'No Sweat' Love, Rance

Everybody can just CHILL OUT cause I got some Rance Mulliniks for that a$$.

 Rance Mullinks, 1988 Bowman

Here is Rance Mulliniks. This is vintage Bowman Rance, so if you want to know how many triples he had against the Royals (0) in 1988 as opposed to the Rangers (0), just flip the card over, homeboy. But I don't recommend doing so because:

I feel like the flesh-holed, mock long-sleeve practice jersey was made specifically with Rance Mulliniks in mind. You think he's sweating in that thing? I don't think so, homeskillet. Probably because he's only posing for a picture and not actually playing, and because it's spring time, and because of the breathable flesh holes, and also because he's Rance Mulliniks.

Rance Mulliniks didn't sweat the small stuff when he had 972 hits from 1977-1992. Also when his manager was like, "Lance, yer battin' for Johnson, git off yer kiester!" Lance was like, "No sweat. My name is Rance though."

According to Wikipedia, In 1984 he ("he" meaning Rance Mulliniks, the person I am talking about here, not a different person) was named to Sports Illustrated's Dream Team as a utility infielder. Listen, I'm not gonna sit here and poke fun at being named to a dream team of utility infielders. We're talking about .00000000001 percent of the general population that's even talented enough to be awarded such an honor, homeslice. Utility infielders are important. Very important. The most important, arguably. It's like, why don't they just make the entire airplane out of utility infielders?

Seriously though. Here is my own personal dream team of utility infielders (it should be noted that in my dream all the utility infielders are wearing Ronald Reagan masks for some reason and they are all sitting on the bench waiting to get into the game, which never happens because my alarm went off):

-Rance Mulliniks
-Luis Sojo
-That guy whathisname from the Braves or whatever
-Rance Mulliniks again

I'll go to bat that squad any day, homegirl. J/k I wouldn't do that. But still.

Get Your Squint On

Ed Romero, 1990 Bowman

GUYS THIS IS THE CARD THAT GOT ME INTO COLLECTING BASEBALL CARDS.

ED ROMERO STANDING AROUND.

LIKE A PIMP.

"C'MON MIKE. COLLECT CARDS LIKE THIS. IT'S EXCITING!" IS WHAT HE IS TELLING ME WITH HIS EYES.

CHECK OUT THE BOWMAN DETAIL.

ROCKIN' THE TIGHT RAINBOW BORDER WITH THE MINISCULE WORDS, GET AT ME, DOG.

EVERY BOWMAN CARD EVERY MADE WAS EXACTLY LIKE THIS.

"KILL 'EM WITH CONSISTENCY." -- BOWMAN

"AND BOREDOM." -- CRITICS

PFFT AIN'T TRYING TO HEAR DAT!

YOU THOUGHT THE FRONT WAS DOPE? CHECK OUT THE BIZ-ACK, PLAYA:

MICROSOFT EXCEL SPREADSHEET.

HOLD UP, LEMME GET MY READING GLASSES.

I AM 11, DON'T HAVE ANY.

GET YOUR SQUINT ON!

CHECK IT OUT, ED ROMERO PLAYED THIRD BASE BUT SOMETIMES HE PLAYED SECOND BASE.

WHY NOT PLAY EVERY BASE WHILE YOU'RE AT IT? (JOKE.)

ONE THING THAT'S BEEN BUGGING ME FOR A HOT MINUTE: HOW MANY WALKS DID ED ROMERO HAVE VERSUS THE REDS IN 1989?

NOT APPLICABLE!

NOW I CAN SLEEP.

ED ROMERO SLUGGED .000 VERSUS THE PIRATES IN '89, KEEP IT IN YOUR BACK POCKET FOR TRIVIA SEASON.

THE CARDINALS COULDN'T STOP ED ROMERO, THEY COULD ONLY HOPE TO CONTAIN HIM.

THEY SORT OF CONTAINED HIM.

ED ROMERO'S FULL FIRST NAME IS EDGARDO, NOT EDUARDO AS IS POPULARLY THOUGHT AMONGST ED ROMERO FANS.

I FOUND THAT INFORMATION ELSEWHERE, DIDN'T FIT IN THE CHART.

IN 2007, ROMERO WAS THE FLORIDA MARLINS' MINOR LEAGUE INFIELD COORDINATOR.

WHOSE GONNA COORDINATE THE INFIELD LIKE EDGARDO?

"NOBODY." -- KEITH SWEAT

"HEY SHORTSTOP, PLAY SHORTSTOP!"

"GROUNDSCREW, THIS INFIELD NEEDS MORE DIRT!"

COORDINATE THAT ISH, PLAYA!

LIKE A PIMP.

