The Mystery Of The Unexpected Basketball

Posted on May 25, 2026 by The Shlabotnik Report

At a recent mall show I spent most of my time at the table of a dealer who had a couple of fun boxes full of recent baseball cards. When I was done, he gave me a really good price so I decided to also get one of his 500-ct boxes labeled “$5 Mystery Sports Card Box”. I figured I’d get a fun break, he’d get rid of excess inventory, win-win.

Based on what I see at most local shows and what was on the laser-printed label, I expected a mix of football, baseball, basketball, soccer, wrestling, maybe some NASCAR.

When I opened the box a few days later, I found out that the entire box was basketball from the early 1990s.

Now the thing is that, aside from an honest attempt to get into basketball as a kid because all team sports were exciting, I have never been a fan of basketball.

Harrumph.

I started to go through the box thinking I could find trade bait for some of my collecting buddies, but in my mind it was largely a “salvage mission” at that point.

Thing is, I did have fun going through the box. I ran across players I’d heard about at the time and had forgotten about, saw some card sets I’d never seen before, and when I was done I actually had some cards worth adding to my modest basketball collection.

I figured I’d take you on a little tour of some of these cards as seen through someone who hadn’t really seen them before, and as a payoff at the end there was one card of some value that many of you would be familiar with.

I’ll start with the biggest epiphany of the box. I got a dozen 1991-92 Skybox cards, and while I’d heard of this set and probably saw some at a show somewhere along the line, I’d never actually spent any time with these cards. And…

Holy crap, these are SWEET!!!! They look a lot better in hand than they do in scans. The inks really pop.

I’m thinking that I’m going to take the 9 best cards and give them their own sheet in my “Misc. Sports” binder.

The backs aren’t as nice, but are still better than the fronts of some of the other cards in this box.

I also pulled a few 1990-91 Skybox cards which seem dark and gloomy by comparison.

There were a couple of other basketball sets where I hadn’t seen the cards before but said “Hey, these are pretty nice”, like this 1992-93 Upper Deck set (the dark borders around the ribbons are gold foil)…

…1993-94 Upper Deck…

…and 1993-94 NBA Hoops

There were also sets like 1992-93 Fleer Basketball where I recoiled at the horror of the design.

The vertical names are awful because our brains just don’t work that way. Also, I understand that the design is evoking the pebbled surface of a basketball, but beyond that what on earth is up with that right side of the card? It’s kinda art deco, but beyond that I don’t know what they were going for.

There are a handful of NBA players I passively collect. One is a guy who shares my exact birthday down to the year – I can never remember his name but I’d know it if I saw it and he wasn’t in this box. Ah, well.

I also collect a couple of NBA players who are shorter than I am, and I did get cards of them!

First there’s Spud Webb, winner of the 1986 NBA Slam Dunk competition

A quick aside about the 1993-94 Fleer Basketball set; I’ve long thought the design was interesting and appealing, but I never had any of the cards before. I’m finding they’re kind of like 1957 Topps and 1984 Donruss in that when it works, it looks good…

…but when it doesn’t work, it’s kind of a mess.

OK, I know I said this would be a “quick aside”, but I also want to point out the back of the Spud Webb card.

Look at the size of that card number! It’s huge! I love it!

Compare that to, for example, this year’s Bowman

Hey, remember when I was talking about players I collect? Here’s the other one shorter than I am, Tyrone “Muggsy” Bogues.

This is another design I like (and has me thinking of ways to adapt it for custom card purposes)

The design on the other Muggsy Bogues card looks oddly familiar :-)

Topps really did run this design into the ground, didn’t they? This is from 1992/93 Topps Archives Basketball, which featured the baseball designs from 1981 to 1991.

Now lets get to the biggest hit of the box.

When I got to a section of the box that had a bunch of 1990-91 NBA Hoops cards, I started to think “Wouldn’t it be something if I pulled that card that has the Menendez brothers in the background?”

A minute later I came across that very card:

If you’re not familiar with the Menendez brothers, they killed their parents in 1989 and then went on a spending spree that included courtside Knicks tickets. They’re the two teenagers on the left.

