Friday Five: Top Five Archives Autographs

Topps Archives base set is horrible. 

What is the point of releasing a Topps Heritage set every year, which borrows the design of a previous Topps set, when Archives does the same thing? 

Maybe the question should be why is Topps releasing Archives every year? 

Both products have some positives. I like the Heritage base set better than the Archives, but I like the autograph checklist of Archives much better. With the release of a new Topps Archives set this week, I thought I would take a look back at my five favorite Topps Archives autographs. The autographs after all are the only reason to purchase this annual Topps release.  

This was actually a challenging list to create. I could easily go Top 20 here and still make a good list. Narrowing the list down to my five favorites took some work.  

T5. 2020 Topps Archives Felix Jose 

Felix Jose is a symbolic choice here. I could have picked Joe McEwing or Edgar Renteria or George Hendrick, but I thought Felix was perfect for this post. I try to collect as many certified autographs of Cardinals players as possible and I never thought Felix Jose would be on that list. If you are not familiar with Felix, he came up in the late 1980s with the Oakland Athletics, but was traded to the Cardinals for Willie McGee. That's a tough act to follow in St. Louis and all Felix did was hit .305 with 40 doubles during his first season with the Cardinals. He was eventually traded to the Royals for Gregg Jefferies, but getting this card made me take a few minutes to look back at his career numbers on Baseball Reference and appreciate the time he spent with the Cardinals. Every once in awhile Topps gets something right, Felix Jose signing cards 25 years after he retired is incredible.  

T5. 2020 Topps Archives Tom Pagnozzi 

This is another symbolic choice. I could have gone with a low-key very good player from your favorite team too. Here is a trivia question. Between 1991 and 2020 how many of the National League Gold Gloves at catcher were won by Cardinals players? The answer is 15 or half of the Gold Gloves at one position. Molina won 9, Mike Matheny won 3, and this guy Tom Pagnozzi won the other 3.  Who remembers stuff like that? Topps Archives. Tom Pagnozzi also was the Game 7 starting catcher in the 1987 World Series and also caused Uber prospect Todd Zeile (sounds funny now) to move to third base.  He's not a Hall of Famer or anything, but still a really good player and I am happy to own his autograph.  

 

4. 2001 Topps Archives Mickey Lolich Autograph 

I started collecting the current Durham Bulls players the year that I moved to North Carolina. They have had plenty of top prospects on their roster over the past two decades and there has always been an abundance of modern autographs that has made them easy to collect. I did not start collecting the old former Bulls players until I started blogging about my cards, roughly a decade ago. The autographs are a little harder to find, but I was really happy to land this 2001 Topps Archives Lolich card. I loved the 2001 Archives set, which has a little different format than the current rendition of the set and a much better autograph checklist. However, those autographs are also largely off the secondary market at this point save for a few really common cards that were signed in huge numbers. Lolich is not one of those, making this my tough to find autograph on this list. Lolich also has a better Hall of Fame argument than most realize.  

3. 2012 Topps Archives Jose Oquendo 

Nicknamed "The Secret Weapon" you never knew where Jose Oquendo was going to play for the Cardinals when you watched one of their games in the late 1980s. He eventually settled into being the second baseman next to Ozzie Smith, but for several years he played all over the infield and outfield. Topps did something incredible with Oquendo's 2012 autograph by creating 9 different variations of the card, one for each position on the field. These cards were a project a few years back, but I lost track of it and stopped trying to track them down. Topps can be creative when they try. It's all about the effort.  

2. 2016 Topps Archives Robert Wuhl Autograph 

Topps has done several pop culture insert sets over the past decade within their Archives product. The 2016 Bull Durham movie cards were obviously my favorite. I never shelled out the money for a Tim Robbins or Kevin Costner autograph, but Robert Wuhl was in my price range. The long-time actor plays the Bulls pitching coach Larry Hockett in the movie and has some of my favorite lines in the movie, including his pep talk to the team while they are on the mound airing out all the drama that is occurring in their lives.  

Candlesticks always make a nice gift, let's get two.  

In fact, I have two copies of the card.  

1. 2013 Topps Archives Ray Lankford Autograph 

Ray Lankford last played for the Cardinals in 2004. During that entire season, the only card made of him was in MLB Showdown. No Topps, Fleer, Upper Deck, or Donruss cards at all.  Nobody made a card of him in 2005 either. It took almost another decade to get a brand new Ray Lankford card, which appeared in the 2013 Topps Archives autograph set. No base card. I was still really excited to see this card and pick up a copy for the collection.  

