New Pack!

So I bought a pack of baseball cards. Yeah, yeah, so did you, and you, and you, but not Nǐ over there in China, that one is just a web crawler trolling for - ? I wonder what I would have to type to generate a bookmark over there in the People's Republic?

Anyhow, see if you notice anything new about this pack:

Yes, I thought some blogger somewhere should report the demise of the 2 panel "rack" / "fat" / "jumbo" pack. Maybe that will get the attention of the Chinese - ace Japanese pitcher moves to America, triggers savings in plastic wrapping material. That would probably need to happen with basketball cards for anyone in China to notice, actually.

But this does mark a certain end of a long tradition - the long pack of baseball cards hanging on a peg. It has of course been a long time since we could see the cards inside, but those long packs were a certain tiny part of the traditions of baseball cards.

Personally, I'm OK with this, less packaging material is a good thing. I really sometimes wonder why Topps sticks with the "packs" in a blaster box, and I hope that is the next place they look to save a few pennies. And yes, I will still be buying new packs of cards in the future, as I love ripping packs and I will have to get a chance at the random cards I put on my idiosyncratic binder pages somewhere. And it  is still the very best way to keep an eye on what Topps is doing with all those baseball cards.

Though the minimal color cards this year made me so sleepy a very strange thing happened to this pack of baseball cards in my possession - I bought it 3 weeks ago, and never opened it! What the hell? Not to worry, my friends, baseball card collecting has gone on as usual here at the Base Set base, I was just too busy dealing with old base cards to look at the new base cards. What the hell?

So even though I haven't made it as far as blogging about my Series One cards this year (I did get them all bindered up, and I recently picked up the bulk of Series Two to start on those - I'll post some of each soon I hope), let's see what I found in this new-ish pack of baseball cards.

First card:

And, yawn.

Though I must say here I find it odd that with Topps designating blue as the Yankees color, the red of their iconic icon logo really stands out, and though I've never been a fan of the Yankees, I much prefer this logo on my baseball cards rather than the blue NY used last year (Topps seems to agree as this red logo is much more common on their cards than the NY). It also works well because the Yankees never place this logo on any uniform, so when Topps uses logos on the cards, the Yankees never have those overly busy cards that result from multiple logos, a topic I've been working on for an upcoming post.

So here I am with a brand new baseball card, and I'm not yawning. Thanks, Topps. I won't even ding you heavily for lopping off Francisco's elbow, as on this card:

Yes, his elbow is complete — but why just slice the baseball in half with the photo software? It would change little of the live game portrait style the set editor goes for on every card Topps issues these days, to just include his complete hand and the baseball by decreasing the zoom % just a single point or two.

I complain about the zoom choices of new cards fairly often (best fortune cookie ever says: "Human invent language to satisfy need to complain.") That doesn't mean I don't like all live-action close-ups, or that every last body part absolutely must be visible on the card:

This card works very well without Brignac's left elbow being visible, as the photo has captured the intensity of waiting for a Major League pitch, and the lines of the image converge nicely on the intensity of Reid's grip on the bat - your eyes are led to the batting gloves, not off the card, as on this shot:

That is another classic still image for a baseball card, but leaving Santana's thumb sticking back into the frame kind of makes for a whole that is less than the sum of the parts. I think the focus is again on the hitter's eyes, which is kind of interesting here as well, probably more so on-card than on-screen. Maybe Santana will go on to multiple fan-ballot All-Star appearances and this card will become an iconic RC on it's own, though that mess on the left edge will certainly detract from that.

The Santana card contrasted nicely with this one:

I did not know that the Twins sport two different left shoulder patches these days. I've always liked that big Minnesota patch on the Burton card; the patch on the Santana card is a new one for me. Maybe if I could watch baseball on TV all the time, I would know these things.

But I always like looking through the Update cards to find all the new-this-season patches, and this pack didn't disappoint:

Though you have to squint a little to see the Mother's Day patch there on Tyler's left breast. I believe this was new this year; here is a nice downloaded-from-web-somewhere view:

With all the zooming going on with the cards these days, that might look nice with a little bit more zoom, actually. Never thought I would see a pink LogoMan.

Update is a quirky set of baseball cards for many reasons, including the way it is now frequently the home of "sunset" cards:

And that seems like a nice one for probably the only card in this set that has a first stat line that starts with "95" in the YR column. I've never been a fan of Giambi, nor a hater, but by the time any player has made it to 20 issues in the base set of Topps cards, I always like their final cards. There are several such in Update this year, also including Daisuke Matsuzaka and Bobby Abreu. All 3 players got photo variations in the set - a nice touch by Topps. 