Looking back, I did pretty well for a box full of cards of a sport I don’t follow.

Cards I Like From Teams I Dislike

Posted on May 17, 2026 by The Shlabotnik Report

About 2 weeks ago in a post on BlueSky, Night Owl made a comment about how there are a number of 1975 Topps cards of the Giants that he loves, and I off-handedly responded that “Cards I love from a team I hate” would be a good subject for a blog bat-around (if there were more than a handful of bloggers left to bat something around).

The next thing I knew, Night Owl had done a post, San Jose Fuji did a post and Mike Matson did not one but two posts. I said “Well, I guess I’d better do one myself”.

By the way, if anyone else did/does one of these, please leave the URL in the comments!

My knee-jerk was to do the Yankees, but many of my best-loved Yankees cards came from the mid-1970s when I was young and naive and liked both New York teams. That goes against the entire premise.

I decided to instead focus on the Dodgers, a team I have never liked going back to when I was a kid and picked up on the background radiation of disdain from former Brooklyn residents living around me on Long Island.

I loved this card as a kid. It’s not a great photo of Steve Garvey, but in my eyes it’s awesome photography

Same for this Davey Lopes record-breaker card. Not a great picture of Lopes, but it tells a story (and it doesn’t hurt that there’s a Met on the card, I think it’s Felix Millan)

I went through a number of binders looking for Dodgers cards and the one which came out of my “random cool cards” binder was this 1999 Stadium club of Chan Ho Park. I love cards which feature player blowing bubbles

Former Met Darryl Strawberry had two Dodgers cards that I’ve always liked and rather than pick one over the other, I’m featuring both.

“Attack of the 50-foot Darryl, our love was at an end..”

Darryl at Shea, no doubt providing a mixed reaction from Mets fans

Maybe it’s from misplaced nostalgia for someone else’s youth, but sometime in the 21st century a switch flipped in my brain and Brooklyn Dodgers cards tremendously appealing to me. Throw in 1956 Topps and a young (!) Don Zimmer and you’ve got a winner.

Similar reasoning for Sal “The Barber” Maglie.

In my mind “SEALING YANKS’ DOOM” is a Nelson Muntz “HA HA!” card directed at the Bronx Bombers, but the Dodgers are the ones doing the doom-sealing. TCDB says that the batter is Frank Howard, and I have no reason to question that.

Oversized baseball equipment needs to show up on a baseball card every few years. What I want to know is whether this is the same oversized glove that Mickey Hatcher had on his 1986 Fleer card.

I don’t love the 1971 Topps Steve Garvey rookie card in general, but I do have a perverse fondness for my copy of that card, with it’s creases and paper loss and schmutz and mysterious stamped five-digit number

I hadn’t really considered featuring sports other than baseball until I read Fuji’s blogpost, and then I started thinking about the teams I don’t like outside of baseball.

Hockey is sort of a dicey subject when talking about teams I hate, because I wouldn’t say I really hate any NHL teams any more (I just barely harbor positive feelings about a couple of teams as it is). The Islanders were the bane of my existence when they were winning Stanley Cups on the regular, but I’ve always liked this card of Hockey Hall of Famer Mike Bossy. I like the photobomb by Ron Lalonde, a player for MY WASHINGTON CAPITALS (who stopped being “mine” in the 1990s, but anyway)

The team I consistently root against in football is the Baltimore Ravens, but I don’t think I have any Ravens cards. The vast majority of my football cards come before the Ravens’ first season in 1996.

I do harbor a fair amount of disdain for the Dallas Cowboys, which made me immediately think of the last card I needed to complete my 1975 Topps Football set (which of course makes it a card I love):

Thinking of Dallas Cowboy cards made me think of Roger Staubach, because when I was a kid he was above any petty team hatred, and this is just a nice “hero card”

And that covers things for me, at least until I pull out some other binders and say “Dang it, I could’ve used this in that post!”

See you all at the next “Blog Bat Around”!

