Closing Day(s)

It was a simple plan. After coming home from about 7 months on the road, I would sort all the 2018 Opening Day I had accumulated, find the handful of cards with a different photo than the player's Series 1 or 2 card, and put the fun little set to bed.

Sometimes, the light's all shining on me and my baseball card plans. And sometimes, there is a bit too much light - though I am not sure there could be too much light on a baseball card - a sport for a nice sunny day -

That is my second favorite card from the set. It has that just perfect (estimatedly prophetic?) shaft of light, lots of strong lines, a nice mix of sharp and soft colors, and a nice trippy empty seats section. It is a bit of a 'farewell' card - Cole's final card as a Pirate, and a card I like so much I have now scanned and posted it twice in my sadly now nearly bi-annual posts. He was due to appear in Series 2, wherein he appears in his new Astros duds, thus making this a unique card in Opening Day.

This has generally been the only way an Opening Day card differs from it's S1/S2 counterpart over the years. He was traded to Houston on Jan. 13th - too late to change this card. And usually, only players changing teams in a certain segment of the off-season end up with a distinct card in this set.

Not this year.

By my count, some 65 cards in 2018 Opening Day sport a photo not used in the 700 card "Flagship" set. That's nearly a clean 1/3 of the 200 card set and a large break from how this set is usually produced. Topps promised something to do with "Base Card Veterans" on the 'sell sheet' for this set oh so long ago now, and they delivered. It is easy to rip (wait, I thought that was a positive word in this hobby) on Topps for their little boo-boos here there and seemingly everywhere. It is far more satisfying to use that verb 'delivered' with the word "Topps" as the subject.

This is pretty good news for me, a collector of those worthless "low end" baseball cards. I have always enjoyed Opening Day despite the cruelly repetitive cards from _the_ Topps set of the year. Usually an insert set or three appeals to me, the price is right, and the "hits" are tough pulls - but that gives them excellent re-sale value, like this one:

That isn't true across the board; although the product is not blaring a "Scrub Auto in every Box" tagline on every packaging surface, the sometimes quirky hits that do appear can also have a scrub-like essentially randomly dubious value like cards in other products, too...

I mean, the good pull there would be a Mr. Met or Wally the Green Monster "Auto" that I am sure someone would want a bit more than this one, from the franchise with the lowest attendance in Baseball. Though why anyone would pay real cash money for one of these totally eludes me. Can I sign the Mascot autos next year, Topps? I am so old I learned cursive in grade school and I know I could handle the assignment. Maybe I should reach out to Marlins Man on the Twitter somehow, though I don't know if he has kissed and made up with Derek yet. I suspect not.

But that's how baseball cards work - there is not a $20 bill in every pack. If you buy some at about every trip one makes to the grocery store, like I do, what is in the retail packs lately is a whole lot of repeats. And even the 6 card, 1 insert packs of Opening Day have very funky collation these days.

That Cole card pretty much always appeared in a pack with a nice enough card in the exact same position in the Topps universe: the final card as a Pittsburgh Pirate for Andrew McCutchen. Ripping these packs over the course of the season elicited groan after groan as same-same pairs of cards appeared time and time again. 

It wasn't until I had some nice indoors time to sort these cards, using the #s on the back, that I found the most clear evidence I have ever seen of how the fairly not-magical Topps collation machine works.

2018 Topps Update Gerrit Cole is card #183.

2018 Topps Update Andrew McCutchen, it's steady pack-mate every time I pulled the Cole card, is card #83.

Many other cards appeared in my stupidly large stack of these things with the same sequence of #xx and #1xx. I knew I would have 7-8x of some cards, and 2-3x of many others, as so often is the case lately for dumb retail Topps addicts like me.

But I had randomly pulled cards (RC fever) aside all through the creation of that big pile of cards over many months of 'collecting', so I couldn't be sure just how this nutso numerology appeared in the packs, originally. So I ran back to my local Big Box store and scooped up their very last 3-pack blister pack of Opening Day packs that I was hoping was still there - a whole 'Tree-Fiddy' (yes, really, $3.50) of research expense for my devoted blog readers. I had purchased the next-to-last such blister the day after Christmas and I was praying it was still there, to get an accurate look at the actual pack packing of these cards. (I got a big hit from that next-to-last pack; you'll see that card here in my next post, very soon.) So much for the simple plan of just sorting a big stack of cards.

This is what I found:

Pack #1

Marcus Stroman #108 (unique to Opening Day)

Adam Jones #15

Ryan McMahon #115 RC (unique)

insert - YMCA Dance @ Yankee Stadium (dumb worthless card I have 5x)

Jon Lester #25

Austin Hays #125 RC (unique)

Ozzie Albies #13 RC (NOT unique)

(Most of the Blue Jays cards are unique in Opening Day; more on that in a bit.)

Pack 2

Carlos Rodon #25

Francisco Mejia #125 RC (unique)

Jon Gray #42

insert - Rockies Opening Day (yawn)

Stephen Strasburg #113 (unique)

Rafael Devers #2 RC (unique, sorta)

Adrian Beltre #102 (unique)

Pack 3

Xander Bogaerts #149

Miguel Cabrera #46

Chris Davis #146

insert - Cubs Mascot "Clark"

Jose Quintana #199 (unique)

Danny Salazar #38

Luiz Gohara #138 RC (unique)

Every pack held 2 "pairs" of cards. A lot of things clicked into place in my mind over how a "pack" of Topps baseball cards is assembled.

