Buddy the Elf, what's your favorite color?

I planned out our whole day: First, we'll make snow angels for two hours, and then we'll go ice skating, and then we'll eat a whole roll of Toll House cookie dough as fast as we can, and then to finish, we'll snuggle.

I passed through the seven levels of the Candy Cane forest, through the sea of swirly twirly gum drops, and then I walked through the Lincoln Tunnel.

The Best Way to Spread Christmas Cheer, is Singing Loud for All to Hear.

RIP Le Grand Orange.

        Rusty Staub 1944-2018.

        Opening day is supposed to be a joyful day and instead it is a sad occasion this year because of the death of Rusty Staub.  Rusty was a great player and a great man.  He led many baseball lives: teenage phenom for the Colt 45s, expansion star Le Grand Orange for the Expos, World Series catalyst for the Mets, all-star DH for the Tigers, washed up fat guy for the Rangers, and then reborn pinch hitting specialist for the Mets (again).  He is also part of one of my favorite bits of useless trivia as one of only four men to hit homers as both a teenager and a 40-year old (with Ty Cobb, Ken Griffey Jr. and Gary Sheffield)***. 

Rusty is one of those players who I always use as an example of being not-quite a hall of famer (along with the likes of Rocky Colavito, Harold Baines, and Vada Pinson).  This is no insult what-so-ever; there is no shame at all in being in the top 3% of baseball players of all time but I like to imagine the hall being reserved for the best 1 or 2% at most.  And sure, there are players much much worse than Rusty in the hall of fame (Ross Youngs? Rabbit Maranville? Bill Mazeroski? I'm looking at you...) but there is a line that has to be drawn and it is a sad fact that Rusty would be on the outside of that line.  But few players in history are as beloved or will be missed more that they are gone.  I hope Jesus has a rack of ribs cooking for you up in baseball heaven.  Godspeed Le Grand Orange.


***It was not Griffey Jr., it was A-Rod who became the 4th person to pull this trick. Starting Nine regrets the error. 

Happy Valentine's Day

       From the third best manager the Mets have ever had...

...and the sixth best basketball player of all time.

COMC Badge and Pages.

       Pitchers and catchers report today! Simply one of the best days of the year and not a moment too soon.  The weather has been rainy and dreary and football is over so the dead of winter is at hand.  But nothing combats and destroys the wintry blues like pitchers and catchers reporting.  A close second is going to the mailbox and seeing a big ass box from COMC.com full of all the weird shit that site has to offer. Sticking with the sorting theme from last post, here you see the layout of the grid of goodness that going through a box of 206 cards that were all chosen for their specific nature to my collecting needs.  Each pile is a player collection or a photo collection or a theme collection or a sport collection.  I cannot think of a better way to spend my afternoon where my clothes stay on (not that I am above sorting cards in the nude).

The packing list covers up my nephew's blocks, which I was too lazy to remove from the coffee table.

There is far too much here to highlight each card so let's stay on message and look at the pages that were created and/or completed from this batch. 

Here is a page of 2002 Topps Ten that was completed with the acquisition of a Rangers-clad A-Rod card.  I found a small vein of these cards in an old shoebox and a moment of weakness made me find a few others and when I got to 8 I dejectedly decided it needed a ninth for a page.

Not this is a terrible set in and of itself, mind you.  It's just, well, boring.  It's like one big league leaders subset and the design is underwhelming. It is also an orphan set in that they only did it one year, though I think they did basketball the same way in 2002 as well.  Sports card companies just couldn't help themselves at the turn of the century and just cranked out whatever they felt like it.  Not every page is a winner.

Oh, but then there's this one, the diametric opposite of that Topps Ten page.  These are the 2016 Topps Bunt Program cards. 

I can't say I quite understand the Bunt online cards but I do like their physical manifestation.  They are everything a kid-centric set should be: bright, bold, colorful, and imaginative. These inserts have big logos, a fun baseball theme, faux wear, and good backs (which I neglected to scan ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).   I got the Papi in a lot I got on Listia and decided to find him 8 buddies to make a page.  This was a joyous one to put together. These Bunt cards are everything Opening Day isn't (and that's a good thing).

