Set Appreciation Post #10 - 1995 Emotion XL

The local card shop scene in Raleigh is pretty weak.  There is a card shop that is attached to a gas station in one of the far northern suburbs and there is also one that has been dying shopping mall, but actually just moved to within two miles of my house.  Neither are great for different reasons.  I am not going to hold my breath that it's going to be anything great in a new location.  

About a year ago, I was in the dying mall to pick up a pair of extra slim pants for my son.  I had been sorting out some cards at the time, needed a 5,000 count box for storage, so I stopped into the card shop while I was there.  To my surprise, they had out this huge table of old boxes of cards.  Not really their thing.  As you can imagine, the mall card shop's biggest fault is their pricing, which has always been ridiculously high.  The prices on the boxes weren't terrible all things considered, but the Emotion XL box was marked at $30.  A quick search of Ebay listings told me that I had found the rare mall card shop bargain.  Shocking. 

I bought it.  

These were really cool cards back in the day, so I was pretty excited to open this box of cards.  I started opening up the packs and put a bunch of the cards up on my once award winning, now neglected,  Instagram page.  

I ended up with the complete set, but it was much more of a mixed bag than I remembered it to be.  At some point, I stopped posting pictures of the cards.  Yes, I finished up the set.  I put the completed set in a box and shoved them into my card closet.  I liken this set to an old record or CD that you bought at another point in your life.  It was great music at the time, but you can't make it through the whole thing anymore.  

Like the first half of Pearl Jam's Ten album, or almost every Nas album after Illmatic.  

So, let's take a look at the set.  Here is the base card.  

Honestly, I love the full color picture and the last name and team name on the front.  The odd frame corners are a little bit unnecessary, but it's not like they are ruining the card.  The descriptive word is what has not aged well on these cards.  Yes, it would have been awesome to see something like "'Roider" or "Juiced Up" on a Brady Anderson card, but Driving isn't actually all that bad. 

You will see bad in a minute.  Hold that thought.  

Even the pictures on the back of the card are nice.  The little sentence about the player at the top of the card is pretty fair.  The stat line is small, but kudos for mixing in things like AB/HR and OBP% in the mid 1990s.  The card stock is nice too for the mid 1990s. 

THESE ARE TERRIBLE 

Let's get these cards out of the way first.  I went through all 200 cards in the set and picked out 4 that seemed really bad in retrospect.  For more examples, some I disagree with, check out this SB Nation article which likens this set to "Gas Station Cologne".  

"The Heat"??? What does this even mean?  Bichette has a 130 point split difference between his home and road slugging percentage.  He hit almost 300 career home runs, but less than 100 of them came on the road.  I would have gone with something like "Altitude" or "Low Humidity" for his card.  

Will Clark was a pretty intense guy, but this is just stupid.  Couldn't we just get a card that says "Intense", or maybe someone could have used a thesaurus and found a synonym for the word intense.  Personally, I would have done something to reference his tradition of drinking a post game beer.  

Player nicknames aren't emotions.  Dumb.  This is post White Sox, so I would have gone with "Regressing" or maybe "Declining".  

What's dumber than using a player nickname?  

Using a state nickname.  Luckily no Cardinals players have the phrase "ShowMe" stamped on the front of their cards.  

THESE ARE NOT SO TERRIBLE

So, if you clicked on the link to the SB Nation article above, I am going to go against some of the cards that they ripped on in their write up of the Emotion set.  I am not a SB Nation reader, so I was curious about the age of the author, considering he spent a large chunk of the article ripping the Cal Ripken card.  We were born within a few years of each other, so I am going to dismiss age as a factor in his writing and just say it's ignorance in an otherwise humorous article.  

I will give an equally long rant.  

The word on the Cal Ripken word is "Class".  I am not a Cal Ripken person and I rarely write anything about him on this blog.  I agree with the SB Nation article's assertion that MLB went overboard with Cal Ripken during the mid 1990s.  However, the obsession with Ripken was somewhat warranted and necessary.  