[Walks away laughing maniacally]

Love Dem Batting Cage Cards

Posted on May 10, 2026 by The Shlabotnik Report

A little over a week ago, when poking around online, I saw this card and it made me smile.

It wasn’t about Ken Reitz, the San Francisco Giants or even Candlestick Park… it was about the batting cage behind Ken Reitz. He’s not even standing in the batting cage, yet it pleased me for reasons I wasn’t sure about.

That gave me an idea.

For those who do not know, I have an account on BlueSky but I’d be lying if I said I had any sort of gameplan for engagement or optimization or whatever. It’s just a fun diversion for me.

There are a few accounts I follow which have a recurring “baseball card of the day”, and it popped into my head that I should see how far I would get posting cards-of-the-day which feature players in or near batting cages (FYI these are tagged with #BattingCageCard).

I wasn’t sure how it would go over, but I started this past Monday with this 1974 Topps Rod Carew, and it got 31 likes. That’s a lot for me, I can often count my likes on one hand.

I shared this 1976 SSPC Johnny Bench card a couple of days ago, and as I’m writing this it has 72 likes, which I’ve gotta think is a record for me.

Yes, it’s a nice-looking card which probably flies under the radar of many collectors, but the early returns on this seem to indicate this batting cage card thing is resonating with others.

…and that got me thinking about why.

On the surface, I think part of it is that it’s sort of an “inside baseball” view that we don’t always get a chance to see. I think I’ve caught the end of the visiting team’s BP a handful of times, and that was usually because we allowed plenty of time for traffic which didn’t always materialize, so we sometimes got to our seats way early.

There’s also a fun candid aspect of batting cage cards, since players often seem to be relaxed during BP.

I started to go through my binders looking to scan some future Batting Cage Cards Of The Day and I realized that there’s something else going on, at least for me.

One was that BP cards started to become less common during the 1980s and by the 1990s there were relatively few of them. Maybe with action photography becoming better and more popular, there was less need/desire to have BP cards featured on cards.

But the key thing to the rise and fall of batting cage cards is that they seemed to get the most use during the 1970s and early 1980s, which also happens to be my peak collecting years… so maybe these batting cage cards were a subtle nostalgia trigger for me, even without my realizing it.

Some other random observations from the early-goings of my pulling out binders…

The earliest batting cage cards in my collection are from the early 1960s, but there are probably ones from the 1950s which I just don’t happen to own.

Some early 1960s cards – and sorry, I don’t have any examples just yet – seem to minimize the batting cage by tinting – or really removing the magenta, cyan, yellow, whatever – from the background. It’s all about artistic choices in a medium that never pretended to be any form of journalism.

The latest batting cage card I’ve seen so far is from 2004, but it was for a card I don’t own so I don’t have a scan to share here.

Fleer – at least in the 1980s – did a fair number of batting cage cards.

Donruss had some batting cage cards in the 1981 set, but I haven’t run across much afterwards (but I’m really just starting to pull out binders so this may change).

Many of the batting cage cards I’ve run across from the 1990s are by Upper Deck, I’ll be interested to see if that holds up because the other high-end brands of the day stuck to game shots or portraits.

One thing I hadn’t really noticed until recently is the evolution of player attire while taking batting practice. Back in the day, players took BP in full uniform. At some point – I’ll have to do more research on this – teams started to provide special BP jerseys and caps, and this was probably 10% about player comfort and 90% about merchandising.

When looking at recent photos of batting practice, it seems that players don’t always wear their BP caps during BP, and nobody wears jerseys anymore… they wear t-shirts or other athletic apparel, but not jerseys.

In theory it would be great if Heritage, for example, were to include some batting practice cards, but I think the reality of it is that with players not wearing full uniforms the cards would end up looking unlicensed.

One other thing I got to wondering about, and this calls for a disclaimer:

Attention: The following statement falls completely under the category of “I really don’t know what I’m talking about”. I am very unathletic and didn’t even play Little League ball.

Wouldn’t it be better to practice for a game situation while dressed similarly to how you’d dress during a game? Wouldn’t batting in a t-shirt and shorts be different than batting in full uniform? If it’s different, wouldn’t that work against the purpose of BP?