And to complete a bizarre trio, here is a page of the 1991 Pepsi Flavor of Baseball Superstar cards. 

I am not a big Pepsi drinker in the first place but I never knew these cards existed until one day recently I was looking for Dwight Gooden cards and found his (gloriously bad) version from this set (click on that, it looks like he's pitching in a rec league).  They are everything you want in an oddball food issue.  They have a gaudy product logo, a dense and inexplicable title, no official MLB logos, poor photos, poorer cropping, and a derivative design reminiscent of one of the most terrible over-produced sets of all time.  And as a topper, due to what I can only imagine was crappy cutting, they are all a little wider than 2.5 inches so they barely fit in a standard page (I had to look for one that was a tad bigger, owing to Ultra Pro's sometimes awful quality control).   This page is like good camp, it couldn't be planned for, it just had to exist. 

***

And as a total non-sequitur, I recently earned my red founders badge on COMC.com doing their infamous challenge. 

I doubt many of you are impressed but if there is anyone anywhere that I could brag to and get a positive response from this information, it would be on a baseball card blog.  Most people given this fact would tilt their head at me and stare like a confused dog.  All it really means is I need to sleep better and/or leave the house more.

Sorting things out.

       A few leftover notions from my 2018 Topps post from Sunday.

I spoke of the look of the new flagship set and while I don't hate it as much as I have 2017 or 2016 since Topps has gone to a borderless design, they have started to take on the vibe of late era Donruss base cards and this is not necessarily a good thing.  I think one thing that always made Topps special is that they had a specific feel and natural progression and the border is one of those things that now seems is lost. I feel this year's design, unlike the last 2 years, would look great with a border.  My awesome, utterly professional and in no way amateurish photoshop skills came up with this:

You can add a border and they look much more like classic Topps cards (think 1996 perhaps) and if you need to have things extend out a bit, you can see I took the ribbon to the edge of the card and continued the disintegrating name plate into the border as well as the team logo (where applicable).  I am sure somehow Topps thinks borderless cards are all "futuristic" but they have been around since 1990-91 and used on regular base cards since 1994 Donruss and Upper Deck.  I am not sure those are touchstones to be aspiring to. Flagship Topps always had a classic look and they seem to love to celebrate their history, so why have they turned their back on it the last few years in the name of "the future?"

***

We all recognize what this is:

I have collated cards for as long as I can remember yet I have never given it much thought.  I don't know if it is like scoring a baseball game but I suspect a lot of people have quirks to the way they do it, as I have seen folks in card shops and at shows do it their own way.  If I have a few dozen cards, I just do it in my hand like shuffling a poker deck.  If I have a few hundred, I sort them as you see above, into blocks of numbers of 50, e.g. 1-49, 50-99, 100-149 etc.  Then I sort them further.  If there is a few thousand to do, I so the same thing, then break them down into the 10s as I do it and then hand sort.  It is a monotonous activity but I have always found something relaxing and a little zen about it.  When I was a kid, my mom referred to it as me "playing solitaire" (which I supposed when you are 10 has a whole different meaning than when you are 15, but I digress).  And this is just numerically.  Anyway, does anyone have any different way they do things?  Let me know since I am momentarily obsessed with whether there's a whole different system I have never been privy to.  Not to mention there is also the classic 8x4 grid of sorting things by team, another issue all together.  I always do the teams alphabetically but maybe you do them by league and/or division?  I must know!  

***

And finally, a wonderful bit of card serendipity that I am sure we've all had or hoped to have at one time or another.  As I was searching for the new Topps on Friday, I was also meeting a friend for coffee at a Dunkin Donuts I don't normally go to.  I was a little early and there was a comic book shop next door, so I ducked inside there to kill the 10 minutes I had to wait.  Now, I am not comics guy but I can always enjoy a comic book shop just for the nerdy vibe, the toys, and there's always a chance they have some sports stuff stuck in among their wares.  They had a few long 5000 count boxes full of MTG and Pokemon cards and the like but then my eye caught the unmistakable dull gray cardboard color that can only be vintage Topps cards.  There was only a couple hundred of them, but what a vein of joy it was.  They weren't in sleeves or priced but going through them, there were some I just had to have...