Cardboard Fenway: 1955 Bowman Frank Sullivan

Cardboard Fenway - #85. 1955 Bowman Frank Sullivan

Can anyone identify this ballpark? The insanely high wall—that's not at Fenway—leaves me baffled. And yes, this is the second card where the player is in his away uniform.

1948-1979 Countdown: #37. 1950 Bowman

These rankings appear a bit random, don't they? Like, who in their right mind would list this set so low? And lower than 1973 Topps? Is this some kind of joke?

No, it's not a joke. 1950 Bowman may have nice artwork and no words on the front (propelling the Bowman Mystique), but the checklist is missing Joe DiMaggio and Stan Musial and, for the era, has a relatively weak rookie class (lead by Don Newcombe, Ozark Ike, and Roy Sievers). And in a few instances, Bowman used the same artwork better in another set (case in point, the same shot of Ted Williams was used much more effectively in the long rectangle format of the following year).

This was the only year when Bowman was the only game in town, and they didn't disappoint. It was the largest checklist the company had ever done, the cards are nice to look at and though the rookie class isn't spectacular, there are a host of stars from the Fifties who make their first cardboard appearance.

Best of the Set
The checklist has a whole handful of established stars, including Ted Williams (his first with Bowman), Jackie Robinson, Warren Spahn, Bob Feller, and Roy Campanella. But for my money (and I don't have enough to afford this set), I'm going with Yogi Berra (#46). Those post-war sets liked to show catchers in mid-motion, decked out in their gear and pads, and gazing skyward for a pretend foul pop.

And though Yogi's still padded up, his action looks and feels much more natural. It's a much different version of the star, one that's almost all but forgotten: No Nonsense Berra (as opposed to Whimsical, Fun-Loving Yogi). Needless to say, this card would make a terrific poster. And for some reason it reminds me of this painting.

1990 – 1994 Countdown: #3. 1992 Bowman

Every sport has at least one: a set with such a high quotient of rookie superstars that it’s not even fair comparing it to others. Basketball has three entries, simply because cards weren’t made all that often: 1957-58 Topps, 1961-62 Fleer and 1986-87 Fleer. Only in the last one were there a large number of actual rookie superstars, not just players enjoying their first card. In football, there are 1984 Topps, 1986 Topps and 1989 Score. Hockey’s got 1951-52 Parkhurst and 1980-81 OPC & Topps.

Baseball’s littered with sets like this: 1949 Leaf and 1952, 1954, 1965, 1975, 1985 and 1987 Topps come immediately to mind. And of course there are others, like 1992 Bowman. As an exercise of mental dexterity, I’m going to list the names of ten players who appeared in ’92 Bowman and I want you to tell me which ones had their rookie appear in another set. Ready?

Derek Lowe
Pedro Martinez
Jeffrey Hammonds
Mike Hampton
Manny Ramirez (two cards in the set!)
Carlos Delgado
Mariano Rivera
Mike Piazza
Trevor Hoffman
Garret Anderson

Only Martinez, Piazza, Hammonds and Ramirez had rookies in other sets. Now I want you to tell me if that mattered.

Of course it didn’t. 1992 Bowman was, is and always will be the muthafuckin’ set for early-Nineties rookies, and I’ll be damned if it mattered that Pedro Martinez’s only true rookie wasn’t part of it (it came in 1991 Upper Deck Final Edition). If you were a young player—and your name wasn’t Shawn Green—your rookie, for all intents and purposes, was in this set.

This was easily the biggest thing in the hobby in 1992. No other set even came close: ’92 was an off-year for the blossoming ‘premium’ craze as Leaf, Ultra, Stadium Club and Studio put out so-so sets. Only Pinnacle (Score’s foray into higher quality) made its debut. In other words, it was a perfect time for a below-the-radar set like this to take hold.

And thanks in part to a handful of short-printed cards, Bowman’s leap into foil (no more simple, thread-bare gold foil relegated to a corner icon, as in 1991) and at least three distinct rookie waves, it’s never had to loosen its grip.

As I mentioned in a previous post, 1992 was the most popular of the early Nineties Bowman sets. But was it the most deserving of the attention? I happen to like 1991 more, but that set doesn’t bring as much to the table as ’92.

1992 is in the top five of the early decade not just because it’s a rookie juggernaut. It’s in there because of the foil, the short prints and the general overhaul Topps did on Bowman between 1991 and 1992.

It’s fair to say that 1991 Bowman wasn’t much to look at. Actually, if we’re more truthful, the last time Bowman had released a good-looking set was 1955. Taking that into account, Topps printed 1992’s set on coated white stock with a bright action shot and thick white borders on the front and a color headshot on the back. All together it wasn’t a bad design; you could almost even call it attractive. In fact, you probably wouldn’t know the average card was a Bowman were it not for the completely indecipherable block of statistics on the back, the brand’s trademark inclusion.

