the set itself, but Mascots are always there to delight us. This insert set is a big reason why I keep coming back to the brand.

For 2020, mascots didn't have fans to entertain nor many games to work, so most of these card backs mention their efforts in the community, such as working with MLB's Play Ball program or area nonprofits. All while properly masked, of course. Seeing mascots wearing masks reminds me a little of the airplanes that did too.

2021 Topps Opening Day Mascots #M-7 Sluggerrr

Sluggerrr of the Royals also masked up, and he looks a lot like I looked for most of last year. Wearing a mask, shielding his eyes to see into the distance (part of my new birding hobby), and holding a sign that says "Food". This mascot is reaching right out to me.

He's also surrounded by cardboard cutouts, and my single favorite mascot moment from the strange 2020 season was Blooper of the Braves pumping up the cutouts, motioning for them to get on their feet. 

Yes, Blooper fully embraced his role last year.

I showed these cards to my girlfriend, and she remarked at how strange it was that Sluggerrr's crown is a fully-formed structural part of his head. In truth, these aren't that different from a giraffe's actual horns. But Sluggerrr is supposed to be a lion. King of the Jungle and all that. He shares uniform #00 with Mr. Met, Dinger, and Carmelo Anthony of the Portland Trailblazers, who we watched a lot last week during the first round of the NBA playoffs. The Nuggets, whose mascot is a similar-looking mountain lion named Rocky, advanced to the second round.

2021 Topps Opening Day Mascots #M-16 Mariner Moose

As usual, Mariner Moose popped up for me as well. Seriously, I have an uncanny gift for pulling Mariner Moose cards. Someday I'd like to convert that into seeing a real one in the wild.

Mr. Moose looks exceptionally casual in this shot, throwing out the first pitch while wearing a pair of board shorts. Interestingly, I had a dream last night where I was on my way to throw the first pitch at a Rockies game. Somehow, I was identified as the one millionth fan at the gate, and was led as a VIP all over the stadium. I woke up before the actual ceremonial moment, but I'm pretty sure that's what they had in mind.

Somehow, I had the presence of mind while in the dream to question what the big deal was about being the one millionth fan. Even the lowest-attended teams pull in more than that during a season, Marlins excluded.

2021 Topps Opening Day Legends of Baseball #LOB-2 Roberto Clemente

Next up and new to the Opening Day insert family is the Legends of Baseball set. I'm pretty familiar with these from seeing them in the Bunt app, but it's nice to also have a physical copy. Each one has their place, and I'm starting to view it a bit like the physical book/e-book debate. There are advantages and disadvantages to each, but electronic cards save you the trouble of having to buy sleeves and pages and binders. I can carry lots of "cards" around in my pocket that would otherwise require expensive and hard-to-find supplies to store. 

So I effectively have two copies of this Roberto Clemente card. Say what you will about digital cards, but no one will argue that he's a Legend of Baseball. A frequent Gold Glove winner, an even more frequent All-Star, and a beloved figure in Pittsburgh. He's an undisputed legend, and we'll sadly never know how much more legendary his numbers could have been if not for his tragic death in 1972.

2021 Topps Opening Day Legends of Baseball #LOB-23 Rickey Henderson

On the other hand, unlike Clemente's 3,000 hits, we can be reasonably certain that Rickey Henderson's 1,406 stolen bases was about as high as that number could go. Rickey played well into his forties for any team that would take him, and he added just three steals to that number in his final season.

A career that long will bridge different eras of baseball, from the speedy early '80s into the power-heavy early 2000s. As we know, stolen bases are an endangered species these days, but Rickey was on the cutting edge of the latest movement to disregard the old unwritten rules. Rickey would often bolt for second (or third) regardless of the count or the score. And judging by how White Sox manager Tony La Russa is (publicly) handling his own players swinging away on a 3-0 count, I have to wonder how he and Henderson ever got along all those years in Oakland.

2021 Topps Opening Day Legends of Baseball #LOB-10 Derek Jeter

With all the Yankee greats we've seen over the years, including Lou Gehrig who now has his own special day in the MLB calendar, it's surprising that they had a single-digit number left to give to Derek Jeter, another obvious legend. With Jeter's number retirement in 2017, not to mention his imminent Hall of Fame induction, every number from 1-10, and many others, have been retired in the Bronx.