Nuke LaLoosh Rides The Bus

This year was the 30th Anniversary of the movie Bull Durham.  The original release date for the movie was June 15th, 1988.  The Durham Bulls did a few things to celebrate the movie.  The Bulls showed the movie at the Durham Athletic Park, they now play in a modern park, one evening the weekend before the anniversary of it's release.  I had long standing plans with the little ones, so I could not attend.  However, I did manage to squeeze a viewing of the movie in before I went into work on the anniversary.......

Bull Durham turns 30 tomorrow. The movie is 1 hour and 48 minutes long. My children wake up around 6. If I start the movie at 4, I can watch the entire film before they wake up. #BullDurham30

— The Snorting Bull (@TheSnortingBull) June 14, 2018

I pulled off the whole 4 A.M. thing too.  

4 A.M. - I made it. pic.twitter.com/9jZ8RZ7t3G

— The Snorting Bull (@TheSnortingBull) June 15, 2018

That start time hurt a little bit by the middle of the afternoon.  

Beyond the movie showing the Bulls also gave away a Nuke LaLoosh and Crash Davis Bobblehead this year as a promotional item to ticket plan holders.  The bobble featured the two main characters from the movie on the Durham Bulls bus from the movie.  

This one.  

There are three main scenes that take place on the bus during the movie.  

The "21 greatest days of my life" scene.  

The nightmare scene where Nuke is pitching in garters and a jock strap.  

and my favorite, the cliches scene.  

Pretty important setting in the film, so it's nice to see the bus make an appearance on this dual bobblehead.  This is the front....

and the back.  

Both the bus and the head bobble.  The actual front of the bus.  

A little closer view.  

It's hard to read with the black print, but the front of the bus says "Greatest Show On Dirt".  Good detail from the bus in the movie.   

Final picture.  

Which is the back of the bus.  

Overall, this is one of my favorite Durham Bulls promotional items that I own.  I love the fact that both the heads and the bus bobble, as well as the fact that the team celebrated the Bull Durham movie with a giveaway item.  One more Bulls promotional item at some point in the next few weeks.  

1989 Durham Bulls Part 1

I am going back and sharing a few old Durham Bulls team sets from yesteryear.  I thought I would split the 1989 team in two different posts.  The last one on the 1995 Bulls teams seemed like a lot.  It was a lot to type in one sitting, and probably a long read too.

The 1989 Bulls set came out one year after Bull Durham, so of course it has a Kevin Costner card in the set.  It's actually the last card in the set, but it follows the same general design patterns.  The cards in my scans are the blue framed version of this set, but you can also find all of these cards with a orange and blue frame too.


The front of the card....

and the card back.  

The cards have a nice finish for the late 1980s.  They are not the quality of the Upper Deck cards, but they are better than the base Topps set cards.  I put them more in the league of the glossy Topps send in cards from the 1980s.  The centering is a little bit off on some of these cards, but overall they are in good condition.  

First group of cards.

Two of the better names in this set are here in the first scan.  Avery had a great 1989 with the Bulls and headed into 1990 as the top prospect in all of baseball according to Baseball America.  He finished the season in Double A with Greenville, but made the jump all the way up to the Majors after that stint.  Burlingame had two great years with the Bulls.  In 1989, he started out the year with the Bulls, went 4-0 and had a shortened perfect game.  He also pitched with the Bulls in 1991 and had good numbers.  Eventually injuries caught up with Burlingame and he never reached the Majors.  

Card backs.  

not the best scan, I caught off the tops of the cards a bit.  I like that they put the schools on the back of the cards.  Probably does not mean too much for the players coming out of high school, but pretty cool for the college players.  

Not much happening in this group of cards.  Casarotti was the only player in this group to make it past Double A, but he never managed to make it to the Majors.  

Jamie Cuesta went to Emporia State.  Did not see that one coming.  

A few interesting players in this group.  Wes Currin is from Oxford, North Carolina which is not far from Durham.  He also attended UNC-Wilmington for college.  This was his last season of professional baseball, so at least he got to play at home.  

Jim Czajkowski played a few games for the Rockies in 1994, so he is one of the players in this set who actually made it up to the Majors.  You have to remember that this is an A Ball team.  Flip through a set of the Bulls now while they are in Triple A and very few do not the Majors, opposite is true here.  He was 30 when he made it, but he got there and that's all that counts.  He actually had a dominate year playing for the Bulls in 1989, ending the season with an ERA of 0.99, and 14 saves.  

