Happy St. Paddy's Day.

     While the Reds were the first team to wear the green on St. Patrick's Day in the 1970s, it was that 1990 Classic card with Mike Schmidt in the middle there that showed collectors the uniform possibilities of the 17th of March.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over the years, it has become a tradition for teams to wear green today (except for the A's who almost always wear it no matter what city they are in). And hey, even I am wearing my green shamrock-clad David Wright shirtsy today, lest I chance getting pinched. 

Dave, Dick, and Dump Trucks of Money.

     Word came in baseball this week of two things I am very happy about, to the point that I am posting about it. 

     Firstly, that Dave Parker and Dick Allen were elected to the hall of fame. These two men are long overdue to be in Cooperstown. Parker was a great player with a sublime peak.  His great downfall to those pesky writers was he may or may not have enjoyed cocaine a little too much. But hey, in the 1980s, it was the law to do cocaine once you made a certain amount of money and after all, he was the first player to make a million dollars in a year. 

 

I hate to play the if/then game when it comes to the hall of fame, but if Jim Rice and Harold Baines are in Cooperstown, then there was zero reason to keep Parker out. 

His pages in my book are also a fun way to see how my brain works in terms of organization. That first page has him all in a Pirates uni - where he began his career and made his biggest contributions as a player (Stargell was the leader but Parker was the most dangerous hitter). That makes sense. He then was traded to Cincy after the Pittsburgh drug trials, so maybe that next page would be all Reds cards, well not quite. You see mostly Reds but also cards that match cards on the other pages. 

Parker did bounce around a lot at the end of his career, didn't he?  Have bat, will travel. I am glad the veterans committee, or whatever they are calling it this week, came to their senses and immortalized a great player while he was still alive. The same cannot be said for poor Dick Allen. 

He died in 2020 and he belonged in the hall way before that.  His numbers are the perfect illustration of why you need to "normalize" for era. He did all his damage in the 60s and early 70s, when pitching dominated the league. He also committed the cardinal sin of being an outspoken black man in the 60s when all the writers were stuffy old white dudes and Philadelphia was not exactly into loving the brothers. So his family will get to enjoy his enshrinement but he will not.  They did this more recently to Ron Santo as well, so I can't decide if this move is pulling a Santo or pulling an Allen.  The opposite is waiting until a player dies because they don't deserve to reap the benefits of being a hall of fame member; this is now pulling a Rose but someday will probably be pulling a Bonds. 

The second thing that happened is that the Mets backed up the dump truck full of money and unloaded it in the yard of Juan Soto. 

Fun fact: the two world series MVPs in Mets history also wore #22

This signing is obviously a very expensive undertaking for my hometown team to partake in and it is also unique for them.  The Mets usually make big trades for big players (Carter, Alomar, Piazza, Lindor) and then sign them to big deals but have never really signed the prime free agent for the right reasons. The only other time this happened was with the now infamous Bobby Bonilla and they did that as a knee jerk reaction to not signing Darryl Strawberry - when they should have either just given Straw the money or waited a year and paid Barry Bonds. And we all know how Bobby Bonilla turned out in Mets history.  But here they have signed the "generational talent" (they passed on A-Rod) to the biggest contract (and outspending the Yankees to do it) and it actually has a chance to work out for a change, both as a player and his fit on the team. I am hopeful, but with the Mets, it is always tainted with caution.

RIP Ed Kranepool 1944-2024

     I am so saddened by the passing of the Original Original Met that I felt compelled to post here for the first time in far too long. I never got to see Ed play so I really only know him through stories and of course baseball cards. 

He got a career capper in 1980 which has all his career stats.

 

 

One of the great things about Ed is that his run of flagship Topps cards fits perfectly into two 9-pocket pages. 

The '63 was the last card I got of his, thanks to Tony Oliva.

 

 

Ed came up as a 17(!) year old bonus baby in the Mets first year of 1962 and stayed through 1979.  He still holds the record for most games played in an Amazins uniform. 

That middle card is a custom and the auto is real.

 

 

He has this third page of odds and ends in my Mets pages and in fact has the honor of being the only person to lead off two books because he is also the subject of a favorite autograph of mine:

 

 

A 100 years ago my Uncle Ron, the very big Yankees fan, waited in a very long line at a corporate show to get me an autograph of a Mets player. I have cherished this one a very long time and now, sadly, even more so. 