Each of these card backs picks a few key statistics that confirms their legendary status, and of course there's enough for each of these players to fill volumes. Jeter's card tells us that he reached the Hall of Fame in 2020 with 99.7% of the vote, without quite saying that he was one vote shy of unanimity.

2021 Topps Opening Day Opening Day #OD-1 New York Mets

Across town, the New York Mets have a lot more of these numbers still in circulation. This Mets outfield crew celebrating a win on Opening Day 2020 are Brandon Nimmo, Jake Marisnick, and Michael Conforto. Nimmo's #9 is no longer worn in the Bronx thanks to Roger Maris, and Marisnick's #16 (obscured by his glove) was retired for Whitey Ford. Only Conforto's #30 is still available in both boroughs.

All three of these guys look really happy to be in the Win column, a feeling they hadn't known for a long time due to the shortened season. As expected, staff ace Jacob deGrom pitched the season opener, and as expected, the Mets gave him next to no run support, relying on a solo shot by Yoenis Céspedes to win the game 1-0. That's still continuing this year, despite deGrom's sub-1.00 ERA putting him in the conversation with 1968 Bob Gibson. I just looked up his WHIP and it is 0.569. His ERA+, an advanced stat based on the league-average ERA, is a statistics-breaking 624, with the league average defined as 100.

I mean, this guy's WHIP looks more like a slugging percentage. This is all unheard of, yet he has a 5-2 record with two no-decisions.

Typical Mets.

2021 Topps Opening Day Outstanding Opening Days #OOD-4 Bryce Harper

There are a few other insert sets with long odds that I didn't pull, but I had good enough luck with the rest. Outstanding Opening Days is the last of the plentiful sets, and a young Bryce Harper is the lone representative I found from this 10-card insert set.

You might think this is from Harper's debut game in 2012, but his career didn't begin until late April that year. His first taste of a true Opening Day came during this game in 2013, where he hit two home runs against Ricky Nolasco of the Marlins. Those two solo shots were the only runs scored all day, during a game that barely cracked the two-hour mark.

We're well into June by now, with the season a bit beyond one-third over. In fact, this is about as long as the regular season lasted in the shortened 2020 year. The season is still pretty young, and the Rockies are planning on taking Coors Field to full capacity on June 28th for a day they are calling "Opening Day 2.0". 

Perhaps I'll blog about my 2020 Opening Day blaster by then.

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

Max Scherzer looks like he's seen some stuff.

2021 Topps Opening Day #182 Max Scherzer

As have we all the past year or so.

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

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

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

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

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

2021 Topps Opening Day #189 Kyle Lewis

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

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

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

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

2021 Topps Opening Day #205 Trent Grisham

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

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

2021 Topps Opening Day #102 Nick Solak

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

2021 Topps Opening Day #104 José Berrios

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

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

2021 Topps Opening Day #210 Chadwick Tromp (RC)

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

2021 Topps Opening Day #22 Keston Hiura

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

2021 Topps Opening Day #152 Dylan Carlson (RC)

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

2021 Topps Opening Day #61 Carter Kieboom

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

2020 Topps Opening Day #118 Yoan Moncada

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

2021 Topps Opening Day #57 Santiago Espinal (RC)

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

2021 Topps Opening Day #159 Dane Dunning (RC)

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

2021 Topps Opening Day #155 DJ LeMahieu

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

2021 Topps Opening Day #142 Salvador Pérez

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

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

2021 Topps Opening Day #101 Andrew Benintendi

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

2021 Topps Opening Day #69 Trevor Bauer

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

2021 Topps Opening Day #5 Yu Darvish

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

2021 Topps Opening Day #42 Charlie Blackmon

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

2021 Topps Opening Day #89 Albert Pujols

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

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

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

Little Gridiron on the Prairie

I didn't watch a whole lot of TV when I was young. There were a handful of contemporary shows I followed, such as Boy Meets World, Full House, and Everwood, along with a few others. My dad was a Northern Exposure fan, and it remains a travesty that they can't get the licensing figured out well enough to add it to streaming services. But there was a lot that I missed.

This remains a challenge, because classic TV is one area where I definitely do not have encyclopedic knowledge. I remember a time when a coworker made a Webster reference about a decade ago and it sailed completely over my head.

Much of what I did watch at a younger age were among my mother's favorite shows, like Gilligan's Island, the occasional episode of The Waltons, and quite a bit of Little House on the Prairie.