The funny thing about this set is that it is one of the few modern-era sets that’s as relevant today as the day it was released. Simply put, every player of the last generation—regardless of his star quality—had a card in this set. Okay, at least a number of them did. And it’s not even that 1992 had such a great rookie class. It’s that this set managed to include a lot of guys years before they showed up in other brands. Take Derek Lowe, for instance. After his Bowman card in 1992, he doesn’t show up in another brand (besides Bowman) until Donruss 1998. Granted, he didn’t make the majors until 1997, but that was Bowman’s thing: get a guy early, way before the competition.

1990 - 1994 Countdown: #6. 1991 Bowman

Back before card manufacturers had (somewhat) strict rules about who and who was not eligible for a rookie card, anybody was pretty much fair game. And coupled with the vast hype focused by the media and collectors on the rookie bubble as part of the hobby explosion in the early Nineties, it was only a matter of time before a manufacturer capitalized on the situation. Enter 1991 Bowman.

More so than any set before it, Bowman’s 1991 release was all about rookie cards. Legitimate rookies, guys who would never set foot on a major league diamond—like I said before: everybody was fair game, and everybody was included.


It wasn’t a bad thing for a set like this to exist. For one thing, it set up a nice working model for 1992 Bowman (as classic and hobby-defining a set as there is). It also made a relatively strong rookie class and made it stronger, not by adding more quality rookies but adding more rookies and career minor leaguers in general. It’s a ‘phonebook’ set: if you made it to Spring Training, you probably had a Bowman card. It’s also a ‘sidelines’ set: a sea of faces, crouches, poses and the odd throwback painted card. Few and far between are actual cards that feature what could be considered ‘action’ shots: out of a 704-card checklist, I only found only 189 (the best being of Cal Ripken’s back, excuse me, I mean Junior Ortiz). That’s less than 30% of the set. Action shots comprise almost 100% of brand flagship sets today. It’s funny how trends die out and others take hold.

Anyway, this set reminds me of an essay I wrote last August that addressed the idea of why baseball cards exist. If my thesis has some merit—that cards exist to validate the hard work minor leaguers put in to make the big leagues—then 1991 Bowman exists so that guys like Pat Lennon can get a major league rookie card. Think of it this way: just because only seven of the 12 guys at the beginning of this article ever made it to the major leagues doesn’t mean the others didn’t try just as hard. More often than not, guys just don't get there, or they're the odd man out if and when they do make it (just ask Pat Lennon). Only Sean Cheetham failed to have any semblance of a baseball career: the other 11 combined to tally service in 3,365 minor and 185 major league games.

As I mentioned above, this set was blessed with a strong rookie class (beyond just those on their ways to long minor league careers), made stronger because with no insert sets to speak of, there was nowhere for them to hide but amongst their team set. Rookies of guys either destined for the Hall of Fame or the Veterans Committee ballot like Chipper Jones, Jeff Bagwell, Jim Thome, Ivan Rodriguez, Mike Mussina, Javy Lopez, Kenny Lofton, Tim Salmon and Luis Gonzalez and other guys like Rondell White, Reggie Sanders, Ryan Klesko, Raul Mondesi (yeaahhh boy-eee!), Mike Lieberthal, Jeromy Burnitz, Roberto “Father Time” Hernandez, Bret Boone, Jeff Conine, a flameout like Todd Van Poppel and the colossal jerk Carl “Someday I’ll Head-butt an Umpire” Everett; all of them got their start in 1991 Bowman. This is not to say that other sets didn't feature one or most of these guys as well, but all of them together in a one-series regular set? Bowman was your only option.

Don’t get me wrong. There were problems with this set. The design was an afterthought, the backs made no sense, the photography was at best uninspired and at worst terrible and as I said, it was both a ‘sidelines’ and a ‘phonebook’ set. But so what? The checklist was incredible. And it had a purpose: to include not just everybody, not even just everybody who was anybody--but everybody who was everybody, everybody who was anybody and everybody who was never going to be anybody. And that’s the very reason baseball cards exist.

1990 - 1994 Countdown: #40 1993 Bowman

40. 1993 Bowman
I’ve been trying to come up with a metaphor to help better my understanding of how this set fits in the early Nineties Bowman lineage. The best that I’ve been able to come up with is that 1991 Bowman is John Lennon, 1992 is Paul McCartney, and 1993 is George Harrison (and if we follow this line of thinking, 1990 Bowman is Ringo Starr and 1989–Bowman’s mostly forgettable re-introduction–is Stu Sutcliffe).