Original Met, Miracle Met, Lifetime Met. Godspeed Ed.

Sort 'em If You Got 'em.

       Yesterday was National Baseball Card Day and no, I couldn't get to the National this year (or any year, yet) and no, I didn't get out to my local card shop.  But if you saw my last post, you know that I had plenty to do - I had 925 cards sent from COMC to sort through and revel in.  And that's exactly what I did:

These piles all make sense, to me anyway.  The majority are baseball cards but there are also football, hockey, basketball, bowling, tennis, golf, softball, gaming, movie (James Bond, Batman, and Star Wars among others), music (Beatles and Guided By Voices), and all sorts of Goodwin Champions which include all those things and more. There are three separate piles of Mets cards alone, and also one each for the Saints and the Devils and the Knicks, and a couple of players even got their own piles, Tom Seaver and Todd Hundley (no, really, I am a Hundley super-collector at this point). After that there are Hall of Famers and current stars and retired stars and birthday boys and all-star rookie trophy cards.  It was a fun few hours to go through all these.

I obviously can't highlight and scan 925 cards (103 scans! That would more than double my Seaver memorial post) so I will semi-randomly grab some cards that are either fun or fun to look at or just interesting, to me anyway.  Plus there were a few surprises even for me because after two-plus years, I had forgotten I'd bought them.

The top three here are some multi-player game used cards, one with Gary Carter and Mike Piazza - basically my two favorite players of all time - one with a "Bat Rack" of Mets with the aforementioned Carter and Piazza plus Jose Reyes and Kaz Matsui (remember when he was a thing?) and the third is a glorious mix of 1973 World Series adversaries from the UD Decades set, that one has Tom Seaver and Bud Harrelson along with Reggie Jackson and Bert Campaneris.  THAT is the best card I completely forgot I bought and I was giddy when I saw it.  But it also begs the question, how could I ever forget that card?

 

There is also a Ralph Kiner announcer card, a rarity of him with Mets colors, a great Lee Mazzilli from 1979 Hostess (I have the panel with Steve Garvey and Mike Schmidt but I needed it solo), a 1970 OPC Mets World Champions #1 card, a low numbered Frank Thomas jersey card (with pinstripes!) and a pair of one of my favorite unusual uniform subjects - Pete Rose on the Montreal Expos - I now have a complete page of him in French red, white, and blue.

Let's do a second nine, shall we, I can't just show you less than 1% of these, can I?

First off is the other side of that Carter/Piazza tandem jersey card.  Now I have to decide if it goes with the Carter collection or the Piazza.  Maybe Carter because he's technically the 'front' of the card?  Then you have two modern Topps Hall of Fame short prints.  I am not a big fan of these but sometimes Topps picks really cool photos for them and these two definitely fit that category.  The Koufax is a magnificent shot of him admiring the scoreboard from his perfect game and the Nolan Ryan is a brilliant candid shot that should/could have been one of his 70s cards.  Topps should only pick pictures of this quality when doing these short prints (alas, they often do not).

 

 

There's also a few fun vintage cards here, a 1974 Tony Oliva with its proud position designation of Des(ignated) Hitter, and a late 70s run of Tom Seaver O-Pee-Chee cards.  That last one in the left corner is a 1998 Fleer Tradition Todd Hundley '63 Classic card numbered to /63.  I told you I was becoming a Hundley super-collector.  I also had my eye on a Piazza version of this card but alas did not pull the trigger on it and now it is gone and I might never see another.  I have put that card in my Needed Nine, you can find that list on the right side margin of the blog.  

I teased it in the post from the other day so here is a much better view of the 1952 Andy Pafko #1 I acquired:

I am not certain why I ever bought into the hype of this card but somehow over the years I did and I just decided I must own this stupid thing.  I ended up getting it during the COMC Black Friday sales and the price was right for this condition.  I think what I really like most is the randomness of someone like Andy Pafko being the first card in their first big set.  He was a good ballplayer but nothing anyone would ever consider a superstar.  Donruss went with Ozzie Smith, Fleer went with Pete Rose, Score went with Don Mattingly, Upper Deck lucked out and chose Ken Griffey Jr. over Gregg Jefferies and Gary Sheffield for their lead off but somehow Topps went with Andy Pafko as card number one. If anyone knows the solid reason why they chose him (I don't recall ever seeing one) please enlighten me.  For now, Andy has a hot date with the other two 1952 star cards I keep protected: my Gus Zernial and my Bob Feller.  

