Player Collecting the Easy Way #3

When I headlined a post recently with an Al Kaline RC reprint, I knew it was time to get crackin' on assembling my first display of Al Kaline cards.

The Card That Started It All

2003 Fleer Flair Greats

I pulled that one from some repack product, out of the blue, over 10 years ago now. At that time I hadn't thought of the idea of collecting just a few cards of a player, rather than diving into the deep end of a Player Collection pool concept and starting out with a goal of collecting all of a player's cards.

But I didn't know what to do with that card aside from placing it in my box of Tigers cards. I didn't have any 1950s Tigers cards, where this picture seems to have originated. But I knew I wanted to keep it. When I looked up it's lineage, some definite cheese on the part of Fleer appeared as they had used this same image in a 2002 product called Greats of the Game, on a much cleaner and thus more appealing design. That is only a 100 card checklist that I knew would be enjoyable to collect, but has to be done one card at a time as the original box&packs when it was issued featured one on-card autograph of a Hall-of-Famer per box, placing that firmly in the too-many-Benjamins for me category. If I ever run across a lot of the base cards from that product I could see launching an enjoyable collecting effort from it.

That pleasant daydream would still leave this 2003 Flair Greats re-run quite well orphaned, however. So here on this dreary last Sunday of 2024 I am finally giving the card a proper place in my collection, along with these:

1994 Topps 1954 reprint

One thing I particularly like about that card is that it is slowly but surely increasing my motivation to consider collecting the previous year's reprint of 1953 Topps, though I will have to check out some singles from it first to make sure there isn't a too simple (i.e., blurry) "re" in the "print." Some reprint efforts are better than others, from what I have seen; but I now have several cards from this 1994 version of '54 Topps and they are just exactly perfect for a simple binder page construction project.

2010 Topps Turkey Red "Boxer frame" insert

2019 Topps Archives 1975

Kaline does not quite have a card in 1975 Topps; though he is featured on a Highlights card at the start of the set for reaching the 3,000 Hits milestone at the end of the 1974 season, after which he retired. 

So this was a mostly pleasing inclusion in 2019 Archives; I like how you can see the color of Al's eyes on this one. The '75 style cards in that release had one of Topps seemingly standard go-tos of applying a digital filter to the source images for the cards, which detracted from the enjoyment of the card for most of the 20th century players, and some of the contemporary ones as well. Fortunately that filter seems to not bother this card, at all.

Given that 1974 was Kaline's final year of play one would think that a '75 style card for him would be the perfect place to print his complete career stats, but Topps punted on that idea, even though 1975 cards for a Kaline contemporary such as Hank Aaron didn't cut the stats short.

1972 Topps

Such a pleasant card; Mr. Tiger just chillin' during practice. I like the glove just casually waiting for some activity. 

I do not know which of the 11 other 1971 AL ballparks might be shown here though several can be eliminated from consideration upon first glance. That will be an enjoyable little research project some other dreary winter day in my future.

2019 Topps Stadium Club

Quite a departure from classical Baseball Cards though I don't think this is the first such card Topps had ever made. Kaline remained on friendly terms with Topps in the 2010s and new Kaline cards appeared routinely.

2011 Topps Lineage

2023 Topps Heritage insert

In original Topps, the Highlights appear in the next year's set. In Heritage, they appear with the set of the Topps Baseball style being celebrated.

That card certainly does show Kaline's age, appropriately enough, although that is not a photo from Baltimore on Sept. 24th, 1974 - home uniform in this one. So, close enough I guess, as is this next image -

2014 Topps Update Fond Farewells insert

I normally don't care for inserts clearly designed to show off a "relic" inclusion but then still needing a non-relic version to place in packs. But this one does have a nice enough foil repro of the Tigers logo, and I for some reason like that the card designer drew in the batter's boxes on each side of Home Plate for a touch of authenticity.

That photo might actually be from a post-retirement appearance by Kaline, it appears to me; he remained employed by the Tigers throughout his entire life.

Card Most on the Bubble: Surprisingly enough, that would probably be the excellent 1972 Topps card. But that's because I would rather include that in a nice run of Kaline cards, starting backwards from his 1975 Highlights card, which would be a nice affordable look at the final third of his career.