This could be a sunset card for Chief Wahoo there, unless he pops up on a Fan Favorite type retro card in some future set, but I'm good with that.

So I was reading the back of the Giambi card, and in fact read most of the cards in this pack. That's a main reason I buy them. The unique feature of this year's card back is the "Rookie Fact," like this one:

Usually the Rookie Facts are totally forgettable, but if you squint at them long enough, you find a few kinda interesting ones. Pitchers hitting the ball is probably an easy go-to for the writers as they skim a player bio:

I'm pretty sure I set that one aside to share with you as I read through Series One, when Arroyo had a Reds card. 

And there is always the hope that the baseball card back will connect you to the history of the game:

Here I am in 2014 still discovering things about a favorite player of my youth, Carl Yastrzemski. Again, thanks Topps.

Another neat thing about the card backs in Update is they sometimes discuss the just-completed season:

But not many people buy baseball cards for the backs. Actually, zero people buy them for the backs, unless I go out and break my long-standing aversion to Bowman products and pick up some 2014 Bowman Chrome mostly for the interesting card backs I've seen on the blogs lately.

So let's get back to the fronts of the cards. This one caught my eye:

Check it out - a baseball player's knee! There were only 4 cards of 36 in this pack wherein that body part could be seen, if you don't count a pitcher's leg kick (always a sure bet to see on any of Bronson Arroyo's cards).

That card also certainly made me notice a card later in the pack:

I'm not sure I've ever pulled two cards from the same team in the same pack for the same individual position on the field. Perhaps I have in the several dozen other fat/rack/jumbo packs I've picked up the last several years, or whether you count the 72 card "hanger box" as a "pack." It just seems like for the last four years or so, I am always pulling cards of S.F. Giants infielders named Brandon, and just tons of S.F. Giant infielders in general. It's like they have a special infielder bullpen full of almost-could-be guys out there. At least that's what I glean from Topps anyway, who has yet to issue a Joe Panik card outside of Bowman or Minor League products.

So anyhow, what about those other cards in the pack, that might actually feature a famous baseball player instead of all these Update back-ups? 

Let's take a look:

POW! That one's going on the "None" page - as in "None More Red", a page I dreamed up just tonight when I opened this pack. It will only have one other card so far, though I will probably put other colors on the page so I have some chance to make it to 9 cards some day. I certainly never expected an Oakland A's card would end up a contestant in the reddest card of all time. This card is so red, it takes the viewer quite some time to even notice the All-Star Game logo there in the corner - even though it is mostly red!

Maybe if I can find the Red Foil parallel of this card, Sean and Ted can have some company:

A pity the Cardinals can't really put red birds on a red alternate jersey. Maybe if we ever get a little bit of a "loose" photo selection out of Topps again, with a player wearing their warm-up jacket. I think it's been awhile for one of those cards. Don't even get me started on the fact that all the All-Star cards feature the special warm-up uniforms as on the Doolittle card - I pulled 5 other such boring cards.

I did promise to detour from those base cards, so here ya go:

Is there any more useless card back than the back of an insert? The story of a home run in a Gulf Coast League (high or low A league, I forget, and absolutely don't care)….yawnzzzerz.

The front of this card is quite strange and I will have to compare it to the few other examples I have from Series 1 & 2; I'm not sure if it is an example of Topps checking out what some menu option in their photo software does, or this is just a warm fuzzy analog photo somehow. I'll return to this another time.

I was really surprised to find this card:

I really like it when I get a card of an All-Time Great in a new pack of baseball cards. Especially when they play for my favorite team. Though Kaline (name in foil = Boo) retired when I was 7, I have grown to be a fan through his post-playing work in the broadcast booth and his continuing work in scouting and development for the Tigers. I even saw him give a short speech at Comerica Park on Ernie Harwell day some ten years ago. I will never forget it.

I'll never be a fan of insert designs really intended to be a base for "Relics", but I would say these are unique in that the team logo is all in foil, including the Tiger graphic. Though I don't care for foil, I kind of like it's use here. I've already been on the lookout for the Stargell card on this insert checklist; it should be interesting to see some of the others.

So being not quite old enough to know the details of Kaline's Farewell, I eagerly flipped this card over:

I knew he hit his 3,000th hit in Baltimore, his hometown, and the 399 Home Runs, but did not know that about announcing his retirement. For a second time in a brand new pack of baseball cards I'm picking up information tidbits about long retired Hall of Famers. Another Well Done, Topps.