I have gotten to the point in my Gary Carter collection where the only cards I don't have are either strange local oddball issues, low numbered monstrosities, or (somewhere in between) just plain old stuff I don't think is worth the money.  I did pull the trigger on a solid gold Gary that I just couldn't pass up during that black Friday sale.  I must say, it is shiny!

I doubt these Danbury Mint cards will ever be worth much (I also bought a Jerry Koosman one in this batch) but I suppose if times are tough I could melt them down and make fillings out of them or something.

Lastly is a card that probably only means something to me but I am so happy that I got it, the nerd in me is still glowing.  It is a 2019 Goodwin Champions Robert Pollard printing plate, a yellow 1/1. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The pandemic left me a lot of time at home to sit and listen to music and Uncle Bob here cranked out something like seven albums (and counting) during 2020 and 2021.  Maybe it is the old man in me, but I don't listen to a lot of music the way I did when I was a younger man but the pandemic did a lot of strange things to all of us so it was nice to have new Guided By Voices albums flying out at the rate they used to in the 1990s.  This card will now be the centerpiece of my Bob Pollard collection from that Goodwin set and I have to trust in myself that I don't become that lunatic who needs to hoard the one-of-one cards.  It helps that I haven't seen any of the others for sale...you know, not that I've checked or anything.  Now excuse me, I have 905 other cards to put in their proper place in my collection. 

Do You Believe in Miracles?

 Kind of.

This package was waiting for me on my doorstep yesterday:

yes, that is a 1952 Topps #1 Andy Pafko along with 1989 LJN Baseball Talk. Fun Times!

If you cannot read that tiny little print on the label, it came from the glorious Seattle suburb of Redmond WA from a company you might know, COMC.  Remember them?  Well, I requested this package in February and it was scheduled for a May delivery - I doubt you need a calendar to see what today is but I can assure you, it is not May.  I am not saying I completely gave up on ever seeing it but their pandemic combination of horrible customer service and empty promises made me wonder if 2022 was out of the question.  But it did arrive.  They have answered emails faster of late and it was very well packaged when I got it.  You can see a nice tease of the stuff that was on top and I am going to spend the weekend sorting and enjoying the 900+ cards that are inside.  I am not here to praise COMC or bury them right now since the world is still knee deep in madness but I will say to anyone reading this wondering if they will ever see their package: miracles do happen.

The New Normal: Opening Day.

       Today is opening day!  *looks at calendar* Holy shit! It's July 24th.  Like most things these days, things are a little different.  They are going to start playing baseball today amidst this pandemic and they are going to do it with slightly different rules and a very different atmosphere.  Since we can't go out the the old ballgame today (but we can watch on TV) let's breakdown what you might see and what you definitely won't see. 

Famous people throwing out the first pitch:

Yes!  Last night during the Nationals opener, Dr. Anthony Fauci threw out the first pitch, and while it wasn't exactly a strike, I like to think he has more important things to be focusing on right now.  With any luck, the people in charge might even start listening.

Topps needs to bring these back, I always liked these cards.

 





 





 

Mascots: Nope.

The stadiums will be empty and the large costumed buffoonery will have to be on hold for a while.  If you want to dress up in the privacy of your own home, I am certainly not going to judge. UPDATE: I may have been misinformed about this one...

Cardboard cut-out fans:

Yes!  Real fans will not be in the ballpark but most teams (including my Mets) have put up cardboard cutout fans behind home plate and around the stadium.  On TV, it looks like an old computer game with the graphics turned to simple - I can only imagine what it looks like to the players.  They also pipe in crowd noise, which is strange to say the least.  Whoever has been on the button for the cheers and boos needs to be a little faster on the draw, at least from what I saw on SNY last weekend.  Maybe they'll have the bugs worked out by tonight.

Exuberant celebrations: No way.