In my experience, collation slipped a fair bit down the hill a few years ago, and has stayed horribly bad ever since, across all of the flaggy-shippy sets I like to rip (this one, S1/S2/Update, a little Chrome now and again). I do not recall precisely which year this was, but I suspect it was 2015, when Opening Day went from a 220 card set to a 200 card set. I am pretty sure this also heralded a change in the basic design of a printing sheet, going from 110 card sheets to 100 card sheets.

And it seems obvious that in this release, the cards may have been placed on the sheet in sequential order, which is not the normal practice. But to get these #xx, #1xx pairs, I suspect they were; and then a card is cut from the 1-100 sheet followed immediately by a card from the 101-200 sheet - the same 2 spots on each sheet being then stacked together.

Now, I don't know the rest of the mysteries of the collating technology. I do think these card #s explain it some, and also explain those excrutiating runs of 9 identically sequenced cards that come out of all sorts of different pack configurations of the other retail flagship releases. Except those sheets are probably assembled without card #1 adjacent to card #2, like these Opening Day sheets probably were.

Or, I could be wrong, and there are still 110 card sheets with 10 cards simply "Double Printed' - it used to be a little sideline on checklists, to identify "DP" cards. But really I don't think those exist any more. Though my brand new 100-sheet theories leave a hole in how all the printing plant gadgets handle creating cards #301-350 in S1 & S2.

Unfortunately, it has been a long time since an uncut sheet of Topps baseball cards has escaped into the wild for Topps nutz like me to get their grubby paws on.

Ahh well, I bet you are starting to pick up some more of those little letter zzzzzzzs by now. Let's look at some cards already!

This card has the blah blahs; a card of a decidedly middling middle infielder in his magical 'new' road grey duds. Not up to my usual standards of showing you the good stuff and nothing but the good stuff. But it is actually one of the 2 most unique unique cards in the set - Solarte's only 2018 'Flagship' card as a Blue Jay. In Series One he was still a Padre, and he didn't make the cut for a brand new card in Update. (Gerrit Cole, conversely, got a new Astros card for himself in both Series 2 _and_ Update). 

Yawn. I just report the esoteric, not exciting, checklist news; probably the little z key is still chasin' yas. So how about this card:

Bazinga! I think if you are a Blue Jays collector, yas gottas get your mitts on deeze cards dere, eh? Here I am even subtly advertising the source in the photo, which I cribbed from eBay as I do not own any of these. I somewhat wish I did, but I also somewhat understand that I already have way too many baseball cards, anyway.

That is a "Blue Jays Canada Parallel" seeded one per blister pack at Wal-Marts in Canada, only. The Morales card is a unique Opening Day card; the Jays have 5 cards in the set and 4 of them are nique-sters (Josh Donaldson's is not). All 5 have a parallel like this, north of the border.

Whew. The things you discover when you set out to sort a stack of baseball cards. So, since I found all this cheap thrill baseball card treasure, let's see it already!

The Dodgers were the biggest winner of new cards in '18 Opening Day, so I had to keep them all together for ya, and for me, and my 2018 baseball card binder - the point of this 'simple' plan. That will probably be my only Yu Darvish Dodger card, ever.

As befits an NLCS winner, the Dodgers have 11 cards in this set. 8 of them get sui generis (haven't you, too, always wanted to use that in a sentence?) efforts. The ALCS winner, the Houston Astros, get only 8 cards. Exactly Zero of them vary from S1/S2. Conversely, their cross-state rivals up in Arlington or wherever, receive 7 cards, with 5 of them being these nifty extra work tasks carried out by the Topps card creator, who works for the Topps Chewing Gum Company --- Brooklyn.

That page includes the first of a bit of a gusher of nu-RC in this set -- 25 of them. I like them. Some day, collectors might start to value these Opening Day cards because of their unique content. In the Rookie Card Flood era, there are so many of the darn things for most Rookies, especially the hawt ones like Buehler & Verdugo out there in a pretty darn good baseball card market, some collectors are finally starting to collect cards to collect based on "eye appeal", from what I read on the Internets lately.

And that's a good thing. Though I don't want, need, or plan to own multiple Rookie Card cards, I do like the idea that I can end up holding a cheap little Opening Day card that someone else might want, some sunny day. And that other collectors have little choice but to start considering esthetics - that will lead to better baseball cards, for all of us.

Rookies Rookies Rookies, moar Rookies

Only thing to really note here is that one of the more anticipated RCs this spring, Rhys Hoskins, who has a multitude of RC logo cards in all sorts of inserts and retro insert subsets and autos (nifty sig, too) and every other kind of gimcrack Topps can think of you to get you to buy still more Rookie Cards - well, he does not get a special card in base Opening Day. Neither do some of the other S1 Rookies falling out of every other set of 2018 baseball cards in all directions, like Ozzie Albies and Amed Rosario.

Is this an example of Topps just really starting to dive into the little things, the itty-bitty things, like the way all us bloggers constantly try and whine them into doing? I would say, somewhat. These 'extra' cards of just ordinary not-hot Rookies are very welcome in my collection, and I don't miss having an extra Rhys Hoskins card as "hot" rookies get too many cards, in total, to want to keep them all anyway. I think the real reason Hoskins doesn't have a special card on that NL East RC page there is that Topps probably made so many other cards of him, they needed all the other photo rights they purchased for those other cards.

One "top" Rookie did get a hey, look, it's different card here -

I get a kick out of a "Rookie Card" for players that have already been placed on the Topps All-Rookie Cup team based on performance in their "Rookie" year. How did that happen? Eventually, I will have 9 of these things to amuse you with, all together on their special 2nd Year Rookie Card All-Rookie Team.