The inserts and parallels always fall just past the middle of a pack of course, so this means I have a few more cards to check out:

It's always cool to pull the player on the wrapper, though the Rookie Debut cards are a slightly dubious proposition. But when they are a horizontal card this nice, complete with lurking fielder in the set position, they are A-OK with me.

The 2014 design probably works best on the horizontal cards; there is a better supply of color from the design. This set would have been very nice in a radical all horizontal issue not seen since 1956 (it's time, Topps!). I will be assembling these all together for some interesting pages, probably. 

Quite often these days, the zoom fetish just wastes the always big potential of the horizontal format:

Though I am always a sucker for the cards with the colorful gloves. There are plenty of those; I can never decide if I actually want to make a special page of them. Probably not - just not enough going on, usually, on those cards. At least the baseball doesn't get sliced off on these cards; even a careless photo editor can figure that out in the horizontal format.

One feature of the 2014 set that surprised me is a return to documenting the 2013 Highlights:

Though all we get is a number, and one word: "500 Homers", as this is actually a checklist card with no further elucidation, not even the date, of this feat for Albert Pujols. And it would not have surprised me at all to see the Checklist cards somehow be connected to Rookie accomplishments, to go with the Rookie Facts and the Rookie, Rookie, Rookie theme of all the insert sets particularly in Series 1 & 2.

But a nice baseball card for one of the Hall of Fame statistical points. Nice touch by Topps to use a photo featuring a fan wearing a vintage St. Louis uniform for this one.

One probably-not-collected-by-anyone-else meme I like on cards is Empty Seats. And 2014 Update has a doozy of a card for that page:

Empty Seats at Night! Oh yes. So many neat image components here, many working very well with the swoop of the card design. A first mystery is the blurry red-white&blue bunting = Opening Night? No, there wouldn't be empty seats on Opening Night. But the bunting might stay up for the whole Opening Series, and Pomeranz pitched an inning in the third game this year,  a night game of a day-night doubleheader after a rain-out I guess; a 4-6 A's loss to the Indians). The line of the script Athletics on the uniform works tremendously setting up a second main horizontal line image, just as the bill of the cap goes with the other line to the left - really quite a photograph here. The cropping/zoom is perfect again on a horizontal card, and I even like the Nike swoosh this time in an upside-down appearance.

So though the 2014 Topps Baseball Cards didn't grab me as much as their 2013 models did, I know I will probably always find some enjoyable baseball cards in every new pack of baseball cards. I hope.

Beam Me Up, Scotty

I've been half-heartedly looking for this card for a long time. I knew I would find it, but I had no way to know which card it would actually be:

I think you can probably connect this card to the title of this post. Unless, perhaps, you are also too young to not understand the reference when a bald guy says "Make it so."

That's Strike-Out King Mark Reynolds starring on this card as he is about to be whisked aboard the USS Enterprise, from back in the days when he played for the Diamondbacks. Reynolds surfaced on First Base in Milwaukee this year, another marcher in the long parade of nothing at the position for them, outside of the years it was manned by someone named Cecil, or the son of someone named Cecil. Lately the ennui of that carousel is even affecting the guy just across the chalk line attempting to guide the players from the Coaches Box, as they told their 1B Coach to hit the road recently. Though when you think about it, how you can screw up relaying signs from the home dug-out to right-handed hitters bad enough to get fired? What else does a First Base Coach even do?

But I digress. I'm sure you're not surprised. Of course, this is actually a David Eckstein card, and the last thing I ever want to collect, or one of the oh so many such things these days, is David Eckstein cards. The man who seemingly single-handedly destroyed my beloved Tigers during the only World Series this century where they managed to win a single game. It's not easy watching your team being beaten by a guy who is only 5' 7" tall. When Jose Altuve finally achieves his Free Agent freedom from Houston and does this to your team in some future World Series somewhere, you'll know what I mean.

So I like how the 60th Anniversary Diamond Parallel is soooooo sparkly and shiny with lots of shiny colors, too, and you are starting to wonder just what Reynolds will say to Captain Kirk when he meets him, that you forget all about David Eckstein on this card. Well done, Topps. Or, perhaps, Scotty picked the wrong guy, though by 2010 it was too late for Scotty to fix things for me. Unless he activated some sort of time-space flux distortion field….the Enterprise was always good for messing around with Time. Maybe there's hope for the 2006 Tigers yet.

I hope to find more of these cards. Normally the baseball players that get sent to some bizarre tale in outer cheese-fi movies all in the mind of some demented baseball card collector, well they are much more anonymous, as on another recent acquisition:

Though I must admit that lurking Pirate center fielder is pretty much completely amorphous on the regular issue base card as well.