The players are under orders to socially distance as much as possible.  This means they sit wide in the dugout and the reserves have been sitting in the stands.  Also, no spitting, no high fives, and definitely no walk-off dog pile insanity.  I went to a baseball game and a golf match broke out!

Overpriced delicious fatty foods:

Only if you make them at home.  I am ordering the old ballpark staple Chinese food this afternoon to watch the Mets.  Like I said, this is a very different world we live in.  "Buy me some peanuts and crab rangoon!"

Players going all out to win:

Absolutely.  This 60 game season is, antithetical to baseball history for 150+ years, a sprint and not a marathon.  Also, 16 teams will make the playoffs with some very short opening round series.  I like to think the players are rested and the ones who have chosen to play are coming to win.  This season is going to count, these games are for real; the world is all asunder but better late than never, it's time to Play Ball!

I Have a Bad Feeling About This.

      A quick look at the date means I should be saying "May the Fourth be with you" and post some Star Wars cards but I just can't do it.  I know you all feel the same way but it has hit me hard this week:

Dear god, I miss baseball so fucking much!!!

Yes, I am shouting and I don't care who hears me.  I rode out April in quarantine just kind of imagining it was a second February.  February is long painful month most years - it's cold, the holidays and football are over, baseball only begins to emerge from the winter - let's face it, February sucks.  This April was February part 2, just an awful fate for what is usually a wonderful month.  And now it seems we are all dug in and the virus is going to stick around all summer and it is seriously beginning to look like we are going to get little to no baseball at all this year.  There is only so much radio replays of world series broadcasts and twitter posts about what happened on this day I can take. Even during times when I was trapped inside due to depression or unemployment or sickness or some combination of those things, there was baseball to look forward to in the evenings to pass the time and distract the mind.  But the weight of our collective situation is hitting hard: we might not have baseball to get us through this.  And for any foreseeable future, the next couple months definitely won't have baseball.  Just writing this rambling paragraph is driving me crazy and pissing me off.   I am going through the entire Kübler-Ross in 250 words or less.  *sigh*

I have been dealing with my lockdown by spring cleaning.  And I mean capital-C Cleaning.  The whole house has never looked better.  So many things have been organized, thrown out, or scrubbed.  But I am running out of things.  I am doing the big parts of the baseball collection and saving the actual sorting of cards for last.  After that, well, I don't want to think about that.  I do a lot of reading in general, both online nonsense and actual books, and I have been diving into more baseball history than any of the virtual seasons that some websites have been running.  Today, on what is usually a Star Wars-centric day, I read a fun TDIH baseball thing and I will now bring everything together and focus on that.  This month is my birthday month, I will be 45 on the 27th.  On May 4, 2007 Julio Franco hit a home run (what would be his last) at the age of 48 years and 254 days.  This is the record for the oldest player ever to hit a home run.

This home run is on the card in the lower left; rare that I have the exact moment on hand.

Even more fun?  That home run was hit off of Randy Johnson, who was 43 years old at the time (and 239 days).  That is 92+ years of pitch and homer!  This is obviously the record for that obscure mark and I imagine it is one that will stand for quite a while.  This little fact has made me feel both very old and surprisingly young at the same time.

In fact, this is as good a time as ever to start a series called Players I Like For No Reason.  PILFNR - it just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?  Julio Franco is a great example of a PILFNR.

Actually, we are off to a bad start because there is a very clear reason I have liked Julio Franco for basically his entire 400 year career - he has the coolest batting stance ever.  Like a lot of kids on the playground and in the batting cage, I liked to copy major leaguers and their stances.  Hell, there is a lovable doofus who turned this into an entire shtick. Alas, I was just an amateur and never saw the future in mimicking the likes of Eric Davis, Gary Sheffield, Don Mattingly, Howard Johnson, Darryl Strawberry, Mickey Tettleton and the like.   But my favorite by far was definitely Julio Franco.  In case you are unaware, you can clearly see his stance on four cards on this next page...

The man stood up basically straight, turned his hip inward, and held the bat over his head back at a 270 degree angle pointing to the pitcher.  And it was actually weirder than I just described.  And somehow it worked! He used the fastest wrists I ever saw to turn the bat, whip it though the hitting zone, and terrorize pitchers until he was 50 years old.  He was amazing and unlike anyone before or since.  I enjoyed the hell out of watching him at the very end of his career on the Mets but he will always be one of those players I always dug way before his association with the blue and orange.