Let's review: 

1. Fans were irked with both the players and owners after the strike in 1994.  Many of the angry fans had promised to stay away from the game.  Baseball is the worst professional sport at selling its superstar players, but they went big on them when the games resumed in 1995 for once,  Ripken was included for an important reason.    

2. Ripken's run at Lou Gehrig's consecutive game streak was the first important event that came up after the strike ended.  I am sure that if there was a player closing in on 3,000 hits, 500 home runs, or 300 wins, that would have been blown up too. 

3. Playing more than 2,000 consecutive games is a legitimately impressive record.  You have to be good enough to start.  Good enough to maintain your starting job over other players.  Healthy enough not to get injured over a 16 year period of time.  It's part talent and part luck, but it's not a record anyone is going to touch anytime soon. 

4. Tell me something bad that Cal Ripken did as a person while he was playing baseball?  ((You can't))

With that being said, as a person who watched a lot of baseball in the 1990s, it's not a stretch to say that Ripken was an important part of bringing disgruntled fans back to the game.  Yes, he was a good player.  Yes he was classy.  Ripken chasing Lou Gehrig during the 1995 season was an important hook that soothed a lot of bad feelings.  

Some other good cards.  

I am going to ignore the word "Precision", and instead focus on the fact that McGwire has a mullet in this picture.   Any McGwire card from the mid 1990s where he has a mullet is an instant winner in my book.  In fact, I am going to add that to my little note pad of future post ideas.  McGwire mullet cards.  

Manny Ramirez always had a great looking swing.  I love the look on his face in this card along with the word "Punishing" that is attached to his card.  I know he's a bit of a lightning rod, so I am not sure if/when he will get into the Hall.  Still a great player though.  

I saw this interview a few years back where someone was talking to Dennis Eckersley.  They brought up blown saves and I instantly thought he was going to start talking about the Kirk Gibson home run in the World Series.  Instead, he starts talking about this Manny Ramirez home run from 1995.  Eckersley threw him a fastball on the inside corner, catcher is not moving his glove in the clip, and Manny hit the ball halfway up the bleachers in Jacobs Field.  

Eckersley is smiling after the home run and says "Wow". 

Last one for the not so terrible section of this post.  

This card also gets torn apart on the SB Nation article, but considering Gwynn was one of the first players to use video to improve his hitting, I think it is a pretty fitting label.  Gwynn is a Hall of Famer based on his statistics, but he's also a very important innovator.  Where would baseball be today without him watching video?  I am sure someone else would have done the same thing at some point, but Gwynn turned video into a popular practice.  

The Best Cardinals Card 

I will go with a former player instead.  The Cardinals cards are decent, but none of them really stood out.  However, you don't get many relief pitchers wearing batting helmets on baseball cards.  Yet, here we are with 1986 National League Rookie of the Year Todd Worrell.  

The Todd Worrell card is also ripped apart in the SB Nation article, but I actually like this card as a Cardinals fan who knows something about his background.  He went to tiny little Biola College, which is apparently in the middle of Los Angeles and was founded by some Presbyterian pastor back in the early 1900s.  It's not an athletic powerhouse, but a Cardinals scout went to one of their games while in town to watch another player.  Worrell played outfield and catcher for the team, but occasionally pitched, mainly as a long reliever.  He threw in the mid 90s as a college position player who didn't really work with a pitching coach.  

Obviously, Worrell did not bat often as a back of the game reliever, but he did register a triple as one of his two Major League hits.  I am sure that players like Worrell, who have experience as a position player, take batting practice every so often.  

The back of the card has the more standard pitcher photos.  I like the one in the background with him finishing his pitch.  Worrell was really tall and had this great downward motion with a low finish at the end of his delivery. 

It's not as cool as the Bob Gibson follow through, but I always thought Worrell looked different.  Max Scherzer does something really similar to this too.  