This concludes this edition of “I really don’t know what I’m talking about”. Thank you for humoring me.

So anyway, that’s where I’m at on this Sunday morning. I expect to have future posts following up on this topic.

Three-Digit Yankee Uniform Numbers In Our Lifetime! 2026 Edition

Posted on April 26, 2026 by The Shlabotnik Report

Back in 2015 I wrote a post about wishing the Yankees would retire so many uniform numbers that they would have to start assigning three-digit uniform numbers to active players. When I started writing that post it was 99% sarcastic, but as I started to look into the candidates, I realized there are some Yankees legends where the lack of number retirement is a legitimate slight.

This past February it was announced that the Yankees would be retiring CC Sabathia’s #52 this coming September, and that got me thinking about this again. Yes, Sabathia has been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame as a Yankee, but to me that by itself is not sufficient reason to retire his uniform number.

…But here we are… and if Sabathia is number-retirement-worthy, who else could a case be made for? There are other HOFers who have a Yankees cap on their plaque yet don’t have their numbers retired. Some of them played before uniform numbers were a thing, some wore numbers which are already retired for other players (i.e.Earl Combs and Joe Gordon). But for the others I take issue with where the line is drawn.

I’ve revised and updated my 2015 list of former Yankees for whom some kind of case could be made for the Yankees retiring their numbers. Just to be clear, just being a HOFer who played for the Yankees is not sufficient for my list. For example, Iván Rodríguez is in the Hall of Fame, but seeing how he played just 33 games for the Yanks and had a -0.8 WAR, I’m not going to make any arguments to retire the #12 he wore while in pinstripes.

And so, approaching this in numerical order, here are the former Yankees where a case could be made for number retirement:

#11 – Lefty Gomez
Baseball Hall of Fame
Honored in the Yankees’ Monument Park
WAR as a Yankee: 43.4
This is the Yankee legend for which there truly is no excuse except that his playing career came before many of us were born. He’s a Hall Of Famer, has the most wins of any Yankee left-handed pitcher, was a four-time 20 game winner, pitched in five World Series while going 6-0, twice won the “Pitching Triple Crown” by leading the league in ERA, K’s and wins, has a .652 winning percentage while wearing pinstripes, started five All-Star games, and his Yankee career stats have him as 4th in wins, 4th in shutouts and 6th in strikeouts. Sadly, they’ll probably retire #11 for Anthony Volpe sooner than they would for Lefty!

#12 – Wade Boggs
Baseball Hall of Fame
WAR as a Yankee: 18.3
Boggs might’ve gotten his Yankees number retired if he weren’t in the Hall with a Red Sox cap, but with the Yankees he was a four-time All-Star, a two-time Silver Slugger and both of his Gold Gloves came while he was wearing a Yankees uniform.

#12 – Ron Blomberg
WAR as a Yankee: 9.5
He was the first-ever Designated Hitter, the first pick in the 1967 draft, lead the team in batting average in 1973 and was the greatest-ever Jewish Yankee.

#14 – Bill Skowron
WAR as a Yankee: 9.5
During the period from 1956 to 1962, Bill “Moose” Skowron was named to 5 All-Star teams and earned five World Series rings. He hit a grand slam in game 7 of the 1956 World Series and a three-run homer in game 7 of the 1958 World Series, and hit 165 homers in 9 seasons as a Yankee.

#17 – Vic Raschi
WAR as a Yankee: 15.4
Raschi lead the AL in strikeouts in in 1951, won six World Championships, was a four-time all-star, won 21 games in three straight seasons and had a 120-50 record in his 8 years with the Yankees.

#18 – Don Larsen
WAR as a Yankee: 4.6
Larsen threw that famous perfect game in the 1956 World Series and was the World Series MVP.

#19 – Dave Righetti
WAR as a Yankee: 22.9
Rags was the 1981 Rookie of the Year, a two-time All-Star, 1986 AL Saves leader, sits second to Mariano Rivera in Yankees career saves, has the #3 spot on the Yankees single-season saves chart and as a starting pitcher on July 4, 1983 Righetti no-hit the Red Sox. Hell, for most Yankee fans just the “No-hit Boston” part is enough of a reason.