So when a pair of 1975 Topps Football cards started navigating their way through the blog community, I knew I could come up with a relevant post, despite knowing less about the 1970s Los Angeles Rams than I do about 1970s TV.

1975 Topps Football #525 Merlin Olsen

That's because Hall of Famer Merlin Olsen, longtime Defensive Tackle for the Rams, had a co-starring role on Little House on the Prairie after his football career ended. He played Charles Ingalls's friend Jonathan Garvey for several seasons, filling the void left by the departure of Victor French's Mr. Edwards character. 

For the most part, his role consisted of normal 19th-century frontier farmer things, but there was the occasional reference to his famed NFL career.

One such reference came in the Season 5 episode, "The Winoka Warriors", in which Olsen, as Jonathan Garvey, coaches a youth football team. The episode's final game ended with a play in which the interpretation of a forward pass rule followed the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law.

Not a bad second act for a 14-time Pro Bowl participant.

I've never been all that interested in football cards, but I have a distinct memory of my dad taking me to a mall card show in the early '90s (remember those?), spotting a Merlin Olsen card in one of the glass cases, and pointing out the connection between Merlin Olsen the player and Merlin Olsen the actor. I never ended up owning one of his cards, but this one is briefly in my possession before I send it on to the next participant in this "Living Blog Bat-Around".

1975 Topps Football #60 Jack Youngblood

Accompanying Olsen on his travels is another 1975 card, this one of Olsen's teammate Jack Youngblood. Both defenders are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and both spent their entire careers with the Rams. Beyond that I don't have much more insight to offer, although it's remarkable how different the 1975 Topps sets were between football and baseball. The 1975 baseball set is far more colorful, but that little helmet in the lower right on the football set is pretty great.

Thanks for reading, and if you're interested in seeing Merlin Olsen's acting career, there are plenty of episodes of Little House on the Prairie available on Peacock Premium.

The Dawning of a New Age

We're three days into the 2021 season and it is already shaping up to be a wild one. Miguel Cabrera hit the first home run of the season into a blizzard. The Nationals and Mets had to postpone their opening series because we're still in a pandemic. The Rockies had a feral-looking feline visitor on Friday night. And, as I mentioned was a possibility in my previous post, the MLB has decided to relocate both the 2021 All-Star Game and the Draft, opting not to hold it in Atlanta in the wake of Georgia's recently-passed voting law.

A new host city has yet to be announced, although rumor has it that Denver is in the running. Such a decision is not without precedent, as we saw other sports leagues make similar relocation decisions in 2016 and 1991.

Even though it's still Opening Weekend, the All-Star Game is front of mind. The whole Cardsphere just wrote about the '83 Midsummer Classic a couple days ago. Night Owl was a participant in that, and he sort of blew us all out of the water with his post about how Whitey Herzog managed it, which effectively ushered in a new form of the All-Star Game. That, coupled with the news out of Commissioner Rob Manfred's office, got me thinking about the current state of the (almost) annual exhibition game.

Think back a ways to the summer of 2019. Long before the Nationals won that electrifying World Series. Before the pandemic that caused the cancellation of the 2020 All-Star Game. Before the tragic events that led to a rapid increase in our awareness of racial justice issues. Before the legislation in Georgia that led to MLB finding itself in the position of selecting a new city with barely more than three months to do it.

Who was the MVP of the 2019 All-Star Game?

2020 Topps Heritage New Age Performers #NAP-13 Shane Bieber

This guy. Everyone's favorite pitcher not named Justin.

Shane Bieber, featured on this card from 2020 Topps Heritage, part of the brand's long-running New Age Performers insert set, is our most recent All-Star MVP. He won the award in front of a hometown crowd in Cleveland. You can sort of see the commemorative patch on Bieber's hat.

In leafing through the contents of one of several blasters I bought last year, this card jumped out at me. Topps of course goes for a retro look with the Heritage set, but I feel like this card ended up inadvertently being a lot more relevant than they intended.

Because we are kind of in a new age, aren't we? An age where Major League Baseball will move the All-Star Game practically overnight in response to injustice. It wasn't that long ago when anything beyond a press release would be inconceivable. And when the 2021 All-Star Game happens, wherever that may be, we will all find ourselves in a dramatically different world than when we watched the 2019 game.