Best Durham Bulls Player

I am going to ignore the word "Cool" and just focus on the fact that this card has a sweet photo of Braves first baseman Fred McGriff.  He had not actually been on the Durham Bulls at this point in his career.  He did not appear on the Bulls until the end of his career while trying to work his way back up to the Majors with the Rays in 2004.  

McGriff ended up making to Tampa. 

That's cool.   

His career was done by the middle of July in 2004.  

That's not cool.  

Best Non-Cardinal/Non-Durham Bull 

in 1995, what was the best reason to buy some Emotion XL cards? Before Strasburg, Bryce Harper, Kris Bryant, Wander Franco, and whatever other uber prospects who were overvalued by baseball card collectors, there was Hideo Nomo.  People were crazy for his cards.  Non-mania might have been worse to some degree because he was actually pitching in the Majors at the same time people were going crazy over his cards.  I didn't go out of my way to find them, but I still ended up with a few from random sets.  

The "Twisting" tag seems a little weak, maybe "Effectively Wild" would have been better.  I like the picture on the front.  It gives you a little insight into Nomo's pitching motion, but the back is really good.  

Love the picture on the left with Nomo's back.  That's not a side view, that's likely from behind the plate.  

I don't love the description of Nomo's throwing motion as herky jerky.  He paused at two different spots during his delivery.  Lots of pitchers have used a pause mid wind-up to throw off the timing of hitters.  Currently, both Johnny Cueto and Marcus Stroman use a pause.  I believe Marichal used one back in the day.  

How Does It Compare?  

I love the photos.  I like Emotion brand concept on some of the cards, but others do not work for various reasons.  Some of the cards did not age well, others were just not very well thought out, which goes with the gist of the SB Nation article, if you read it.  

Good card stock and photos count for something, but not enough to crack the top half of the sets that I have featured on my Set Appreciation Posts.  

10. 2000 Pacific Paramount Update 

9. 2010 Topps USA Baseball  

8. 2000 UD Ionix 

7. 1995 Emotion XL 

6. 2017 Topps Heritage Minor League

5. 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders 

4. 2001 Fleer EX 

3. 1979 Kellogg's 

2. 2002 Topps Super Teams

1. 1983 Topps 

I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 54 - John Mabry

Mabry worked as a hitting coach for the Cardinals in recent years under the unsuccessful and unpopular Mike Matheny.  He took a lot of flack, maybe rightfully so, about the lack of offense during his time with the club as a coach.  More specifically, the team seemed to lack much power.  Mabry was not exactly know for his power as a player, which likely added to fans criticism of him as a coach.

Manager Mike Marheny, John Mabry.And Billy Mueller all fired from #Stlcards staff

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) July 15, 2018

Cardinals fans rejoiced.  I am not sure if he has found another job as a coach.  

The Cardinals selected Mabry in the 6th Round of 1991 Major League Draft.  He made it through the Minors with little fanfare.  Mabry never put together a great season in the Cardinals system, he was just sort of a solid player who happened to reach the Major League level at a time when the roster was a little thin on talent.  It did not help that All-Star first baseman Gregg Jefferies left the Cardinals for the Phillies.  

Mabry showed up in a few different baseball card products while he was in the Minors, but there were better Cardinals prospects to go after beyond Mabry.  He appeared in an Upper Deck Minors set, also the 1994 Bowman set.  My favorite early Mabry card was his 1994 Score Rookie/Traded card.  Loved the red border on these cards.....

He was more or less a full time player on the 1995 Cardinals.  He frequently started at first base for the team, but also made some appearances in the outfield.  One of Mabry's best attributes as a player was his throwing arm.  The Cardinals had a crowded outfield though with Ray Lankford, Brian Jordan, and Bernard Gilkey taking up the majority of playing time.  

I think there are several 1995 cards that do a good job of summarizing Mabry's offense skills.  

A Collector's Choice card with a picture of Mabry throwing the bat.  He did hit over .300 in 1995, which is something positive.  Mabry also came in fourth in the Rookie of the Year voting.  