#19 – Bob Turley
WAR as a Yankee: 9.3
“Bullet Bob” Turley was the 1958 Cy Young Award winner, the first Yankee to win that award. He won four World Series, was the 1958 World Series MVP with the Yankees and lead the 1954 AL in strikeouts.

#19 – Fritz Peterson
WAR as a Yankee: 19.6
Yeah, yeah, wife-swapping blah blah blah. Fritz Peterson has the lowest all-time ERA at Yankee Stadium and the lowest WHIP of any Post-WWII Yankee starting pitcher.

#21 – Spud Chandler
WAR as a Yankee: 22.9
Spud was the 1943 AL MVP, a 4-time All-Star, a six-time World Champion and has the lowest ERA of any Yankee righty. Also wore several other numbers, but 21 is the one he wore the most

#22 – Allie Reynolds
Honored in the Yankees’ Monument Park
WAR as a Yankee: 19.6
Reynolds threw two no-hitters, was the 1952 ERA leader, was a five-time All-Star, had a 131-60 regular season record as a Yankee and won six world Series.

#24 – Rickey Henderson
Baseball Hall of Fame
WAR as a Yankee: 30.8
Rickey has the top three slots in the Yankee single-season stolen base list, and all-time he’s second only to His Jeterness in career Yankee stolen bases.

#24 – Tino Martinez
Honored in the Yankees’ Monument Park
WAR as a Yankee: 16.7
Won four World Championships with the Yankees, and hit a grand slam in the 1998 World Series and a game-tying two-outs-in-the-9th home run in the 2001 World Series.

#29 – Catfish Hunter
Baseball Hall of Fame
WAR as a Yankee: 9.9
In 1975 Catfish lead the league with 23 wins, a 1.009 WHIP and finished second in Cy Young voting.

#30 – Mel Stottlemyre
Honored in the Yankees’ Monument Park
WAR as a Yankee: 40.7
was a career Yankee who was a five-time all-star, won 20 games three times, started three games in the 1964 World Series, is 7th on the Yankees career win list (despite pitching on some relatively weak Yankees teams), 8th in K’s and tied for 2nd in Shutouts. He was the Yankees pitching coach for a decade and got 5 World Series rings that way.

#30 – Willie Randolph
Honored in the Yankees’ Monument Park
WAR as a Yankee: 54.1
Willie was the Yankees starting 2nd baseman for 13 straight seasons, was on the Topps Rookie All-Star team in 1976, the same year he played in the World Series against the Reds. He won two World Series as a player and four more as a coach, won a Silver Slugger and represented the Yankees in five all-star games.

#31 – Dave Winfield
Baseball Hall of Fame
WAR as a Yankee: 27.1
Winfield played 9 years in pinstripes (more games than he played with any other team), was an All-Star each of those 9 years, won five Gold Gloves and five Silver Sluggers.

#35 – Mike Mussina
Baseball Hall of Fame
WAR as a Yankee: 35.1
Mussina won 3 Gold Gloves as a Yankee, has the 7th-most Yankee career strikeouts, 13th-most wins and a 200+ strikeout season.

#36 – David Cone
WAR as a Yankee: 20.3
Cone threw a perfect game at Yankee Stadium, had two seasons where he had more than 200 K’s and was a two-time All-Star.

#54 – Rich “Goose” Gossage
Baseball Hall of Fame
Honored in the Yankees’ Monument Park
WAR as a Yankee: 18.8
Gossage is 4th in all-time Yankees saves, was a 4-time All-Star with the Yankees and was the 1978 AL Reliever of the Year. His HOF plaque shows him in a Yankees uniform… I don’t see how Sabathia gets his number retired while Goose does not.

If the Yankees follow my advice, they can add 15 additional numbers to the 23 which have already been retired, bringing the retirement count to 38. That leaves 62 available numbers between 0 and 99. Subtract the 40 man roster, that’s 22 left. Now subtract Aaron Boone and his 10 coaches, and we’re starting to feel the pinch.