The actual photo on this ¿different? card for Devers is the same photo as his regular Series One card, which will always be worth infinitely more than a card from the red-headed little stepkid set called Opening Day, because the Series One card is a traditional vertical card, and the bulk of hilariously OC baseball card collectors hate horizontal cards. And particularly, horizontal Rookie Cards, like those.

OK, just a few more Rookies to go...

Yankees Rookies! I'm rich! Is anything better in baseball cards than a Yankees scout finding the next true Natural, nursing him up through the Yankees farm clubs until he is elected to the Hall of Fame part-way through his incredible Rookie season in Yankee Stadium? Oh, wait, that was last year. These guys are more ordinary Rookies, with questions on their defense and questions on whether they will be able to re-write "The Book" that all the veteran MLB pitchers will write about them, once they see them for a few more series, and a more than passing chance they will get traded to some sad sack team that lives in baseball card purgatory, like my beloved Detroit Tigers, who have a whopping 2 whole cards in this set - the same # of just Rookies that the Yankees have.

OK, now we can plumb the mysteries of just what is a "Base Card Veteran", per Toppseses very own advertising for these cards. Does that mean a baseball player who has already been on soooo many baseball cards in their career that Topps felt they should have an extra base card this year? I'm down with that.

Ooops, forgot, more Rookies. Dang things are as bad as Tribbles - keep an eye out around your card desk, in case they start to multiply.

Now, I wish I could ponder each and every special card in Opening Day, and how it compares to the counterpart card in Series 1 or 2. Sometimes these are better, other times S1/S2 is superior. Alas, I have already spent way toooo much time on this post and I still have a few more scans to upload. I will include an actual checklist of these cards in the Comments down below here, eventually.

I can recommend this nifty blog - the 2018 Topps Opening Day Blog. I hope it returns to action; it features an awesome breakdown of exactly which game each of these action packed baseball cards came from - check it out!

Personally, I do like horizontal baseball cards. Going forward in my collecting efforts, I am going to try harder to collect them properly - by freeing myself from the chains of sequential checklist #s and simply keeping 9 such cards all together on a binder page to make them so much easier to enjoy.

Of those, the David Price, Chance Cisco, and Greg Allen cards are clear winners, with so much winning over their other 'Water Slide' cards, that I will never get tired of such winning, that I can tell you.

I might get tired of all these RCs, though, whew. 25 RC logo cards in a 200 card set is 12.5% of the set - 1-in-8 cards is some kid who may or may not 'stick' in MLB. But those are the last ones to share, finally.

Meanwhile, I just realized I should have grouped some of these Base Card Veterans into a page with all Alternate Uniforms. I like those, particularly on baseball cards, cuz I can't see them on the radio, where I absorb most live baseball action. Colorful Alternate Unis make for more colorful baseball cards, and that is more better. This 2018 base design is really starting to grow on me.

A few more 'Farewell' cards in there for players who changed teams last winter, and a rare photograph of Troy Tulowitzki actually taking a recent At Bat for the Blue Jays. I hope that one is covered in that '18 Opening Day blog I haven't really delved, yet. And I would have to say that otherwise just ordinary baseball card for TT there is actually better than his Series One card, which is part of the weird "Pointing" subset fetish Topps produced this year in S1 & S2. Pointing is sometimes considered rude due to some ancient quirk in our DNA &/or our cultural DNA, and it doesn't always work on sports cards, if you ask me. If you want a final Toronto Tulo to remember, pick that one.

I did mention that Solarte card is one of 2 such in this set; the other is Ian Kinsler -

This will be the only California Angels 'Water Slide' for Kinsler, who pulled off a rare design+team triple header for Topps in 2018, appearing in Series 1 as a Tiger, Opening Day shown here, and in Update as a Red Sock. I was glad to see him finally get another chance to be on the winning side in the World Series after such a solid career, but felt pretty bad for him when he had such a Buckner-esque experience this time, though with the sting lessened quite a bit by his particular bad game making no difference to the outcome of the Series.

Still, a nice card to have if you collect Ian Kinsler, which wouldn't have been possible without Topps Opening Day, for pack rippers at least as it is also part of the Angels 'Factory' Team Set. 

Opening Day is now a set/product that I feel has been near totally re-born, and I look forward to starting to rip (the good kind) it all over again, in a little less than 90 days as I type.

I also found a clear, obvious winner for Best Card of the Set, which could obviously only come from these Opening-Day-only cards. My Best of the Year? Stay tuned. But clearly a contender. And this player had a really nice candid card, amidst all the all-action-all-the-time cards that make up 'Flagship' these days, in Series One - a pair of nice gestures from Topps, here. And I think there should be an excellent chance for this recently retired, future Hall of Famer to get a true "Sunset" card send-off in 2019 Series One, just four too long weeks away as I type. But if that does not happen, this will have to do, and will do nicely:

Rest In Peace, Sy Berger

I think you will see a lot of these posts today. I hope so.

This is my only Sy Berger card:

There are two others, and I will own them someday. I think I want to try my luck at ripping another box of the 2011 Lineage release, which had a /60 on-card autograph that I have always wanted - one of only two autographs I truly wish to own.

Here are some links on the brief details:

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/12027167/sy-berger-father-modern-day-baseball-cards-dies-age-91

http://www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/sy-berger-long-time-topps-executive-dies-91/

And here is the gold standard, the New York Times obituary. If you are not an NYT subscriber and have read all of your ten free articles this month, I suggest finding another electronic device which still has some space on it's NYT cookie to read this one, quite good:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/15/sports/baseball/sy-berger-91-dies-created-the-modern-baseball-trading-card.html?ref=obituaries&_r=0

Here is perhaps his last interview:

http://www.sportscollectorsdigest.com/features/catching-up-with-cardboard-pioneer-sy-berger

In the hobby of baseball cards, you never stop learning little tidbits of information about the game, the players, and the cards themselves. I write this blog to share those tidbits I discover, in hopes you enjoy them as well, though venting my opinions on cards might out-number those tidbits all too often. This afternoon I was researching ways to contact someone to chat with for a post I hope to write, though it isn't anyone at Topps, and along the way I stumbled across this news. In the article from Sports Collector Daily, I saw a picture of the bottom of a box of 1952 Topps for the first time.