Look at that check swing.  Mabry also only hit 5 home runs, which seems borderline criminal for a corner infielder.  His slugging percentage was .405, which sadly ranked just behind the aforementioned starting outfielders.  He often occupied important places in the line-up, but probably would have been a seventh or eighth place hitter in many other lineups.  

One of his highlights from 1995 was a fake bunt walk off hit against the Cubs.  

If you want to understand how bland and boring Mabry was a player, I think it is best exemplified by his Emotion card from 1995.  These cards had adjectives stamped on the side of the player's picture which was a description of their style of play.  Mabry's word.....

Adroit, meaning skillful, is a way of saying he shows up and he puts his jersey on the correct way.  I am not exactly sure in what way Mabry showed that he was adroit.  Really, it probably made people go grab a dictionary or thesaurus.  

Seriously, he looked nice on a card or two.  Like his Flair.....

That's a good look for Mabry.  He just hit a single.  

John Mabry's best season was probably 1996.  He just missed hitting .300, had 13 home runs, 30 doubles, and drove in 74 runs.  In the Postseason, he hit .300 against the Padres in the Divisional Series and .261 against the Braves in the National League Championship Series.  Mabry also had his best baseball card made, which appeared in the 1996 Leaf Signature product.  

Mabry has some oddball autographs from early in his career, but this is his best autographed card available.  Probably his best card overall too.  I am not a huge fan, if you could not tell, and if I did not need the other cards in the post to complete sets in my collection, this would likely be one of my only Mabry cards.  

There were a few cards of Mabry during the 1997 and 1998 seasons, but his role on the club was rightfully diminished after the team signed Ron Gant and traded for Mark McGwire.  The two moves made it hard for him to find playing time as an outfielder or on the infield.  The Cardinals played around with making him a third baseman, but that did not work out well.  

My favorite 1997 card of Mabry was his Stadium Club.  He's fielding in this picture, but I like the action shot in Wrigley against the Cubs.  That park always makes for a great baseball card backdrop.  Having the Cubs player being Ryne Sandberg also probably helps too.  Great photo, exactly what you would expect out of a Stadium Club card.  

Mabry was non-tendered by the Cardinals after the 1997 season and ended up playing for the Mariners in 1998.  He still had a few cards with the Cardinals in 1998 though.  My favorite is his Topps card, which shows him fielding a ground ball at first base.  

The rest of Mabry's career was spent on the bench bouncing around the league.  There is always space for an extra left handed bat.  Mabry would reappear for the 2001, 2004, and 2005 Cardinals teams.  In between he played for the Mariners, Padres, Marlins, Phillies, A's, Cubs, and Rockies.  There were not a ton of baseball cards to commemorate his second and third stints with the Cardinals.  Those that were made were rather.......

boring.  Sort of fitting.  

I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 37 - Tom Pagnozzi

The Cardinals have had a pretty good string of defensive catchers dating all the way back to the 1980s.  Over the last 30 years, the Cardinals catchers have won 14 of the National League's Gold Glove Awards.  Many of those belong to Yadier Molina, but two of his predecessors also won a few Gold Gloves too.

Mike Matheny actually was the last starting catcher the team employed before Molina, and took home a few Gold Glove Awards with his first coming in 2000.  There were a few years in the late 1990s when the team cycled through a few different catchers, but for the majority of the decade the catching duties were handled by Tom Pagnozzi.

Pagnozzi was slow and pudgy, did not hit much some years, but he was always a very good defensive catcher.  He won a total of three Gold Gloves and has some great defensive stats to back up his awards.  Not just someone who won an award because of his reputation as a good defender.  There was a season he led the National League in defensive WAR, several where he finished near the top, several seasons with almost 50% of base runners caught, etc.

Pagnozzi also had some nice baseball cards over the years.  There is always some player on every team who always ends up with really nice cards in spite of the fact that they are not necessarily a name player.  You'd think that there were be some more time spent on Ozzie Smith or Mark McGwire, or possibly we could get good cards of the majority of players.