Other times, Scotty can't seem to lock onto just one baseball player amongst all the oh, the humanity on a baseball card, and their baseball kidnapping victim has to stay in another mundane baseball game watched by the Topps photographer:

And then still other times, no matter how much Spock re-modulates the tri-corder or Jeordi re-configures the deflector array (writing a Star Trek episode must be the easiest thing ever - when the characters get painted into a plot corner, you can just make up new technology to solve their problems), they absolutely can not seem to even detect an Umpire, who I guess have pretty much always seemed to be fairly impervious to modern technology:

Maybe after this season and the success of instant re-play, they should try again.

Now I must confess I have been a bad blogger and I haven't even perused my ever increasing stacks of these cards for the best examples of these. Which has many reasons - my collection of recent cards that I actually have access to as I type, is in an extreme state of disarray as I prepare it for hibernation again in the coming off-season, and I select cards to finally beam-up to COMC and make all that ripping the last several years be a little more worthwhile. And thus I will soon have some more trade list pages for you to peruse over there to your right. So I did happen to have all my Lineage inserts and parallels sitting around when the wonderful Mark Reynolds Beam-Up card showed up recently. Err, the David Eck .. no, screw it. Hands down, the best Mark Reynolds card evah.

And I have had all this fun tonight with just a baker's dozen of these diamonds at hand, while declining to share a totally faaaaahbulous example of a Diamond Tatooine Card, because that would be the wrong parallel universe for this post, and I'm saving that up for a possible homage to a Legend of Cardboard. 

Imagine what I could do with hundreds of these things sitting around. Oh yes, I can imagine that….

Sometimes, these cards don't make me wander off into my relatively minor affair with sci-fi make believe. I've never actually watched all the episodes of Star Trek (I heard that gasp from the hardcore Trekkies that wandered in here at random). I did that on purpose as I watched friends obsess over the whole deal, so I could always enjoy the idea of catching an episode I've never seen before, knowing this TV show would be "on" the entire rest of my life. And now more than ever I suppose, when I could summon the complete checklist of episodes with just a few clicks on the track-pad and check off all the missing boxes whenever I wish.

So please don't think I will be wandering off into the many worlds of cards with aliens on them (though I do pull the very best ones from some of the stacks I do have), nor will I be getting into ordering up printed Customs like this one:

With that one, I am content to enjoy a cribbed digital version from this neat-O blog: http://metsfantasycards.blogspot.com

These Diamond Anniversay cards don't always whisper "sci-fi" to me because sometimes, they are  straight-up magnificent baseball cards:

And this from a collector who's just not that into Chrome, or Rainbows (despite building a Rainbow Set, go figure) or especially anything Bowman, where this kind of stuff is all the rave,  though I know I probably I like these because I like actual Rave accessories quite a bit. Sometimes Ooohhh, Shiny + Hall of Fame just simply works.

As I sort my acquisitions of the last several years I have reached one conclusion about these chimerical diamonds of relaxation, and that is: I'm keeping all the ones I have. I had thought I could make a wicked cool looking binder page of the very best ones. Then I thought what the hey, I could make a couple three of those pages. I mean, with 2011 Series 1, Series 2, Update, and Lineage, I would have 1,190 of these to pick from. But soon I realized what would be coming….something to do with that COMC credit left over the glorious day I finish the Rainbow Sea Turtle project. A way to help all my fellow bloggers who have their own little stacks of these, quietly curling their way towards making the stack fall over, who could instead send them to me for safe-keeping, and proper straightness training bound up properly, in an Ultra-Pro Platinum binder page.

Yes, there have been a few things I have found useful in life I learned watching Star Trek. Such as this one:

Collect Long, and Complete

I can't collect modern archive styles...

…without collecting the original:

Had a very nice visit to my not-that-local card shop (65 mile drive) yesterday. It was the best possible day to visit the LCS.

The day the new cards come in?

Nope. The day the owner of the shop had just purchased a new random collection that no one had looked through yet!

I pulled the above treasure immediately. Two bucks, out the door - though I found some other wonderful treasures to share with you soon, though not the ones I walked in for, as the new Stadium Club was all sold out and the new Update wasn't in yet (in the LCS round of the playoffs….Topps slips more and more on this each passing year). And now as you are reading this, I will be scanning some of the wonderful replacement treasures I found….