Okay, that bit of giddiness over Julio Franco has made me feel a little bit better, sorry if this post was a little all over the place.  I am going to go watch the despecialized version of the original Star Wars and plan on my tacos and margaritas for tomorrow.  Stay safe and sane everyone.

Old and New Business on a Pretty Good Good Friday.

   First things first, you will have noticed that the header has changed, I figured the blog could use a spruce and little more color plus the other photo was not a good example of social distancing.  While I am not sure if the new one has the guys 6 feet apart, it is still a better graphic for this day and age. 

A couple packages have come to Starting Nine central recently, one was from a new reader eager to share; Tom from The Angels in Order looked at one of my my wantlists and satisfied some missing base Mets, especially from series 2 of 2018 Topps, from which I purchased exactly zero packs:

One of the last posts I did before I disappeared was a harsh yet fair critique of the 2018 Topps design (and what they could have done about it).  I stand by my thoughts 1000% though I must say, those vertical photos of d'Arnaud and Thor looks great regardless of their borderless nature.  I never did get to say what I thought of the 2019 look, but I liked it more than most; 1982 Topps is one of the first sets I remember and it definitely invokes that look.  Anyway, I have a bunch of Angels stuff to go out to reciprocate these so thanks Tom!

The other came from Nate of The Bucs Stop Here, who read about my glut of 2020 Heritage and wanted to trade.  I sent him the Alvarez/Aquino rookie I had and he sent me some Mets that will be far more appreciated around here:

It may not look it, but that Granderson is shiny foil and rookie cup cards are always appreciated especially when needed. My completed trades column to the right has been updated.  Thanks Nate!   Also in the right column, you will see the "followers" and "blog roll" - if you aren't following me, you may as well click on the button now and rectify that.  Also, if you want to be on the blog roll, just let me know and we'll do the old quid pro quo (and not even get in trouble for it).  I usually don't worry about such things much, but with the blog being dormant for so long, I figure I'd like to see more readers and know who they are, especially if they're new.  Hell, I have now posted more in the last month or so than in any of the last four years.  I am also pleased to see that one of the few bright spots of this current lockdown situation we all find ourselves in is that a few blogs that had gone down have started up again.  Let's hear it for the blogosphere!!!

***

A few belated thanks need to also be delivered to some altruistic displays of cardboard giving.  Last November, Jeff from 2 by 3 Heroes sent a random email to me verifying my address.  This email had no other information whatsoever but I told him I hadn't budged, address-wise.  A few days later, a package arrived full of goodies:

I am pretty sure it was this long forgotten post that inspired his delivery, but full of Firefly cards it was.  He even gave it an international header card.  There was also a bunch of Mets cards in there too and it is rare that they are relegated to second tier in a scan, yet here we are.  Firefly is streaming on Hulu right now and we all have nothing but time on our hands, so I suggest highly that if you have never seen it to go watch it.  And hell, now is as good a time as any to watch it again if you have seen it.  (belated) Thanks Jeff!

While I was irregularly (then not) blogging, one person I kept trading with was venerable veteran Night Owl Cards.  We have probably sent 40-50 packages to each other in the last 10 years or so and because we know what each other collect so well, we just kept doing it regardless of online status.  At one point last year I scanned this batch:

Matt Harvey?  Sheesh, this is old.  Remember that guy?

These are some fabulous Mets cards and inserts, then there was this vein of oddities (from NO at least):

The note answered my questions when it said "I didn't suddenly become a Bo-Chro collector, the cards just kind of landed in my lap."  It is probably the strangeness of the rookies in there and the gloriously dismissive abbreviation that made me scan them for future use in the first place.  Well, thanks as always Night Owl, I already have plenty in my pile for your next package.  I even looked at your wantlists for a change.

And speaking of piles, lastly I need to clear up a few unresolved trades.  I keep the outgoing cards on my bookshelf close to my mailing stuff and right now there is a bunch of things I need to figure out.