Shane Bieber might even be on the American League roster again, despite being the one who served up that snowy home run to Miguel Cabrera. Yet, a lot has changed for us all, and there are things that just won't fly anymore.

How many times have we said it? "Baseball is a business." Well, businesses have a responsibility to avoid liability. Surely this will cost the league millions, or at least their insurers. But are we under the impression that the MLB and other leagues aren't going to learn a lesson from this and perhaps be more cautious about site selection for future events? Might it be prudent for them to keep All-Star Games and Winter Meetings and expansion franchises and so forth in locations where the local legislature is less likely to manufacture what could charitably be called a PR crisis?

With similar laws in the works in Tennessee and elsewhere, this might very well affect Nashville's hopes for getting a team. And let's not forget, Atlanta might not have gotten teams in several sports when they did (if at all), had they chosen to continue the practice of segregation.

Just something to consider.

Maybe it feels like this is a brand-new thing, but it's really not. As we can see from the stories of Josh Gibson, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, Adam Jones, and Masahiro Tanaka, racism is baked into the fabric of America even more deeply than this great sport we all love. It takes different forms, yes. And there's still a long way to go.

What is changing, and what should give us all hope, is who's willing to stand up. There have been great strides made between Babe Ruth, allegedly, to Branch Rickey, to the league as a whole.

In addition to New Age Performers, Topps also includes a News Flashbacks insert set in their Heritage checklists. For the 1971 retrospective, Topps made a few cards about the later years of the Apollo program, the deaths of Louie Armstrong and Jim Morrison, and the advent of Starbucks, NASDAQ, and Walt Disney World.

2020 Topps Heritage News Flashbacks #NF-15 Louie Armstrong Passes Away

In 2070, what will they say about us? Who's getting a card in 2070 Topps Heritage News Flashbacks? Rob Manfred or Brian Kemp?

See you in 49 years.

Finding a Triple Crown Winner

Today is Opening Day.

It's been a while since I've been able to say that in the month of April. In both 2018 and 2019, the season began in the last few days of March, and 2020 was scheduled to do the same until, uh, events happened. Instead we got an Opening Day in late July.

But while much remains wrong with the world, far more than I have the heart to discuss here, at least Opening Day 2021 is in April.

To me, that's normal.

As you may have discovered by now, I and many of my fellow bloggers are participating in a coordinated Scavenger Hunt today, really more for an April Fools' Day prank than for Opening Day, but the two happen to coincide this year.

Last year, Matt at Diamond Jesters had us all write about Phil Niekro's 1988 Score card in honor of Knucksie's 81st birthday, which would sadly turn out to be his last. Niekro was one of far too many Hall-of-Famers that left us in that awful year of 2020, and while I doubt he ever knew about our little activity, it's comforting to know that at least he could have.

This year, things are a little different. Participants from last year's one-day Blog Bat Around were offered the chance to participate in this year's iteration, a complete look at the checklist of a particular 22-card insert set.

1984 Topps Glossy All-Stars #11 Carl Yastrzemski

With that, you can now check Carl Yastrzemski's card #11 off your list of 1984 Topps Glossy All-Stars.

I own none of the cards in this set, so Matt graciously supplied the above image. Consequently, I didn't have much of a claim to write about any one particular card, so by luck of the draw, I was assigned this very famous Hall of Famer. You've seen him on Infield Fly Rule before in vintage form. Many of us know that his grandson Mike plays for the San Francisco Giants, but in my research, I learned that Carl is second all-time in games played, trailing only Pete Rose.

As is usual with the nature of cards predating the existence of Topps Now, this set documents the prior season. In this case, that's the '83 All-Star Game. It was held in Chicago's Comiskey Park, and it was the last of eighteen that Yaz participated in. He looks weathered here at 43, and is listed as an "Honorable Mention" on the front, and an "Honorary Member" on the card back. Those have the same initials of "HM", but it seems that either Topps or MLB were a little indecisive about what that actually stood for. 

Presumably, he didn't get in via balloting, but was granted a spot anyway as part of a farewell tour. His only at bat resulted in a strikeout in the 7th inning.

As has happened throughout much of my baseball fandom, the American League was the victor in this one. As the home team, they won by a score of 13-3, thanks in part to the only grand slam in All-Star Game history. Whoever ended up with Fred Lynn's card #7 will surely tell you all about that.

