Three Bad Nicknames For The Hall.

       One of the problems with restarting the blog at the beginning of January is there's just not a lot going on, both in the hobby and life in general.  Luckily, along comes the Hall of Fame to give me something to write and rant about.  Four years after not bothering to elect anyone, the writers continued their unparalleled generosity by humbly decided to allow three men into their sacred realm. 

Jeff Bagwell.

Bagwell was named on 381 of 442 ballots (86.2%) in his 7th year of eligibility. 


I am a little biased when it comes to Bagwell as he is one of my birthday boys, born on the same day as me and the exact same day as Frank Thomas - May 27, 1968.  I am pretty sure this is the first time Hall of Famers have been born on the exact same day, and though my internet research didn't prove this for certain, I am going to make this bold proclamation.  I easily have as many Bagwell cards as I do Frank Thomas cards and it is a secret part of my collection that has somehow not seen much exposure here.  Expect a similar post like the Big Hurt's there with his cards before July.


Bags (or Baggy or Bag Pipes) had his election delayed as so many have due to unfounded rumors of PED use.  Given his amazing and amazingly consistent numbers, his inclusion in Cooperstown is long overdue.  And given his quirky batting stance and fantastic facial hair, he deserved a better nickname than a simple twist of his name. 

Ivan Rodriguez.

Pudge was elected with 336 votes out of 442 for a narrow 76% of the vote in his first time on the ballot.  He somehow overcame the incessant PED rumors (and out right admissions) and got in without years of nonsense.  I hope this is a sign of things to come. 

Rodriguez was a teenage marvel and a 40-year old wonder and pretty damn good in between.  He set the record for the most game caught, threw out runners from his knees, stole an MVP award from Pedro Martinez, led teams with fiery gusto and ended a playoff series about as awesomely as possible.  The man was unique and deserved his own fitting nickname rather than a recycled one, though he did do Carlton Fisk proud in its appropriation.

Tim Raines.

Raines was checked off on 380 of 442 ballots (86.0%) in his 10th year on the ballot.  Given the new rules, I am pretty sure this would have been his last year on the ballot before being turned over to the veterans committee.

Why it took 10 years is pretty mystifying but given the writers usual biases, Raines found himself in a perfect storm of "why players don't make the Hall of Fame when it is obvious they should."  Raines began his career in obscurity in Montreal, hardly a media hot bed.  He was great at one thing and really good at a lot of things, but he was not the greatest at that one thing so the other things got lost.  The things he was best at are kind of obscure and not very glamorous.  Plus rather than stay on one team for his whole career, he bounced around at the end and settled for being a role player on winning Yankees teams rather than compile sexy numbers like 3000 hits or 1000 stolen bases.  The strongest argument as to why Raines should be in Cooperstown is the simple, yet overlooked, figure of times on base: he is right *ahead* of Tony Gwynn, a sure-fire first ballot guy, on that list in practically the same number of plate appearances.  But they don't give fancy awards for on base percentage and they do for batting titles.   He also was the second guy to ever play on a team with his son, and you can ask Larry Doby what the Hall thinks of dudes who do things second.  He even got sick at the end of his career but it was this time, it was lupus, a disease that can kill you but also brings out the jokes rather than the telethons.  And finally, it all comes back around to the nickname Rock, which while it innocently brings an image of a strong, sturdy guy (which Raines most certainly was) that nickname probably did not have such simple origins.  I seriously doubt you will see it on his plaque.

While these are three very deserving men to be inducted, as usual, there are a few elephants in the room.  One is the awful fact that Bud Selig was elected a few months ago by the Today's Game committee, which was inevitable given the penchant for long time commissioners to be elected no matter what the circumstance.  Some of the writers saw through this slight hypocrisy and the votes for many of the PED poster boys went up.  I really wanted Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens to go in with Selig to add to his embarrassment but alas, they will have to wait.  My other issue is with how Edgar Martinez has been treated by the writers.  Follow me here, Trevor Hoffman has been on the ballot for two years and came very close to getting in this year and will probably get over the hump next year.  Closers have been all over the map on the writers' radar - some have to wait, some skate in - but all in all, they have been pretty generous to them.  The writers have accepted that closers are part of the game.  But what did poor Edgar Martinez do?  It's not his fault the American League instituted the DH rule in 1973 and never rescinded it.  And it is certainly not his fault the Mariners were too stupid to give him a starting job before he was 27 years old.  He just played by the rules of the game.  The designated hitter is part of the game and has been for more than 40 years.  They are real baseball players.  Seriously, you can look it up.  Would Edgar Martinez be that much better a candidate if he had played a mediocre third or first base for most of his career like Harmon Killebrew did?  It comes down to a simple question, if you were going to start a team and have a player for 15 years, would you rather have Trevor Hoffman or Edgar Martinez?  Exactly.