As a collector at the time, 1989 Bowman was a dud of a set. The nostalgia of larger cards was lost on me (was this truly the first ‘Heritage’ set?), and my ten-year-old brain couldn’t make heads or tails of the statistical grid on the backs. And yet, though it didn’t fit in the hobby’s landscape then and stands out as a sore thumb today, the Bowman brand wouldn’t be the same today without it.

It’s very clear to the casual observer that they took a step back after 1989 bombed and shifted the brand’s focus to rookies for 1990 (Starr). And while that set is fairly uninteresting, it’s loaded with rookies, assuring it inevitable staying power, deserved or not.

Though not as universally popular as the Hobby Titan/McCartney issue in 1992, Bowman really hit its stride in 1991 (Lennon), prompting an endless debate of which is the greater set. Combining just the right mix of minor and major league rookies with a winning design and loads of stars, 1991 felt like a real set, without a hint of the novelty that pervaded the oversized ’89s or the tweening bland puberty that plagued the ’90s.


Like Harrison’s role within The Beatles, 1993’s set is ‘The Quiet Bowman.’ There is plenty within this set that makes it memorable, and you even get the feeling that Bowman was restraining itself a little, even though the released the set in greater quantities than 1992.

With the gentle foil, the understated front-of-card design that took nothing away from the clean photography, not to mention the full-color backs (if still promoting a slightly convoluted system of statistical analysis), and the standout rookies of Pettitte and Jeter, you almost forget that set's overall rookie class is much weaker than years before. The key word there is almost.

The 1990 – 1994 Countdown: 42 - 41

42. 1994 Bowman’s Best
I never collected this set. Not when it first came out, and not any time since. My collection does not have one single card from this set. Chalk it up to lack of interest, I guess. So then why do I have it tucked into the middle of this Countdown? It’s because of my interest (bordering on obsession) with the art of checklisting.

This first edition of Bowman’s Best is a landmark in the way Topps divided the checklist, as well as in card distribution within packs. That they seeded two 90 card sets–red for stars and blue for promising rookies–within the same packs marks the first time in company history (as far as I can tell) that this was done (and that neither was an insert set). It’s a remarkable achievement. I’m not so sure you can say the same thing about the cards themselves.


41. 1994 Finest
In 1993, Topps Finest was something of a pioneer. It was one of, if not the first of the ultra-luxury sets. The checklist was limited to 199, with room only for the upper echelon of players (though guys like Dave Fleming and Mike Devereaux snuck in somehow), not to mention that the quality of the cards was staggering: the backs featured a full color gloss and the fronts resembled pressed beer can art. Everything about the set breathed ‘fine art a la baseball,’ and the quantities available and pack and individual card prices only reinforced that idea. And I haven’t even mentioned Refractors yet.

This background is important because without it, you can’t begin to understand why 1994 Finest was a major letdown. Finest’s debut the year before had got a lot of things right; the bar was set high, but not impossibly so. The limited checklist and quantity available allowed Finest to cater to a higher-end customer, and limiting the number of insert sets down to just the Refractors parallel set—especially in the context of insert mania in the early Nineties—gave the brand a refined air. Packs were expensive, there weren’t that many cards per pack, and the Refractors were scarce. In other words, everything fed off each other to create a perfect storm of collector buzz.

So why didn’t Topps follow the same game plan for 1994? Were they frightened of possibly appearing staid in the overwhelming hobby environment of push-push-push? It’s hard to say. Instead of taking the lead from the previous year, 1994’s Finest was bloated: With a total of 440 base cards—more than twice the amount from the previous year—it became just another ‘premium’ set without much substance.

The 1990 – 1994 Countdown: 45 - 43

Say this in your best Christopher Walken voice: "Guess what? I gotta fever... and the only prescription is more countdown!"


45. 1994 Pinnacle
There are two ways a set or a year could be deemed a Hobby Turning Point. The first is in content, ie rookies, subsets, corrected/uncorrected errors, major stars included, and perhaps the last cards of retiring stars. The second is in the medium and the technology in its presentation. For example, 1981 was a hobby turning point in medium: the hobby went from one manufacturer to three. 1987 provided a hobby turning point in content: it was one of the strongest rookie classes of that particular decade, squarely focusing future hobby attention on the seemingly endless waves of strong young stars.

I bring this up because I’ve been trying to figure out just where 1994 fits in. The year saw Upper Deck’s and Score’s first parallel sets and the first Bowman’s Best set, all of which clearly expanded the hobby landscape in a technical sense (I’m not counting UD’s gold hologram set from 1993, as that was released in factory-set form only). But it also saw the introduction of one of the decade’s defining rookies in Alex Rodriguez, a player who has become so important that all rankings, lists and analysis of sets from his rookie year must be made with his inclusion in mind.