Maybe.

I am going to share more than the usual three cards for this post.  The good Pagnozzi cards show him playing defense, but my favorite card of the former Cardinals catcher has to be his 1995 Pinnacle card where he is arguing with an umpire......

There are not a ton of cards made with players and umpires arguing.  The card also has a really old picture on the front.  Pagnozzi is clearly wearing one of the polyster uniforms that the Cardinals wore in the 1980s and early 1990s.  The team ditched these uniforms after the 1991 season.  Mind you, Pagnozzi actually came up with the Cardinals in the late 1980s and was Tony Pena's backup for several seasons.  Even played in the 1987 World Series, so this card has a picture that is potentially seven or eight years old from the time it was printed.  If I had a cool picture of a player arguing with an umpire I would throw it on a baseball card too, even if it was older.

A few nice Stadium Clubs.

This his 1996 card from that set.  Another photo that you do not see too often on baseball cards, catchers running down foul balls around the back stop and netting.  I am pretty sure that Pagnozzi caught this ball and is turning to check on a base runner.  The fans in the stands do not seem to be moving either, which would likely happen if the ball was over the netting.  The old guy in the Rockies hat is calling the batter out.  

This is his 1995 Stadium Club.  Nice photo of him throwing, guessing a bunt or something hit in front of the plate.  Good early 1990s Busch Stadium background too with the blue wall and astroturf.

Last Stadium Club.

Always fun to see a slow catcher get on base on a ball hit on the infield.  Pretty certain that the Giants first baseman, not Will Clark, has missed the ball here.  I also like that Pagnozzi is off the ground.  Does not seem like the type of guy who would have any sort of leaping ability, but here we are.....

I had fun finding these cards of Pagnozzi, so you are getting a few more.  

Favorite Topps card.  Again, kind of a unique picture you do not see often on a baseball card.  

Last base card.  

I don't even remember this card being made, and I have a ton of these Emotion XL cards.  Gritty is such a catcher word, or maybe a backup middle infielder.  Pagnozzi is definitely "gritty".   This was only a 200 card set, a little surprised that Fleer would even include Pagnozzi.  I'd tip my cap to your set designers for adding him to the checklist, but your company went bankrupt awhile ago.  

Last card.  If you had to own one Tom Pagnozzi card it should be this one.  There are some pretty nice Cardinals cards in the 1996 Leaf Signature Series autographs, along with several players who were only around the team for a short time.  Cards of Rick Honeycutt and Mike Gallego are in a Cardinals uniform in that set, but they are not really Cardinals players.  Brian Jordan, Mabry, and Pagnozzi are much better cards if you are truly looking for a Cardinals card.  

I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 27 - Alan Benes

The better of the two Benes brothers who pitched in the Majors.  Well, it was shaping up that way until his shoulder fell off.  His first full season in 1996 was fairly ho hum with 13 wins and an ERA of nearly 5.  Then there was 1997.  His record was only 9-9 through the beginning of July, with ERA of 2.89, and 3.5 WAR.  At the time he went on the disabled list, he never returned that season, his numbers were right in line with pitchers like Kevin Brown, Curt Schilling, and Tom Glavine.

Not the top tier with Maddux and Pedro during that 1997 season, but a very very good pitcher.  Mind you he was only 25 and his numbers had been trending up to this point in his career prior to the injury.  Could the first half of the 1997 season have been a complete fluke?  Sure, but I tend to think that he was headed that direction.  Not a stretch to say that the numbers put up by Alan Benes in 1997 were better than anything posted by Andy in his 14 years in the Majors.

The Cardinals drafted Alan Benes out of Creighton in the first round of the 1993 Draft.  He was a pretty highly regarded draft pick and immediately made his way through the Minor Leagues.

He had baseball cards almost right away too.  Like all mid 1990s prospects, he had a bunch of cards in Bowman products, but I actually liked his Upper Deck cards from that era better.  Benes was in both the 1994 and 1995 Upper Deck base sets.