I think the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs of the text on the bottom of the box are a just exactly perfect epitaph for Sy Berger:

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some baseball cards to sort. Thank You, Sy Berger!

The Wal•Mart Blues

Here's a fun game you can play the next time you are in Wal•Mart. And I know you will be in Wal•Mart, because you buy baseball cards.

Sure, you can try and pretend you never go in there. You can tell me you only and always shop at Target, which would be wise, 'cuz the wimmins in there are way prettier. But I know you would be lying, because you buy baseball cards.

And my little game has nothing to do with the so-called "People of Wal•Mart" that you might be unfortunately picturing in your head right now. I'm not a fan of that website; I can have fun mocking baseball picture cards, but taking pictures of ordinary people to then publicly mock them on the internet is kinda mean really. Karma will find the people who take such pictures, I sincerely believe.

No, my game is one you can simply play in your head the next time you visit Wally World; and it is a simple one that is just simply a question: Is anyone happy in Wal•Mart?

Seriously. Just look around whenever you are in there. The customers? The employees? You?

I am happy at Wal•Mart - I am almost always only there to buy baseball cards. The fact that I can pick up a few groceries or some motor oil or a fishing lure or a pair of work gloves at the same time is kind of a time-saving bonus. No baseball cards, no Wal•Mart for me. Even though I know the other box stores I go to  instead are selling essentially the same junk manufactured by exploited workers in foreign countries.

But hardly anyone besides me ever is happy in there, despite all those smiley faces plastered everywhere. Mi amigos de Mexico y puntas sur, si. If you are in a Wal•Mart near much of an Hispanic immigrant population, you might notice they do seem to enjoy the place and their new American levels of purchasing power. So let me rephrase the question. Are any Americans happy to be in Wal•Mart? Perhaps small children being pacified with a purchase I guess. So one final rephrase - Are any adult Americans happy to be in Wal•Mart?

You be the judge next time. The results ... might surprise you. Or might not.

So I was mentioning that I pulled up to a Wal•Mart a week or so back now in the throes of baseball picture products withdrawal. And then the blog went dark for a few more days.

There is a heat wave gripping the area where I live this week, a rather northerly locale, so we don't really need central air conditioning save for a few miserable weeks a year, like this one, and it isn't built in to my house. And the room with my scanner and baseball cards was more intolerable than my enjoyment of writing this blog for y'all. Especially since the post I had lined up in my mind needs lots of scans. Because you want to see some baseball cards, not just read more wordy words on the internet. Right?

So, finally, let's look at a baseball card:

That's not a Wal•Mart Blue, man. Don't worry, I won't cheat yas, those were in the pack too. Along with my fix of Topps stickers, I picked up a 'fat' pack of Series 2 while I was visiting with Wally. Though this one didn't at first seem quite as 'fat' without Prince Fielder on the cover now.

Mr. Diamond here just seems to say America. Baseball. Wal•Mart. There's a diamond on his card and he's named Diamond. Lots of blue on there, like the store's signs. Minnesota. Is there a state more American than Minnesota? Seemed appropriate to get a Twins card when I had watched a Minnesota TV station to get my weather forecast the day before, despite being a couple state lines away from all those lakes.

I am more than a little burnt on the pitcher's torso framing so prevalent in 2013 Topps - this one lost some potential composition points by cropping off most of Scott's leg there, but gained a few back by leaving his uniform's leg stripe on the card.

I like this card anyway, because it is another one shot at Detroit's Comerica Park. That fuzzy white stuff behind him is part of the #5, retired by the Tigers in honor of Hank Greenberg, as noted on the center field wall. Where are all his vintage repros, Topps? Heck, his life story is so amazing there could be a whole set of picture cards about him. Topps, though, seems to think the only old-timey Detroit Tigers worthy of new cardboard are named Kaline and occasionally Cobb.

I also wonder if we have Tatooine cards, what can we call brick-walled cards? Not many of those around, I'm sure. That's all solid brick there behind Mr. Diamond.

And the Topps collating machine didn't let me down on my all-American box-store trip, with more red-white-and-blue, though I just can't scan and blog the whole pack. I thought about it. If I did that, I might as well just launch a whole straight-up Sea Turtle blog, which I have also thought about. But I just don't have that kind of time - you wouldn't see card #990, aka #US330, until sometime in the year 2019 perhaps - and I like to blabber about lots of different baseball cards than just these neat little turtles, like this one:

Who would vote against the idea of more head-first third-base slide cards? This one might appear on some best-of lists; especially since the slightly better card of Everth Cabrera was suspended for the rest of the season. Which coincidentally, seems to have tanked the prices on that Superman-like card, making it rather easy to rainbow if you wanted to. I briefly considered doing just that before launching head-first into my Parallel Project instead.

Usually sliding cards in the digital century feature a little dust going airborne as well, the absence of which makes the Florimon card that much more striking I think. I did quickly find a somewhat analogous card:

I always like the I'm-gonna-catch-that-ball, I'm-gonna-catch-that-ball, I'm-gonna-catch-that-ball baseball cards. The viewer is as entranced with the probability as the baseball player immortalized in time. On this one, Mayberry has run to make this catch so hard that the turf divots are still going airborne behind him. In action, indeed. Topps saluted Mayberry's father with a somewhat unexpected checklist entry in Archives this year.....I think it's time Topps busted out those nice Father/Son cards in a little subset next year. But they probably won't, cuz the 19 year old card dealers dealing cards of 19 year old minor leaguers could care less about major league parents.