As I mentioned the other day, 1972 is one of my favorite designs. Unfortunately, I haven't really collected the originals very seriously and own just a handful of them. I could change that with just a few clicks of a mouse of course, and I might some day. But until that day I'll just pick up 72s when I run across them. I could have just asked my friendly local card shop owner right there on the spot and I'm sure he could have got me started with 100 commons for a carefully calculated price of "ahh, those would book at twenty, so how about eight bucks?" Maybe next time.

The shop I picked this up at hasn't been in my FLCS review series, but it will soon. There is actually a shop ahead of it on my list.

Such a pick-up this card was. When I was young, my first baseball memories are from 1975. Living in the mountains of West Virginia, I pulled for the Pirates in the National League due to their minor league team being the only baseball team in the double-U-V, and the Red Sox because my mom's best-neighbor-lady-friend was from Massachusetts. And she was the only grown-up I knew who had enough of an interest in baseball to comment on the sport, which was good enough for me.

Of course, 1975 is an epic year in Red Sox history, even though it was a bit of an off year for Yaz. I'm sure I'll return to 1975 on this blog plenty. I didn't know or care that Carl didn't produce as normally that year. He was YAZ. Last winner of the Triple Crown, all that.

Right now would be the time to pull out my first Carl Yastrzemski card, but my vintage collection is still locked in it's storage unit prison. (Stupid work).

So I could only show this one. I would have purchased it regardless, and it is definitely now the A #1 1972 baseball card that I own, but it also fits in with another collection I've been occasionally building a little pile of, that I will now add to my blog index: A Tree On My Baseball Card?

This card has a glorious lurking Tree there in the background amidst other miscellaneously dark, threatening shrubbery; a pity that 1971 camera technology didn't dial it into focus the way modern equipment would have. (We are so spoiled these days). I'm thinking a solid specimen of Southern Yellow Pine somewhere there in Winter Haven, though even with a very intimate knowledge of the three Pines that get lumped in to the generic Southern Yellow Pine name, I can't be 100% sure it is actually a Pine.

The one thing I struggle with while making some mini collections is whether a card should go in the set it came from, or only in the mini-collection, or whether I should just set aside an extra copy of it in that little pile.

Hmmmm, looks like I will have to be keeping an eye out for another one of these tell-tale psychedelic green-orange-yellow Sox…...

There are Umpires at the baseball game?

Because I just don't see them on my baseball cards much any more.

I received this card recently; not in trade, but as a bit of packaging protection in a shipment from an eBay seller. The fate of early 1990s baseball cards...

A nice, basic, horizontal baseball card. A Turning Two card, most likely selected out into many collections of such cards.

But what immediately jumped to my attention is the Umpire there. You just don't see many cards like these. We still receive brand new Turning Two cards from Topps, but the Ump is so often edited completely out of the picture.

Now I'm not suggesting Umpires should be on baseball cards. They shouldn't, generally. Baseball picture cards are supposed to feature the players, and oh how well they do now. I just prefer baseball cards that depict the game of baseball, rather than make fetish objects out of the players. Baseball card collectors are always saddened by the size of "The Hobby" today, and wonder why more people aren't interested in it. I'm beginning to think the steady banishment of baseball pictures in favor of the ego-gratifying celebrity-worshipping products that baseball cards generally are today, is one, albeit small, part of the reason.

When I started pondering this toppic the other day I knew I should compare my old-fart complaints about those kids today to cards of years past. But I don't really have the collection for that, with my wonderful 70s/80s cards in a secure remote undisclosed location for the time being, and only large portions of 1991 and 2001 Topps sets to check out. 2001 proved to have a whole lot of live action photos, but no Umps; the images were all sensibly cropped down to a single baseball player, as they should be. You do usually get to see their feet however, which allows in more glimpses of that game context I crave. And again, the cards should be about the players, not the Umpires.

I knew 1991 likely held few of the action shots I seek. That led me to the set that brought me back into everyday collecting, the 2011 set. I fondly recall some Umpires on a 2011 insert set, the Kimball Champion minis:

I like those little cards, where it looks like the Major Leaguers are playing on some small town ball diamond with a forest in the background, but am only saving 2 binder pages of 15 each, rather than collecting all 150 of them. I am down to 8 entries on my want list and have about 50 left over, which I would like to find a good home for. They're not worth sending to COMC.

Now the 2011 set has standard cropping very similar to the 2001 set, but far more horizontal cards, and those are usually dramatic entries in the set. It didn't take long to find one:

A complete slice of baseball action there. I always like cards that capture the press pit there in the background for some reason, though they make me wonder who Topps hires to get such shots, as they obviously aren't over there with the rest of the media.