This point sort of contradicts one of the pillars of my thoughts on how to rank a set. One great card does not a great set make; the set should be judged on its entire checklist. A great example of this is between 1986 Topps and 1986 Fleer. That year’s Topps set was iconic, even though it didn’t include a card of Jose Canseco. Fleer, on the other hand, could be best described as Canseco and a pile of commons. In other words, a given set shouldn’t be punished if it doesn’t have the big rookie from a given year.

I’m thinking I might need to amend this rule, simply because in 1986 it didn’t matter quite so much that Topps didn’t have Canseco, because there were so few sets (and Topps had subsets and other cards that Fleer, Donruss, and Sportflics didn’t). But because by 1994 there was so much parity in a hobby landscape of literally scores of sets, it certainly did matter if a given set didn’t include Rodriguez. Accordingly, in a countdown like this, sets without Rodriguez should be given a demerit.

That’s why it pains me that 1994 Pinnacle doesn’t rate higher. This was one of my favorite sets that I couldn’t really afford to collect: Clean, crisp photography on a full-bleed glossy stock, minimal front-of-card graphics and understated black backs. Just a great looking card, not to mention what has quite possibly become my favorite parallel set of all time (narrowly beating out the run of Silver Signatures sets from mid-Nineties Collector’s Choice): The Museum Collection. By championing the use of Dufex, Pinnacle created a gorgeous, shimmering card, and an excellent, poor-man’s stand-in for Topps’ refractors.

Unfortunately, that’s where the niceties end. The checklist seems stale in hindsight (especially without a Rodriguez rookie), with no real deviations for subsets within the base set, complemented by a smattering of boring inserts. All of it seems a little fishy, too, because 1993 Pinnacle had great subsets and massive, fun-to-covet insert sets (like Team 2001 and Then & Now), which seemingly disappeared from one year to the next. It’s too bad, because 1994 Pinnacle had its shit together in a big way in terms of its design. And that’s no small feat.


44. 1994 Bowman
No, this set didn’t have an Alex Rodriguez rookie, either. In fact, only eight sets had him on one of their checklists in 1994. Still, by 1994 Bowman had firmly established itself as a major player, if not the player in the rookie game. It didn’t really need Rodriguez to prove its position, even though many 1994 rookies weren’t surrounded by as much hype, nor made an immediate impact.

It took guys like Derrek Lee, Trot Nixon, Torii Hunter, and Billy Wagner a few years to get things going. And, like earlier Bowman sets, many rookies never got it going. Guys like Cleveland Lavell, Arquimedez Pozo, Gar Finnvold, Duff Brumley and the immortal Ruben ‘Derek Jeter Wanted Me To Steal These” Rivera. But the thing that brought attention to Bowman—even to a weak set like 1994—was that there were so many rookies. First came the flameouts, then guys like LoDuca, Renteria, Edgardo Alfonzo, and Wagner. Then a third wave of Lee, Hunter, Posada, Nixon, and others. By no stretch of the imagination can we compare this set to 1992 (or even to a lesser extent 1993) Bowman, but three waves of rookie interest does give your set some staying power.

Rookies aside, the rest of the checklist never struck me as exciting, fun, or even interesting. At just under 700 cards, I have always approached this issue as ‘just another set with all the same guys.’

The mantra of producing a set in the Nineties was that to compete you had to give collectors what they wanted: presumably a thousand versions of their favorite players, be it from the base set, as part of a subset, and/or in a mixture of inserts. But because every manufacturer was following this rule, you also had to be sure that your product stood out from the rest. So what did Bowman do? They slapped some shiny foil on the some of the cards. They gave every card hideous strips of metallic gold. But most of all they made it about the base set, meaning no inserts. Collectors might have come for the rookies, but why should they have stayed for the rest? I’m still trying to figure that one out.


43. 1994 Leaf/Limited & Leaf/Limited Rookies
I think I can explain the logic behind these sets. Obviously they are ‘These Go to Eleven’ sets from the Donruss and Leaf executives. Let’s start in 1990. Leaf comes out, trumping Upper Deck’s mind-blowing inaugural 1989 triumph. Then in 1991 Fleer chisels out the Ultra line, and Topps debuts Stadium Club, teaming with Kodak to melt some faces with full-bleed photography and full-color backs. (Donruss replies with unintentional comedic gem that is Studio.) 1992 sees the introduction of Pinnacle from Score, a beautiful card with crisp photography, black gradient borders and a thin gloss. 1993 raises the stakes even higher, with Topps’ Finest throwdown, Upper Deck’s stylish SP, and Fleer’s cigarette-cased Flair. Oh sure, Donruss still had the Leaf line chugging away since the 1990 bow, and a few of the sets were relatively decent (1992, 1993), but the manufacturer didn’t have an answer to Finest, Flair, or SP. Then in 1994 they released Leaf/Limited and L/L Rookies, super-premiums that accelerated the arms race for the deep-pocketed, new-card collector.