Come on, Yankees! Go big or go home!

THREE-DIGIT UNIFORM NUMBERS IN OUR LIFETIME!

Off The Beaten Path, April 2026 Edition

Posted on April 18, 2026 by The Shlabotnik Report

Still haven’t finished a number of posts I’d started, so it’s back to “Show & Tell”, this time featuring some new acquisitions which are all unusual in some way.

1973 1st series Wacky Packages sticker which is very much an upgrade from the one which is stuck to the tattered cover of my 53-year-old looseleaf binder.

Here’s the original looseleaf cover, which is still in a box *somewhere* in Shlabotnik HQ.

As a kid I loved when Wacky Packs made fun of Topps products. As an adult I still love them, but also recognize that it was probably a form of defense against companies who didn’t care for their products being parodied. “Hey, we make fun of our own stuff! Get a sense of humor, you lawyers, you!”

I tried to get into basketball as a kid, honestly I did. Looking back, the brief effort ended up being largely about team names and logos and player bios and statistics and almost nothing about sitting down and watching the sport (which, it turned out, kinda bores me). The fact that I never attempted to collect 1970s basketball cards should’ve been a big tipoff to young me that it was never going to happen. Now, “Approaching Retirement Age Me” loves picking up cards like this one.

On the wall behind the Virginia Squires it says “THE NEW VIRGINIA SQUIRES” and I don’t care whether your talking New Squires or New Washington Senators or New Bob Dylan or whatever, whenever “NEW” is used in any form of marketing, run fast and run far. The New Squires were a star-free, historically bad team which folded before the ABA/NBA merger.

I originally started with 1976 SSPC by buying a monster box full of cards which worked as a nice starter lot… but when I got home I discovered that I had many copies of guys like Biff Pocoroba and not a single card from the Yankees, Phillies or Red Sox. As my casual chase rolls along, I’m always extra happy to pick up a guy like Diego Segui (who’s posing in Shea Stadium as an extra bonus)

BURGER KING ALERT! In March 1978 the Reds traded Jack Billingham to the Tigers. 1978 Topps, of course, shows Billingham with the Reds, but the 1978 Burger King Tigers shows his updated card! Wheeeee! The bad news is that I think I’ve run out of 1978 BK cards which don’t need to be planned for in my hobby budget.

After many years I finally have a Ronald Acuña rookie! That’s Ronald Acuña SENIOR, an early 21st century Mets prospect, and this card is from the EVIL 2002 Topps Traded set. Senior peaked in AA ball… or maybe he peaked in the Atlantic League, depending on how you view the Atlantic League

“I want you to hand over all the lupins you’ve got!” However, I will accept a 1938 Wills’ Cigarettes card featuring Lupins, acquired for my Monty Python References collection. IYKYK

I now own two 1930s tobacco cards featuring Lupins while my oldest baseball card is from the 1940s. Make of that what you will.

I tried to grow Lupins years ago. It did not go well.

Cheap 3-D card of Rick Reichardt, about whom I can think of nothing to say… other than it’s a Kellogg’s card so I love it.

Earlier in this post when I mentioned “New Bob Dylan” I was specifically thinking about “Talking New Bob Dylan”, this 1992 semi-autobiographical song by Loudon Wainwright III. Enjoy! Or don’t!

“We were new Bob Dylans, your dumbass kid brothers!”

Impressions Of 2026 Heritage

Posted on April 10, 2026 by The Shlabotnik Report

I found some 2026 Heritage in multiple configurations at a local big box retailer. I know people say “Hangers are bangers” but I have little-to-no interest in the inserts and I’m looking for the most cards for my money, so I bought 4 jumbo packs (80 cards for $28+tax).

Unsurprisingly I got very little in the way of “hits”, but I’ll touch on that later.

Before I get too far into my thoughts… my first card was Jac Caglianone

Just quickly I’ll mention that I don’t find the placement of the RC logo to be off-putting as some people online found it.

