Set Appreciation Post #17 - Topps Lineage

Topps Lineage is really an off-brand version of Topps Archives.

Yes, there are positives here, but I think there are limitations because of its format.  

Same general idea as far as the checklist goes, but rather than recycling a bunch of their former card designs, Topps used the same border for all the cards. Looks like something that was likely a rejected design for one of their base sets at some point.  

Here is the basic design.  

I like the photograph of Koufax, but there is just nothing really special or interesting about the design of this card. It's just not very good.  

Back of the card.  

No stats on the back. I actually like this idea for this type of set, especially given the way that Topps wrote these snippets. If you had to summarize the career of Sandy Koufax in two sentences, it would be difficult to do a better job than what is on the back of this card. The modern players are just as well done. 

The card backs are a positive for this set.  

Similar to the Koufax card, there are plenty of other older players throughout the set. 

Whoever made the set actually did a good job of picking out former players. Nice mix from all different areas. The older players, such as Tris Speaker, are generally colorized, but the card photos still look decent. The photography on the older players is another positive in Topps Lineage.  

I like that Lenny Harris makes an appearance on the Ryne Sandberg card. He's a first ballot guy if someone ever makes a Hall of Fame for utility and bench players. Also shout out to Topps for not using the cringeworthy Milwaukee Braves logo from the 1950s and 1960s, even if they used the cringeworthy Cleveland Indians logo on the modern players.  

Any set that has a subset of cards with Topps All-Star Rookie Trophies can't be all that bad, right?  

Favorite Cardinals card.  

Bob Gibson.  

Favorite former Durham Bulls card.  

Evan Longoria.  

Best non-Cardinal/non-Durham Bulls card.  

An aquward looking, 21 year-old Freddie Freeman.  

How many Braves players have baseball cards with this same pose at the Braves Spring Training Stadium?  

It's a lot.  

Topps Lineage is still not all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows.  

There is still the ever-present horrible airbrushing. I picked out two different examples. The Adrian Beltre card is just incredibly bad. The Damon card is not quite as bad, but they airbrushed him out of a Tigers uniform, but left Jim Leyland in the background.  

If Jim Leyland were smoking in the background, I would forgive the bad airbrushing.  

Topps used the parallels from their flagship sets on the Lineage cards. A bunch of sparkles and colors that do not look very good with this card design.  

Sparkly Lou Gehrig?  

No.  

However, I do like the cloth cards based on the old Cloth Stickers. Topps had some cloth/silk parallels around in different products around this time. Good looking cards that they should consider bringing back.  

I have thought about finding all of the Cardinals and former Durham Bulls cloth sticker cards from this set, but that is somewhere way down on the list of things to do. 

Let's talk about another positive.  

The inserts are great, but similar to the Archives sets, the designs are all borrowed from older Topps products.  

There are the 2011 Rookies insert that is a copy of the 1980s Rack Pack All-Star cards.  

Hank Conger with a Hooters ad over his shoulder.  

There are 1975 Topps Minis. Miniature in real life, but not here because of the scan.  

There are also relic cards with the 1975 Topps Mini design. I am sure that there are a few floating around in one of my boxes of relics, but I am not going to go surfing for one at the moment.  

We also have the 1964 Topps Stand-Ups.  

Love the green and yellow backgrounds on these cards.  

There are also autographs. There were some decent current player autographs in this set. Early autographs of Stanton, Posey, and Freeman. I bought a box of Lineage while I was on vacation in St. Louis back in the day and ended up with a Charlie Morton autograph.  

Charlie is pretty old now, but he's had some good seasons along the way.  Solid autograph. 

The autographs of the older players are really nice. I have a few of the players who appeared for the Cardinals. I will go with Duke point guard, Dick Groat for this post.  

The 1952 Topps design has been completely overused at this point, but what are you going to do?  

HOW DOES IT COMPARE?

 Lineage is essentially a Topps Archives set. I like that they do not recycle former flagship set designs on the base cards. I think that is the biggest positive here, along with some of the autographs. There is nothing here that really stands out to me, so I am going to go with the bottom half of my rankings.