I did escape from all-America colors for a few selections in the pack, courtesy of the New York Mets, who generally fare well riding the Sea Turtle:

Especially when the opposing player supplies plenty of their complementary base color, blue. This card did lead me to a bit of extra typing on this 'puter thing in front of me - just who is this mysterious Amarista player in the striking blue uniform? I knew he wasn't among the hallowed 660 in 2013 Topps; which turned out to be because he is a pedestrian infielder for San Diego. No room in the base set for them, unlike near-similar players in major media markets. Though I have to stick up for 1 Whitehall St. here in that no one expected Tejada to disappear from The Game this year after a promising first couple seasons in the bigs.

Though the Mets have that excellent Orange in their color scheme, their cards still scream America! Baseball! as much as the flag-color teams, such as this one:

A classic. Great Sox - old school, good supply of Met-blue. Wright has already taken his left foot-step forward - he's committing to swing at the pitch just about to enter the frame. The fully extended left arm further adds to the not-tense but excellent anticipatory tension of the shot. The Met's 50th anniversary shoulder patch is featured nicely. Just an outstanding baseball picture card; even though there have already been, who knows, a million different baseball cards produced (2 million?), and there is nothing new under the beautiful sunny skies at the ballpark that day, I can still enjoy a base set baseball card like this one. It also marks a return to "hero numbers" in Series 2 here, as this is card #400. I liked Topps' experiment with matching card #s to uniform #s in Series 1. I thought it was a nice way to honor more players than the limited amount of "hero" card #s in a set. I hope the tradition can continue right along with the new-fangled-ness next season.

And if you look real close at Wright's face (I won't crop it and blow it up for you - get your own card, it's a good 'un) you will notice that he has his tongue sticking out, like a happy cat or something. I think he is gonna smack that incoming pitch right over the outfield wall.

Of course baseball fans love sluggers, and generally love their baseball cards. But soon enough in this pack I got back to primary baseball colors, and a rather amusing card:

I don't think I've ever seen a slugger with a case of guitar face before -

It must have been a foul ball. Not sure I would hand Jay that card to sign, though he has a few other similar post-contact cards.

Sticking to an also more-common-than-I-totally-wish meme in Series 2 (as in Series 1) - showing a player's "unhappy" face (granted, an inescapable result of 'action' photography) - we find this card:

Normally these are found on the pitcher's cards of course, but Yunel there doesn't appear to be throwing from much of a stretch position, so we have to check the back of the card. Yep, an infielder. A basically unremarkable card really (too, too much blue), until another Tampa Bay Ray wandered into the pack a few cards later:

Another unhappy action shot. Both of these make you think the player is thinking, hey, the runner is already safe, but I have to throw the ball over there anyway. But you can't blame Kelly for being disgruntled at being photoshopped into a Tampa uniform despite being a Series 2 release this year. That's right Topps, a big fat Zero for this one, you graded it yourself there. The overly shiny uni and the too-bright hat are always a dead giveaway for a dead baseball card. I only had to look back a few cards in the pack to confirm I was being manipulated so you could have more time and production budget to put redemption cards in your expensive products.

Fortunately, Series 2 rarely disappoints for long:

My first thought on my first copy of this card a few months back now was that it could be a possible entry in the shoulder patch binder for that intricate Orioles patch. Or maybe an addition to the Shades page. Just today I noticed it's a second card with a touch of slugger face perhaps.

But eventually what really makes this card jump off the stack of baseball cards is the partially flattened baseball jumping off the end of the bat there. Even with the cutting edge camera equipment Topps gets in action these days, such intense motion can't be completely frozen and the ball seems to be departing the bat as if McLouth ignited the rocket fuel in the core. A pity such a great image capture is weakened by the way the ball hides in the white of the uniform. And the unfortunate way the lines of the composition lead the eye away from the baseball to such a degree that it took me 2 months of playing with Series 2 cards to even notice the incredibly rapidly accelerating baseball on it. So close, Topps, so close; much like hitting off the end of the bat like that is not just exactly perfect.

Did I just type 'perfect'? Yep. Like this card:

Yes we have made it to the Wal•Mart Blues at last. Though if you still have the blues after seeing this card, well, baseball cards just won't help. I featured this card before Series 2 even came out, I like it so much, though I did discover what happened to the ball on that card. Hint: don't hit the baseball off the end of the bat. This card is giving me the blues a little though, as I have realized that the best possible parallel edition of it would be the /62 black bordered version, which is basically true of all the Pirate cards. The black-border Alvarez card has been up on eBay twice in the last few weeks and gone for a little more than $25 and $20 w/shipping and I just don't want to spend that much on a single card. But oh how I desire to have it (and the McCutchen card) in that parallel. Donations always accepted. I think, though, that I will probably settle for tracking down a /2013 gold border version, like a few other classy cards this year. The gold always seems to work out nicely with any team colors.

The Wal•Mart parallels also bring me down a little with their pastel washed-out-ness. The basic, nearly-dark blue of the standard Wal•Mart logo would look quite a bit more striking on a baseball card. There was probably no way around that, given the nature of the colored Sea Turtle - i.e., to make a blue parallel either the border or the graphic frame has to be washed out compared to the other.