I'm glad I have the chance to participate in this scavenger hunt. It's also a good reminder that there is such a thing as the All-Star Game, because that is one of many events that did not occur in 2020. At this point, it's still on for 2021, although where it will be held is perhaps up in the air. It was supposed to happen at Dodger Stadium last year, but we'll have to wait for 2022 for L.A. to get that chance again.

If you didn't already know this Blog Bat Around was happening, I hope you're pleasantly surprised. And if you've just now discovered Infield Fly Rule while hunting for #11, welcome!

Weekend Roundup

I've obtained a grand total of two new cards so far in 2021. I still have piles of 2020 cards everywhere, but at this point I'm taking on a bit of a LIFO inventory model just to stay somewhat relevant. No new trips to Target because they're not offering cards as part of their pickup option, no orders from Dave & Adam's, no assorted packs. I've mainly just been watching the hobby get crazier and crazier, with NFTs and seven-figure rookie cards and Topps making a pretty insensitive blunder.

Topps Bunt has been taking up a lot of my time and attention, though. 

I do a lot of my writing when I can watch sports in the background, but even those opportunities have been few and far between. Spring Training isn't really capturing my attention, I didn't bother filling out an NCAA bracket for March Madness and didn't even know that my alma mater was participating until about three hours ago, and the other things like golf and such just haven't spoken to me. Yes, the NBA and NHL seasons are continuing, but it's quite difficult to legally watch my local teams due to the ongoing impasse between the RSN and the cable provider, which has lasted nearly two years and shows no signs of improving.

In short, sports has drifted pretty far down my list of interests, and likewise, so has collecting. In fact, my first purchase of 2021 has nothing to do with sports.

2020-21 Topps Now Election #21 Bernie Sanders Attends 59th Presidential Inauguration Ceremony /91,169

We're now two months into the Biden Presidency, and vaccine rates have improved dramatically. As of yesterday, I'm now considered eligible, and am keeping my fingers crossed that I'll be able to find an appointment soon. But we had to formally begin this Presidency with an Inauguration, and along with Amanda Gorman's wonderful poem, one of the highlights of that event was this now-famous photo of Senator Bernie Sanders ready for a New England winter.

Some people knitted his mittens. Some people crocheted a little figure of Sanders himself. Some people pointed out that a person only needs one good coat, after noticing that he's wearing the same coat from his "I am once again asking" meme. A friend of mine bought a coffee mug with this image and "The Man, The Myth, The Mittens" next to it.

I bought the Topps Now card. A lot of people did, as it smashed the record for a Topps Now print run, coming in at 91,169. That far outpaced Dr. Fauci's first pitch card at a mere 51,512.

I quite enjoyed reading the photographer's take on it, too. You can never plan something like this. You just have to be ready.

In addition to the occupant of the White House, a lot more has changed in the past year. But one thing that hasn't is that my mom still checks my Eight Men Out list for birthday gift ideas. 

2015 Topps Mini #62 Nolan Arenado

Unfortunately, Nolan Arenado is no longer a Colorado Rockie. But he was back in 2015, and he'll forever be pictured as a Rockie in '15 Topps. This Arenado is the penultimate one I need to finish the team set from 2015 Topps Mini, with only a three-player League Leader card remaining. Julie from A Cracked Bat sent almost the entire team set a little over four years ago, and because the League Leader card doesn't have the same border, I've now added the maximum possible amount of purple to that binder page. 

It's strange to think this set came out six years ago, and this photo of a youthful-looking Nolan is from all the way back in 2014. It's a solid Coors Field card showing him following through on a swing, even though he's better known for his fantastic defense. None of us should have been surprised at his eight consecutive Gold Gloves. 

That said, I certainly didn't think Arenado would be playing for the Cardinals by the time this Eight Men Out need came in, but the world is an unpredictable place. This is why no one has ever done a perfect bracket, for example. But even in an unpredictable world, come what may, things will always feel at least a little bit normal if I keep getting baseball cards for my birthday.

Farewell, Nolan

This is not a post I ever wanted to write. It's a post I've been putting off writing for over a week. Less than two years ago I thought it was a sure thing that Nolan Arenado, my favorite player to ever suit up for the Rockies, would remain in Denver for many years to come. Maybe for not the full eight years of his contract, but at least until his opt-out kicked in.

As we all know by now, it was not to be. Last week, the Rockies traded their generational talent (and around $50 million) to the St. Louis Cardinals for a flotilla of mid-ranked prospects. I had heard of precisely zero of them, and only one, LHP Austin Gomber, has any Major League experience.