How often does a coffee date turn into 1975 Topps?  More than that, was some of these...

I love the 1973-74 hockey design and there are a couple of wonderfully miscut ones as well.  So I only had a few minutes with these cards and I had no time to go through them all.  These are the few I nabbed while I was there initially.  When I went to check out, the n̶e̶r̶d̶ dude behind the counter said, "oh, anything in there without a sleeve is 10 cents"  I had lucked into a 10 cent vintage box in the middle of Wayne NJ on a Friday afternoon!  I had my coffee and caught up with my friend, and then you better believe I marched back into that shop and bought just about every one of those cards that even remotely interested me.

All because of my efficiency in finding the new Topps and over-promptness in meeting my friend, I now have a few hours of bliss ahead of me this week.  Oh, and I also have this:

If you need an explanation, I don't think we can be friends.

Beirut.

       Today is Babe Ruth's 123rd birthday which had he lived past 1948 would make him the oldest person to ever live. This makes a bit of poetic sense because Ruth set records that don't make much sense even today.

I make fun of the Yankees at any opportunity but let's face facts, Babe Ruth is the greatest there ever was and the best there ever will be.  In fact, his numbers are so screwy people often just forget about him when arguing who the best player of all time is because he is such a conversation killer.  It's as if there is Babe Ruth and then everyone else. 

I remember in college, and this is 25 years ago before there was internet based smartphones to answer every argument immediately, one of my roommates was kind of ignorant of Ruth's overwhelming numbers.  When I said he once hit .390 and was in the top ten in career batting average, he laughed and said "there's no way that fat tub hit .390!" and right then and there we had to march to the library where I pulled out the Baseball Encyclopedia and gave him a humbling education.  And while there are some hitters who have approached his greatness, there is one thing that is one of the all time trump cards in history.

This last page here is one of my favorite pages in my collection.  For all his mythical qualities, the one thing that always slips through the cracks is that Ruth was well on his way to being a hall of fame pitcher when he decided that he was better at that hitting thing.  By the age of 24 his career marks were 89-46 with a 2.19 ERA. Even at the end of the deadball era, those are Walter Johnson/Christy Mathewson type numbers over 6ish years.  One can only wonder what the end result would have been if he had pitched in the majors for 22+ years instead.  If anyone ever points out the exploits of Ted Williams, Hank Aaron, or Barry Bonds and tries to make them out to somehow be better than Ruth, just ask them if they ever won 94 games as a pitcher as well.  It is a joy to watch the life in their eyes die because there's just no counter move to that argument.

“How to hit home runs: I swing as hard as I can, and I try to swing right through the ball... The harder you grip the bat, the more you can swing it through the ball, and the farther the ball will go. I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.”

We were all lucky to get 53 years of Babe Ruth since he lived as hard as he played.  I think one can easily say he lived 123+ years in that time.   Happy Birthday ya big lug.

Ride The Waterslide.

       Seeing as I have little to no interest in who wins today's Big Game (aka Super Bowl - sue me!) it seems as good a time as any to break out the new Topps.  I stopped in two Target stores only to stare at bare shelves full of old, picked-through 2017 product and it was only serendipity that led me to cut across a parking lot to a Toys R Us to go looking for the new stuff.

There I found blasters and hanger boxes and seeing as it was Friday and I had some money burning the proverbial hole in my pocket, I bought one of each. 

