The 2000 All-Star Weekend Futures Game

As the baseball season has taken its midseason pause, I thought back to when the All-Star festivities visited Turner Field here in Atlanta in 2000. Because I did not have tickets to the actual All-Star game or to any of the Monday Night Home Run Derby, I bought much cheaper tickets for the All-Star Sunday festivities.  I roasted to a lobster red in the hot Atlanta sun that day watching both the "All-Star Celebrity Hitting Challenge" and the All-Star Futures Game.

The rosters for the Celebrity Hitting Challenge were, well, interesting:

To be quite honest, though, I remember nearly nothing from this hitting challenge. Couldn't tell you who won, couldn't tell you what the format was, and can't tell you now whether I even watched it.

I went for the Futures Game.  It was only the second time that they played the Futures game, and it ended with a 3-2 victory for the USA.  

Here's the US Roster from that game:

In retrospect, that is a loaded team in many respects.  A pitching staff with Ben Sheets, C.C. Sabathia, and Barry Zito?  Not bad at all.  An outfield of Josh Hamilton, Vernon Wells, and Brad Wilkerson or Jack Cust or Corey Patterson?  Pretty good too.  The infield was a bit rough, but even there Marcus Giles didn't have a bad (albeit short) career.

The World Roster is less impressive now, certainly:

That Ramon Castro is the guy who made it to 2011 with the white Sox, I think.  Carlos Pena had a couple of decent years, and Felipe Lopez made it to the All-Star game with the Reds in 2005.  The outfield...well, in retrospect, that was a car-crash of guys whose prospect status would fade to black within the next few years.

The pitching staff...ouch.  Danys Baez made the all-star game in 2005 as a closer with the Rays, which puts him as likely being the guy with the best season of any of his other fellow World pitchers. Tomo Ohka might be the second best pitcher on that staff. Carlos Silva had a 9-year career in which he finished 70-70 with a 4.68 ERA for four teams. Otherwise, there are some interesting stories there -- Anderson, for example, appears to have ended his career in 2011 pitching for Neptunus in the Dutch Major League.  Guzman was already 27 when he appeared in Atlanta for this game.

Who was the biggest superstar in this game? I would probably have to say that that title would go either to Josh Hamilton, Josh Beckett, or C.C. Sabathia.  And boy, do they look young:

The Futures Game was a lot of fun to see in 2000. I'm glad that I ponied up the money to get those tickets.  

As a postscript, on the morning of the All-Star Game, the woman in my office who was responsible for billing for the firm I was with at the time e-mailed me and asked if I wanted to go to the All-Star Game -- free tickets.  I grabbed another guy, and we went and enjoyed the game.  It was a great experience -- one I'd highly recommend for anyone who can pull it off.

14-Years-Old is New to Me

Back when I first bought cards at the local Target in February -- my first unopened pack buy in about 25 years -- I picked up a blaster of Panini's version of Elite Extra Edition.  In that blaster, I got a relic of a 15-year-old's jersey that creeped me out, so I sent it to Brian at Play at the Plate for his son.  Thankfully, his son appreciates the relic.  With my luck, that kid will end up breaking Cy Young's win record.

Anyway, now that I kind of have an idea of what I'm doing and I'm not buying nearly everything on eBay, COMC, Sportlots, and Amazon that I see, I've started trying to snipe unopened boxes of cards for sets that I don't have or don't have much from.  I keep it cheap, though I'm avoiding junk wax.

So, this past week, I picked up an unopened box of the 2000 edition of Topps Opening Day.  These 14-year-old cards are new to me.  I have perhaps no more than 10 regular Topps cards from 2000, but I have never had any Opening Day.

I'm ashamed to admit that I kinda like them.

Maybe its Hank Aaron as a Milwaukee Brave that convinced me.

Or the "Magic Moments" inserts that are really a subset.  Then again, it might be pre-steroid A-Rod, who was an incredible ballplayer without the, ahem, extra assistance.

Don't mind my scanning job on El Capitan, but Derek Jeter almost looks, well, friendly here.  A guy who is happy to be in the big leagues.

Then, there are the flights of fancy.  The promise of the future.  For Josh Hamilton, looking back 14 years must be a difficult task through the years of fighting addiction, pain, and anger.  I wonder what his Year 2000 self would think if you told him what the next 14 years would hold.

My only disappointment in the 2000 Opening Day set is that this card -- Jeromy Burnitz -- is the lone Milwaukee Brewers representative in the entire set.  In fairness to Topps, they chose who to put into the set after the 1999 season in which Milwaukee finished 13 games under .500.  In criticism to Topps, both Jeff Cirillo and Geoff Jenkins had good enough years to merit inclusion in the set except for the fact that both guys played for Milwaukee rather than a big-city team.

I know a lot of us crack on Topps for too many parallels (my hand is raised on that one), too many inserts, too many autographs, or the inclusion of stupid white fabric swatches in cards.  Others wish every card had dirt on which Player X spit.  My favorite thing about this set is the fact that there is a checklist included as a card in the set which lists ALL the cards issues -- both subset inserts and autographs -- instead of playing games with crazy short prints.

Sometimes, simpler is better.  Topps has lost sight of that with nearly every single set it issues these days. Opening packs from 2000 made me notice that.