Trade with Dime Boxes.

This month has been declared the one where I settle all draft folder business.  This week I am focusing upon the trade posts that I scanned and set up, but for some reason, did not complete. 

Last July, I had a card overload, full of show trips, dog sitting, and sorting through a lot of new product that I had ripped but not collated properly. I had a great time doing nothing and as I read through blogs, I could go through want lists and help out.  Enter Nick and his blog Dime Boxes - The Low-End Baseball Card Collector's Journey (sort of the blog equivalent of How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb). I am a huge fan of this frugal and eclectic approach to collecting.  When I posted Topps series two, Nick let me know he was building the set and would like to swap to get my cards since I was not.  I checked out his wantlists and saw he needed a bunch of other 2014 stuff as well and I sent him an email and after the usual back and forth, I sent off a metric fuckton* of cards from his lists.

In return, a few weeks later, I found a fat and heavy jiffy pack full of Mets cards. 

That John Maine covers not only my love of Mets cards but one of my favorite collecting quirks. It is also impressive to find a Mike Piazza card I do not have.

This pack was loaded with oddballs and oddities.  I mean, when was the last time you got a package with two pitchers batting cards?  Not to mention a player taking photos card?

Plus there was two vague shiny Mets I didn't have, that 3D Bonilla and that dufex Murray.  The early 90s were a black hole for the Mets, but the cards were pretty sweet.

And the oddballs keep coming fast and furious here.  Food issues, box sets, Ted Williams faux-vintage and...

...SSPC cards.  How great is it when an Archives reprint is the least oddball of any card in a scan?

Speaking of faux-vintage, there was some Tom Terrific cards too.  And some Nolan Ryan on the Mets cards. I need to make a Nolan Ryan Mets page now that I finally have more cards of him in blue and orange than cowboy hats.

And low and behold, it's one of my all time favorite card sets from the 1990s, that hot pink Classic update set.  I have the whole set somewhere - I recall buying a bunch of those on clearance at Bradlees back in the day - I just didn't have a single of that Julio Machado card. Machado was a pretty terrible pitcher but he is famous for eating iguana and randomly killing a woman after a car accident.  Seriously, I couldn't make that up if I tried.

Not only were there great Mets cards in the package, there were some cards straight off my want lists too.  He sent cards for my Mike Trout collection and my Jim Bunning and Jim Kaat pages.  I am still torn if I should start a Trout collection but I am accumulating his cards anyway.

Also from my player collections were a couple of Jeff Bagwells and Reggie Jacksons, two of my faves.  That center Bagwell hologram is so beautiful yet so vague, I'd never even seen it before. 

There was so much in that package, I obviously ran out of patience for it and just did a Gilligan's Island "and the rest" on it.  Just from here, I see Diamond Kings, more food issues, more Classic, some 1985 All Star cards, 1990 Score Traded, a couple more Reggie Jacksons, and I wisely emphasized the 1966 Topps Dan Napoleon. That is a super card.

Nick put a friendly little note in with the trade pack and yes, I can assure you these cards found me well.  I am just sorry it took me so long to post this awesome trade.  Thanks, Nick!

*it's an industry term

Heartbreaking Cards of Staggering Altruism.

       I am going to settle all my draft folder business this month.  This week, specifically, I am going to post the half dozen or so trade posts that are languishing half-written or merely just scanned in.  You can't move forward with things half done. 

First off is a package I got in January of 2013(!) from the very generous Matt of Heartbreaking Cards of Staggering Genius.  I had send him a Mars Attacks 1 of 1 sketch card I had pulled with no strings attached and while he promised reciprocation, I couldn't have expected the haul he would answer with just a few months later:

Three game used cards (that's Dwight Gooden, Jeff Bagwell, and David Wright - he read my wantlists, obviously), a Jose Reyes manu-patch, and a glorious vintage combo card?  Are you kidding me?  How could I have not posted this right away?  I am going to blame my swooning lightheadedness and the winter of two years ago for this oversight.  But, better late than never, thanks Matt!

