Random Cards From My Collection #51

Card #8054
2007 Bowman Orange # 66 Jose Contreras

Comments on the card: The orange parallel to 2007 Bowman. Ugly.
When acquired: September 2007
How acquired: Paid $0.35/card for a blaster box.
Player's season: Jose was 10-17 with an ERA of 5.57 for a White Sox team that was 72-90 in 2007.

Card # 1281
1998 Aurora Pennant Fever #30 Hideo Nomo

Comments on the card: This is from a 50-card insert in 1998 Aurora, one of many sets produced by Pacific in the mid to late 1990s. It has all the 1990s excess you could want.
When acquired: November 2003
How acquired: Paid $0.25
Player's season: 1998 was almost the end for Nomo. He went 2-7 with the Dodgers and was traded to the Mets. He then went 4-5 with the Mets who released him before the 1999 season.

Card #2857
1993 Fleer Final Edition #109 Jim Eisenreich

Comments on the card: 1993 Fleer Final Edition was only available as a boxed set and I wish I had bought it when I had the chance. I always liked the back of these cards.
When acquired: Don't know
How acquired: Don't know
Player's season: The Phillies signed Eisenreich as a free agent in January of 1993. He was an integral part of the the team that went on to the World Series, batting .318.

Card 37147
2013 Topps #149 Yovani Gallardo

Comments on the card: One of my favorite baseball card cliches, the pitcher throwing the ball right at ya.
When acquired: January 2013
How acquired: Paid $0.15/card for a rack pack at WalMart
Player's season: Gallardo was 11-10 in 30 starts for the Brewers this year.

Card #3182
1989 Upper Deck #720 Tommy Herr

Comments on the card: Upper Deck's premier year. The first really premium baseball card at a time when the very concept of a 'premium baseball card' was unknown.
When acquired: July 2006
How acquired: Paid $0.07 card in a repack box. These are pretty common these days in repacks.
Player's season: After a long career with the Cardinals, the Phillies signed Herr as a free agent after the 1988 season. He hit .287 with 35 doubles. The Phillies traded him away during the 1990 season.

Card #9224
1991 Topps #141 Nick Leyva

Comments on the card: Nice set with the 40th anniversary logo.
When acquired: Don't know
How acquired: Don't know
Player's season: After 2 previous terrible years under Leyva, the Phillies fired him just 13 games into the 1991 season with a 4-9 record.

Card #38875
2009 O-Pee-Chee #460 Roy Halladay

Comments on the card: The pitcher equivalent of the batter card where the batter holds the bat straight out towards the camera. Halladay can pull it off.
When acquired: June 2009
How acquired: Paid $0.22/card for a blaster box.
Player's season: Roy was 17-10, with a 2.44 ERA. He led the league with 9 complete games and 4 shutouts.

Card #751
1989 Donruss #159 Dave Winfield

Comments on the card: Nice photo of Winfield just starting into his swing. 1989 Donruss is another set I've completed by getting cards I needed from repacks. These cards have yellowed badly from age. Luckily Photoshop can fix that with one click.
When acquired: Don't know
How acquired: Don't know.
Player's season: After a 1988 season where he hit .322 with 25 HR and an All-Star berth, Dave spent the entire 1989 season on the DL with a back injury.

Card #42352
1990 Topps Big #205 Julio Franco

Comments on the card: This was the second and last year for Topps Big. The slightly over-sized cards were not popular with collectors.  These have also badly yellowed.
When acquired: July 2003
How acquired: Paid $0.03/card for 57 unopened packs on eBay
Player's season: Franco's batting average dipped a bit in 1990 (to .296 from .311 the year before) but he stole 31 bases and scored 96 runs.

Card #33479
1969 Topps #206 Larry Hisle/Barry Lersch

Comments on the card: This card back scanned badly. They are more orange than pink. I also removed the yellow. Notice that Lersch's pitching stats are labeled "Minor League Lifetime Batting Record".
When acquired: June 2012
How acquired: Paid $0.50 at a card show.
Player's season: Hisle, the Phillies 2nd round pick in 1965, hit .266 with 20 HR, good enough for 4th place in the ROY voting for 1969. Lersch was 0-3 in 10 games in relief with 2 saves in his rookie season.

2013 Topps Chipz

This post may go far in answering the question "Will I buy any damn thing that has a baseball player on it"?

My introduction to Topps Chipz came with the promo card in packs of Topps.

My first thought was "Pogs!" Remember pogs? Unless you (or your kids) are of a certain age this is a fad you might have missed. For a brief moment, around 1991-1992, pogs were popular. My kids were just the right age and we had hundreds, it not thousands, ot them around the house. Then, all of a sudden, they were gone. Pogs were circular pieces of cardboard with various images on them. There was some kind of game played with them that involved the use of a thicker, heavier disk, called a slammer. These Topps Chipz are more like slammers.  They are an eighth of an inch thick, made of metal and weigh almost a half an ounce.

