As I mentioned in my last post, I decided to start collecting Christian Yelich cards showing him on the Brewers. Yelich is 26 years old, having turned that age last December 5. Yelich is the kind of player that the Brewers should be building around -- young but experienced with a good batting eye.
On his trade, Topps issued a Topps Now card for him. The Yelich card only had a print run of 177 cards, so hopefully the guys from whom I bought the card for $5.50 bought 20 of the cards at $3.99 a card to maximize their profits. Let's take a look:
After two years of complaining about ToppsNow ignoring the Brewers, I've come to the conclusion that I'd prefer that Topps continue ignoring the Brewers. If over 2,800 people/Yankees fans want to get a Giancarlo Stanton card about a press conference, I mean, let Topps play P.T. Barnum with those people and take them for their $4 to $10 a card accordingly.
So, now that I have a Christian Yelich card for my Yelich collection, let's learn a little bit about the newest Brewer.
1. Christian Yelich was NOT always considered a top prospect.
When Yelich was first evaluated by Perfect Game, he was rated during his junior year of high school as a 7.5 -- somewhere between being a "College prospect, possible future draft pick with development" and "Potential draft pick and/or excellent college prospect." At his national showcase in mid-2008, however, he was bumped up to being a 9.5. That put him just shy of being a potential very high draft pick and/or elite level college prospect" and above being a potential top 10 round pick. He eventually signed a letter of intent to attend the University of Miami over UCLA despite having given his verbal commitment to UCLA.
2. Yelich probably likes rap music.
I know -- going out on a limb saying that a suburban-born-and-raised white kid likes rap, right? But, going by the MLB Plate Music website, Yelich used Drake's "Cameras/Good Ones Go" in 2015:
In 2016, he changed (or perhaps added) a song by Future called "Fly Shit Only" as another walkup song:
Apparently, in 2017, he went back to "Cameras" for his music -- at least according to MusicBoxPete.com, that is.
Now, to throw you a curve, a Reddit post from 2016 had a poster saying that Yelich had "Take It Outside" by Brantley Gilbert.
I don't know if that is true. Based on the video, it could very well be true because Yelich has a brother in the Marines. If it is, it gives me a Georgia tie since Gilbert is from Jefferson, Georgia, which is just north of Athens.
3. Many people think Yelich looks like SNL's Pete Davidson.
Maybe so. See the AP photo below. What do you think?
The Marlins took it so far in 2015 as to have Davidson come in to Miami and take batting practice and fly balls with Yelich's jersey on.
Maybe that is the reason that Yelich wanted out of Miami as much as he did?
4. Yelich's Grandfather is Japanese. Maybe?
The rather poor Google translation of this link says that he is "Japanese-affiliated." That got put on Wikipedia as his grandfather being Japanese. Kenny, you read Japanese: What does this all say:
5. Yelich hangs out with Baker Mayfield sometimes.
Twitter is a great look into the real lives of baseball players from time to time. If we had had Twitter in the days of Gorman Thomas and Pete Vuckovich carousing around Milwaukee and engaging in unsavory behavior, might we have a different view of them today than we do?
Okay, probably bad examples to use.
Anyway, last week, these two photos got tweeted into my timeline somehow. On the left in both photos is Heisman Trophy winner Baker Mayfield -- last seen in Pasadena being informed wisely by Davin Bellamy to "Humble himself"...well, I have to put that video up...
Anyway, getting back to Baker...he tweeted out that his "dude Christian Yelich made an upgrade to the Brewers so naturally [he] had to get some custom gear ordered." The photos he tweeted out are below.
Weirdly, some Brewers fans on Reddit did not appreciate me saying that Mayfield's other sweatshirt says, "Property of Roquan Smith."
So, that's a little bit about Christian Yelich, along with my first Yelich Brewers card. I'm thinking that my next Yelich card probably will end up being another Topps Now card -- it will take Topps at least until midyear to catch up with this move because it always does.
No problem though -- I look forward to the first Yelich walk-off win.
Thanks for stopping by and, if you know Japanese, if one of you could confirm the whole Japanese lineage thing that Yelich has going on, that would be cool too.
I have been in a rut this year. At first, I thought it was because of being super busy with work and all that goes along with it. Then, I thought it was because my creativity in terms of blogging had slipped. I've come up with all kinds of reasons why I might be in a rut, but none of those reasons dragged me out of my rut. Then, this morning at work, with my morning coffee, I read this fantastic post from Dan's Other World called "The Great 2017 Baseball Card Price-Out: A Commentary." It helped me put my finger on a few things that have happened over the past six months to a year that have really turned me off to modern cards to some extent. I suppose if I'm honest with myself, my malaise truly began with the introduction of Topps Now at the beginning of last season. The idea, in concept, is a good one as I have said on many occasions. In its execution, it's a money grab by Topps. Topps is happy to feature Aaron Judge or Cody Bellinger walking on the field each day as a card in Topps Now, and those cards sell well even at their ridiculously overpriced $9.99 per card (or even at the $79.99 price per 20, or $4 a piece). There are signs that collectors generally are a bit tired of these cards. Last year, the lowest print run was a Chris Carter card near the end of the year, which had 178 total cards purchased. This year, that number has been surpassed on an incredible thirty-six occasions so far, including a recent Marcell Ozuna catch card (Card 362) that just 113 cards sold. Before I go on, let me show you the Brewers Topps Now cards that came in from eBay recently.
I still feel compelled to buy them right now. I have two more on the way, I think. I'm guessing that if the Brewers fall off (and by the way they are playing lately, they will fall off the pace quickly) Topps will fairly ignore them going forward. I am quickly arriving at the point, however, of ignoring current cards. Sure, I'll collect them if they are sent to me, and I'll probably even buy them as team sets on eBay or at card shows. Even then, I'm not 100% committed to it. It's still "probably" because I'm kind of burned out on the decision making that goes on at Topps. For instance, there is the inexplicable decision making that went into the Archives set autographs -- particularly including Zack Hample as an autograph subject. If Topps did not have a completely tin ear, it would have known that Hample is an object of scorn both in the baseball card community and in baseball generally thanks to his ballhawking getting in the way of things like decency and letting military people go to the game at Fort Bragg last year. Similarly, Topps included a New York Yankees fan in the Archives autographs (Fat or Loud Vinny or whatever...who really cares what his name is). Even if those two were in Allen & Ginter, it would have been disappointing. Speaking of Ginter, I really liked this set when I first got back into collecting. Ginter & Archives. This year, the Brewers had three base cards in the set. How does that stack up? The Cubs and Mets have 15, the Reds have 9 as do the Diamondbacks, the Rays and Twins have 7, the Padres have 6, the Yankees have 17, and the Red Sox have 19. I know -- the world was clamoring for a new Johnny Damon on the Red Sox card or a new Henry Owens cards (since we sure didn't get enough of those last year /sarcasm). The only team close in terms of the small number of base cards is the Angels with 4 and the Montreal Expos, Milwaukee Braves, and Brooklyn Dodgers with 1 each. Of course, those last three teams no longer exist. Where am I now with collecting? I don't know, honestly. I'm still grabbing Brewers cards here and there, but I'm more likely to find myself deep-diving on eBay looking for a new police department set to add than I am looking for the single Ryan Braun autograph from a set. I guess what that means is really that I will focus as much -- or more -- on the things that I enjoy in collecting: oddballs. I'll keep posting here -- don't get me wrong -- but my attention may be spent more on the 1980s Oddball blog than here. This was more of a personal vent than anything, so I apologize if it made you upset or if you are the world's supercollector of Henry Owens for whom Topps is printing cards.
It's year two for Topps Now. Topps kicked off its second season of "instant" cards with a Spring Training set for each team, some of which included optional autographs. The Brewers were not one of the teams with an autograph option, but I was tempted.
Had I not sent my "20% off" coupon out to Zippy Zappy for a friend of his -- it was a Trout card, after all -- I may very well have sunk $40 into buying one of those sets. Even after sending off that card, I was still tempted to plunk down $50 for it. I checked with some regularity to see what 15 players would be included in the set.
I checked and checked and checked. By the time the period for purchasing the sets had nearly ended, only eight of the fifteen cards had been posted. As much as I wanted to pull the trigger, I couldn't convince myself to do it. I just didn't trust Topps to provide decent players for the Brewers set in light of some of their selections for the flagship and Heritage sets.
In the end, I'm apparently not the only one who eschewed buying that money grab -- Topps sold only 32 Brewers sets. I am kicking myself, though, for not buying into it on the potential that the Brewers could be in first place in the division at the All-Star Break.
And then Eric Thames hit the scene. Thames exploded into the national baseball consciousness by an incredible hot streak of home run hitting against the Cincinnati Reds and Chicago Cubs. That led those now-much-less-lovable winners -- John Lackey and former Brewer/still lardass Chris Bosio -- to insinuate that Thames was on steroids. I'm assuming that was because Thames had the temerity to hit a homer against the Cubs.
As an aside, the Cubs did not accuse Ryan Zimmerman of juicing even though Zimmerman has hit just two fewer homers in 42 games than he did in 115 games all of last year. Did Zimmerman really change his hitting approach to hit more fly balls, or did he just become acquainted with the clear and the cream? My answer: he changed his hitting approach and got lucky with how many balls left the park. Also, again, it's small-sample-size theater here too. If Thames or Zimmerman hit 13 homers in 28 games in the middle of August, we'd say they were on a hot streak. Do it in April, and John Lackey says, "check him for steroids!"
I'm pretty sure that Lackey walks around in the summertime saying, "How about this heat?"
So, back to Topps Now.
I decided this year that I would not purchase directly from Topps because I could save a few dollars on each card by going to the eBay secondary market. I jumped all over both of the cards that Topps put out to celebrate Thames's excellent start, and I got them for about $7 each. The guy I bought them from made money, I saved money, and we all win.
Here are the Thameses!
I'll note that Matt Prigge covered the fact that Topps has upped its game in terms of the shipping container this year -- and considering that the purchase of a single card is a $10 venture, it's well past time for that.
When my shipping envelope from the eBay seller arrived, I pulled the cards out. Immediately, I noticed that these cards feel different from those from last year. They feel thicker -- perhaps more substantial -- as compared to last year's cards. Design-wise, I think I prefer last year's set, though. For comparison, here are the non-Trade Deadline, non-Prince Fielder retirement cards from last year:
Based on this selection, I'm very concerned that Eric Thames will not be a Brewer next year considering that every single Brewer to feature on Topps Now last year is gone. I don't count Arcia slapping hands with Carter as featuring him.
The other thing: the rainbow back is a new feature. Last year's cards were just glossy on both sides:
Basically, last year's Topps Now was nothing more than a really expensive extension of the Topps flagship set in terms of the paper quality. This year, though, it's almost to Stadium Club levels, I suppose:
Or something like that.
As one would expect, Topps's orgasmic delight in everything Yankees continues to manifest itself. Last year, it was the Sanchize, Gary Sanchez, who appeared on 11 Topps Now cards -- literally one card for every 5 games in which he played last year. This year, it's all Judge all the time. Judge has appeared on seven Topps Now cards, including one card that celebrated his breaking a TV during batting practice, and six autographed parallels of that same card.
Topps is just doing what sells, of course. They've issued a ton more cards during the first two months of the season than last year -- the Zack Greinke card on sale today is card #173, which celebrates an occurrence on May 22. Last year's card 173 was Yankee Starlin Castro's walk-off home run on June 22. In other words, Topps realized that the demand for these cards is high and will issue however many they decide makes sense on a particular day...even if they ignored the Brewers comeback from 6 runs down against the Mets a few days ago in lieu of issuing two Topps Now cards for Derek Jeter (RIP).
Perhaps Topps will issue a Topps Now card for when the Brewers do their "Re2pect Bobblehead" giveaway. And, to be fair, Topps did not issue a Topps Now card for David Ortiz picking up an honorary degree from Boston University over the weekend. Maybe Topps should have done a card for this story....Ortiz's claim that he failed a PED test and had the results leaked because too many Yankees tested positive. All this led me to do a Twitter poll. Please ignore my typo on the second line.
I complain about Topps Now all the time for leaving out the Brewers. What are your thoughts on Topps Now?
Just in case the results are not showing: 59% of the 44 respondents said they did not like Topps Now. 48% dislike it and ignore it. 27% of people love it but do not buy it. Only a quarter of respondents -- 25%, or 11 of the 44 -- buy the product, whether they love it or dislike it.
I fear that Topps risks doing with Topps Now what it does with every good idea it has: beating it into the ground with a club so far that everyone hates it and refuses to buy it. Topps only does things for one reason: to make more money for The Tornante Group. To that end, perhaps we should expect Topps cards for BoJack Horseman or Judge Faith? Shall we expect more Topps coverage of League 1 in England next year, since Tornante has been approved to purchase former Premier League Club Portsmouth F.C.? Maybe he can talk his pals at his favorite club, Arsenal, into giving Topps some additional swag? I'm just glad Eisner isn't a Manchester United fan. But I digress, as always. Topps Now is a good idea executed with the ham-handedness that we have come to expect from the exclusive license holder. It's all about the maximization of short term profits without regard for a longer vision of creating new collectors. If there was a vision for new collectors, Topps Now would be a great opportunity for it -- by making the cards less expensive or available on a $1 per game subscription for kids or something like that. But that's not in Topps's business plan currently, nor is it likely to be for the foreseeable future. Topps would rather cut up bases and stick them in cards to sell with a Derek Jeter autograph for $4,999.99.
In some respects, Shakespeare presaged the internet. By that, I mean that Shakespeare was really incredible at coming up with pithy yet memorable lines that completely foretold the coming love 500 years later for memes. One that has persisted for centuries derived from Hamlet -- "Frailty, thy name is woman." To paraphrase Wikipedia, the "____, thy name is ____" phrasing is used to indicate the completeness with which something or somebody embodies a particular (usually negative) quality. That applies completely to me this month. I keep complaining about how work keeps getting in the way of blogging, but it does. I guess I need to start writing things up on weekends and scheduling and releasing them during the week or something. But then, I get tired of writing or I start writing in the same vein constantly and I fear that folks will get bored. At any rate, today I am going to combine a couple of things that came in to the OHHQ from random directions. One is an obvious source and the other sounds just strange. Happy Holidays from Topps
While I was never a fan of Wham! or of George Michael, there is no denying that the man could sing and write catchy songs.
The Wham Christmas song goes well with Topps's Topps Now Holiday card. Lord knows I am critical of Topps on many levels. Topps deserves much of the criticism I send its way too. Take this holiday card, for instance. On the back, it features Ichiro (for his 3000th hit, I'd assume) and David Ortiz for his retirement. And while I have made multiple jokes about the multiplicity of David Ortiz Topps Now cards, the fact is that Ortiz had an excellent career. Then you see this side of the card. You get Kris Bryant -- the NL MVP who led the Cubs to the team's first World Series victory in 108 years. But Gary Sánchez?
Gary Sanchez, thy name is shoe. Yes, he had a good debut this year for his two months in the majors -- 20 homers in 53 games is nothing to sneeze at. But come on! He wasn't the AL Rookie of the Year -- Michael Fullmer was, and deservedly so. Sanchez was not the AL MVP -- Mike Trout was and deservedly so as well (only Mookie Betts was within a win by WAR of anyone in the majors of Trout's shocking 10.6 WAR) and, in fact, did not even get a single vote. So what the hell is he doing on a 2016 Highlights card, other than the fact that Topps had its own little Sanchez-gasm, spewing Gary Sanchez Topps Now cards around like Ron Jeremy at the AVN awards? I guess Topps felt like it needed to send its own employees a Christmas card with their favorite team on it. Cards from Christmas for Kids My wife does a lot of volunteering around Dunwoody. One of the coolest ones is Christmas for Kids. The Dunwoody Police Department collects up toys through donations. They then work with local social workers and local child services organizations to identify children in need and give those children invitations to a special outing the weekend before Christmas. At the event, the children are ordered by their relative level of need. The neediest go in first and get to select multiple gifts for themselves. The kids get to meet Santa, and they get to eat free food from local food trucks which volunteer and donate the food for the day. At the end of the event this year, there were tons and tons of toys left over. There were so many toys left over, in fact, that the DPD drove around Dunwoody on Christmas with toys in the back of a patrol truck and handed them out at local apartment complexes. My wife saw some cards laying around unclaimed and asked the police about them. Turns out that the cards had been left for a couple of years, so they said that my wife should take them. It's a bit sad, therefore, that I have these cards. After all, it means that dozens of kids decided they would rather have some GI Joe toy -- or whatever else was available -- instead of grabbing baseball cards. I'll take them, but I feel bad about it. On the bright side, I got some good stuff:
Such as a complete factory set of the 2009 Upper Deck First Edition set complete with relic and five 20th Anniversary cards. What did I get from those?
Josh Barfield didn't make it past 2009 as a major leaguer. He started his career pretty well with the Padres in 2006. He was passed by Asdrubal Cabrera in the organization by the end of 2007. He kicked around the minors thereafter, and played last in 2013 in the Atlantic League. Most recently, he has been a part of the Arizona Diamondbacks organization as the Assistant Director of Pro Scouting. Otherwise, my 20th Anniversary cards were decent. Granted, I'm not a hockey guy, so I had to Google him to find out that Eric Staal is a "Triple Gold Club" member, being a winner of the Stanley Cup (2006), the World Championships (2007), and the Winter Olympics (2010). I've heard of the other four people/things, though the whole idea of putting "The Universe" on a card is a bit ridiculous. Maybe we can get a "stars of the stars" card set to highlight all the great stars in the sky soon. As for the set itself, well, it's a set. I needed nearly all the Brewers in the set, so no complaints there. It was fun to see CC Sabathia in a Brewers' uniform and to see Mat Gamel listed with uniform number 98 though.
And, this set was a great reminder of how good a card design can be when you don't have the creeping death fog at the corners of the card. I hope everyone had a good Christmas, and I'll try to write again this week -- but I do have to go to work some too!
As the world changes and information becomes available at everyone's fingertips, a lot of companies have fallen way behind or by the wayside entirely. Nearly everyone who is old enough to have been able to turn on a computer in the 1990s probably used America Online to first get online. I certainly did. Yet, now, AOL struggles for relevance and the guy whose voice welcomed millions of us online (after the obligatory cracks and beeps of our modem connecting) now is an Uber driver in Ohio.
In our little world of baseball cards, the card companies, too, have struggled to stay relevant. Ever since the heyday of the early 1990s, companies like Fleer, Upper Deck, Donruss/Playoff, Pinnacle/Score, MLB Showdown, and Topps have tried various gimmicks to get new collectors interested in cards. Let's be honest -- the new gimmicks were not really aimed at existing collectors, though if those things helped get people to buy more packs, then sure, that would work too.
The latest craze, of course, is Topps Now, which was so successful so quickly that Topps expanded it almost immediate from baseball into MLS, UFC, WWE, politics, and television shows I've never watched. Indeed, Topps is continuing to issue cards even today -- issuing cards for the Players Choice Awards (I guess issuing 18 for the Gold Gloves would have been too many, or maybe they didn't notice the Gold Gloves being awarded on the night of the election...morons in MLB).
Anyway, as many of you know, I've been tracking Topps Now. I tracked the cards all the way through the end of the regular season to tally up numbers on which teams were seen most frequently and which were ignored the most. I stopped at card 536 -- the "Giants clinch Final NL Wild Card Spot" card.
I was going to do more with it in terms of classifying the cards into "reasons for issuance" but man is classifying the reasons nebulous at best. Sometimes it would be just rookies hitting homers, sometimes it was a good pitching performance, sometimes it would be good pitching crossed with hitting, and sometimes it would be just a long home run. Throw in the cards for trades, retirements, all-stars, a no-hitter, and random cutesy stuff, and that became nearly impossible to track.
So, let's go to the lists instead, counting backwards from 30 to 1 in terms of fewest to most.
30. Arizona Diamondbacks: 2 cards
The Diamondbacks got only two cards all season -- Zack Greinke's 3-hit shutout for career win #150 on June 7 (281 purchased) and Paul Goldschmidt's walk-off homer on August 22 (294 purchased). Arizona finished 69-93 and cleaned house after the season, so perhaps the low number should not be a surprise. But the D-Backs did have 8 walkoff wins (including 3 out of 5 games in August on the 22nd, 24th, and 26th), so perhaps they should have gotten a few more.
29. Tampa Bay Rays: 3 cards
The only reason the Rays have three cards is that Matt Moore featured on the "Traded" card along with Jonathan Lucroy and others. The Rays had three walk-off wins, none of which featured on a Topps Now card.
28. Milwaukee Brewers: 6 cards
To get to 6, you have to include the Prince Fielder retirement card and the Jonathan Lucroy traded card. The other four were Aaron Hill, two team cards (one for the team's second triple play and one for scoring in every inning in a game in August), and one for Chris Carter hitting his 40th home run. The Brewers had only one walk-off win all year, and it was lost in the All-Star shuffle.
27. Toronto Blue Jays: 8 cards
Considering this team went to the playoffs, finished 89-73, and led the American League in attendance with 3,392,099 people at their games, it's hard to believe that they got only 8 cards. But it is pretty easy to understand why this might be: shipping costs to Canada being what they are might have limited sales of their cards. The top seller in the regular season was a Josh Donaldson card at 524. Still, there should be more.
26. Philadelphia Phillies: 9 cards
One of these was for having the first overall pick in Mickey Moniak. Three went to rookie pitchers. Ryan Howard only got one card.
24T. Oakland A's: 10 cards
Oakland gets to 10 by including Jimmy Foxx showing up on one of the 7,402 David Ortiz Now cards (more on that in a minute).
24T. Cincinnati Reds: 10 cards
The Reds got to 10 by having a player on the traded card, a player on the "MLB Turn Back the Clock" card (#270), and with Frank Robinson showing up on an Albert Pujols milestone card.
23. Minnesota Twins: 13 Cards
The Twins count includes another Pujols milestone card (with Harmon Killebrew) and a card for the batting titles being renamed for Rod Carew and Tony Gwynn.
21T. David Ortiz: 14 cards
Topps should have just had a separate ToppsNow program just for Ortiz.
I don't know why I find that funny, but I do.
21T (for real). San Diego Padres: 14 cards
21T. Seattle Mariners: 14 cards
From here on out, I'm just going to comment where appropriate. I'd like to end this post tonight, after all.
19T. Atlanta Braves: 15 cards
The Atlanta Braves were absolutely terrible until literally the last month of the season and finished just 20.5 games worse record-wise than the Blue Jays. But they got 15 cards.
19T. Kansas City Royals: 15 cards
Topps paid attention to the Royals as long as they had to. Almost all of these cards were before the end of July. Also, the Royals were the only team to feature an insect.
18. Pittsburgh Pirates: 16 cards
This includes sharing the Eric Kratz card with the Astros and a Roberto Clemente appearance on an Ichiro card.
16T. Chicago White Sox: 17 cards
16T. St. Louis Cardinals: 17 cards
One of the best rookies of the season was Aledmys Diaz of the Cardinals. The 25-year-old from Cuba was an All-Star immediately and hit 17 HRs while slashing .300/.369/.510. He got 2 cards, or as many as David Ortiz had in April.
14T. Detroit Tigers: 18 cards
14T Texas Rangers: 18 cards
That counts Prince Fielder on both teams, since his card showed him in all three uniforms he wore. It also includes an Al Kaline cameo on an Ichiro card.
13. Colorado Rockies: 19 cards
The Rockies finished two games better than Milwaukee, 6 games better than the Diamondbacks, 3 games worse than the Pirates, and 11 games worse than the Cardinals. But apparently it was a memorable season nonetheless, apparently. That might be because Trevor Story -- the Topps poster boy for April who signed off on a splashy exclusive signature contract shortly after a good start -- had 3 of the first 9 ToppsNow cards and 6 total before getting injured. Topps loved them some Trevor Story.
11T. Miami Marlins: 20 cards
11T Cleveland Indians: 20 cards
Is it surprising that the Indians were relatively ignored? Just six more cards than David Ortiz? I don't think it is. After all, Cleveland is in the Midwest and is not the Chicago Cubs.
The Marlins lept up the charts for cards thanks to the Ichiro-gasm around his 3000th hit (I'm not saying it was unjustified, mind you).
10. Baltimore Orioles: 23 cards
The Orioles had the same record as the Blue Jays -- 89-73. Mark Trumbo hit a lot of homers that ended up commemorated on cards. He appeared on 6 cards total.
9. San Francisco Giants: 24 cards
The Giants edged out the Orioles thanks to a Willie McCovey cameo on a David Ortiz card.
8. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim: 25 cards
Lots of Albert Pujols in the set too. While I picked on David Ortiz for being on 14 cards, Pujols wasn't far behind -- he was on 11 of the Angels 25 total cards.
7. Houston Astros: 26 cards
Carlos Correa appeared on 8 cards, including one for a "dramatic walk-off single." Of course, that was in May, when seemingly every walk-off got a card.
6. Washington Nationals: 27 cards
This one is a little surprising with the star power on the team. Daniel Murphy appeared on five cards, Bryce Harper was on seven, and Max Scherzer was on just two. Of course, 27 cards is still a lot.
5. New York Mets: 31 cards
Yes, we're getting into the major media market teams now, i.e., the teams that Topps pushes because they sell cards and make money. Especially Bartolo Colon (5 cards), Curtis Granderson (4 cards), Noah Syndergaard (4 cards), and Yoenis Cespedes (3 cards). There are probably others with more here, but the Mets are fairly evenly dispersed.
3T: Los Angeles Dodgers: 34 cards
3T: New York Yankees: 34 cards
Clayton Kershaw was on 6 cards.
Gary Sanchez was on eleven, and that doesn't count the two different relic cards Sanchez had. That is 11 cards for fifty-three games in which he played in 2016.
Look, Sanchez was excellent in his first 55 MLB games (his 0-for-2 in 2 games last year getting factored in there by me...not sure if Topps did), hitting 20 homers in 201 at bats. He's 23, so maybe this is a new level of performance for him. It is not, however, consistent with his minor league performance. Just saying.
2. Chicago Cubs: 40 cards
Kris Bryant was on 8 cards. Gary Sanchez was on 11. I think Topps overdid the Gary Sanchez.
1. Boston Red Sox: 42 cards
It should come as no surprise that the Red Sox got so many cards. David Ortiz's retirement after an excellent season helped that, as did the young talents like Mookie Betts, Yoan Moncada, Xander Bogaerts, and Jackie Bradley Jr. Hell, Andrew Benintendi got more cards (3) than the Diamondbacks and Paul Goldschmidt got.
Topps pushed the Red Sox, though -- the Sox appeared on the Father's Day card, the Turn Back the Clock card, and the September 11 card -- oddly enough, from Rogers Centre in Toronto -- in addition to their own player cards.
These numbers should not be surprising, in the end. The better teams get publicity and accolades and have more positive moments than the bad teams do. But I can't help but feel that Topps is infected with some of that elitist bias on which some people are blaming Hillary Clinton's election loss.
For Topps, it's being based in New York City that leads to a lot of groupthink about what games or events are worthy of being on cards. Yes, I get it -- it's about the money. But even the least purchased baseball Topps Now card (my man Chris Carter's card #523 sold just 178 cards) would be the second highest selling Topps Now MLS card, being behind only Frank Lampard's hat trick for NYCFC selling 255 cards on July 31 (The lowest selling? Toronto FC's first playoff win sold a terrible 34 cards on October 26). At $10 a card, Topps is still making almost $1800 (gross, not net) on the Chris Carter card.
Hi kids! Welcome back to the Off Hiatus Baseball Card Blog! If you've been wondering where I have been the past week -- and, judging by the emails and the tweets, you almost certainly haven't! -- well, I will fill you in!
Last week Saturday, I spent my weekend at picturesque Sanford Stadium in Athens, Georgia. There, I watched as my Georgia Bulldogs came back and, with just 10 seconds left in the game, scored to go ahead of the Tennessee Volunteers. Of course, it being Georgia Football, that meant that we were being set up for one of the rarest of losses -- a "That Game" loss, as Bill Simmons put it in 2007...you know, around the time that Simmons's ego and paycheck started matching one another for which was bigger. A "That Game" loss combined two levels of losing -- a "Guillotine" loss mixed with a "Stomach Punch." A Guillotine loss is one where your team is in it or winning, but you can feel the inevitable breakdown coming. As Simmons said, you're angry at yourself for contributing to the bad karma and you are angry it happened at all. A "Stomach Punch" game is a roller-coaster game that ends with an opponent making a pivotal, sometimes improbable play and ends with fans filing out after the game in stunned disbelief, if they can move at all. Simmons said only one game to him had made it to that level -- the 6th game of the 1986 World Series. This Georgia game made it there, though. UGA scored with 10 seconds left, and, sadly, my wife's uncle and I turned to one another and said, "that may be too much time left." It was, especially after the stupidity of a second-string defensive back running onto the field to celebrate the Ridley TD without his helmet on. Throw in a poor, short, kickoff and a complete Hail Mary, and you have a "That Game" -- one where ESPN's stats guys said UGA had a 99.9% chance of winning after Ridley's TD. As if that weren't bad enough, we got an email during the game from my father-in-law saying that he wasn't feeling well at all. He ended up going to the hospital that night with kidney failure. He's been in dialysis all week, and only after the doctors started filling him with cortisone has he started feeling any better. The man is only 60 years old -- we're not going to let him go that easily. Add in that my wife's older uncle is suffering from a disease very similar to dementia that comes on quickly due usually to a trauma of some sort, and last weekend was very, very long. So, Monday came and my wife went home to help there. They needed her help with her uncle to get him to his various appointments as they try to get him into better shape, and my mother-in-law needed my wife's help because my mother-in-law was staying at the hospital with her husband -- as you would expect. Of course, that wasn't enough drama. I had a conference for work that I had to attend in Chicago. It was something of a welcome respite from the disastrous weekend, but I really could have used being at home instead. At least I had views like this from the hotel:
My hotel was on Upper Wacker Drive, so we had great views of Lake Michigan, the Chicago River Turning Basin, and the Navy Pier. Not that I got to go to any of those places due to all my responsibilities with our seminar, but at least I was around a lot of my friends whom I've known anywhere from a few years to over 20 years. I got back in town late Friday night, and, yesterday, got up to run errands (like pick up dry cleaning and clean up the cats' litter boxes), and then I drove for two hours to my wife's hometown. I went to see her uncle and her dad -- who is now feeling a million times better thanks to the steroids -- and to take some things to my wife for when she has to go back there this coming week to help out again. There are a few envelopes that were waiting for me here, so to get back into the mundanity of regular baseball card life, here's one of the envelopes. After my caterwauling to Topps about their ignoring the Brewers, of course the Brewers got two Topps Now cards in the final two weeks of the season. One of them was for turning their second triple play of the season, and that is the card that arrived:
The Brewers ended up totalling six Topps Now cards over the season, assuming that you count the Jonathan Lucroy "Traded" card and the Prince Fielder Retirement card with the Brewers. Of the other four, Chris Carter appeared on three of them -- the card for the team scoring in every inning in mid-August, this card for the triple play, and then his own solo card for reaching the 40-home run mark. Carter was a heck of a pickup off the scrap heap for the team, as he ended the season tied for the National League home run title with 41. For what it is worth, he and Nolan Arenado tied both for the Homer lead and for the NL Games Played lead. No one in the NL played every game, but Arenado and Carter both sat out only two games each. Carter also set a Brewers team record by striking out an incredible 206 times in 2016 -- but he finished 13 strikeouts behind MLB leader Chris Davis of Baltimore. NL and Major League stolen base champion Jonathan Villar did not appear on a Topps Now card, however. Villar probably would have gotten one had he hit one more home run in the final days of the season. Villar finished the year with 19 homers, though, so he did not join Joe Morgan (twice), Rickey Henderson (three times), and Eric Davis in the "20/60" club. Of course, it is worth noting that those players plus Villar are still the only ones to be members of the 19/60 club. But we like round numbers. In the next few weeks, I'll get caught up here on the packages I've received. I'll also write a few of the "Meet the Brewers." But, one more thing I am going to do is recap the Brewers season and the players the team used this year. My love for baseball comes out through words and photos/cards. Since I am not making any cards or taking any photos, I have to write. Thanks for reading, and here's to a happier, healthier rest of 2016!