He was in the 1994 set as a Top Prospect.

A lot of these cards were draft picks from 1993, it might have been all, did not do that much homework on the checklist.  When I think of these Upper Deck prospect cards, I always remember the Billy Wagner rookie.  He was taken a few picks in front of Benes in that draft.  The Benes card kind of sticks out because of the uniform.  I was never quite sure where the good people at Upper Deck took this photo, but that Cardinals uniform is straight out of the 1980s.

It could be that this card was made at some sort of photo shoot, or if they took it while he playing for a Minor League team that wore the old polyester Cardinals uniforms.  I found a Dmitri Young card from 1994 where he is playing for the St. Petersburg Cardinals.....

and wearing an old polyester style Cardinals uniform.  Young played for the Cardinals A Ball team in 1993, Benes played there in the early parts of 1994.  The Benes card is a high number, second series later release, so it would have given Upper Deck time to have taken the picture after the season started.  I would lean that direction for the picture.  

Benes was also in the 1995 Upper Deck set as a top prospect.  

They use pictures of him in the polyester uniform again, even though he was in Double A and Triple A during the first parts of the 1995 season.  He actually pitched a few games for the Cardinals towards the end of that season.  I hate recycled pictures, and the effort on this card seems really low when you take into account that his 1995 Upper Deck Minor League card had an updated photo of Benes playing for the Arkansas Travelers.  They would have been the Cardinals Double A team at that point.

I still like the blue background on the 1995 Upper Deck card.  I always prefer to see what is actually happening in the picture when it's an action shot, but this backdrop seems like a good Upper Deck card design element from the mid 1990s.  

Is this a game shot, or is he throwing in the bullpen?  You will never know.  

Before we get to the Major League cards of Benes, I would like to put up one more Minor League card of sorts.  Upper Deck had some Arizona Fall League cards in their Collectors Choice product in 1996.....

which had an Alan Benes card.  There are some other Arizona Fall League cards which have been floating around in more recent sets, but the Minor League players in that league now just wear their team's Major League uniform with a Fall League hat.  I like these mid 1990s cards when the Fall League teams had there own uniforms.  

Not sure when the unis switched over, but I am sure it was some cost saving move.

Benes did not have a ton of cards once he reached the Majors, mainly because he had a major shoulder injury towards the end of the 1997 season and was never quite the same pitcher after that year.  I have it narrowed it down to three or four cards.  

First up is my favorite card of Benes, which is 1997 Topps base card.

Speaking of recycled pictures, if you look up the other Alan Benes cards that Topps made in 1997 they are either this picture, or a photo that was taken from this moment in whatever game he is pitching in here.  Why do I like this picture?

I like the background of the picture.  It's a nice action shot too, but the Cardinals had spent the first half of the 1990s with an astroturf field and blue walls in Busch Stadium.

It's how Busch Stadium looked during my childhood through my years in high school.  After the Rams played a few games there during the fall of 1995, the playing surface was changed over to grass and the outfield walls were painted green.  

I have good memories of the blue walled, astroturfed field of the 1980s and early 1990s, but the green grass and green walls were a nicer place to watch baseball.  The 1997 baseball cards were the first year where you could find a plentiful number of Cardinals with the green fixings of Busch Stadium in the background.  I like that on this Benes card.

A few more classics from the mid 1990s....

The Emotion XL cards were always pretty cool cards.  Sometimes I could clearly see why the cards had a certain emotion printed on the side, other times not.  Alan Benes is excited?  He looked this way.....

almost every time that he threw......

a pitch.  

Good effort though and I still like these cards.  You cannot get them all right, but I am just excited that a smaller set from the mid 1990s had a Cardinals player in it outside of Ray Lankford, Ron Gant, or Dennis Eckersley.  Did not get many Alan Benes cards in these types of sets.  

Next.  