But let's see what happens when we apply the 2013 zoom style to a similar card I know you all probably remember from Series One this year:

Now the Umpire is just a lurker? No, though even lurking umpires are few and far between on the backs of the Sea Turtles. They can be found on the Ben Zobrist I-just-murdered-the-catcher card, and the spectacular Pedro Alvarez card.

There on the Utley card, the Home Plate Umpire is still present, with just his fingers on Buster Posey's back there, which I found quite touching. Ouch. The Utley card is still a pretty good card, but despite all my bitching about the zooming in to the all torsos, all the cards this year, I have never liked cards that don't show a player's face, no matter how spectacular the game action we receive in exchange. It just seems disrespectful, to me.

But that's about it for Umpire Action in Series 1 & 2. A couple blurry lurkers, and one headless umpire that I was very grateful to have on a card, as I used his uniform # to determine the results of the bunt on the wonderful Erick Aybar card.

Now that Aybar card introduced me to an outstanding baseball card vantage point, seemingly from a point just above and behind the pitcher's shoulders. I'm not sure just how new this is, as I don't have enough baseball cards to ponder. Does anyone ever have enough baseball cards? Topps came through with another fine example of this in Update, on what could become a classic Rookie Card:

Now to me, that is already a great baseball card. Arcia is still a promising young Major Leaguer, but if he hits 30 Home Runs next season collectors these days will be scrambling for all his shiny photo-shopped serial #d relic autograph cards....every card but this one.

I'm not sure how Topps gets these photos. Maybe all that digital / optical zoom technology they overuse now has it's advantages I guess; perhaps these are even stills from the video feed of the standard baseball-on-TV vantage point. I have never fully understood that view; I have always wanted to watch a game from the Umpire's vantage point. I sat 7 rows directly behind Home Plate at Comerica Park once, watching each pitch come right at me, and I've had a bit less desire to go back to a baseball game ever since; unless I could return to that simply awesome vista of baseball, which is how the game should be seen. 

However these photos arrive in my packs of baseball cards, Topps certainly deployed it to good effect on the live-action All-Star cards this year:

There are several of these shots used for the All-Star cards, and I have already featured another great one. Whatever the technology at play, it's only a tad better than the TV cameras at handling Max Scherzer's max out the tint orange shoes there. Is this his hint that he hopes to play in Baltimore in 2015?

Topps does get their photo equipment dialed in to deal with more great orange shoes on an actual Oriole player, Adam Jones:

Though here we are back to an obscured Umpire, I added this tonight because I certainly flubbed not including this one last night ... where else are you going to find two memorial patches for two baseball legends, Stan Musial and Earl Weaver, on the same card but on an All-Star card. (The O's Weaver patch is moved to the left breast to accommodate the All-Star Game shoulder patch). I love the lines on this card created by the MLB logo, the umpire's torso, and the space betweem Molina and Jones. They lead you right to those wonderful shoes. Though lines trending down aren't good for baseball cards, they work out just fine here.

A few more of those cards shot from the same point are used for the All-Star cards in Update, and I am just fine with that, as these make for excellent baseball cards. Overall the Arcia card is probably my favorite Umpire Card this year, at least among the base cards.

But my actual favorite baseball picture cards including an Umpire appeared in an insert set in Opening Day this year:

The game is over, for everyone but the Umpire, lurking there to make sure Willingham steps on the plate after his Walk-Off. I'm not the greatest fan of these cards, or seeing this at a regular season game, though I guess some teams need to celebrate when they can.

Another card in those inserts actually is a home run though, for many reasons. A copy of it will probably make my Airborne binder pages, for one, and even though the card features the vast majority of the Washington Nationals - perhaps these are better than staid team checklist cards - I can't seem to find Bryce Harper anywhere on it, amazingly enough, though I have no plans to look too closely:

Now I had hoped to deploy my own digital technology to figure out which Umpire this is and give him some props here, by zooming in on the scanner results, but that didn't work out. Just not enough pixels available, I think.

Whichever Ump it is, I love this shot of the Umpire, an integral part of every Major League Baseball game, all the way to the end. Whether Topps ever notices them or not.

Maple Leaf Baseball Cards

Happy Canada Day! I'm even resisting adding a bonus vowel there, to show a little respect. Besides, I did that last night.

I always thought this card in my collection would be the card with the most Maple Leafs on it:

3.5 Maple Leaves, and 3 hockey players. That guy on the left there, somebody should poke him. You're supposed to look up, optimistically, when they are playing O, Canada on your home ice. But then if you played for the 1980s Maple Leafs, you'd look down at the ice a lot too.

