"There is a shortage of Roger Maris cards in a Cardinals uniform, it would be a shame to pass up this card"

I have written about the 2002 Topps Super Teams set a few times in this space. It's one of my favorite modern baseball card sets that focuses on players and teams from yesteryear. In this case, 10 different teams from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The 1967 Cardinals who won the World Series against the Boston Red Sox make an appearance in the set. 

I own most of the Cardinals cards in the set. At least the base cards, shiny parallel cards, and the autographs. My favorite is my Bob Gibson autograph with a piece of a seat from old Busch Stadium. 

Very nice.  

While I have all the autographs and base cards and shiny parallel cards, I was still missing one of the relic cards. If you are a long-time reader, you know I have an aversion to the majority of relic cards out there. They rarely appear here and I have made my peace with the fact that the authenticity of the relics is often dubious.  

Well, I am going to set that aside, because I found that final missing relic card, which belonged to the right-fielder on the 1967 Cardinals, Roger Maris. You might remember Roger from the New York Yankees.  

Roger spent the final two years of his career with the Cardinals. He was more of a complimentary piece at that point in his career, as the Cardinals had Orland Cepeda, Lou Brock, Curt Flood, and Tim McCarver.  Bob Gibson and Steve Carlton too. Maris was a good defensive outfielder and a nice left-handed bat to stick behind Cepeda.  

There are not many modern cards of Maris shown as a Cardinal. I understand that his best year's were with the Yankees, but that fan base was also pretty terrible in their treatment of him both before and after his career. Thrilled to add a nice Maris card to the collection in a Cardinals uniform. 

Seat relics are cool, right?  

Here is the back of the card.  

It's the less grand version of the "CONGRATULATIONS" message that frequents so many of today's autographs and relics. I forgot about the old Topps authentication stickers, which is to the right of Roger's head. I wonder if that website is still live?  

Anyway, great card, happy to add it to the collection.  

Set Appreciation Post #3 - 2002 Topps Super Teams

No music this week.  

Basic Design 

I really like the concept for this product, and I am kind of bummed out that Topps only put this out once.  The set features players from 11 different World Series winning teams starting with the 1954 New York Giants, and ending with the 1986 New York Mets.  In between there are cards for the 1955 Dodgers, 1957 Braves, 1960 Pirates, 1961 Yankees, 1967 Cardinals, 1969 Mets, 1970 Orioles, and the 1974 A's.  

I am not going to scan cards from every team, but the fact that there are only a few teams represented in the set probably limited the appeal of this product.  As a Cardinals fan, living in St. Louis when this was released, I was all for owning some cards of the 1967 Cardinals.  

So, here is the quick run down.  

Each team has roughly 15 cards in the set.  Each team features one manager card, roughly a dozen base player cards, a World Series MVP card, and a team card.  Here's a look at each.  

The manager card is the first in each of the 11 team sets within Super Teams.  I am glad that Topps put the manager cards in here.  There are some great names here, including a few Hall of Famers.  The design of the manager card is roughly the same as the player card outside the obvious "MANAGER" stamp across the top.  

I also love that Topps used the time appropriate logos on the bottom of the card.  

The card backs are generally the same.  The player cards have stats, which you will see in a moment.  My only complaint about this set, leaning heavily on the appreciation in the post this week, is the location of the card number.  It's a little weird off to the bottom left.  

Here is the team card.  

I am not sure who the artist was for these pictures (Gardner??), but I really like how they are done.  Each has three or four players on the front with the team name at the bottom of the card.  All of the manager, base, and MVP cards are portrait style, while these team cards are all landscape.  I am a big fan.  

The back of the team card has a little write up about the players in the picture.  If you work at a card company, and you're looking for a way to make a good team card, these are well done.  

The base cards have a decent design, and I really like some of the pictures that Topps used in the set.  The Durocher at the top had a black and white photo, but the cards after the 1955 Dodgers, 95% of the cards have color photos.  

This is a nice card of Roberto Clemente.  Again, I love the little logo on the bottom of the card, which was used by the Pirates in 1960.  The card back.....

The base cards all have a little blurb about the player, along with their stat line from that season, and the career stat line.  I like this card back.  I am going to ignore the weird placement of the card number 50 on the side of the card.  The write up on the base cards gives a little bit of information about the player from the championship season, and their overall career.  

Last one.  

Each team set features a World Series MVP card.  The front has the red, white, and blue script at the top.  The biggest difference is the content on the back of the card.  

The World Series MVP card for each team has a write up specifically about the player's performance during that World Series.  The stat line also only features their numbers from the World Series.  

Favorite Former Durham Player 

There is not a former Durham Bulls player in here, so I am going to share the card of someone with a loose connection to a former Durham Bulls player.  Here is the card......

Story time.  

This is Fred Haney, the manager of the 1957 Milwaukee Braves World Series team.  He took over a Braves team that featured a lineup a deep lineup anchored around Hall of Famers Hank Aaron and Eddie Matthews.  The Braves had actually been a very good team throughout the mid 1950s, prior to Haney taking over as the manager.  