One of the blues in this pack -

- got me wondering about the colors of the Turtle, vs. the colors of the team logo. The "A's" there is a dark, dark green. It looks great on most cards, matching the tint of the Athletics' unis. And the Turtle is decently dark enough, but still not a match. Ahh, the mysteries of Topps sometimes. And the mystery of Brandon Moss and his little baby blue fore-arm bands, and how he cutely destroys Tiger pitching, and the mystery of how good Billy Beane is at reading the waiver wire all the time.

Which are frequently only matched by the mysteries of the Cubs:

Another probably safe-at-first fielding card, the nearly official meme for light-hitting infielders. You can't hardly put a bat in their hands on the front of their baseball cards when they hit all of .121 last year but are still expected to be part of the starting 9 come Opening Day. Perhaps the card farthest below the Mendoza line this year. And similarly indicative of Topps' luck with printing baseball cards with Cubs logos on them of players that actually end up taking the field for Chicago. There's always next year, when I expect we'll see more Vitters cardboard after an injury-plagued but healthy stat year in the minors. Maybe Topps should just wait and issue all Cubs cards in the Update set until Epstein somehow gets together more of a regular line-up around Castro and Rizzo. Maybe he should call Billy Beane, Epstein's original employer's first choice for the job.

Now of course once the Wal•Mart Blues roll out of the pack, we're due for even more excitement.

What could be more exciting than that Alvarez card up there? Why the generally pretty good crop of inserts this year, usually led off in the 'fat' packs by a '72 mini:

Can't beat a '72 mini of a player who actually played in 1972. I like the '72 design; despite my affinity for harmoniously synchronized team colors on a baseball card, I also like how back in '72 Topps just refused to use the color red on a Redlegs card. Lost in the trippy stars I guess. An added bonus was despite a more than passing familiarity with all the vintage Johnny Bench cards I have or still desire to acquire, and Topps' penchant for ridiculous amounts of photo repeats, this was a new image for me. Now there's an upside to avoiding all those gimmicky "high-end" ego cards. Just don't put this sweet new Johnny Bench card anywhere too close to his entry on the faux-high-end insert set in hobby boxes called "The Greats" or "The Elites" so clearly designed to entice you on to those surely extra-valuable "high-end" sets, or the spell of acquiring a brand new Johnny Bench card might fade a little.

After the minis appear the regular size inserts, such as Chasing History:

Though I have thought there is little more pointless than a card designed to hold autographs or "relics" that then hold neither and just take up space in the packs of the base cards I actually do want, the Chasing History set broke that sad mold this year. The card pictured there is right up there with the excellent Lou Brock edition on the checklist, and a few others. Another great, arm-fully-extended, I'm-ahh-gonna-hit-that-pitch batting card. Great light and shadows interplay and a sweet MLB shoulder patch. I'll need an extra copy of this one for the patch binder. I hope the Jr. Junkie might swing by and enlighten us on what year this great shot is from.

But much like the base cards in this pack, I decided against scanning all the inserts. Normally in a Series 1 or 2 'fat' pack, I like just 1 or 2 of 'em enough to want to comment on them. But this pack just kept on packin':

I've never had any die-cut cards before this year, I don't believe. I skipped those crazy 90s cards and most of those other card companies too. But I sure do like these Cut to the Chase cards, and I need to convince you to send me all of yours somehow. And no collector can have too many Mike Trout cards, now can they? I in no way would ever want to start a Player Collection of him, though I have been starting to think Topps just won't issue a card of him with his mouth closed. It's like he is always breathing like a fish or something.

By this point in the pack I was fairly satisfied by Topps' team-up with the Walton clan. But this Wal•Mart was so far off the beaten path I think, that those two corporations had a reward for me for loyally tracking them down at the very end of the distribution chain:

It's a hit. A retail hit. Aww, thanks Wally. Even though the back of the card has to remind me even more explicitly of a Series I'd just as soon forget even more than the 2006 edition. That's a trip to Wal•Mart for ya, always giving everyone the Blues.

The Parallel Colors of Baseball

Are obviously Red, White, & Blue:

I like seeing that on vintage baseball photos, for example on baseball cards:

An MLB logo patch card (plus lurking light-towers) ... ahhh, I have a vintage meme to chase.

Of course, great baseball cards can be all about colors too:

I've always thought it unfortunate that blue/red was never a color combo for '75 Topps. But I love this card anyway, with even more colors in the stadium seats. That background has always made for great cards, because they have great lines. As on the 2013 Jacoby Ellsbury card, somewhat of a rare image these days.

I've always been a '75 type collector. Mostly of course because that was the first set I ran smack into when I was a child. If that had happened a year later, perhaps I would be more fascinated with cards with generic player silhouettes on them instead of color framed cards.

Now I do like white border cards, and black border cards too. I dislike all of the wood border cards and plan to get all of them out of my collection eventually. Thought that might require selling off the 87s by the pound.

But mostly I like cards with color borders. I'm happy with even what you might consider garish combos that should have never been made:

I would have posted some other 1975 craziness, but Cey is the only '75 I own in this building as I type.

So I went with one of the new Archives Day-Glo parallels to illustrate my strange tastes. I have been looking forward to scanning one; my scanner makes them look light pink too. I could have worked longer on a nice photo, but hey, it's a holiday. Anyway, on this card we have a red uniform, some blue framing with a bit of yellow, and the ridiculous hunter safety orange border that has to be seen to be believed. I will be collecting these ... only the '72s, and will have a trade post on it in a week or so.

But I do like classically attractive baseball cards too, and I like it when team colors and card colors match up in ways I like. I enjoy the visual art of cards, as well as using them to keep up with baseball information. They are invaluable for listening to games on the radio.

So I really like this year's 'Sea Turtle' set, due to the tasteful use of primary colors on them. But given my love of color border cards, naturally what I like best this year are the parallels.