Another classic 1990s set.  Still trying to figure out what the Crusades have to do with baseball cards, but the design is really nice.  Sad story behind this card.  A few years ago this guy with basically everyone of these Crusade cards, all of the color variations, was dumping them all on Ebay.  I tried buying the Lankford red variation, a print run of just 25 cards, but the card ended at almost $200.  I lost, but I won this Alan Benes card.  

Last one.  

Alan Benes does have an autographed card in the 1997 Donruss Signature set.  It's not very hard to find and is also very affordable.  For whatever reason, Benes signed all of his cards across his picture rather than the space for the autograph that was provided at the bottom of the card.  There were not many players who missed the memo on where to sign these cards, but curiously three of them were on the Cardinals at some point during their career.  Benes from above.  

Edagr Renteria also signed his picture, as did Larry Walker.  

Benes did pitch after sitting out the 1998 season recovering from his shoulder injury.  Between 1999 and 2003 he only managed to pitch in roughly 60 games.  He was on the Cardinals until the 2001 season when he became a free agent and signed with the Cubs.  Benes would also pitch briefly with the Rangers and tried a comeback with the Cardinals in both 2004 and 2005.  Neither was successful.  

You can find an occasional Benes card from the later years of his career, but they are rather sparse,

although its nice that Topps made a few cards of a player who could have been great, minus the injuries, even though he did not ever live up to his potential.  

My Top 50 Players On Cardboard-#39 Barry Larkin

My Top 50 Players On Cardboard
#39
Barry Larkin

1987 Fleer Barry Larkin

Hobby Impact-
Larkin seems like he missed out a little bit by beginning his career in the prime of Ozzie Smith's career. It seems like a lot of people warmed up to Barry Larkin cards after he had been playing for a decade, but he still pulls a lot of weight with his cards.  First, his rookie cards have good company in the 1987 sets which also feature other bigs stars of the nineties like Maddux and Bonds.  Not the most expensive card in those sets, but definitely important to have a good clean copy of the Larkin card if you want to claim your set is truly complete.

His autographs sell very well.  Larkin has been a little bit stingier with his autographs then many of the stars from his era which has pushed the price and competition on bidding and pricing.  Older inserts of Larkin also sell very well and often pusher high because of demand and popularity.  Whatever Beckett says you can throw it out the window at times with Larkin cards.  While Larkin was slow to warm-up nationally, Reds fans have always viewed him as the best player from his generation of the team and they do not miss out on many of his cards.

On The Field Impact-
As stated before, Larkin was the best player on the Reds for a long run.  Sure, the Reds had Eric Davis at the beginning of his career and the team had Ken Griffey Jr. towards the end of his career, but Larkin was always better than the other good players on the Reds.  Strictly looking at awards, Larkin put up an MVP award in 1995, won a couple of Gold Gloves (would have won more without Ozzie), and also claimed roughly ten Silver Slugger Awards.

Larkin was always a really good shortstop defensively, but was also a top tier offensive player for a middle infielder.  In my opinion, a better defender than a player like Derek Jeter and a better hitter than Ozzie Smith.  Although, I would argue that he is probably much closer to Jeter offensively than most people would probably admit.  Larkin's highest OPS+ season of 155 is higher than any season posted by Derek Jeter.  In fact, for his career Jeter and Larkin are within a point of each other in that statistical category.  The separator between the two for me however, is the fact that Larkin has a higher career dWAR than Jeter who has a negative rating for his career.

The JAWS rating system puts him as the thirteenth best shortstop of all-time immediately behind Jeter and several spots behind Ozzie Smith.  Here's a look at Larkin in action:



Favorite Card:
Larkin has had some pretty cool cards over the years.  A part of me wants to put a card like his 1987 Topps in this space, but everyone has seen that.  Not interesting.  So, I will go with a bit of a dark horse.

1995 Emotion Barry Larkin

I've always rather liked this card.  The Emotion set was released once or twice in the mid 90s and featured close up, almost studio like, pictures of players with a descriptive word.  Cool picture of Larkin in his prime with the red Reds jersey, not black.