I assume Topps has Mike Trout under lifetime contract since we get to look at his mug on the packs yet again and I am surprised Aaron Judge isn't here - maybe series 2.  One thing I am amazed at is the now incredible amount of odds and legalese that accompanies baseball cards.  It literally takes up the entire back of the hanger box:

Enough of the packaging, let's take a look at the cards. When this set was previewed last fall people immediately seized upon the 3D ribbon on the bottom of the graphic and referred to it as the Water Slide Set.  I think it is Night Owl that keeps track of "official" nicknames but this one was a no brainer.  If only it twisted in on itself a little, it could have been the Mobius Strip Set, which would be as good a name as the Psychedelic Gravestones IMO.  I'll have more on the design in a later post, though this is a great improvement over the last couple years.

As the name of my blog hints at, I tend to view sports cards nine at a time and this is the page I made from the 20(!) doubles I got in 172 cards.  Since I bought 2 different boxes I guess that isn't terrible collation but hardly optimal for the set builder (full disclosure, I am not building the set).  The real disappointment was that I only got 3(!) Mets cards out of all those cards.  All things considered, statistically, I should have gotten 5 or 6.  Luckily Amed Rosario was 2 of those cards.

These are some more cards that are staying in the collection: rookie cups and World Series cards, and of course a couple of my birthday boys, Garrett Richards and Yoan Moncada. Not to mention a couple of dudes that are tastefully named. The rest are for player collections or other such things.

This is just about all the cards that are staying in the collection this time around.  Not an inspirational haul but part of the joy of this time of year is the opening of the new flagship as a reminder that spring and the season are just around the corner.  Good thing to since it is cold as fuck this weekend and this Superb Owl has me rooting for the meteor strike.  In the name of completeness, let's look at the inserts that Topps inundates us with:

This is Year 18 of the gold parallels, they are now old enough to vote.  I am always fond of the shiny and that McCullers is a rainbow foil parallel; alas my scanner didn't quite do it justice.  Topps has a new contest that is convoluted as it is uninspired.  It involves scratching things and home runs hit on certain dates and in the end winning a trip to the 2019 Home Run Derby.  The fine print is what you're going to get is an all expense paid trip to Cleveland.  Wonderful.  Also seen here are the opposite ends of the insert spectrum, the Superstar Sensations which features players in glorious swooshes of purple and sparkles, and then MLB Award winners, a well-worn concept drably presented in what looks like a design that was rejected last year with all it's bad negative space and jutting angles.

On the top row we see the Salute cards again, in what looks like a rejected design for this year's flagship set; I had a hard time picking them out during my sort.  I am not sure if presenting 100 different cards in a bunch of different subsets reeks of overkill or laziness.  That is not high praise.  Speaking of lazy, Topps also has a whole insert set here titled Opening Day.  Given the design, why not something with "Wall" or "Bricks" or "Foundation" or some other cliche rather than the same name as an entirely different set they already release.  *sigh*

I ruminated last time around if the 30th anniversary milestone would be a touchstone for a design reprint insert.  I was wrong because this time they are going with 1983 as a 35th anniversary.  Topps really does love to congratulate itself on its own history.  But between Archives and Heritage, these are overkill to the extreme.  We just got 1983 in Archives a few years back anyway.  Since they insist on reusing all their old nostalgic designs, I wish they could/would use Archives base cards to highlight subsets or odd vintage inserts rather than flagship designs, or even other sports designs applied to baseball, as they have done before for inserts.  This could mix things up a little and they have done it to interesting results for their WWE Heritage sets.  Also above you see a set called Legends in the Making and they are exactly what you would expect from that bland moniker, a rehash of young stars and highly touted rookies presented in some splattery computer design that looks like something Panini would reject.  Am I wrong in thinking Topps would be better off focusing on a few excellent inserts with nifty designs rather than a bunch of rehashes and rejects?  That or since this is the flagship, just keep parallels, inserts and short print variations to a minimum and focus on the base cards.  I know, this is crazy talk.

Speaking of which, last but not least here you see my promised manu-patch card from the blaster.  I really liked the idea of Players Weekend, with the funky jerseys and nicknames on the back of uniforms.  I think it would make a splendid topic for a well done insert set.  Instead, Topps kind of throws the idea away without bringing it to full fruition and giving it the attention it deserves.  They don't focus on the nicknames the players used at all and use the same "patch" for every card.  They at least did come up with a photo of Miguel Cabrera in the uniform the Tigers used that weekend.  It really makes you wonder who's making decisions over there.  