Everyone comments on the color-bordered parallels. Since I am writing about red, white, and blue on Red, White & Blue Day, I will stick to the red and blue parallels for today, and go back to discussing zany combos some other day. I'll try and use new Series 2 parallels as examples, so you jaded types have something new to see.

One thing I always see written about parallels is how nice a blue-team card would look on a blue-bordered parallel:

I don't really get that sentiment. How much blue do you want on a card? Andre Ethier's card in Series 1 has a bit more if you really want. I traded it away at the earliest opportunity. The Ellis card didn't turn out too bad though, compared to this one:

Ugh. We almost have a new contender for the reddest-card ever, though I don't think any card will ever knock the 1990 Ted Power card off the spot (my "None More Red" post), at least in my collection, probably only because there is no home crowd in the background. Though I prefer cards featuring any team's solid color alternate uniforms, and have posted them from Series 1, the teams with a red logo on this year's cards don't turn out that well with a red border.

Sometimes the conflicting thoughts about contrasting cards draw in teams that don't have anything to do with the color red:

I think the Sanchez card looks much, much better. The red border contrasts perfectly with all the blue portions of the Sanchez card, compared to the redundant blue all over the Avila card. The color of the Sea Turtle does vary at times though:

Cabrera's turtle is just a little bit lighter blue. The horizontal cards are clearly all from the same sheet as they always appear in packs together, and sometimes not at all. Packages with parallels such as the retail blasters, can feature 20 horizontal parallels. And then somehow that sheet gets a lighter tint on the turtle.

That can make or break a blue turtle blue border card in my opinion. And there is one exception to this, on the AL League Leader cards in Series 1:

There the much darker '13 main design element works much more nicely with the blue bordered parallel. Unfortunately, that dark blue isn't used on the league specific cards in Series 2 - the Cy Young, MVP, Rookie-of-the-Year, and new Defensive Player-of-the-Year cards. Mike Trout's award cards even get the normal red on all other Angels cards. The blue could have made those 2 cards stand out a little more. It's all about the details, Topps, the details.

In general though, I like the blue parallels the least, due to the washed-out near-pastel color used:

My scanner cut some of the top off there, not Topps. A bold primary blue with the red teams would have looked much better I think. Wal•Mart signs are a deep, deep blue after all. I will put together a set of Blue Red Sox, out of all the "red" teams. Sometimes I pick my personal subsets on the goofy names. Perhaps you can predict which team gets the purple treatment, aside from the Pirates. The red parallels are much closer to a primary red, and I think make sharper cards:

Bad scanner, bad. I like the Dodger cards with the red uni #s and the red borders. Red, White, and Blue cards, more so when they aren't in their road greys.

Now there are a number of Red, White, and Blue teams in the league that use both red and blue in their color schemes. Even the Nationals do this with their very nice alternate-blue uniforms. How well that works on cards depends on a few things. The Braves, for example, receive a red team logo with a blue sea turtle, so it is hard for me to really like their blue or their red parallels. Sometimes I pick a purple parallel for such teams as I assemble my parallel project, as Red + Blue = Purple. Subtle, huhh?

Overall though, this has been almost my favorite red border card this year:

A near-perfect classic. Bits of red and blue all through the crowd too. If only they had used that darker turtle...still a great card. You have to be optimistic to be a Cubs fan.

That one really puts the Series 2 Steve Lombardozzi card to shame - another Topps All-Star Rookie Cup card just ruined by a goofy image I don't want to post; you'll see it anyhow.

But I have found one other card that tops it in the Red, White, & Blue department. No, not the hard-to-come-by Opening Day Highlight cards that make Opening Day seem like the 4th of July that I have posted previously.

This one came from the Heritage retail parallel set, from Target. I got very lucky in that I specifically bought just one Heritage blaster at Target in hopes of getting one red border card to trade for it. I recently traded away my '13 Heritage Andrew McCutcheon short-print, and I already miss it. He gets such great cards. But I am cheered to know that there is a red border version, which I want very much. Very much like this one, which is on it's way to a new special set of special baseball cards I will display all together, and not because I happen to enjoy cloud cards:

That one's going in my Baseball Card Hall of Fame.

Too Much Loot

Sensory overload tonight. I went to a Baseball Card Store! Oh, sure there were some other sport cards in there (not many), and some baseballs and other baseball Americana, as they call it (even less). And the customer in the shop at my arrival had just delivered a miniature replica of the "Bird Nest" stadium from the Beijing Olympics that lit up, as a gift for the owner. Oh, the things you see every day...

Mostly, though, this store just sold Baseball Cards. Yep, good ole 2.5" x 3.5" Baseball Cards. Made of cardboard. Baseball Cards.

Baseball Cards everywhere. A "Wall of Wax". Singles. Sets. Boxes. More boxes.

I've been to 6 other Friendly Local Card Shops this year. One wasn't even actually friendly. This one is probably the MVP of the group. I am looking forward to doing little reviews of all of them, when I run out of cards to blab about.

But that might take a while. Because.... I bought a bunch of Baseball Cards! Some thoughts:

I like the Day-Glo orange Archives parallels. I have a Parallel Problem, for sure. But I only pulled 2 of them in 4 packs. The '85 Wei-Yin Chen is up for trade. I'd like a '90, or a '72 for it. Day-Glo of course.

Yeah, I only got 4 of those packs. I really respect that the owner of the store is very carefully spreading them across his whole customer base. Reading comments on internet-only-card-dealing-punks forums that ran like "yeah, I only got 70 of those packs. I sold all the Day-Glos on the damn eBay and made a tidy profit, after those eBay pricks took their vampire cut" made me wonder once again if I'd rather just participate in this hobby all by myself, without even ever knowing about all the esoteric eye candy out there.