A few, like those Orioles and Blue Jays, I just need to verify addresses before I send them out.  But I also have a rare Barry Larkin insert that I can't recall whom I was going to swap with.  I also have a bunch of blue parallels, do you collect blue parallels?  Let me know, I think those are for you.  I also have a couple of 1990 UD Marquis Grissom rookies that I know there is a blogger who wants to collect 1000 of them or something but I can't remember who it is.  Is it you? Do you know who it is and if he's done collecting his grand of Grissom?  Please leave a comment or drop me a line. 

So now it's back to the grand Spring Cleaning, in between playing with stuff I find of course...

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.

First Things First.

       Ah, Opening Day.  There is nothing else like it.  Except, well, it is now stretched out over a few days so I guess MLB should just trademark Opening Few Days and get it over with.  But enough with the awful march of commerce, let us embrace the wonderful march of time.  The sun is up, the sky is blue (etc.) and the Mets are out in Flushing adding to baseball's best record on Opening Day.

This year at CitiField, the ceremonial First Pitch was very emotional.

My favorite meaningless statistic is that the Mets are now 36-20 on opening day, the best percentage in baseball history.  Also quirky - and often pointed out - is that they won a World Series (1969) before they actually won on opening day (1970) which means they are 36-12 since that Miracle happened.  Fascinating and stupid.

On a more card related point, this is what the 2017 Topps page ended up looking like:

I am still not crazy about the design and it has yet to grow on me.  That along with this year's Heritage being the burlap abortion that is 1968 Topps, I am not in a collecting happy place right now (and let's not even bring up that Panini decided that the 1990 Donruss design needed to be brought back, ugh).

I did, however, follow through on my threat to tweak the Salute inserts into a better looking base design:

My photoshop skills are weak at best, but I think by making the photo a tad larger by dragging out the half-border and replacing the insert title with the position, you have at least a good starting point for a much better and cleaner design than the inception angle boxes Topps gave us this year.  With a little more skill and time, I am sure the gold stripe could match the team colors and the city name in that right border could be something else as well (though I kinda like the half-font thing going on there).  But this is what I was driving at when I critiqued the 2017 base design and in a rare instance, I don't think I am crazy or wrong here.  What do you think? Has anyone else done something similar recently?  Let me know since this is the first year I have been that turned off by the Topps design since I started the blog.

A Day Nine Years In The Making.

       Well, 8 years, 11 months, 21 days to be exact, but who's counting, right?  After 3278 days in the desert, the Mets get to play in a playoff game tonight.  Your starters are Jacob deGrom...

...who I had never even heard of two years ago.  Now he is slated to start the first and fifth game of the Division series.  Since this is his first postseason start, I will cherry pick the smallest of samples from the All Star game this year and guess he is going to throw a 90 pitch 27 strikeout perfect game. Yeah, that's the ticket.

The opposing side is putting three time Cy Young award winner Clayton Kershaw on the bump.

Kershaw started the season 1-5 but finished up 15-2 to end up 16-7 with 301 strikeouts and a 2.13 ERA, which wasn't even the best ERA on his team.  I kinda like that first stat, though; his record in 11 postseason games?  1-5 with a 5.12 ERA.  I hope this trend continues. 

It's nice to have the Mets back in the playoffs but I don't want this team to be satisfied with just making the postseason, I want them to use all this great young pitching they have and make some noise and shock the world.   My prediction for the series?  Mets win 3-1.

Division Champs.

       I hope this is the first a few celebratory posts I get to do in the next 6 weeks or so, but I am happily shouting from the rooftops today that...


The 2015 New York Mets are National League East Division Champions!



Yeah, I know, it's not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, but for the Mets, it is a huge deal because of what they've gone through the last nine years - especially 8 and 7 years ago.  That team should have been three time champions, instead, well, it was horror show after horror show.



But let's not dwell on the past but embrace what will hopefully be a grand future.  These are all the 2015 cards I could put together in any sort of cohesive presentation.  Plus...



Let's start by celebrating the man who is, IMHO, responsible for bringing this whole team together...



...and lastly give a huge batch of respect for the man who has brilliantly finished off all the games, including the clincher Saturday night. 



There is no time to rest on this little laurel, though.  There is still the matter of wresting home field advantage in the NLDS away from the Dodgers and keeping everyone sharp for the playoffs.  Wow.  That's fun to say.  The Mets are in the playoffs.