Most of the cards here are available for trade (think from the gold parallels down) and I have a whole list of cards (in comments) if you need to fill your want lists. Be warned, these cards are destined for eBay so act quickly.  I am looking for the Mets cards and inserts and will gladly trade for them as I didn't get very many, as I lamented before.  Drop me an email or comment if you're game for swapping.   And now, back to hour nine of the SB pregame show.

RIP Oscar Gamble 1949-2018

The Man. The Myth. The Afro.

Hundreds of men have hit 200 homers in the major leagues.  No one has ever rocked a hairdo like that.  “People don’t think it be like it is, but it do.”

Hall of Fame Foursome.

Hey look! It's late January and that means the white smoke is billowing from Cooperstown and the new Hall of Famers have been elected.  I like that after years of obstructionism and hardcore posturing by the electorate, the lists have been constantly three and four players the last few years.  With Jack Morris and Alan Trammell also elected, you've got a six-pack of players to give speeches in July.  With Bob Costas and the Spink awark winner, have an extra cup of coffee before watching that one.  Let's look at who the writers opened the ropes for:

Vladimir Guerrero.

Vlad was named on 392 of 422 ballots (92.2%) in his 2nd year of eligibility.

Guerrero is the perfect example of the notable bias some baseball writers have even to this day about electing players on their first ballot.  Looking at Vlad's numbers: 449 HR 1496 RBI and a .318/.379.553 slash line, how is he not a hall of famer?  Yet he jumped from 71% to 92% in a single year to walk into the hall; what changed between last year and this one?  It's not like his stats changed or even got reexamined.  There is the infuriating layer of voters who will never ever vote for a first year nominee because of Babe Ruth or some nonsense but the secondary layer is equally as frustrating.  They decide that a player is good enough for the hall but not good enough for the honor of first ballot induction.  The bar for who is a hall of famer is much much lower than Vlad Guerrero and yet the same shit still happens.  While the hall has gotten better over the years about electing obvious players on the first ballot, that Vlad had to wait is why the election system needs to be completely overhauled.

Jim Thome.

Jim was named on 379 of 422 ballots (89.8%) in his 1st year of eligibility.

I am glad Thome didn't get the shabby treatment Vlad received and got in on the first shot.  The only thing missing from Jim's resume is a good sturdy nickname.  He was a jovial mountain of a man who hit baseballs really far.  612 homers and 1699 RBIs speak for themselves but his .402 OBP more than make up for what the uninformed would poo-poo as a pedestrian .276 average.  He is a lot closer to Frank Thomas than Harmon Killebrew. 

Trevor Hoffman.

Trevor was named on 337 of 422 ballots (79.9%) in his 3rd year of eligibility.  Hoffman is proof positive that voters have no idea what to do with closers and especially newer one-inning closers.  Goose Gossage had to wait 9 times to get into the hall yet Trevor waited 1/3 as long.  The convoluted and arbitrary save statistic has come to be exploited in the modern setting and voters can't wrap their heads around what that means.  Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman have similar statistics but saying they were similar pitchers is like saying George Clooney and I are similar just because we are both adult men.  I am not saying Hoffman isn't a great modern closer but with players like Edgar Martinez not in the hall, it really makes you wonder why Hoffman is.

Larry Wayne Jones.

Larry was elected with 410 votes out of 422 which is 97.2% of the vote in his first time on the ballot.  Usually I castigate the voters who leave off an obvious, no doubt, slam dunk hall of famer but in this particular instance, I salute the 12 individuals who decided he wasn't.  I will this one time admit a begrudging respect for how good a player he was but as a Mets fan who lived through the turn of the millennium, my default setting is "wow, fuck that guy."  I made this page of cards for the inevitable day he was elected to the hall and now I can put it in the book and try to forget it and he ever existed.  No, I'm not bitter, why do you ask?