Second – and I didn’t even notice it until someone pointed it out – there’s no faux autograph. I’m completely fine with that, especially since signatures of people under a certain age are generally just squiggles (and this isn’t a condemnation of them, it’s probably an unintended consequence of not teaching them cursive as kids).

In thumbing through these packs, I realized something has shifted for me with these Heritage sets. I don’t get fired up about comparing these cards to the originals like I used to (although I’ll do a bit more below in this post).

Indeed, I’m starting to think that the appeal for me is less about being an homage to vintage Topps sets I collected as a youth and more about the general retro-ness of these cards. I like the relatively simple foil-free designs, the many posed photos and the cropping tight enough that you can get an idea of what the player looks like.

If Topps were to replace Heritage with a similar set that – just as an example using a custom card I made a few months ago – used a vintage non-baseball design and kept the relatively tightly cropped photos, I don’t know that I would care.

Anyway, let’s get back to the actual cards.

This card is an early frontrunner for “Favorite card of 2026”. I just like the pre-game goofiness of it.

…But I’d also like to point out that the different font for the team name is notably different for this team. I mean, it’s the same family of font, but the big wide “O” in “ASTROS” is the one thing in this year’s Heritage design which falls into the category of “I’m sorry, that just bugs me”.

For comparison, here’s a 1977 Astros card. If I hadn’t spent so much time poring over these cards since I was a youth, it might not bother me now.

I saw this Luis Gil card and my brain immediately thought of the 1977 Dock Ellis card. I know better than to imagine that this was even remotely intentional on the part of Topps.

Like any recent Topps set, they go over the top with rookie cards. Christian Montes De Oca pitched 2.2 innings in one game and was released by the D-Backs in February, but that’s OK because RC.

Looking at the back of Montes De Oca’s card and some others, it amused me that Topps had to really wedge some of the player names into the card back.

By comparison, I believe that the longest name in 1977 Topps was Claudell Washington (19 characters including the space)

A few years ago I started to get tired of most insert sets, and now I’m finding that I’m kind of tired of many of the subsets. I’ve got this Pete Alonso Record Breaker for my Mets collection so I’m officially done with the Record Breakers subset. Since nobody I collect is in the League Leader, Postseason or Turn Back The Clock subsets, all of those cards go directly into my Halloween Box.

Speaking of Subsets, I should point out that there’s no “Big League Brothers” subset this time around… Maybe in High Numbers? Will there be a High Numbers set? Since this year’s Heritage checklist is just 400 cards (25% of which are SP’ed) I wonder if they’ll make the follow-up set more of a “2nd Series” than the small, “whenever we get around to it” release that High Number tends to be. I’ll be honest, “Heritage Series 2” is probably overly hopeful thinking on my part.

The four-up rookie cards all seem to be short prints, which is just fine by me as it gives me an excuse to largely ignore them.

I don’t know why a rookie who appeared on one game got his own card but Drew Gilbert plays in 39 cards and has to share cardboard.

Rookie Cups always make Heritage cards better.

…As do All-Star banners

“Skubal and Skenes and pray for… um… beans?”

Since I’ve brought it up in previous posts, I’ll get into the colors used for those teams which have been added or moved since 1977. Here’s the original set’s teams organized by “color buddies”.

I’ll bring back Mr. Montes De Oca to represent the Diamondbacks. This combo is almost like the Twins and Cubs, except the player’s name is black instead of red.

It’s also the same as what Topps used for D-Backs players in 2018 Archives when they last used the 1977 design except that – brace yourself for an uncharacteristically positive change – the position used to be an unreadable white on yellow. Now it’s black on yellow. Were… lessons learned??? Is that possible at Topps?

The Rockies have a combination not used in 1977 but the same as the 2018 Rockies except that we again have black lettering on the yellow pennant. I don’t think I can handle this much learning from mistakes.

The Rays are similar to 2018 Archives except the player name is black rather than red. The font for the team also seems a little different from 2018 Archives.

The Marlins colors are the same as the Diamondbacks, and almost the same as 2018 Archives except that back then the player’s name was red and the position was white.