In my opinion, it is not as good as the first four sets in the bottom half of my Set Appreciation posts. So, that's below the Heritage Minors, Emotion XL, Donruss, and Bowman. I thought long and hard about how this set compares to the Ionix and Bowman Platinum set. I was tempted to put it behind both of those sets, but I think the autographs are the saving grace here. 

Yes, copying the design of the 1952 Topps set is slightly annoying, but they are good looking cards. I am ranking the Topps Lineage set 11th.  

16. 2000 Pacific Paramount Update 

15. 2010 Topps USA Baseball  

14. 2000 Topps 

13. Bowman Platinum 

12. 2000 UD Ionix

11. Topps Lineage   

10. 2002 Bowman 

9. 1988 Donruss 

8. 1995 Emotion XL 

7. 2017 Topps Heritage Minor League

6. 1998 Topps TEK 

5. 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders 

4. 2001 Fleer EX 

3. 1979 Kellogg's 

2. 2002 Topps Super Teams

1. 1983 Topps 

A Giant Project: Update #2

 Picked up a few new Topps Giants cards for my set project.  There are a total of four cards in this post, they were all pretty easy to find and inexpensive.  My next update is going to have some really good names.  Thought about waiting a week, but I think the next group of cards deserve their own post. 

First up for this post is Reds pitcher Jim Maloney.  

Here is the back of the card.  

Solid player.  Made a few All-Star games, struck out a ton of batters.  

Next up is Bob Bailey.  I know him mainly as an Expo in the 1970s, but he started out with the Pirates in the early 60s.  Kind of an interesting career path.  Here is the front of the card.  

He was much more of a fielder at the beginning of his career who hit the occasional home run.  Then he got sold to the Expos before the start of their first season.  He started hitting home runs in bundles and was one of their offensive stars.  

The back of the card focuses on his defense.  The second sentence was generous in describing his offensive talents at this point in his career.  Love that action picture on the back.  Very nice.  

Next.  

I was a little disappointed in the top to bottom centering on this card.  I bought it from an Ebay seller who had multiple copies.  I paid for one copy, got another copy.  Tried to return this copy, got my money back, and the guy told me to keep the card.  I might replace this one at some point, but for the moment it's staying.  

Back of the card.  

Another great action shot here with the pitch almost over his head.  I also like that the mention his basketball career at Duke on this card.  Groat's career with the Pirates was far more notable than his time with the Cardinals, but he did win a World Series with them in 1964.  

Last card.  

I did not know too much about Gary Peters before writing this post.  He had a really good beginning of his career, but was out of baseball by his mid 30s.  He won the 1963 American League Rookie of the Year, two ERA titles, and once won 20 games.  

Back of the card.  

Looks like he had a really odd motion.  

Here is my updated checklist.  I have 14 out of the 60 cards, roughly a quarter of the set.  A few new cards will be posted next week, a good name or two is included in the next group of cards.  

1 Gary Peters
2 Ken Johnson
3 Sandy Koufax SP
4 Bob Bailey
5 Milt Pappas
6 Ron Hunt
7 Whitey Ford
8 Roy McMillan
9 Rocky Colavito
10 Jim Bunning
11 Roberto Clemente
12 Al Kaline
13 Nellie Fox
14 Tony Gonzalez
15 Jim Gentile
16 Dean Chance
17 Dick Ellsworth
18 Jim Fregosi
19 Dick Groat
20 Chuck Hinton
21 Elston Howard
22 Dick Farrell
23 Albie Pearson
24 Frank Howard
25 Mickey Mantle
26 Joe Torre
27 Ed Brinkman
28 Bob Friend SP
29 Frank Robinson
30 Bill Freehan
31 Warren Spahn
32 Camilo Pascual
33 Pete Ward
34 Jim Maloney
35 Dave Wickersham
36 Johnny Callison
37 Juan Marichal
38 Harmon Killebrew
39 Luis Aparicio
40 Dick Radatz
41 Bob Gibson
42 Dick Stuart SP
43 Tommy Davis
44 Tony Oliva
45 Wayne Causey SP
46 Max Alvis
47 Galen Cisco SP
48 Carl Yastrzemski
49 Hank Aaron
50 Brooks Robinson
51 Willie Mays SP
52 Billy Williams
53 Juan Pizarro
54 Leon Wagner
55 Orlando Cepeda
56 Vada Pinson
57 Ken Boyer
58 Ron Santo
59 Johnny Romano
60 Bill Skowron SP