I tried to find some vintage Maple Leaf cards to celebrate Canada Day with you, but I think my vintage vintage Hockey Cards are on safari with my terribly missed 1970s baseball cards. This was as good as it got in a box of Hockey Cards nearly amazingly Maple Leaf-less, but then it was an all-Topps box, mostly from the 80s. I'm sure O-Pee-Chee would have given me way more Leafs. I've always wondered if Canadian collectors chase Topps cards to complete their player collections:

A '78-'79, old school no-helmet edition there. Who knew Hockey Cards had Night Cards too? Maybe the Leafs were saving a few bucks by only lighting the side of the arena with the puck in it. You just don't normally think of finding a goalie lurking in the shadows on a Hockey Card.

I was in Canada last year on Canada Day. It was wonderful. A few days later, while my hometown hardly wanted to even celebrate pre-USA Day in the baking 100+ heat, I got to watch these big puffy white things drift down from the sky while I was working. Yep, I could almost say I got to see it snow on the 4th of July. Missed it by a day. Still totally wonderful though. I'm no fan of the Heat.

I had received an awesome career educational opportunity from a nice contractor who let me work up there, illegal-alien style. This year, I could secure neither a work visa, or a job. To get a job, I need a work visa. To get a visa, I need a job. Those Canadians. On the obscure chance a real Canadian could help me get around this empty-net type problem, please get in touch. I had many other things on my brain ... like working on a tree-planting crew with more women than men. Oh, how different my life would have been in Canada. I would probably own 1000x more hockey cards than baseball cards, for example, rather than the reverse situation found in my current collection.

Now, I wish I had a sports card story for you from Canada, but, alas I do not. Actually, I forgot to even look for cards the one time I got to visit Canadian Tire (yes, I think there was a good chance cards were in there, even with the word "Tire" in the store name), but I do have one outstanding sports memorabilia (I really dislike that word) story.

When I reached Edmonton, on my way much further northwest deep into the Blue Canadian Rockies, I stopped at a book store for a little extra reading material out there in the bush. And when I opened the front door of the place, I was greeted by a life-sized piece of awesome cardboard that looked very similar to this image:

That's right, this bookstore was darn proud. We've got Bob Probert's book, bitches. In Edmonton. The city that hated Bob Probert, and the scene of one of his many fuck-ups one night before a playoff game for the finally somewhat successful mid-80s Detroit Red Wings. What an impressive sports fan country.

To my great regret (along with not staying in Alberta longer in the company of someone with huge tracts of land), I didn't buy that book on the spot as I had a long shopping list in my head already. I really need to fix this situation. So if you see a life-sized Bob Probert (RIP) cut-out anywhere....

But what about the Baseball Cards? That's what we signed up for. You can get almost anything you want with a maple flavored version in Canada - baked beans, breakfast cereal, donuts, even whiskey now (where else but Canada). In fact I think you can accurately judge how far north or south you are in North America by how many maple flavored products are for sale. Try finding one in a grocery store in Georgia. Good luck.

But the Maple Leafs don't play baseball, everyone knows that. So this year I have a new contestant for the most maple leaves on a card, on a Baseball Card:

Don't ask me to 'splain it. Oh, OK, I will try. That is the point of a Baseball Card blog, isn't it? Even the Rajai Davis walk-off card doesn't have that many maple leaves on it, though it has a whole lot of players, but no Maple Leafs. Stay with me now.

That cap is a new cap this year for the Blue Jays. Technically, they wear it for batting practice, though I would wager it gets a pretty prominent display in the gift shop at the Rogers Centre. So it sure was nice of Topps to put it on a baseball card. I'm sure the Topps-always-sucks-all-the-time conspiracy forum posters would wonder what Topps got in return for publishing this card. I don't care, I just wish I had one, I would surely wear it today. Maybe it would get me a little better luck on getting one of those visas.

And of course technically, there are several cards in Series 1 that have three maple leaves depicted on them. Such as the final card in the Series, #331 Jose Reyes. Which is of course a horrible Photoshop crime against the sanctity of Baseball Cards. Hey, wait....if they Photoshopped (I love how the automatic spell checking these days accepts "photoshopped" as a real word) Jose Reyes, what about Josh up there....things are starting to look suspicious. What's Topps' cut on hat sales in Canada anyway?

But I don't think so, because we also have this card:

Sergio actually played for the Jays in 2012, so Topps would have no need to photoshop a card for him, particularly in Series 2. (If your favorite National League team is due to face the Jays at home after Santos returns from the DL, you might want to read the back of his card before you start puzzling out late-inning pinch hitting strategy. I can't give away all Baseball Card secrets.)