Cake.

       Today is my birthday.  As a grown man (37 years and counting), I eschew parties and presents as the domain of children.  The people who love me do not shower me with trinkets or cards and do not call to wish me well...they show up with a Carvel ice cream cake or a plate full of cupcakes or heck, even an Entenmann's right out of the box.  I am not picky.  Now, it is not news that as a large man who loves sweets, I will sit through an insurance seminar if there is cake involved.  But make no mistake, there is only one thing and one thing alone that matters today: cake.

       Thanks to the marvelous frivolities section of Baseball Reference, years ago I was able to pin down all of the major leaguers born on the same day I was.  Oh, I already knew a few.  I was at Shea Stadium on my 15th birthday when I learned that a rookie named Todd Hundley shared my birthday.  As a lover of all things Mets and Mets catchers especially, I became a Todd Hundley super-collector from that day forward.  I also learned that year that uber-rookie Frank Thomas and a prospect named Jeff Bagwell shared the same birthday in 1968 - May 27th.  I am not sure if it is narcissistic or pragmatic, but I also became a big fan and collectors of both those players as well.  I now collect any player that has my birthday and I have a binder that collects all my "Birthday Boys" together.  I keep a separate one for Hundley, Thomas, and Bagwell, so they are represented in these pages.

John Jaha, one of the all time best names to say aloud, was born today in 1966.  I never became a Jaha collector for some reason and these are the only six of his cards that I own.

These are some prospects that have my birthday.  Richards has made the show and shows some promise.

Brad Knox and Trey Shields, alas, never got to the Big Leagues.  But their DOB on their cards, though, got them in this book.

After the Big Three of Hundley, Thomas, and Bagwell, Mike Caruso was the next in line to break out and become a star with my birthday...

...unfortunately, he flamed out and never really amounted to much.  He was out of the majors by the time he was 25.

Jacob Brumfield sounds like a British gent.  Instead, he was a marvelously sub-par outfielder from the 90's.  He looks like a ball player, but he didn't play much like one (70 OPS+ in 1747 PA - yuck).

Also on this page is Chien Ming Chang, a Taiwanese player who has been in the WBC.  I caught that his birthday was mine on a broadcast and immediately went to eBay to pick up one of his cards.  Terry Collins, was for a while, the failed manager of the Astros and Angels.  Now his is the manager of my beloved Mets; I will have to find some more of his cards.  Those last three players are a trio of never-weres.  You will find that to be the case with a lot of these guys from here on in. 

Like these five guys (mmmm burgers).  All the very definition of commons. 

Ah, but here is a tragic story.  Gary Nolan was Mark Prior before Mark Prior.  He had an electric arm and came up to the bigs at the age of 18 throwing gas - he even finished second to Tom Seaver in rookie of the year voting in 1967.  Alas, his elbow went early and while he became a finesse pitcher for a time, he never panned out to be the world beater his first few years would have indicated he would.  People rarely use him as an example of a pitcher who blew out his arm early from overuse.  Everyone seems to think every pitcher from the 1960's was Bob Gibson and Don Sutton.

Ahhh, back to the scrubs...

Terry Moore and Pinky Higgins had decent big league careers, but if it weren't for that one day in 1968, May 27th wouldn't have much to show for it in the major league annals.

Not being content to stay with just baseball, I checked for the basketball birthday boys as well.  I did pick up cards of the players I could find.  These eight players are about as underwhelming as you would possibly imagine.

I read somewhere once that Sam Snead had my birthday, so I picked up one of his cards and his being here with these awful basketball players makes him the best athlete on this page by far. 

About a million people will celebrate birthdays with me today, so obviously, there are some football players too.

Antonio Freeman somehow got a whole page worth of cards in the binder.  Most of these are shiny...I imagine that is why.

Danny Weurffel played for the Saints, so he's got that going for him. 

I haven't checked the football site in a while, Nick Barnett was the last player with my birthday I consciously remember playing in the NFL.  With over 1500 players in the league, I am sure there are more.

Jackie Slater is by far the best NFL player with my birthday, he made Canton a few years ago.