But, I only got 4 of those packs, and 2 of the goodies. Topps dangles the carrot in front of my nose, and I keep trudging forward trying to reach it. And I wonder why they call them "Master Sets."

Moving on somewhat...the Blue Sparkle parallels are ridiculous. Hypnotic crack from the Master. I only received one from Series One, I think a kindly FLCS took pity on me if I recall correctly, and I was very fortunate to trade it for the Blue Sparkle of my very first PC I've ever dreamed up. I think I traded card #221 for #220 with Colbey in SC; he got one of his PC players. Neither of those cards really showed me the potential of that parallel. Four new ones from Series 2 have.

Yep, four "Week 2" packs. Four Blue Sparkles. No Silver Slates. Boo-hoo. Really. I'll have to actually buy one. I've never liked buying a baseball card. I don't know why that is. I like ripping and trading, but not card shopping.

I'm glad there is no wrapper redemption for Series 2. This way I can open all my new packs a lot more leisurely for the next few weeks, and absorb the cards the way I like. But that is why I got my Series 1 wrappers mailed in just a few days too late.

But I wish there was a wrapper redemption for Series 2. That way I could get more crack by just giving more money to the Master, and his retail agents. I'd probably end up overnighting my wrappers in with hourly tracking and required signatures at the receiving end, the way the Bowman kids do it. And then complain all the way to the bank with the results.

In other ga-ga news, I'm falling for 2009 O-Pee-Chee. Why can't baseball card Base Sets be like this one? 600 pieces of real cardboard. I had thought to avoid opening the book on any years prior to 2011 that I didn't already have a partial set from. So much for that idea. I still kick myself for passing over 2 discounted blasters of the stuff at a K•Mart back in February. Fortunately, I found one today, at a K•Mart I hadn't pillaged yet this year. I just like using the option-8 bullet I think•

Even better, I got 216 of those pieces of cardboard in a single box. Of course, at my new favorite Baseball Card Store. Too bad I bought the last one they had. I like how it says "Hobby" right on it. Yep, a hobby. Not a pseudo-business that every customer almost has to participate in. Just a nice relaxing hobby. I'll probably repeat all this blubbery when I go nuts scanning some of the delights in that box. They're better than whipped cream.

I don't know yet if I got what I really want out of today's O-Pee-Chee purchases. I'll just savor opening them for quite a while yet. What is that? That would be cards that launched a lawsuit — always tantalizing, eh? I never did hear how that turned out, though I'm sure it's over, and I'd wager that the Master won. They usually do. But to me, it's news. Stay tuned.

And, I got some supplies. Yeah, zzzzzz. But I'll have to post about that one of these nights too. Like those seemingly cool box-cards on the aforementioned '09 O-Pee-Chee, there is always something in this hobby that turns out almost perfect. Good, or just OK, but not perfect. Perfection is so very rare in baseball. So maybe I shouldn't expect Topps to be perfect either. Hmmm.

Blahblahblah, you're up past your bedtime reading this babble and I haven't even rewarded you with any pictures of any cards, though you sure have a hankering after that '69 Stargell up there, and that hatless Harper just might be a bit too ghey. Yep, I typed that. I know, I type too much. I just can't scan anything else tonight, not even the paralyzing Wei-Yin Chen Blue Sparkle. You thought that was up for trade, nope, nunnhhh-uhh, never. His Day-Glo can go however. I had a Wei-Yin Chen hot promo day. I hope he's a good player. Those sparkles could cheer me up as good as elf trinkets do for Hobbits. Or, oh heck I'll just delete all the silly similes I had in mind and get back to Baseball Cards.

I got over my disdain for buying a Baseball Card at the Baseball Cards Store today. I was contentedly reliving some youth with the ever-wonderful cigarette box of the 1982 K•Mart set. Oh what a happy day it will be when I find my boxes of that. Printed in that set are some cards I want. Some more than others. One most of all. I casually mentioned that to the helpful FLCS owner and in a jiffy he parted the stacks of cardboard boxes of cardboard and offered me an Original Copy of a White Whale I've been able to close my eyes and picture in my head for near-on 37 years now, since I first saw it on the first reprint of it, just a year after it was first issued. 1982 stoked the fire some more. Blogs the last few months made those eyes-closed memories of it seem like reality, floating just out of reach. Oh dear.

Oh, sure, I could've probably bought the card elsewhere over the years if I tried, but I never did. I'm sure I'm just 4 mouse clicks away from buying an even better copy right now. Buying a baseball card has just never been my style. I can't explain that. Baseball cards have always seemed like a luxury item, and maybe I should just take my chances on collecting them from packs. Dunno. Plus, Baseball Card stores have always been very far away from where I usually am, unless I am traveling, and then I don't usually have spare change for Baseball Cards. The stores still are - 110 mile round trip today.

Anyhow, there it was. And only ONE DOLLAR. I never dreamed that would be the price tag on it, unless it had been hideously tortured in the ole bicycle spokes. If I could purchase a larger reproduction of this, suitable for framing, I surely would. I just might hang the 2.5" x 3.5" version on my wall some day anyway. I'm not even a particular fan of the player, or the team. I did not know he ever played Third Base. That surprised me. But that's what's great about baseball cards. The details...that I forgot over the years. Like that he was a Michigan State Spartan. I went to that other school in Michigan, and thus I shouldn't ever wanna collect Spartan cards. But that's irrelevant.

Baseball player on the TV. THEY are watching. The lurkerest card ever.

Ahoy, Mateys!