60s Cardinals In 1964

This is going to be a pretty quick post.  I am excited to be here for my third post of the month!  I hope this isn't my last post of 2020, but it seems like a real possibility.  My quest to find older Durham Bulls cards skewed off course a few weeks back when I found a few really nice Cardinals cards for sale on Facebook.  All the cards are from 1964 Topps sets, some of the players are pictured as Cardinals, some are not.  

Let's start out with the 1960s Cardinals players who are pictured on other teams.  Both of these cards come from the 1964 Topps Pop-Ups. 

 

 

First up is long time Reds outfielder Vada Pinson.  He only played on the Cardinals in 1969 after being traded to the team for Bobby Tolan.  Pinson filled the hole in right field for the Cardinals after Roger Maris retired from baseball at the end of the 1968 season.  He was older at this point and had began to decline, so he was not the extra base machine he was for the Reds throughout the late 1950s and 1960s.  Pinson finished in the top 10 in doubles and triples eight times during his first 10 years, while hitting more than 20 home runs 6 times.  

Not a Hall of Famer, but a really good player from his era. 

 

Speaking of Hall of Famers, I also picked up a Topps Stand-Up of Orlando Cepeda.  He was a really good player while he was on the Cardinals, winning the National League MVP during the 1967 season.  That was after spending a decade being paired with Willie Mays in the middle of the Giants line-up.  I really like the picture on this card.  It took me a few minutes to figure out what was happening here, but I believe he is throwing ground balls warming up the other infielders before an inning, or taking infield practice before a game.  Not something you see very often on a baseball card.  

One more Topps Stand-Up. 

 

Former Duke basketball player Dick Groat.  

This is one of the worst airbrushed card of all-time.  The STL on the hat is something.   Clearly an old Pirates picture that was taken while he was wearing one of the sleeveless vest style uniforms like this......

Love that they got the gold stripes on the socks red and blue, the sleeves on his shirt red, but then left the gold and black piping around the arm holes and neck line of the vest.  Regardless, good player for the Cardinals and an important member of the 1964 World Series winning team.  

Last card, the best one in this post.  I don't need many words for this card.  

 

 

This is a 1964 Topps Giants Bob Gibson.  Great looking card of the Hall of Fame pitcher.  Love that light shade of gray the 1960s Cardinals had on their road uniforms.  

Friday Five - Top 5 MLB Players From Duke

Last week I did a post on the Top 5 MLB players from NC State.  This week I am taking a 30 minute drive west on I-40 to do a post with the top former Blue Devils who have hit the field for a Major League baseball team.  Before I get to the top five, I have to give a tip of the cap to two former Major League players who were connected to the Duke Baseball program as coaches.

Probably more important to the program than almost every player on my Top 5 list....



Ace Parker 

Ace was a multi-sport star at Duke during the mid 1930s.  He was on the Philadelphia A's for 38 games in 1937 and 56 games in 1938.  That was the end of his baseball career.  One could argue that 90 some games is not really much to go on in terms of evaluating the quality of play.  However, when Ace walked away from baseball it was to play football in the NFL.  He won the 1940 NFL MVP and managed to put together a good enough career on the gridiron that he was inducted into the Football Hall of Fame in 1972.  Probably a good decision on his part.