The NHL is represented here with a few players, but once again, I have not checked that list in a long time.  I am sure there are more than four players.  Jeremy Mayfield is a Nascar driver (strike one) who is a crack head (strike two) who also is a big jerk about it (strike three).  Yet my completist nature won't let me not include him.  Paul Gascoigne is a really good soccer player.  Good for him.

Lance Schulters was a pretty mediocre to pretty terrible defensive back.  He was also born the exact same day as I was.  So was Andre Savage.  So was Jamie Oliver and Andre 3000 (not shown). Happy 37th boys!

There are a couple of WWE folks with my birthday.  That's kind of sports related, right?  Just to be well rounded, I have a boxer and a Tennis player as well.  Lee Meriwether is a former Miss America and I found that she has my birthday as well.  Or well, that I have hers.

OK, this is just straight vanity, but if your card also mentions May 27th, I include it in the book.  That ever so popular Yankee Stadium Legacy set is here, as are some major league debuts and some Joe DiMaggio streak cards. 

I will include the backs of these, as I did double up some that just had information on the back.

The Carlos Pena and Curt Schilling cards just mention feats done on May 27th and Jim Clancy's kid shares my birthday.  Finding those was pure serendipity and shows that I spend far far too much time reading the backs of baseball cards. 

While there is the immortal Lance Schulters in football and the incomparable Andre Savage in hockey, there has never been (and very likely never will be) a Major League baseball player born on May 27, 1975.  The closest I came was Travis Lee.

His mother was far too anxious to get him out of her and thus he was born on May 26, 1975.  He never quite panned out, given all his prospect hype, but still had quite a decent career.  I have about 6 pages worth of his cards, but I think one is enough here.

Two days off the pace is Randall Simon, born 5/25/75.  His claim to fame is hitting one of the sausage mascots in Milwaukee with a bat during their little race.  Quite the legacy.

Also two days off the pace was Sean Spencer, but in the other direction.  I am a whole two days older than Sean.  I have an Auto and a refractor of old Sean.  Obviously it is quality over quantity in my Sean Spencer collection.  Last but not least is Christian Parker.  Well, maybe least in term of career as he pitched a whole three innings in the majors and was once suspended for steroid use.  Plus, he was born July 3, 1975, so what the heck is he doing here?  Well, he was born in Albuquerque, NM as was I.  He is the closest in terms of age to someone from my birthplace to make the majors. Obscure?  Well, if you have read this far, you can tell I have an odd attention to detail when it comes to these kinds of things regarding my birthday.  I didn't grow up in Albuquerque, but if I had, I may have played with a major leaguer, all be it one with a 21.00 ERA, but hey, he made the majors didn't he?  I never came close.  (Oh, and now that you are armed with my birthday and place of birth, you can try to steal my identity.  Believe me, when you see my credit score, you'll wish you hadn't.) 

So, now that you know it is my birthday, I will be expecting cake (kidding).  But actually, this post sets up tomorrow's, where I show the oddest and most obsessive part of my collection.

Complete Set Sunday - 1995 Topps Cyberstats.

       Today I wrap up what became parallel weekend here at Starting Nine with one of my favorite sets of all time.  First, let's jump into the WABAC machine...1995 was an odd time for baseball.  The 1994 strike was damn near armageddon for the sport.  Both sides got themselves in a Mexican standoff over the issue of a salary cap and neither side blinked; we lost the World Series because of it.  Spring of 1995 brought folly to the proceedings when the owners decided to bring in replacement players for spring training.  Once they realized how ridiculous that idea was, they blinked and the sides settled, but nothing was really settled.  Not to get into the boring details, but it is obvious that the only one's who lost the 1994 strike were the fans.  I know folks who still don't care about baseball because of the whole nasty affair and I really can't blame them.

       Topps released their flagship set of cards in 1995 in a rather muted manner.  It wasn't in every toy store and CVS and they say the presses were run at their lowest levels since the mid 60's, so the cards were a little hard to find.  I was in my junior year of college in 1995 and probably at an all time low in terms of excitement about baseball in general and card collecting specifically.  So, due to the combination of youthful shenanigans and ennui over baseball, I don't think I bought a single pack of 1995 cards in 1995.  And it is a shame, because the Topps put out a quality set:

The simple borders and non-offensive but stylish font make for some good looking cards. They used some nice pictures and the area for the photo is nice and big.  Most noticeably, for the first time, Topps used gold foil on the base set, not the parallel set.  Turn the cards over and you see the backs also had some flair to them:

You get two pictures, an action shot and a head shot cleverly stylized into a Diamond Vision scoreboard look.  There were also the usual stats and some good write ups.  It is a shame no one noticed at the time, but the 1995 Topps set was put together very well, I wish they put as much time and creative effort into the contemporary base sets.