I also look forward to assembling some pairs of cards featuring Kaline and George Kell, his TV broadcast partner for many years. 

And I also hope to come across a post-retirement card for Kaline that prints all of his stats, from 1953 to 1974, a probably not-overly-difficult project I haven't dived into yet.

The Result

Player Collecting the Easy Way

Tonight I completed a most pleasant Baseball Card collecting task — I pulled a plastic-y fresh binder page from a box of Ultra•PRO Platinums, filled it with cards, and placed it in a brand new binder. Hooray!

I have been wanting to install cards on this particular page for a very long time. It is my first Player Collection page. I refer to it that way because this binder will not be full of cards of a single player. Instead it will be full of single pages of a lot of players.

I do have one large and perpetually expanding Player Collection, which is cards of Miguel Cabrera. I quite look forward to assembling those on pages as well, but one can only collect Baseball Cards but so fast of course.

This whole idea of collecting other players, instead of sets, probably started with...

The Card That Started It All

2018 Opening Day "Before Opening Day" insert

This was a small checklist of (theoretically) Spring Training themed cards, befitting the sorta-around-Opening-Day release date for the product. Here, Anthony Rizzo is sporting a green Cubs cap, something only seen on St. Patrick's Day each year, probably not for every team even.

I only know of 2 other cards featuring such caps. A 90s (?) Mets card I am forgetting right now, but do own, and one I suspect I will never own, a 2013 Topps Chrome photo variation of Miguel Cabrera wearing such a cap. Those cards were "case hits" and rarely surface for sale. No one knows the print run of the cards but it could be as low as /25. I am sure one would easily command a 3 figure price when sold. I would quite enjoy owning one for my Miggy collection and am slowly becoming able to entertain the idea of owning a card that costs > $100. But the bigger problem with that card would be ever finding one for sale.

So, I have this cool card of Anthony Rizzo wearing a green Cubs cap. What am I going to do with it?

I like the the Chicago Cubs well enough. If they were still on my TV (if I had a TV) every afternoon essentially as a 'free' part of basic cable service, the way they used to be, I would probably still follow them a fair bit, and that might even motivate me to keep a TV hooked up and in paid service, too. But I can't say even that would result in me assembling a collection of Chicago Cubs Baseball Cards. I am a fan of the Detroit Tigers and that is that.

I could scan it and "cast" it to a wireless digital picture frame that slowly scrolls through a collection of digital images - something I will probably do with a lot of my card scans, some day.

But that still wouldn't solve a key question - where would I keep it? I'm not really into just keeping Baseball Cards in a box that will rarely be opened. The whole point of Baseball Cards is to look at them.

I could put it in a binder page, but what else would go on that page? There are some more "Before Opening Day" cards that I quite like, such as Mookie Betts playing Ping-Pong, & a Detroit Tiger you've never heard of wearing a Spring Training only jersey, a few others. But in typical Topps fashion, the bulk of the images just show baseball players with no particular indication of what is "Before" Opening Day in the image. Do I want a card of Cody Bellinger just sitting on a bench? Nope. I long ago lost the desire to complete insert sets like that one, just, because.

Now 2018 Opening Day is probably the best year of that whole product line, with some 25-ish-% of the set featuring images that are not the same image as the Topps Baseball set that year, probably a record quantity. So that probably leaves a spare binder page slot, iirc, as 2018 Topps Baseball has a sweet design that looks great on binder pages, particularly pages full of essentially photo variations from their more well-known cards in the big set. (This is my semi-annual plug for some cheap, fun, colorful cards you might like to see from your team if you never have.) I look through those on the regular.

But that would still leave that cool St. Patrick's Day card of Anthony Rizzo kind of orphaned by itself in a non-pleasing way.

Finally I realized what the card needed: more Anthony Rizzo Baseball Card neighbors. And thus my Player Collection was born. 

Having a goal in mind when I find a Baseball Card of a player I like, or just a great Baseball Card I want to keep, somewhere, has been a tremendous aid in deciding what cards to keep and which to forward on to new owners, somehow. I can't keep them all, but neither do I wish to stop randomly acquiring new ones, either.

So there we have it. Let's get back to looking at Baseball Cards.