Parker returned to Durham after his football career and initially worked as the manager of the Durham Bulls.  He also had a side job during the fall as an assistant coach on Duke's football team.  Eventually, Parker took over the coaching duties of the Duke baseball team in 1953.  He retired from coaching baseball in 1966.  Interestingly, he remained on the football coaching staff the entire time that he was also the head baseball coach.  During his time at Duke, Parker coached the Blue Devils to three ACC Championships, a Southern Conference Championship (Pre-ACC), and two appearances in the College World Series.

I am not sure how many people outside of central North Carolina know the name Ace Parker, I didn't before I moved here, but he is a tremendously important sports figure from the 1930, 40s, and 50s who had a huge impact on the school.  The numbers on his baseball card are not as good as the rest of the people on this list, but he's one of the most important figures in the history of Duke's athletic program.  


Jack Coombs 

Coombs actually went to college at a small school in Maine before he spent 14 years playing in the Majors with A's, Dodgers, and Tigers.  His best years were during the first half of his career with the A's.  The team was loaded with Hall of Famers including Chief Bender, Frank "Home Run" Baker, Eddie Plank, and Eddie Collins.  The team won back to back World Series in 1910 and 1911.  Coombs led the American League in wins during both seasons.  He won 3 of the 4 games needed to win the 1910 World Series against the Cubs, and added another victory during the following season's Series against the Giants.

After Coombs retired from baseball, he ended up at Duke as the baseball coach.  In all, he coached the Blue Devils for 24 years and retired with a .636 winning percentage.  Coombs helped the Blue Devils win the Southern Conference, the ACC had not been formed at that point, six times and advance to the College World Series twice.

Again, not a Duke baseball player, but a very important person to the program.  The modern Blue Devils split their games between the Durham Bulls Athletic Park and their on-campus baseball stadium, which bears the name of Jack Coombs.  There is a statue of the long time coach outside the stadium.

5. Chris Capuano 

Capuano is a native of Springfield, Massachusetts native who pitched at Duke in the late 1990s.  He earned an Economics degree while he was in Durham.  Originally drafted by the Diamondbacks, he was traded to the Brewers for Richie Sexson.  In all, Capuano spent 12 years in the Major Leagues between 2003 and 2016, half of that time was spent in Milwaukee.  His two best seasons were in 2005 and 2006.  In 2005, he won 18 games, pitched more than 200 innings, and set a career high with 176 strikeouts.  In 2006, Capuano was named to the National League All-Star team, and duplicated his innings pitched and strikeout numbers.

Capuano did not appear in a Major League game in 2008 or 2009 after undergoing Tommy John surgery.  The Brewers released him and then resigned him to a Minor League contract allowing him to work his way back up to the Majors through their system.  He returned in the middle of the 2010 season.   At the end of the season, Capuano signed with the Mets as a free agent.  He also spent time during the second half of his career with the Dodgers, Red Sox, and Yankees before returning to the Brewers for 16 games in 2016.


4. Marcus Stroman 

I think the first two or three times I saw Marcus Stroman play for Duke he was a second baseman.  He starred for Duke for three years between 2010 and 2012, obviously he ended up becoming a star pitcher for the Blue Devils.  I first saw his pitching skills on display at USA Baseball's College National Team.  The Blue Jays made him the 22nd overall pick during the 2012 MLB Draft.  Obviously, he is not very far into his career, but I would guess he should be 2nd on the list if I revisited it in a few years.

Stroman has only played three full seasons with the Jays and has already won 37 games, had a pair of 200 inning seasons, and two seasons with more than 150 strikeouts.  He pitched a few games during the 2015 season, had a knee injury that shut him down for the year, but he just went back to Duke and finished the final year of his degree program.

Last season Stroman was a real bright spot for the Blue Jays.  He ended the seasons at 13-9 with a 3.09 ERA, and 164 strikeouts in 201 innings.  Stroman also won the Gold Glove Award for American League pitchers flashing some of those glove skills that I got to watch back when he was at Duke...