Anyhow, both cards have that same yellow line, probably the top of the short Spring Training ballfield fence. Like in this picture, taken in warm-ups for a Spring Training game at Dunedin:

That would have made a nice maple leaf Baseball Card. He just hit a home run as I type, though he did it on the radio. I'm Blacked-Out of watching a free game on MLB.TV, even though I am 350 miles and one international border away from the likely sold-out Canada Day Jays-Tigers game. Brilliant.

So Topps appears to have taken pictures in 2013 Spring Training, and put them on 2013 Baseball Cards. Something I regularly wish for, and a sentiment I have seen obliquely on other blogs as well. Why can't Topps do some more of this? Would it have been so tough to just print a nice safe Jose Bautista card in Series 1, as he is signed through 2015, and issue an all-new-and-shiny Jose Reyes card in Series 2 instead? That wouldn't have changed the stars mix for either series. And no, I can't explain why Josh Johnson gets a card in Series 2 AND Series 1, rather than __________________ insert-your-favorite-player-you-must-now-wait-till-October-to-see-in-Update.

And speaking of we-could-have-skipped-using-the-Photoshop:

Especially since Melky's card didn't come out until Series 2. I wish I could remember who pointed out the other M. Cabrera's orange batting gloves on his new Series 2 card. Figures Melky would wear the abysmal flat-brim version of this new cap. Fits.

It's becoming clear to me this year, Topps just isn't a purist about those Baseball Cards.

Fortunately, it's Canada Day, and I hope you are having a happy one, even if you might have likely celebrated over the weekend, so you can get back to work by the time it's USA Day here shortly. And fortunately in Canada, one can still find purists, such as for this famous hairstyle that I have always thought must have originated there, likely in Hockey Falls (fails?):

This is a rarely seen variant, the Teased Curls Mullet, and is probably a famous card in Canada, a country of good spirits. Maybe this is why Hockey teams need enforcer players. Don't laugh. I'm warning you. You can't laugh at Canada, Canadians, or Canadiens on Canada Day. Even Bob Probert would agree with that. Let's not make Bob mad now.

None More Red

Great idea circulating in the blogs today ... post from Your Archives.

I'll run mine backwards:

Was probably gonna post this one eventually anyway. You'll see...

...meanwhile, we have Archives to explore:

I know, I know, just not quite right there. At least there is a lot of blue and red involved. For some reason, the only other '85 card I could find featured the man on the other corner of the diamond from The Penguin, but we has wearing the wrong uni too, and that one was mustard and brown. These had to have come out of a couple packs and I will find the poor commons eventually, probably tomorrow. Like '90, I didn't collect in '85, though it is a great design that would have been much better paired with '80 than '90. Great lines in the design, great lines on this card.

These weren't "inserts" back in the day:

It's very important to look tough on a donut card.

I hope somewhere in the 50some new hockey stick cards, there is an autograph as good as this one:

Such a pity he never played for the Astros. He did eventually accomplish a rare feat in the 20th Century - he won a playoff game for the following card's team:

I didn't have a lot of '72s to pick from, as I am a child of '75 and all '72s had to have come from older kids who were busy neglecting their card collections. I actually need another copy of this card - both a Cloud Card (lurking clouds no less) and a Shoulder Patch. Maybe I'll just find another example of that great old Cubbie patch.

I love the '72 cards and those are the main reason I bought any Archives at all this year. I'm working up a 2 blaster highlight & trade post, just not done with the scans yet.

And I never thought I would type this phrase "getting back to that 1990 Topps card..." - I mean really, who selected 1990? Sooo mental. But if you understood that, you knew the reference of the title of this post. If you don't know where the title of this post comes from, that's cuz I'm on the way to being an old fart, and you're not (yet).

They say memory is the second thing to go, and I forgot the first. I do know a key sign of aging is when you try and use a classic movie line, and your audience hasn't seen the movie. So I'm always amazed when I trot out a line from Spinal Tap, and it lands like a Stonehenge stage prop. Which is always a drag, because then my story about one of the greatest pure straight-face lines I ever heard - "Spinal Tap, yeah, that band had it rough" - doesn't make any sense.

Anyhow, getting back to that 1990 Topps card, it would have to be in the running for the Reddest Card of All Time, wouldn't you think? Sorry Cincinnati fans, though he played for you twice. Not a totally bad result, as far as 1990 Topps goes; the white for the lettering saves it from a worse fate. But something about that card never seemed quite right to me....so I fixed it: