All New Series!

This is definitely a good year to be absorbing some brand new baseball cards. I have been buying some on and off this year, but lost the enthusiasm for cards when it was uncertain if we would even have a baseball season.

That has worked itself out, for now, so I have been quite enjoying listening to some live baseball, that actually "counts," and ripping some packs.

The other day I lucked into finding Series Two on my local shelf, when it had only been there for a few minutes, I think. The MJ Holdings rep was still there setting out new cards when I walked up to the section. Otherwise, I kind of doubt I would have been able to see this card as my First Card in this year's Series Two:

That's the Meijer's exclusive purple parallel, from the 'Big Box' chain that conveniently built a store in my hometown a few years ago now. I quite like these parallels this year; I guess 1/4 of a colorful frame is better than no frame at all. And I like the tint and pattern to the special 'parallel' section of the card - bright. I like nice bright, colorful baseball cards.

But overall, this continuing 'full bleed' era in the Topps Baseball set is wearing me down and these cards in particular are bleeding into my memories of the 2017 set. Oh how grey life can be sometimes - I don't want grey on my baseball cards, outside of the traditional road grey uniforms on the players. I kind of doubt I want a binder full of a set of these, so I am looking at buying a Complete Set / Factory Set, whenever those actually appear this year, if the ravenous 'retail flippers' happen to leave one on a store shelf for me to buy, complete with my 1-in-ten-thousand-comes-for-the-no-name-cards-inside chance at some special Chromed /13 version of yet another Luis Robert Rookie Card sure to be worth a million dollars, some day. Could become an ongoing dilemma, possibly.

But that's a bit of a cheat for a 'First Card', so let's see what was inside the pack that came inside a blister pack with that purple card.

Sweet! I got that New Guy that hit all those Home Runs for the Mets last year. I mean, that has to be good, even though I already have like 3-4 cards of him from last year and this year that look just like this one. 

Oh, wait? Wasn't that guy on the cover of Series One packs? How could he be my First Card in Series Two, too? I guess I will have to read these action image baseball cards a little more closely.

Oh, well, I always manage to find things I like in a brand new series of Topps Baseball cards, like a cool blue glove:

The Topps gaze does seem to like Walker Buehler, regardless of glove. Spiffy gloves do always jump out at me, and perhaps they look even better on a Night Card:

That card supplies a good trivia question to maybe win a bar bet, if we can ever go back in bars. First Elvis to play for an expansion team? Nope. That might depend on how you define 'expansion' perhaps. No, sometimes there is nothing quite like discovering new young baseball players, via baseball cards, to make a baseball fan feel a little old sometimes. Elvis Luciano is the first player to appear in Major League Baseball that was born in the 21st Century - 2-15-00, as Topps kindly informs us on the back of this card. Thanks, Topps, thanks. Nice card though.

I also like special hats:

That's the Cardinals' special Home Sunday cap with the single Redbird on it. I like seeing it on Cards' cards; this isn't even the first Wainwright card to feature it. And those cool socks, yeah, I like those too:

Actually what I like best about that card is not the 2nd example of the snazzy socks, but the way we can see Dexter's eyes focused on the incoming fly ball. That crisp detail, along with being able to see a complete baseball player, In Action, is quite probably made possible by the nameplate being vertical on the side there. That is to this design's credit; now just imagine this card without so much grey space and also with the interlocking STL logo being something other than white-on-grey, like, say, white-on-red, as on their regular everyday caps.

I do like captured motion on baseball cards though, and as with the Luciano card, and also that Fowler card, a player shown with a foot off the ground always supplies a great sense of watching live Baseball:

I have also always liked how a seating rail in the stands can really positively contribute to the overall set of lines in a baseball card image, well, sometimes, at least:

Cards like that one have been amusing me for several years now. By 'like that one' I mean a Dodgers RC issue. Series One had 2 such cards lighting up the $ signs in the eyes of the purchasers of the lottery tickets, err, the packs of baseball cards. Hey, look, here comes another one:

I dunno, not sure 'Garlick' is the best baseball name I have ever come across. I wonder what his Player's Weekend Nickname card will reveal, some day? If he actually appears on such a card some day. The Dodgers line-up has been so stacked for so long now, I sometimes have to wonder what is the point of Topps sending me so many Dodgers rookie cards, series after series.

At least Dodgers cards always have that classic red white & blue baseball look, so those 2 cards will look presentable in the RC binder at least, even if I never hear of these 2 players ever again. I just wish the high draft picks my team makes could hit bushels of Home Runs in the Minors the way obscure Dodgers draft picks can.

Oh well, sometimes I do get a second chance to see anonymous RC players again in a subsequent series, like this player:

Sadly, Isiah is now down to just 2 positions as assigned by Topps there in the really small type, down one from the 3B/2B/C combo on his RC. I know it is wrong to make fun of someone's last name, but I like finding one of Kiner-Falefa's cards in packs, they always make me hungry and since I live so very very far from a working Middle Eastern restaurant, they also are always a tiny bit of motivation to just get un-lazy and make my own darn falafel, some day.

Now that card has a brand new feature down there in the corner, though it is hard to notice amidst all the colorful Catcher gear - an "Inaugural Season" logo for the Rangers' new stadium. I often feel for the Rangers fans, more particularly their baseball card collecting fans, as Brooklyn HQ frequently does an even worse job covering them than they do with my favorite team in Detroit. They both are regular contenders to be card #666 (though given to Colorado this year), and of course Topps completely punted the effort when they issued Series 1 with just one Texas Rangers card. Which, in classic Topps fashion, didn't have this special logo. I just hope they got it right on the blister pack issued Team Set cards, perhaps, the ones they would possibly sell in the spiffy new stadium....oh, wait. 2020 strikes again, sorry Texas. I did hear some interesting talk, now that live baseball analysis has returned, about the dimensions of that new park and how they favor the Pitchers now, rather than the Hitters, which will be quite a change in Arlington. On a team largely guided by Nolan Ryan, hmm, how could that happen?

That somewhat not-out-of-baseball-card-history - logo? stamp? icon? is not so noticeable on that particular card, down there in the right-hand corner. This year's design lifts the eyes up, and away from the bottom corner, as on this card:

With even the Cardinals on the uniform contributing to the great flow of lines in this image, making you ponder what will happen with that baseball your eyes end up on, the now famous RC logo becomes a bit lost all the way down there in the corner. This card is a good example of how captivating the baseball can be on a baseball card - it includes that special Sunday hat and a colorful glove, too, but all I can see when I look at this card is a great example of a Pitcher's grip on the baseball.

Overall that corner logo now is making me wonder what happens on a Rangers' RC, in Series Two at least. I guess I will have to rip some more packs to find out, perhaps.

One long-standing Series Two tradition returns, for players who changed teams but were not included in Series One:

The classic Road Grey PhotoShop job. 

Sometimes that is a bit less noticeable somehow -

- but overall I will always wish Topps would spring for a brand new photo taken in Spring Training for this recurring Topps Baseball checklist situation.

With the grey design this year, 'alternate' uniforms really improve a given single baseball card, like this one:

Romo always seems to get good cards, and he does seem excited to be spiffed out in Minnesota's Road Alternate duds. The Twins also have a Home Alternate uni -

I like that yellow bat knob there, will be watching to see one of those again on a card.

Ultimately though what I hope to find when ripping some packs of cards, finally listening to live Major League Baseball, is cards of my favorite team:

That's probably another PhotoShop job; recall the t-shirt sleeves on those last 2 cards. Schoop is well into a journey-ing type career now, but he did get the Tigers first hit of the season the other day and had a pretty good opening series overall.

My next Tigers card was a bit surprising -

- but only in terms of thinking like it was 2018, when Reyes was a Rule 5 pick who made it all the way through his first season in Detroit to 'stick' on the roster permanently. He really blossomed in 2019 and this pick proved to be shrewd indeed, as did this particular 'pull' from a pack of baseball cards, as Reyes just hit a home run while I was gazing upon his nifty horizontal card here.

5 packs, 3 Tigers:

That's the Tigers new closer, who also had a great opening series with 2 Saves already. This card, a bit less than the previous card, illustrates a little of what could have been on this design as you can partially see that the olde English "D" is blue on the uniform, and white on the cap. Topps always seems to favor the cap logo, even when the uni logo would make for a more colorful card.

I also like pulling cards of the opposing team while I am absorbing Major League action, and Topps came through for me with the Reds' Opening Day starter:

That's the "Turkey Red" insert, which appear one / pack, the now 16 card loose single pack, to be specific. Last year each loose pack held a "Superstars of Baseball" insert, which did not appear in other packaging configurations. Given how collation works in Topps products, and this style of unique inserts in the loose packs, they are becoming my preferred format to pick up a few new baseball cards. Especially when I can still get the Meijers blister packs with the purple cards.

I think Sonny Gray looks good in his new uniform; I never thought the pinstripes suited him, in several ways. At 5'10" he is not a typical starting Pitcher, and for whatever reason I always think the shorter players look smaller yet in a pinstripe uniform. The deal that brought him to Cincinnati was convoluted to say the least and prospect results on a couple other teams remain to be seen, but I think overall Cincy pushing some chips in to the center of the table with the Gray deal will make the NL Central that much more interesting the next few years.

These Turkey Red cards are starting to grow on me:

Even though they are a grey border insert in a grey set of baseball cards, the always colorful backgrounds and that crisp faux-inset image border just make these cards:

Classy.

I am fairly sure I have seen this image of Lou Gehrig on a baseball card before, though I don't specifically collect his new issue cards. But I am also quite certain the image has never been melded with an artsy sunset background like that. Thus, I am starting to think a set of these classic cards of classic players might look pretty nice on a binder page:

Oh, wait. All-time Hall of Famers, current stars, & ... Rookies I've never heard of. So much for a desire to complete that set; probably these Turkey Red inserts are destined for Nifty Nine(s) status in my collection. Especially since I have more than enough collecting efforts under way to absorb too much of my scarce extra dollars, anyway.

So though each loose pack I might buy will deliver me another Turkey Red insert card, the packs do also contain examples of the other inserts in Series Two, like this one:

Boo-Yah!

Can't go wrong with a new Willie McCovey card and as a sucker for 70s 'flair', I think I will be looking into these a bit more. And maybe these, too:

I like/don't like how that particular card recalls the randomly sterile design efforts on Topps baseball cards in the 2010s - hexagons? Really? But I collected a lot of baseball cards in the 2010s and enjoyed following the game of baseball a bit more closely than usual all through that decade, so I look forward to checking out more of this insert checklist.

A Topps Baseball set and summer time often mean: a contest card -

And that is a pretty darn good baseball card in it's own right, right there. I barely have time to blog with y'all so I doubt I will be trying out the Home Run Challenge any time soon, or really, ever. But at least I will enjoy seeing the cards for it this year, as it is starting to look like a few more packs of this stuff will fall in the grocery cart again, presuming I have some luck with the 2020 retail baseball card challenge, which is on a whole 'nother level from previous years and years of collecting baseball cards.

Sometimes I wonder if my decision to like/not like an insert set might depend on the player I first see on one. That certainly didn't hurt with that cool Willie McCovey card I pulled. On this one -

- that's not the issue as I like Pedro Martinez well enough, particularly these days when I am randomly fortunate enough to catch some of his commentary on TV. But overall I am not always that interested in WAR stats, so I doubt I will be keeping any more of these. I prefer straight stats to 'new formula' stats, and with a fair bit of irony, this card did pleasingly tell me that Pedro's season in the year 2000, which generated the 11.7 WAR being celebrated here, also featured a 0.737 WHIP stat, which is the All-Time Record.

& that's why I keep buying baseball cards. I like pondering WHIP on the backs of cards, a regular stat feature of Topps Baseball cards now, but I was unfamiliar with that minor tidbit of baseball info.

I will leave you with a final 'insert' - one that is generally expected to be found when one buys packs of Topps Baseball cards - the Topps Gold. This one doesn't excite me; "Gold" can go a lot of ways on these cards depending on design, and just how the "Gold" is formulated. On this example here, I am having a hard time not thinking of it as a Padres card. The absurdly white edges of the should-be-in-shadow Rays logo 'shopped onto it are quite distracting, and the "Gold" is a bit dark for my tastes:

I picked up 5 packs to open the 2020 season, such as it is; these fall 1:8 packs this year, which is surely a pretty low ratio compared to years past. But that indicates a lot of people are buying Topps Baseball cards these days, and overall, that is a pretty heartening fact to me, in a year when we can use all such heartening things more than ever; most especially these brand new Topps Baseball cards.

Baseball Card Therapy

I've learned a helluva lot about baseball cards in the last five months, and that has been great. One of my life lessons along the way crept up on me very slowly, but it definitively crystallized for me early this morning.

I noticed over these months of reading baseball card blogs how many bloggers have to take a break from frequent posting, and not by choice. Real Life always intervenes with life's never-ending stream of good and bad chaos, and the baseball cards have to be put down for a time.

Now perhaps at times this leads to blogs going dark for long periods, but I think more often than not it doesn't. People want to get back to socializing with others over a bit of pack ripping, card sorting, and trade pulling.

A few blogs have pointed this out very explicitly. I also noticed it early on in my own overly busy life the last few months. Then last Friday I heard a direct quote on the subject. I was placing an order for some supplies (and, heck yeah, some cards along with...you'll see) from an online vendor selected essentially at random for having both the exact supplies and cards I wanted. There was a slight problem with the billing address vs shipping address with my debit card, and I ended up on the phone with the company. This led to an incidental chat about another hobby revealed by one of my email addresses, and how rare it was to meet people with both hobbies. Then the baseball card fan on the other end of the line gave me the quote - "Oh yes, it's always nice to sit down over some cards. So therapeutic."

That is spot on. Tonight after I finish typing this post, I am going to sit down and just sort some big stacks of cards until my eyelids droop, which probably won't take long. I have some trades due to leave Base Set Calling HQ ASAP, and even one trade that has come in that I haven't even opened yet. I'm very sorry to be late and should be back to mailing, etc., on Thursday. I finish a very, very long 7 month "season" of my main work tomorrow too, and I will celebrate by going out to watch a baseball game on color television I hope.

But work has nothing to do with why I will be seeking sanctuary in card numbers tonight. Numbers have always soothed my brain. I used to look at four digit numbers and deconstruct and reconstruct them in various ways in my head, though that has faded over time. So the ever elegant game of baseball has always appealed to me....and of course led to my love of baseball cards.

Last night I had plans to finish up all the trade work I now have planned for Thursday. But Real Life intervened as it all too often does. A pet of 16 years acquaintance died early this morning as the daylight was appearing. It was that time. Unfortunately the situation deteriorated too fast overnight to ask a vet for some help easing the obvious pain involved, and it quite unexpectedly became a long hard, generally helpless night, finally eased by a rain shower supplying enough white noise for me to fall asleep. Even plentiful stacks of cards near at hand couldn't help through that night.

Now I understand this was just a four legged companion, and the loss does not compare to losing a dear friend or family member, as I know has been part of some blogger's lives this year.

When I awoke a few hours later, I had little choice but to brew up some coffee and head out to a jobsite. Over the cups of coffee, I reached for my phone to read some card blogs, and quickly found what I was looking for, without knowing what exactly I was looking for right then. It was just a simple post about the simple joy of discovering a wonderful new baseball card (one I had thought to babble about, but would have never dreamed up what my fellow blogger did), like this one following here, to supply a nice visual header on the blog rolls:

What a card. I pulled it just tonight when I turned to just a little ripping therapy, to go along with this writing therapy.

Of course it can go on the Tatooine binder page, and my Airborne page. If I were to launch a Sweet Shadows page (uhh-oh), it could fit there too. And if we finally reach 9 different players with the last name Cabrera all simultaneously active on Topps baseball cards, well...oh dear. It obviously brings to mind a certain famous player who can't currently be seen on Topps products. I vote for more stealth homage cards for that player, Topps. I'm sure it will end up on many best-of-Series lists.

What I especially like about it is the dirt stain Everth already has on his right leg — this is his second time catching air this game.

Now a part of baseball card blogging is revealing your life's connection to baseball cards. As my profile states, I came back to everyday collecting in 2011 after a long break, though I generally have some miscellaneous cards from every year of my life, even when I wasn't building a set that year. My cards have definitely added to my appreciation of the game of late, and I don't expect to walk very far away from them any time soon.

But I didn't collect much in 2012, and have hinted at some reasons why. There are two of them; I will write about the other one, with scads of baseball card pictures to go along with (I promise), another time.

The non-card reason for sitting out 2012 after such a great 2011 was a basic lack of community. Buying and absorbing baseball cards by yourself is OK, but is something that is much more enjoyable to share. Living in a small town very far from any card shop to talk cards at made the hobby quite a bit more dull. When I was back to ripping more than a few packs in 2011, I kept thinking "I will just use this new Internet thing to get back to trading baseball cards." I actually have a long experience with the Internet, having sent my first cross-state-lines email in about 1988, but not with cards on the Internet.

But I just couldn't find a hospitable place to talk cards. The card forums I wandered around just didn't do it for me. So much focus on the buying and selling of cards, and always with lots of negativity and other, well, repetitive not-positive sentiment. I could hardly ever find a simple "I love this card." Plenty of "I love the value of this card" though.

I have come to think this is likely a generational / age deal, though of course there is one great blogger who disproves that, and I think there are others. But the card forums seem to be the domain of a younger crowd on average than the blogging world. And the younger collectors, well, I shouldn't stereotype, generalize, etc. I don't know, I just know that the $ side of collecting cards is just not for me. Neither is the all too common naked vitriol nature of the Internet, where anonymous speech comes with certain downsides.

But this post isn't another woe-is-the-hobby screed. I'll bore you to tears on that topic some other night. I just wish I had discovered the world of baseball card blogs in the fall of 2011, when I first typed the wonderful words "baseball cards" into an Internet search engine. Then I probably wouldn't be eagerly awaiting the arrival of the 2012 cards I skipped over until I acquired them from nice Mr. Therapeutic on Friday.

So I just wanted to thank you all for publishing your love of baseball cards on humanity's new social medium here. It has been a wonderful five months.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some baseball cards to sort.