Specifically, the other 8 Anthony Rizzo Baseball Cards on Page #1

2012 Heritage

2013 Topps

Of course I have the 2013 card in a binder already; it is one of my favorites in the 2013 set, which is one of my favorite sets. It is probably also a card that helped inspire me to move into Player Collecting as I knew it would look good with some page-mates.

2013 Topps "World Baseball Classic" insert

I have no idea how Anthony Rizzo (Born 8-8-89 Fort Lauderdale, FL, one of my cards tells me) was eligible to play for Italy's national baseball team, but I don't care, either. And I had to have a card showing off his uniform #, which he picked because it was Hank Aaron's number.

2015 Stadium Club

I probably set that one aside first as an example of a "Pop Up" card, of which there are never very many and my little pile hasn't reached 9 cards yet. Rizzo's 2013 Topps card shown above has a "Great Catch" photo variation short print that I also quite enjoy (yes that blog will return, someday), but that one is best kept with the rest of the cards in that enjoyable checklist. 

2016 Topps "100 Years at Wrigley" insert

I am sure many a Cubs collector has thoroughly enjoyed building that set. That a single-team, 50 card checklist was included in Topps Baseball that year goes to show the nation-wide strength of the Chicago Cubs fanbase. A whole lot of that probably flowed from all those wonderful afternoons watching pretty-much-free baseball games with Harry Caray and Steve Stone. That the whole idea can't happen any more is just kinda depressing as baseball ever so slowly fades from being the National Pastime; and is one reason I no longer follow the Cubs particularly closely. Not because I dislike the Cubs, at all, but because I dislike pondering the state of Major League Baseball in this regard, which Cubs memories just tend to initiate.

Sigh. A few more notes on that insert set - a cool thing about it was of course that after it was released 2016 became The Year for Cubs fans. Also I felt good, in particular, about carefully individually selling each and every one of those cards I pulled rather than just leaving them to waste space in a box somewhere.

As for that card in particular, Anthony Rizzo is well known for off-field efforts helping children fighting Cancer, as explained on the back of the card. It was nice to see a nice tasteful acknowledgement of that on a major league Baseball Card.

2018 Big League "Player's Weekend" insert/parallel

2019 Archives 1958 Topps

This is one of the cards that suddenly made me wish to complete the 1958 portion of Archives that year. I never thought I would warm up to the '58 design, but the simplicity and basic primary colors just make for such great cards, even with the basic posed images. Anthony Rizzo. 1st Base. Chicago Cubs.

2020 Topps

Card Most On The Bubble: Probably this last one. Although I like Anthony Rizzo and Anthony Rizzo Baseball Cards, I like a lot of baseball players and way, way too many Baseball Cards. I can't just run around assembling binders and binders and more binders of all of those players.

So this Player Collection will be a dynamic collection in that I might add a card to it - but only if I like it more than one of the cards already selected. 9 cards, No Mas.

Also for now I have only been setting aside cards as I come across them, by buying new product. Eventually I will have to deliberately shop for cards of a given player to finish out pages, but that won't be the main way I finish these pages. I find it more fun to wait and see what the packs bring me.

The 2020 card is a classic sunlit Cubs day game card, of which there are probably thousands. That basic image does help overcome a too-busy design with that pointless Grey - leave that to the road uniforms & nowhere else, on a Baseball Card, please. Thus I could see finding an Anthony Rizzo Chicago Cubs Baseball Card that I like more than that one.

The 2018 Big League card is from a fun little set of such "Nickname" cards, as used during "Player's Weekend" when the nicknames were on the backs of uniforms — a challenge to well include on a Baseball Card. Big League pulled that off very well by simply printing the nickname on the card instead of attempting to use a photograph of a player's back. However "Tony" is kind of a whatevs nickname for a guy named Anthony, so I could see it getting cut as well, though overall the card is an excellent one.

A final oddity about this page in particular I should share is that I have a copy of an excellent, quite-valuable Anthony Rizzo Rookie Card - a 2011 Update /60 "Hope Diamond" parallel that was a lucky pull from a hanger purchased at Toys R Us in Columbia, SC, while working on the road one winter (never hard to remember precisely where pulls like that happened). I also have pulled 2 different Anthony Rizzo autographs and a couple swatch cards over the years. 