Again, early in his career, but Stroman has the potential to be one of the top two players on this list in the long run.  Someone might argue that Dick Groat has a bunch of World Series rings, that was anticlimactic to give away the top player on the list, but Marcus Stroman led the Majors last year in most appearances in rap videos.  

3. Ron Northey 

Ron Northey played for several different teams during the 1940s and 50s.  He played baseball at Duke in the late 1930s and was actually hard of hearing in one ear because of a bean ball incident from his time in Durham.  Northey started his journey through the Minor Leagues in the early 1940s, reaching the Majors with the Phillies during the 1942 season.  The Navy found him unfit for duty twice due to his hearing loss.  Eventually the Army drafted him in 1945 and he was stationed out of Fort Lewis, Washington.  

Before his time with the Army Northey had improved drastically each of his three seasons with the Phillies.  In 1942, he hit only 5 home runs with a .250/.300/.331 slash line.  His 1943 season was a little better, but 1944 showed that he had the talent to be an All-Star caliber player.  That season he hit 22 home runs, 104 RBIs, 9 triples, 35 doubles, and posted a .288/.367/.496 slash line.  He finished in the top 10 in dozens of offensive categories that season.  

The post-war version of Northey was not able to match his production from his 1944 season.  In 1946 he only managed 16 home runs with a .249 average playing full time with the Phillies.  The Phillies eventually traded him to the Cardinals where he found a niche as a part-time player with pop off of the bench.  

In 1947, the Cardinals gave him 361 plate appearances and he put up 15 home runs and 19 doubles with a .321 average.  He followed with similar lines for the Cardinals the following season before falling off with the home run totals and average during the 1949 season.  Northey spent the later years of his career bouncing around between the Reds, Cubs, White Sox, and made his way back to the Phillies before retiring as a player in 1957. 

After his playing career Northey worked as a scout and coach, including a stint with the Pirates in the early 1960s.  

2. Bill Werber 

Werber was a two sport star during his time at Duke and was actually the first All-American basketball player at Duke.  He led the Blue Devils basketball team to the Southern Conference Basektball Championship game twice.  They lost both games, but it was a pretty remarkable feat to even get that far considering the team had exactly five players.  

The losses came against Alabama and NC State who, according to local legend, decided that having five starting players and a few substitute players was a better way to win stuff with your basketball team.  

Werber played three season on Duke's baseball team under the aforementioned Jack Coombs.  He hit .400 each of his three seasons on the baseball team.  After graduation he joined the Yankees, whom he had toured with as an amateur player in 1927 before attending college.  Werber played a total of 7 games with the team between two stints with the team in 1930 and 1933.  During his first at-bat he drew a walk, but quickly scored his first Major League run when Babe Ruth hit a home run as the next batter.  

Werber lived to be 100 and was the last living teammate of Ruth's at the time of his death in 2009.  

As for the rest of his Major League career, Werber went on to spent time with the Red Sox, Reds, A's, and Giants.  He led the American League in stolen bases three different times during the 1930s, twice with Boston and another time with Philadelphia.  Probably the best accomplishment of Werber's Major League career was his appearance in back to back World Series with the Reds.  The 1939 squad lost to the Yankees in four straight games.  The 1940 squad did better, beating the Tigers in a seven game series.  Werber hit .370 and scored 5 runs for the Reds.  

1. Dick Groat 

Werber was the first All-American at Duke, but Dick Groat was the first Duke basketball player to have his jersey in the rafters of Cameron Indoor.  He was an All-American basketball player twice and played one year of basketball in the NBA with the Pistons.  All of this time Groat also was playing baseball.  His first season with the Pirates was in 1952.  Groat played 95 games that summer before missing the 1953 and 1954 seasons due to military service during the Korean War.  

He returned to the Pirates for the 1955 season and his career took off over the next few seasons.  In 1957, Groat finished in the top 5 in batting in the National League behind some other decent players: Stan Musial, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Frank Robinson.  He made his first All-Star team in 1959 and in 1960 won the National League MVP while helping the Pirates win the World Series.  