Seen one, you've pretty much seen them all. I bought 4 packs, for $1.98/pack. Each contained 4 Chipz. Among the variations are Gold and Silver. I pulled one gold (odds 1:3 packs).

Some of them are magnetic. They don't look any different. The magnetic ones are inserted 1:4 and I got 2.

Glow In The Dark Chipz are inserted 1 in 2 packs.

These are not shiny but have a glow in the dark finish. I can affirm that the do indeed glow in the dark, but just barely. I got 3 of them.

Every pack has a 'game board'.

Instructions for several games, each involving some different method of getting one of your Chipz on a number, are printed on the back. My guess is that this could provide minutes of fun for a 8-year-old.

The only saving grace of the 4 packs is that I got two Phillies.

One final thing. One Chipz in each pack had a plastic cover over the heads side, like this.

The logo cover comes right off. There's no adhesive, they are like those plastic film things you can put on your car windows.

Random Cards From My Collection #50

#37024
2013 Topps #260 Giants 2012 NLDS Game 5

Comments on the card:With only 660 cards in the base set (over 100 less then the Topps sets used to have), every card like this means a player has to be cut from the set. You need 780 cards to show everyone on the regular roster.
When acquired: January 2013
How acquired: Paid $0.27/card for a blaster box.
Player's season: In 2013, the Giants beat the Reds, 3 games to 2 to win the NLDS, they beat the Cardinals, 4-3 to win the NLCS and then beat the Tigers in 4 straight to take the World Series.

#40143
1998 Topps #316 Will Clark

Comments on the card: Since there is a catcher in the background, it looks like The Thrill is being congratulated on scoring. I always like the gold-bordered 1998 Topps.
When acquired: Don't know
How acquired: Don't know
Player's season: In his last of 5 seasons with the Rangers, Clark had a pretty good year, batting .305 with 28 home runs and 102 rbis.

#10783
1970 Topps #186 Rick Joseph

Comments on the card: This was not an attractive year for Topps.
When acquired: Don't know
How acquired: Don't know
Player's season: In 4 years with the Phillies, Rick was never more than a utility infielder for the Phillies. Looking at the number of ABs compared to games, he may have mainly been used as a pitch hitter who then stayed in the game. In 1970 he appeared in 71 games with 125 at bats. He hit .227 with 3 home runs. It was his last season.

#2962
2001 Royal Rookies Futures Limited Edition #19 Rainer Olmedo

Comments on the card: I don't know too much about these cards. Royal Rookies Futures was a 40-card minor league set. This is the "Limited Edition" parallel version. I have no clue how "Limited" they were. They are not serial numbered.
When acquired: March 2005 in a Fairfield repack
How acquired: $0.10
Player's season: In 2001, Ray was in the Reds system playing for Mudville (really, there's a team called Mudville?) in the California League. Although he's had some major league experience since 2003, he appears to be a career minor league player. He's currently playing Triple A ball in the Twins system.

#40824
2004 Just Rookies #57 Justin Orenduff

Comments on the card: Another minor league set. Just cards show up pretty regularly in repacks.
When acquired: June 2013 in a Fairfield repack
How acquired: $0.04
Player's season: In 2004, Justin was the Dodgers #1 draft pick. He was 2-3 that year for the Ogdon Raptors. He hung around the low minors until 2011, never making it to the Bigs.

#7520
2004 Bowman Gold #155 Chien-Ming Wang

Comments on the card: The Gold parallels were thick cards.
When acquired: June 2004
How acquired: Paid $0.24/card for a blaster of Bowman
Player's season: Wang was 11-6 in split Double A/Triple A action in 2004. He also won a game in the 2004 Summer Olympics.

#26427
1992 Donruss #208 Tony Pena

Comments on the card: 1992 represented a radical design change for Donruss. Since 1985, Donruss had featured colored borders with crazy designs while the backs were virtually the same each year.
When acquired: Don't know
How acquired: Don't know
Player's season: In his 13th big league season, Tony it .241 and appeared in 133 games and maintained a .933 fielding percentage.

#29011
1987 Topps #778 Jack Morris

Comments on the card: This card comes with a gum stain!
When acquired: Don't know
How acquired: Don't know
Player's season: Jack was 18-11 for the Tigers in 1087 and made the All-Star team. He also led the league in wild pitches with 24. It was not an unusual year for him. He is #13 on the all-time list for career wild pitches with 206.