This Brian Deak card makes him look tiny.  His Baseball Reference page says that he was 6'0, confirming what the back of the card says, so it has to be the card?  He led the Bulls with 21 home runs in 1989.  Deak also struck out over 100 times that season, almost a K per game.  Clearly he played during the wrong era.  Nowadays, he could be Brian Dozier.

This entire group pretty much washed out in A Ball.  Dewey did not even make it the whole season with the Bulls, the others were done at the end of the 1989 season.  

The backs of the cards.  

Last two for this post.  

These last two cards are not extra special.  Just the way I split the set, they ended up on their own.  Similar to the last group, both of these players washed out in the Minors.

and the backs of the cards.

More 1989 Bulls later in the week.

Friday Five: Five Best Lines From Bull Durham

My favorite baseball movie of all time is turning 30 on Friday, so I thought I would make a list of my favorite quotes from the script for this week's countdown.  Since my blog's namesake is taken from the iconic bull in the outfield of the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, I actually try to place some of the lines from the movies in posts, as titles to posts, and also frequently on my various social media accounts.

While I normally do a countdown of five items in these posts, Bull Durham has a few too many great lines to leave off the list, so I am going to go with a double list this week of ten items.  There is that much to love about this movie.

Two quick notes about the movie before I get my countdown started......

1.  The Durham Athletic Park is still standing.  If you are ever in these parts, it is definitely worth a visit.  The stadium hosts different baseball games throughout the spring and summer, with its primary tenant being the North Carolina Central Eagles, which is an HBC college in Durham.  The NC Central games at the park are free, just park your car down the street somewhere and not in the stadium lot.

2.  I cannot tell you the first time I watched this movie, but the first time I watched and thought of it as a favorite was probably at some point during college.  Late 1990s.  At that point, it was just a funny entertaining movie about baseball.  After moving to North Carolina, and following Minor League Baseball for several years, I have come to realize that there are many realistic aspects of this movie.  Several former and current Major League players have shared this sentiment, most recently Curt Schilling chimed in after political commentator Ben Shapiro tweeted out that Bull Durham was overrated.  

There are others out there in agreement with Schilling.  

Just a warning, before you start clicking videos.  The Snorting Bull is generally a PG, PG-13 at worst, type of blog.  The movie Bull Durham is an R rated movie.  Just a heads up.  

Without further delay.....this week's list.


10. "I believe in the church of baseball"  -Annie Savoy 

9. "21 greatest days of my life" -Crash Davis 

8. "and when you speak of me, speak well"  -Crash Davis 

7. "Strikeouts are boring, besides that they're facist"  -Crash Davis 

6. "Don't think, it can only hurt the ball club"  -Crash Davis 

5.  "Lollygaggers" -Larry Hockett 
  

4. "You're Going To Have To Learn Your Cliches"  -Crash Davis 

3. "Just throw it all the bull"  -Crash Davis 

2. "Guy gets a free steak"  -Crash Davis 

1. "Candlesticks always make a nice gift"  -Larry Hockett 

Rehash, Rehash Again

I was out and about a few days back completing some errands at the local Wally World when I ran across one of those boxes of Topps Archives 65th Anniversary Set.  I believe they are only sold at Wal-Mart and each box has an autograph and a buyback card.  I have seen a few different collectors say some nice things about the boxes, so I figured I would take a chance.

If nothing else, I like the Archives autographs.  The base cards and remakes of Archives cards are a little bit stale.  Maybe more than a little stale.

The base cards in this version of Archives all have the original fronts on the cards.....

and for some reason the backs of the cards are all based on the design of the 1975 Topps card backs.  I have no idea why 1975 was picked....

Perhaps to distinguish this version of Archives from all the other versions of Archives that have been put out over the last few years, or maybe something other reason I am not think of at the moment.  Just a little lost on the choice.

My buyback out of the box is related to the Durham Bulls, which is cool in some ways, but....

didn't the Bull Durham cards come out of this year's Archives set?  The answer is yes, meaning that my buyback is just merely a few months old.  Not sure if this is much of a buyback.  Hey, Durham Bulls, right?  

Last card is my autograph which is, as you can see, former Expos second baseman Jose Vidro.  I am not sure how picky you can be about an autograph out of a $20 box of cards from Wal-Mart.  Always nice to see Expos cards, so I am going to consider this card a winner.  Plus, Jose was a pretty nice player back in the day.