Predictably, the Rockies have been getting torn to shreds over this one in the press, with one Athletic sportswriter charitably giving Colorado a grade of "D". And, yeah. This is bad.

Really bad.

Every team makes bad trades; it happens to the best of them. Dodgers fans know it. Yankees fans know it. Red Sox fans know it. Even Cardinals fans know it. But this is more than a bad trade. This is an indication of a systemic problem in the organization. Because in the last half-decade or so under Jeff Bridich, their current General Manager, hardly any transaction has panned out. Corey Dickerson to the Rays for German Márquez has pretty much been the lone highlight.

There's no need to recount the whole thing, but it's been done quite exhaustively by a particular reddit user if you'd like the gory details.

Long story short, Nolan Arenado simply said all along that he wanted to win, either in Colorado or elsewhere, and it became clear that the Rockies were no longer a good fit.

As a longtime fan, that's heartbreaking. I and a lot of fans like me have stuck around for it all, after the Tulowitzki trade, after the failure to ever win the division, after all the free-agent busts, after having to perpetually defend the team and the ballpark which much of the league considers a laughingstock, after learning why Arenado even had an opt-out in the first place.

I stuck around because there was always a glimmer of hope. There was always something to build around, like Todd Helton or the latest batch of young homegrown stars (e.g. Troy Tulowitzki). There was the occasional wild card. More recently, there was a solid rotation, playoff appearances in two straight years, and an infield that was as good as it's ever been. There was always possibility. There was always potential.

But now?

2013 Topps Update #US259 Nolan Arenado (RC)

Now it just seems like Nolan Arenado will just be yet another former Rockie that finds success (or at least more Postseason appearances) elsewhere. Like Larry Walker, Matt Holliday, Tulowitzki, DJ LeMahieu, etc.... And he's taking a huge amount of that potential with him.

It's very likely we'll see Trevor Story add his name to that list. He'll be a free agent after the 2021 season, and he just watched his legendary teammate sixty feet to his right get shipped off. Why would he stick around knowing he'll have to carry the whole left side of the infield?

Once upon a time, Arenado made his own splash as a Major League rookie, documented on his Rookie Card in 2013 Topps Update. It took him a few weeks to find his footing, but he rapidly became known throughout the league as an elite defender and a consistent hitter. 

Watching him play is magical. He's electric to watch. His defense is absolutely jaw-dropping in every single game. He's a great hitter, a perennial MVP candidate, and found himself atop the leaderboards regularly. As you likely know, he's won a Gold Glove every year he's been in the league, and the Platinum Glove four years running. And he plays the game with fierce intensity. 

You might have seen his walk-off, cycle-completing home run on Father's Day 2017, which, looking back, probably marked the high point of Arenado's tenure in Colorado. A month or so before that, I saw him play in a game against the Dodgers, and I remember him lining a rocket to third that Justin Turner managed to spear to end the inning. That was definitely an RBI chance, and everyone in the ballpark could tell that Nolan was pissed. He makes that play on batters day in and day out, but expected of himself that he could beat it from the other side.

That's what I'll miss.

And back in 2013, there was so much hope. Along with Christian Yelich and Anthony Rendon, he's one of the key rookie cards in 2013 Topps Update. I honestly don't know where I even got this one. It's easily one of the most sought-after recent cards in my collection, and I probably pulled it out of a commons box at a card show not long after its release. I also found the Yelich, but not the Rendon. That clearly visible number 28 became iconic in Rockies history, and the team really ought to retire it anyway. They should do so to honor the best player they've ever had, and as a reminder of mistakes made.

So where does that leave me as a die-hard Rockies fan? Honestly, I'm not sure. I'll definitely be tuning in to more Cardinals games this year. But I did see a tweet (or Reddit comment, or news quip, who can remember?) from another long-suffering fan of an NFL team who threw in the towel, saying, "I didn't give up on the team. The team gave up on me."

And while that's probably taking one's fandom a bit too personally, I'll say that I'm not expecting to find myself at the ballpark anytime soon. That's largely because of the pandemic, for sure, as I have no desire to add 35,000 people to my bubble, but also because my favorite player very conspicuously won't be there anymore.

I wish him well, and hope he gets to experience the pinnacles of baseball stardom that he's so clearly worthy of.