And truthfully, even though I considered the appearance of sets like these as a sign of the hobby apocalypse, they aren’t bad looking. The base card looks like a cross between a playing card and the cardboard back to a new razor, with squares and dark lines harking back to those heady old-school Donruss days of 1985 and 1986 (albeit L/L is a little classier).

The base checklists are tight: L/L is at 160 cards; L/L/R at 80. And yet no one stands out. That’s because the star of this show is not in one of the base sets. It’s in the L/L/R insert set ‘Rookie Phenoms.’ I’m speaking, of course, about the Alex Rodriguez rookie, gold-foiled up the wazoo and serial-numbered to 5,000. Talk about summing up the future of the hobby in one card.

But let’s get back to the actual base sets for a moment. Were they even collectable? I’m not sure. Besides being wowed by the super-premium-ness of it all, what were collectors after? Without the inclusion of the Rodriguez rookie, these would rank lower than late-run Triple Play.

It’s 1986 Fleer Syndrome all over again. Too bad Leaf threw their Canseco stand-in in as a hard-to-find insert, leaving almost everyone with the pile of commons.

Give Me Your Creases, Your Misspellings, Your Dinged Corners...

It's 'Best Of' season. So to get into the spirit, I thought I'd post a little something about my favorite purchases of 2007. A few caveats before I begin. I'm not counting cards I got in the wildly popular Great Goudey Trade-away, nor I am taking into account the cards I packed into storage after moving back in September. So really, my own Best Of should be called Best Purchases September through December, 2007.

Best Card of a Wizened Old Timer/Manager:
1951 Bowman Bucky Harris
On the wall of my parents' kitchen is a panoramic photograph from the 1924 World Series, with both lineups (Washington Senators and New York Giants) assembled along the third base line. Walter Johnson is in his pitcher's warmup sweater, Bill Terry looks to be maybe all of twenty-four, there's an oompah band in the right corner getting ready to strike up, and there are a few faces blurred out from moving while the camera moved. The reason I'm mentioning this is because about halfway up the photo, in the center of the packed stands, President Coolidge is flanked by John McGraw and the young Senators player/manager Bucky Harris. Flash ahead 27 years and here's Harris back helming the Senators. Another fun thing about Bucky Harris: though the guy had nine career regular-season home runs over 12 seasons, he managed two dingers in the '24 World Series.


Worst Spelling Error Left Uncorrected:
2006-07 Upper Deck Derk Fisher [sic] I bought a pack of these cards at Target thinking they were from this year. Getting this card of Fisher more than made up for my disappointment (I was trying to determine who to draft for my fantasy basketball team, currently mired in last). Not a bad design, not memorable... I'm still trying to figure out what the defender's tattoo is; it's either one of the ThunderCats or is of Justin Bateman in Teen Wolf Too.


Best Miscut: 1953 Topps Clem Labine
I love miscut cards, the older the better. I love how it accentuates the fact that it's all about cardboard––and machines that cut cardboard––image be damned. Another fun thing: it's self-reflexive. One of the ads on the outfield wall behind Labine is for Topps Gum.


Best Use of a Nickname:
1963 Topps Choo Choo Coleman
It's almost as if the Topps copywriters bet each other they could write a whole card and never once mention a player's real name.

On an unrelated note, someone should write an essay on the effectiveness of the careers of Choo Choo Coleman and Pumpsie Green on race relations within their respective cities (New York and Boston). I know very little about Coleman, but how can a grown man command respect while being referred to as 'Choo Choo'?

As for Green, I have always considered him to be the unfortunate symbol of the deep-seated racism and segregationist beliefs of the Boston Red Sox of the 1950s, from Yawkey to Higgins. It would be interesting to read about what civil leaders and thinkers from the time thought about the teams and these two men.

2007 Bowman Heritage stuff

In case you haven't noticed, this year's Bowman Heritage set kicks ass. In fact, I'd have to say that Bowman Heritage has been consistently great. It's almost too bad that there weren't more designs from the Fifties that today's Topps designers could mooch off.

Anyway, I'm not entirely sure how I got on Clay Luraschi's public relations email list. But whatever, I'm not complaining. So I don't know if this has already been posted, but here's a release I just got from Topps HQ.