So, with gold foil on the front of the base cards, what on earth was Topps to do for a parallel?  I think the world would have continued turning without a parallel set (the base set did just fine without one inserted from 1996-2000), but Topps did something very different and kinda ballsy.  Now, because the mid 90's cards are not as deeply discussed in blog circles as current or vintage stuff, I have not seen many opinions about this parallel set...but I will throw out the notion that what Topps did was one of their most ingenious and daring efforts.

I present the 1995 Topps Cyberstats:

First, let's cover the aesthetics, the shimmering, refractor-like glow these cards have make them very attractive.  Sadly, I don't think my scanner captures the effect perfectly, but believe me, the shiny foil fronts alone would make this a worthy parallel set.  The kicker is the backs:

This is where this set differentiates its self from any set, before or after.  Topps decided to run a computer simulation to complete the unfinished 1994 baseball season and the put the results of that on the backs of these cards...

That's right, this is a parallel set from a parallel universe.


Like I said, I was too busy ignoring baseball and being a capricious youth to notice this set early in the year.  But the 1995 baseball season in Boston (where I was living) was pretty exciting.  The Sox surprisingly won the division and, little by little, they sucked me back into baseball fandom.  It was this team that made the Red Sox my baseball mistress (I am married to the Mets, after all).

Oh, back to the cards, lets look at a few more fronts and then get back to those backs.




Diving into some of these stats...according to Topps, Ken Griffey Jr. would have a monster year: .330 average 55 HR 133 RBI, which seems pretty accurate, given how well he was doing up until then and he would pretty much have two or three years just like that in the next few years.  I have to disagree with the Jeff Bagwell numbers, though.  The players went out on strike on August 12, and Bagwell was hit in the wrist with a pitch on August 10, breaking it.  I am pretty sure he would not have returned until very late in the season, if at all, so his numbers would have stayed right where they were (Bagwell won the 1994 NL MVP unanimously with a .368 average 39 HR and 116 RBI and an incredible .750 slugging - and no, I didn't have to look those numbers up...I am a big Bagwell fan). 


This is the last page of the set.  You can check out the stats for Darryl Strawberry on the original base card (above) and here in the Cyberstats world.  Darryl Strawberry was, as usual, coming back from injury and a drug suspension.  Look at that very Pedro-esque year they had for Pedro.  You might have thought it kind of a long shot then, but Pedro went on to put up those kind of numbers - and a heck of a lot better - over the next 10+ years.  Pedro Martinez makes me as happy as Darryl Strawberry makes me sad.

The set itself covers 396 of the 660 cards in the set, so most major players are covered and a lot of the rookies too.  If you have been paying attention to my odd predilections, I love that this set is 396 cards, because it fits perfectly into 44 pages, but that is certainly not why I kept this set.  When I discovered this set late in the 1995 year, I didn't do much about it, but in 1996, when my card collecting habit regained some steam, I bought as much of the 1995 cards as I could to catch up.  I built most of this set myself from those packs and finished it off at a show in 1996.  This set grew on me exponentially, both because of the spectra light fronts and the weird, bizarro-world stat backs.  I found it such an audacious choice for a parallel set and I poured over the alternative universe Topps created.  I wish they had advertised it more back then; I wish Topps would make such bold choices today in their set making.  I wish I knew more people as obsessed with this set as I am.  The set is in the front of the first book on my set shelf and it will probably always keep that status.

Post Script.  The set was punctuated with an insert set that was only available in the very hard to find 1995 factory set.  The set celebrates the pretend achievements of their alternative 1994.  I only have three of those cards seven cards, but I have the shiny foil Ken Griffey Jr. promo card, which is also pretty rare - and features a much better photo than the base card.

I will hopefully complete this page someday.  I have added the cards I need to my wantlist...if you think you can help, drop me a line.