That key RC will be part of a fun project I hope to share with you someday, but I have been hoping that for way too long. Perhaps finally assembling this page will help kick me into gear on initiating that, we'll see.

Most collectors would make those cards (the ones actually worth money - unlike ALL of these 9 cards) the keystones of a Player Collection, but I would just rather not, and that is again that. I like these 9 cards more than those cards.

The Result

Bring me the Arm of Octavio Dotel

Or at least his baseball cards. Hurry, before that Arm realizes It's Alive! and simply clonks poor Octavio on his noggin and begins a reign of terror.

I love the digital photography era. There is frequently such great separation of subject and background. (Comerica Park on the above card....I'll be starting a Frankenset for it I think).

But sometimes the separation of the elements in the photo can get a little nutty. And then Dotel has a funky motion that makes me think his Arm is actually a separate creature. Just try and name another player with a larger fore-arm than bi-cep. And it surely ain't natural to have one's arm going on it's own special journey back there:

I have those two cards by the way. And his '11 Topps Blue Jays card, and most likely his '12 Topps Tigers card.

I really doubt the following image is on a card, because except on the sad subset of All-Star cards these days, 99% of baseball cards show the player's face. And here his fore-arm seems as one from a normal human, but this shot makes my shoulder hurt:

I swear that Arm is a quasi-independent creature Dotel has cut a deal with to throw baseballs for him.

Whoa. Did you just hear that sound in the closet? I think it's Dotel's Arm, recently escaped from an old Rat Fink card of some sort, and it wants out. It's got a baseball in it's grip, and it's gonna throw it. At you.

Surprisingly, I have resisted all temptation to post images of Dotel making a Funny Pitching Expression Face. His is a good one — he sticks his tongue out at the batter it appears. But the vast majority of pitchers on baseball cards make a Funny Pitching Expression Face. That idea just gets too old and overwhelmed too quickly when you have a pile of baseball cards to paw through.

So I didn't expect to ever do this, but I am launching a Player Collection. My very first one.

I doubt I will have much competition for all those rare short-printed Octavio Dotel auto-relic refractor cards, will I? Too bad the serial #/d cards for him won't have enough demand to merit a press run to ever match his uni #. That sucks.

I am only partially intrigued by the Arm. I have also always been interested in the players who play for the most teams. I think at 13 teams, Octavio holds the current record, which is good because he has absolutely zero League Leader in Italics on the backs of his cards. And the All-Time Record, I believe. So yeah, a PC for a player holding an All-Time Record. Makes sense I think. What about baseball card collecting makes sense?

Plus, 'ole Dotel is currently a Tiger, and probably likely to retire as a Tiger, though his Arm looks eternal to me. Not very rubbery, but not ready to quit yet either.

Another former Tiger also intrigues me as a frequent club-house hopper, starting pitcher Edwin Jackson. What is the deal with him?

Why do some players end up on so many teams? For Dotel, it's probably the nature of being a situational reliever. Surprisingly, he is not a lefty; I would think they would bounce around the leagues the most. But probably southpaws stay put more often than righties 'cuz there's never enough lefties to go around.

Other times though, you have to wonder. Does the player just simply fart in the clubhouse too much? Baseball does a pretty good job of keeping what happens in the clubhouse, in the clubhouse. All pro sports teams try to do that, with varying degrees of success. I think MLB does it the best. So I will probably never know why Edwin Jackson gets traded so much.

So in the months to come when you all finally get to see my wants/needs/desires and the pile of bait I am accumulating to obtain them, you can always offer in any Octavio Dotel card you might have. Any manufacturer, any team, any year. It will be neat to see who got his team right the most times, and whether he gets a card for all 13 teams, which I kinda doubt, or for all 15 seasons he has played on an MLB team. And who simply banished him to the Relievers Set, or the Update Set as it's described on the packs.

But I am still a month out from being reunited with my main collection of baseball cards, and 6~7 weeks out from enough time to type up lists of them, etc. I just came off a job without access to baseball cards......err, I mean the Internet, and all you fine folks. The other day, a Reaper flew over me. I thought maybe I should try to take a picture of it, but then it might lock on to me. Such is life working next door to a bombing range. Thankfully, they weren't practicing sorting their night cards.