NEW BOWMAN HERITAGE SET FEATURES BACKGROUND TWISTS

Collectors ripping packs of the recently-released 2007 Bowman Heritage Baseball will find some very interesting and sometimes familiar backgrounds on certain cards (image attached). In addition to the backgrounds, a couple of players have added text to their photo including “Joba Rules” on Joba Chamberlain’s card. Following is a list of the cards with a description for each:

# 23 Carlos Delgado - Ebbets Field background
# 36 Paul Lo Duca - Ebbets Field background
# 40 Adam Dunn - Cornfield in background
# 50 Albert Pujols - Background from 1952 Bowman Stan Musial
# 51 Tom Glavine - New Citi Field Construction in background
# 68 Andy Pettitte - Old Yankee Stadium background
# 70 Roger Clemens - Yankee Stadium Monument Park background
# 75 David Ortiz - Background from 1952 Bowman Johnny Peske [sic; should be 'Pesky']
# 83 Greg Maddux – “4 CY” on glove
# 90 David Wright - Background from 1952 Bowman Gil Hodges
# 91 Ryan Garko – “Topps TV” on Microphone
# 100 Ryan Howard - Background from 1952 Bowman Richie Ashburn
# 110 Jose Reyes - Background from 1952 Bowman Pee Wee Reese
# 120 Jorge Posada - Old Yankee Stadium background
# 140 Carlos Beltran - Polo Grounds background
# 150 Derek Jeter - Background from 1952 Bowman Phil Rizzuto
# 155 Jimmy Rollins - Liberty Bell background
# 176 Johnny Damon - Old Yankee Stadium background
# 181 Ichiro - Background from 1952 Bowman Duke Snider
# 190 Alex Rodriguez - Background from 1952 Mickey Mantle Card
# 200 Barry Bonds - Background from 1952 Bowman Willie Mays Card
# 210 Joe Smith - Coney Island Ferris Wheel background
# 250 Daisuke Matsuzaka – Background from 1952 Bowman Maurice McDermott
# 251 Joba Chamberlain – “Joba Rules” written on baseball

Goudey Trade-away #9: Napoli for Crosby

This trade comes in from Andy in Akron, New York.

Giving: Bobby Crosby, #17 (red back)
Getting: Mike Napoli, 2006 Bowman

Mike's facsimile signature looks like 'Mihi Nupor.' This gets me thinking...has there ever been a sports injury suffered while signing an autograph? I know about Lionel Simmons and his Nintendo Thumb, but Auto Grip? Also, do you think ballplayers suffer from arthritis at an earlier age (ostensibly from all the signings, not the crippling wear and tear from playing a sport every day) than those of us who aren't in stellar athletic shape?

One last thing: Do you think that the Oakland A's management has it written into player contracts that they must grow some sort of facial hair? I wouldn't put it past them. I've never been to a game in Oakland, but from the hair worn by the players, I'd imagine the guys selling soda and peanuts in the stands all wear sherpa packs, use carved walking sticks and have birds living in their Rip Van Winkle beards.


If you want to get in on the fun and trade with me for a 2007 UD Goudey card, email me!

Early Nineties Countdown: #77 to #70

The checklist is complete. The sets have been ranked. And while I originally thought there were 76 sets from 1990 to 1994, I recounted and found there to be 77, so that’s the figure I’m sticking to.

A few more notes before we begin. Like the Eighties countdown, the worth of an individual card or set will not be considered when ranking these sets, but may be mentioned anecdotally in describing a set. Also, I am going to say that my personal favorites of the years in question will not get preferential treatment, but we all know that that’s a very tall order to fill and I may stray from that rule. Also, I recently came across an old Beckett from November 1995, and will be referring to the stuff in it on more than one occasion. For starters, let me say that I forgot how big a deal Kenny Lofton was; his 1992 Fleer Update card is high column listed at $32.00! Are you kidding?

Finally, what makes a countdown like this so great to me is that thinking back on all these sets, I was able to come up with good things and bad things about almost all of them. There were only a handful that I had no recollection of collecting, and almost none where I couldn’t think of anything to say. I’ve decided that the sets that fall into this category, those that are so boring and non-descript that even I can’t think of one good or bad thing about them, were boring because they simply had no reason to exist. I’ve put these sets at the bottom of the list, but really they shouldn’t even be in the countdown.

In no particular order…

#77 1994 OPC
#76 1993 OPC
#75 1993 OPC Premier
#74 1994 Triple Play
#73 1994 Sportflics

Now, let the countdown begin.