Groat made three more All-Star teams in the early 1960s and finished second in MVP voting in 1963 while playing for the Cardinals.  The following season, in 1964, he helped the Cardinals win the World Series against the Yankees.  He ended his Major League career by playing a few years with the Phillies, and a final season with the Giants in 1967.  

He's also had a fairly successful career post-baseball too.  in 1979, Groat was hired as a radio broadcaster for the Pitt Panthers basketball games.  In recent years, he has stopped working most of their road games, but still can be heard when Pitt plays home games.  

A Most Generous Mailday

I posted a Want List, I am calling it a Void List, a week and half ago as my New Years Resolution.  I still need to put it into a box on the side of blog, but I am getting there.  In the meantime, one of my blog readers, Jon Belk, generously filled in one of the holes on the list by sending me this really cool looking David Eckstein World Series Patch.

I was really happy to being able to cross off a card from my list so quickly, but there were more cards in the package.  Really nice cards including a Topps Black Parallel Numbered out of just 63, a Triple Threads card numbered out of just 250, an autograph of a Duke basketball star/Cardinals shortstop, and a chrome card of Jon's favorite player Ben Zobrist.  Here's a look at the cards.....  

Again, really generous to fill in a card on my newly created Void List and the extra cards were awesome.  All of them fit nicely into my collection and I was so excited to see all of them.  I have actually been spending my winter break from school putting together some packages of goodies for some of my blog followers, so I am going to have to throw a few extra cards into Jon's envelope.  Again, thank you for the awesome cards.   

Buy Local Part 2: Dick Groat

A little Duke flavor for my second Buy Local post features the greatest Duke basketball player to appear in a Major League Baseball game.  I understand that the average sports fan in this country cannot stand Duke and they are one of those teams that attracts all sorts of fair weather fans and all kinds of hate.  Locally, there are plenty of alumni around North Carolina and as a school with billions of dollars in endowment money, they do a lot of good around the community.

As a graduate of the red North Carolina school, Duke is about ten times better than the other blue Carolina school which has problems with agents working as assistant coaches on the football team, football players plagiarizing papers, fake classes, parking tickets,Tyler Hansbrough reading like a third grader, and I could provide four links for P.J. Hairston.  Poke fun at Duke and Coach K all you want, they run a clean program.  If you don't like Duke, click here, and skip the video below.  If you like Duke basketball, click below and enjoy. 

Before the current run of the Coach K lead Duke Blue Devils, the team still had some really good players and some really good NCAA tournament runs.  One of their really good players during the early fifties was Dick Groat.  

Groat was an All-American for the Blue Devils in 1951 and 1952 and his jersey hangs in the rafters of Cameron Indoor Stadium.  He also played a little bit in the NBA for the Fort Wayne Pistons after they used the third overall selection in the 1952 NBA draft to select the guard.  Of course, many people know Groat like this...

1954 Topps Dick Groat

Groat was one of the first North Carolina I took an interest in collecting when I moved here in 2006.  Sure, he's not really from North Carolina, but the connection to Duke makes him quite popular locally.  Basketball fans love him and baseball fans too.  While Groat was a very good baseball player his cards are quite affordable.  Most of his early cards can be pricy if you are looking for great condition, but otherwise they are quite reasonable for 1950s Topps cards.

Groat spent the majority of his career with the Pirates where he made three All-Star teams and won the 1960 National League MVP, but also appeared for the Cardinals and Phillies during the second half of his career.  Of course, I try to pick up the Cardinals cards, which are all under $5 on Ebay, but still really love to dabble in the 50s Pirates cards.  

2000 Fleer Greats of the Game Dick Groat Autograph

Groat has also been a very good signer, especially for some of the early Greats of the Game and Archives releases.  He has a nice signature and the prices of his autographs are quite reasonable.  Groat also signs while he is at work broadcasting basketball games for the University of Pittsburgh.  While I have several baseball autographs of Groat as a Cardinal and Pirate, I do not own a copy of a Duke Blue Devils autograph.  I am hoping to remedy that missing piece of my collection soon.