Rewind to 1952.  The Braves were a seventh place team.  They fired their manager mid-season and hired former Cubs manager Charlie Grimm.  He was the last manager to get the Cubs into the World Series before 2016.  Grimm also played for the Durham Bulls prior to a long productive career with the Cubs.  

Non-set card.  

I've written about Charlie Grim before.  He really under appreciated.  What did Charlie do?  

Grimm's first moves as the Braves manager were to dump the older players on the roster in favor of younger players whom he saw as more talented.  A 20 year old Eddie Matthews was given the starting third base job.  In 1953, he got rid of more old players at the end of their career and gave 20 somethings Del Crandall and Joe Adcock the starting catcher and first base jobs.  Probably his best move came in 1954 when he opened up a starting outfield job for Hank Aaron.  

Grimm finished in second place a few too many seasons in a row, so he was fired in 1956.  While Grimm did not manage the 1957 Braves, but his finger prints are all over the roster.  

Favorite Cardinals Card 

There were autographs and inserts in this set too.  The autographs are all on card, and worth your time to find if you are a fan of the teams featured in this set.  I like the Cardinals cards in the base set, but autographs are nice too.  A ways back, I went out and found a really nice copy of an autograph of Bob Gibson.  

I posted this a few years back, so I am going to reuse that scan.  

That was a few scanners ago.  

I don't love relic cards, but this was way too good of a card to pass up.  

Favorite Non-Cardinals Card 

The Super Team set is loaded with all sorts of Hall of Famers, so it feels like a tough task to pick out one single great non-Cardinals card.  Like the previous two Set Appreciation posts, I am going with style over any sort of substance.  

Look at this picture.   

In a set full of nice portrait style photographs, I am picking out Rollie Fingers because of the facial hair.  I didn't scan the back of the card, so you can't look at his stats from the Series.  Rollie Fingers pitched 9 innings in 4 games, which was good for 1 win and 2 saves.  Mariano Rivera never pitched that many innings in a single Postseason Series.  

So How Does It Rank?  

This was a tough call.  That Ionix set from last week is still dead last.  I had to go back and re-read my 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders set post.  Here is what I am going with....

3. 2000 U.D. Ionix 

2. 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders 

1. 2002 Topps Super Teams 

Friday Five: Top 5 Sets From 2002

5. Topps Total- There were two mega sets issued during the 2002 summer: Topps Total and Upper Deck 40 man.  The boxes of Total were pretty cheap, but with a total of 990 cards collectors needed several boxes and loads of patience to assemble this set.  However, even if you are not into putting together this gigantic set, it's still a plus for team collectors and individual player collectors.  There are dozens of players in this set that do not appear in other sets and honestly, where else can you find a set with 30 players from your favorite team?  Not many Mark Little cards floating around, but he was on the 1998 Cardinals which makes it a keeper.

4. Upper Deck Vintage- If Upper Deck had decided to rehash the wrong Topps set and pass it off as a Vintage set I would have gladly walked the other way.  However, a rehash of the 1971 Topps set is always worth your time and effort.  These cards were really cool with 1971 players and they are also really cool with 2002 players.  The set is not too big and not too difficult to find at low prices.  I loved putting this set together and went through and picked up a lot of the insert sets too.  There are relic cards and autographs too, but you might actually have to spend time and money to land them.  Overall a really good set.

3.  Topps Pristine- I got a bunch of these when they first came out and just remember being completely annoyed at the fact that there was a pack of cards inside another pack of cards.  It reminded me a little bit of the 2001 Donruss cards with the "retro" packs stuffed inside of the regular packs.  Over the years I seem to have ended up with a whole lot of these cards in my collection.  A big chunk of the base set, a ton of the transparent autographs, and some of the encased rookie cards.  For me, the autographs are the real stars of the show.  The signatures are mainly younger players from that era, but that includes nice autographs from Pujols and Jimmy Rollins.  If nothing else, these are fun cards to look at and worth a little bit of your time and money to track down a few.

2.  Topps Super Teams- This was a fun little set and flies under the radar a little too often.  The set focuses on 11 different World Series winning teams and features cards of their key players and manager.  There are foil parallels, autographs, and relic cards too.  Not the most popular set, but it's one of my favorites from this year.  A lot of good names from good teams, cool pictures, and the autographs are aren't too expensive either.  I cannot remember the last time I saw a complete set floating around.....

1.  Topps Heritage- Based on the 1953 Topps set this is the second rehash set to appear in my list this week.  However, Topps rehashing their own card design in a product that is one of the most popular releases annually versus whatever Upper Deck did with the 1971 Topps set (it's beautiful) is a completely different story.  I liken the Topps Heritage sets to Godfather Part 2 with the original design of these cards being the original Godfather.  I almost liked this set better than the 2001 Topps Heritage set for several reasons.  It has the short prints and logo variations and night card variations and everything that goes into a good recreation of the 1953 Topps set, but the extras that come with a modern baseball card set were a little bit more achievable in this set.  I am still looking for the Edmonds autograph....one day.