#72. 1991 Leaf
Let’s start with some easy multiple choice. Let’s say that you’re in charge of Leaf, it’s 1991, and you’ve just come out with one of the great sets of 1990: a set with a perceived limited production run, chock full of rookies, plus a great design and loads of star cards that everyone, young and old, want to get their mitts on. How would you follow this great success? Would you a) put out another great set following the same principles, b) take in a ton of advance orders and then split for the border with the cash, or c) over-produce, strip the base set of important rookies, stuff them in an insert set that no one will ever be able to complete, commission and greenlight a shitty design and then laugh all the way to the bank? If you answered ‘c’…congratulations, you’re correct.

Seriously, how did Donruss and Leaf screw this up? A company simply doesn’t abandon a winning formula, especially at a time when there are a thousand competitors in—let’s face it—a niche marketplace. Why, why, why didn’t they include important rookies in this set? Why did they only include them in the Gold Leaf Rookies insert set? If Leaf had included a Jeff Bagwell rookie in the base set, this would have been a monster in the early Nineties. Instead, it was the hobby’s biggest joke; one from which Leaf would never recover.

#71. 1990 Fleer
I’ve given this a lot of thought over the past few days: Were it not for the colossal let-down that was 1991 Leaf, 1990 Fleer would be the worst set of the first five years of the Nineties, and for a variety of reasons, none so prevalent as it simply had nothing to offer. You’d think that 1990 would’ve been a stellar year across the board for baseball cards, as 1989 had so much going for it and the hobby was experiencing a boom larger than it had ever seen. That was simply not the case. While other sets figured out a way to capitalize on the hype, a few didn’t (Fleer chief among them).

This is not to say that they didn’t try new things with this set; they did. In addition to the requisite combos and doubleheaded rookies, they included 'Players of the Decade,' a new subset of stars of the 1980s. Fleer also led the way with three insert sets: All-Stars, League Standouts and Soaring Stars (after a 1991 hiatus, this insert set was renamed Rookie Sensations for 1992).

But they took more than a few bad turns. For some reason their design team (which was in the middle of putting together an unprecedented four straight years of bad design, 1989 to 1992) approved a bland white border and bland red, white and blue back—virtually guaranteeing that collectors would confuse them with novelty deck-of-cards sets you could buy at Circle K, Kmart and other fine drugstore and discount department store chains. They then proceeded to miss out on the key rookie of 1990, Frank Thomas. Oh, and like most of all the other manufacturers that year, they printed 1 billion cards.

It’s not so much that they printed so many cards. It’s that they printed so many cards and none of those cards was of Frank Thomas. Taking nothing away from Juan Gonzalez, David Justice, Marquis Grissom, Ben McDonald, Larry Walker, John Olerud, Delino DeShields or even Sammy Sosa, Thomas was hands-down the best of the bunch. So to come out with a set that doesn’t have a card of him? What’s the point of that? Exactly. There is no point. You’re just killing time until you have a chance to show the world you realize you screwed up and pray that collectors are completist enough to hold out and buy your lousy Update set at the end of the season, where not only will there be Thomas, but Olerud, Carlos Baerga (was there ever anyone bigger than Carlos Baerga was in 1993?) and Travis Fryman too.

Too bad by the time the Update set came, nobody really cared about it, either.


#70. 1990 Bowman
OK, so I didn’t mean to set up Frank Thomas as the savior of baseball cards. In reality, he was a standout from the many that made up the great, overlooked rookie class of 1990. And while it’s a good thing that Thomas is in this Bowman set, it’s also true that this set is not a classic simply because it has a card of Thomas in it. Far from it.

1990 Bowman must be viewed as a transition set between the 1989 and 1991 Bowman sets. 1990 was the first year to use the modern card size (1989 was the same size as the 1950s issues, just slightly taller than what is considered the ‘modern’ card size that began with 1957 Topps) and really the first Bowman attempt to fashion itself as the ‘Home of the Rookie Card,’ something it would achieve with the 1991 set. So where does that leave this set? Well, it’s got a lot of rookies; all the big names are here, all in the one series, which is nice. Plus the front was one big color photo with a tiny white border along the bottom with team and player names (also nice). But that’s where the niceties stop.

Those minimal fronts became a big sea of boring faces as the set progressed. Also, what was with the backs? Who was it at Bowman/Topps that decided a grid-like breakdown of the past year’s stats would be a good thing? Granted, it was something that set Bowman apart, but for the worse. I could never make heads nor tails of the stats on the back of a Bowman card from 1989 to 1991.

There nothing really that bad about 1990 Bowman, it’s just boring. Minimal design is one thing, but boring? 'Boring' is never going to cut it in baseball cards. C'mon Bowman, you know that.


#69 to #65 Coming Soon