#420
1992 Topps Gold #394 Dennis Martinez

Comments on the card: The first year for Topps Gold. The cards were not numbered (an innovation that won't come for a few years) but production was limited to 12,000 sets. Makes you wonder how many regular sets they issued.
When acquired: Don't know
How acquired: Don't know
Player's season: In his 17th season, Denny was still going strong, compiling a 16-11 record with the Expos with a 2.47 ERA and 226 innings pitched.

#37984
1993 Conlon TSN #811 Johnny Vergez

 
Comments on the card: This set, which was issued over several years, featured photos taken by famous baseball sports photographer Charlie Conlon.
When acquired: March 2013
How acquired: Paid $0.04 in a Fairfield repack
Player's season: Vergez was a 3rd baseman who played from 1931 to 1936 for the Giants, Phillies and Cardinals. He was a member of the 1993 Giants team which won the World Series, late-season bout of appendicitis kept him from playing in the series. Tough luck.

Movie Review - 42

I realize I'm a little late to this party, since the movie came out in April, but better late than never.

If you're reading this blog, you've probably already seen the movie. If you're a baseball fan, and haven't seen the movie, you should see it.

The movie covers the events that lead up to Jackie Robinson being the first baseball player to break the color line and his Rookie of the Year 1947 season.  I knew the general outline of the story from baseball history I've read. I suspect that the movie pulled some punches here. Certainly there are some ugly representations of racism here but the movie would have you believe that Robinson came to be accepted by the end of the season. I read Hank Aaron's biography last year and even in 1954, when Aaron came up to the majors, black players were still not really accepted.

As a Phillies fan, I was appalled that the movie chose to use the Phillies as the most vocal representation of the racism of other players. Appalled but I guess not surprised. The Phillies were, after all, the last NL team to desegregate (finally in 1957). The Phillies manager, Ben Chapman, into whose mouth the most racist statements were put, was not fired after the 1947 season (although the team's 62-92 record would have justified it) as implied in the movie, but during the 1948 season. He did never work as a manager again.  Chapman and Robinson ended up appearing in a photo together to imply hatchets buried. Here's the actual photo.

I though Chadwick Boseman did a good job portraying Robinson. His next bio-pic will be as the hardest working man in show business. Harrison Ford was also good as Branch Rickey, playing a crusty old man to perfection.

2013 Pinnacle - First Look

Although they apparently didn't get the Leaf Brand when they bought out Donruss, Panini apparently did get the Pinnacle Brand.  When I saw that there would be 2013 Pinnacle I thought of nice, full-bleed printed cards with lots of parallels and inserts. 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

I picked up 4 packs at Target at $2.99 per 8-card pack. Not terribly expensive but certainly a higher end card than Panini Triple Play (another 1990's brand brought back to life).

I'm pretty disappointed in the cards, both from a design standpoint and a photograph selection standpoint.

First off, the design. Really, black cards?  Black can certainly be a bold design point. Perhaps Panini was striving to recapture the look and feel of the very first Pinnacle sets from 1992 and 1993. These had black borders but unlike the 2013 reincarnation, they weren't drab.

What about the photography choices. I got 28 base cards from the 4 packs. All but two of the feature a player batting or a player pitching. When you seen either of these poses, you've pretty much seen the whole set.

Another design point. The team color highlights are so dark they add to the overall drabness of the cards. On some of the cards, the color is so dark, it just fades into the generally blackness.  Here's a pitcher card, and a rookie card.

The Rookie Card logo is the same they used on Panini Prizm. Maybe they were trying to make up for the brightness of that set by making this one so dark.  There were 2 cards featuring fielding plays. Here's one.

It looks just like a pitcher card. So does the other one I got.

There are several parallels to the 200-card set - Artist's Proof (another reincarnation from the '90s), Artist's Proof Blue, and Die-Cut. There is also a 150-card Museum Proof set which, I guess, just covers the non-rookie part of the set. Here's an Artist's Proof. I pulled 2 of them.

I never understood why this parallel, which features a textured multiple-colored foil overlay, was called Artist's Proof. I still don't.

There are a lot of insert cards and I understand there is supposed to be an insert in each pack. Along with the 2 Artist's Proof inserts, I pulled 3 more.

Only 5 cards in this set. By the way, each set comes in the same parallels as the base set. The back of this card is the only non-drab thing I saw.

There are 20 cards in this insert set.

And finally, this.

Clear plastic cards used to be a mainstay of 1990s sets. The card backs can be a bit goofy, though.

Song of the Week - Happy Cause I'm Going Home by Chicago

The band Chicago (beginning life as Chicago Transit Authority) was a big favorite of mine right up through "Chicago III". They've been around a long time since then and have had many hits, but, for me, Chicago stopped being Chicago, after III.

This is one of my favorite tracks from the album.  I couldn't find a live video so just sit back and listen.