The color scheme for the Nationals is different from the 1977 Expos but the same as 2018 Archives and pretty much the same as the Pirates and Orioles. Some years they use the same colors for the Nationals and Expos and some years they don’t. I’ve given up trying to understand.

Might as well point out that the Athletics and Guardians go by different names than they did in 1977, but the colors stayed the same.

I pulled a couple of parallels, they mostly look crappy to my eyes

The only non-parallel insert I pulled was this “Ready And Action” card of George Brett. What this design has to do with anything is beyond me.

Maybe… MAYBE? it’s supposed to evoke the 1977 Topps Star Wars sticker inserts?

Meanwhile, these actual 1977 Topps designs were sitting right there waiting to be adapted for baseball use…

So that’s my more-than-enough thoughts on this year’s Heritage. I’ll buy packs, I’ll chase teams and players, but I’m not going to chase the set itself (not that I’ve ever tried to complete a Heritage set).

Somehow, I’ll Manage

Posted on April 5, 2026 by The Shlabotnik Report

I’ve got a half-dozen posts in the works but none of them are ready to publish. Truly there is nothing new under the Shlabotsylvania sun.

Since I want to get *something* posted here before too much time had gone by, I decided to do a quick “Show & Tell” post. I started going through my recent acquisitions and, as I went through the batch, I realized that a bunch of cards I got were for managers or for players who would go on to be managers, and I said “Sounds like a theme to me!”

I’ll start with the big guns. One dealer had a small number of 1970s Kellogg’s cards in his dollar box. The cards were a bit yellowed, very much cracked and reeked from being in a basement, but hey – 3-D FOR A BUCK

I got three Kellogg’s cards of Pete Rose, who managed the Reds from 1984 to 1989, the first three years as a player/manager. I don’t care for Pete Rose myself, but any 1970s Kellogg’s card is welcome in my collection, I don’t care if it’s cracked. Sometimes they just crack on me anyway despite the precautions I take. BTW, this is the 1971 card.

Moving on to a 1972 Kellogg’s Pete Rose… what is one to do with these cards? I put them in a toploader to keep them from curling. They crack. I keep them au naturel, they crack.

1974 Kellogg’s Pete Rose. I’m currently keeping all of my Kellogg’s in toploaders and let the cracks fall where they may.

So these days I’m in complete “treasure hunt” mode at card shows. Local shows are such a crap shoot that I don’t really chase anything, I just see what dealers have and chip away at my many, many wants. I was building 1972 Topps before prices got crazy, so I’m happy to add a 6th series Walter Alston (who managed the Dodgers from 1954 to 1976).

Tony Vitello, the new manager of the San Francisco Giants, got mention as the first MLB manager in X years – or forever, I forget which – with absolutely no pro baseball experience. That got me wondering about Bobby Winkles, who was a former coach at Arizona State before becoming the Angels coach and then manager… but Winkles played minor league baseball, Vitello has no pro baseball experience at all, unless you consider Division I baseball to be pro, but that’s another story.

At the time this 1976 SSPC card was issued, Bobby Winkles had been fired during his second season as the Angels manager, got hired as a coach by the Oakland A’s and would become their manager during the 1977 season, but he didn’t last long on the Charles O. Finley managerial merry-go-round.

Before we get off Winkles, I’ll point out that he’s wearing the white and green cap that the A’s coaching staff wore, but players didn’t. I’m surprised that nobody’s brought this back in current baseball where any excuse to introduce a new cap is a good thing.

As a kid I knew Al Dark as the manager of the Oakland A’s and later the Padres, but by that point he was a grizzled managerial veteran, having managed the Giants, Kansas City A’s and Indians before entering my sphere of awareness. As a player he was the 1948 N.L. Rookie of the Year and a three-time All-Star who stepped directly from playing for the Milwaukee Braves in 1960 to managing the Giants in 1961.

Wrapping up with Frank Lucchesi, who was a rookie manager in 1960. He’d go on to manage the Rangers and, briefly in 1987, the Cubs. Frank was 44 years old in 1970.

Rabbit Hole: 1980-81 Hockey, Topps vs. O-Pee-Chee

Posted on March 25, 2026 by The Shlabotnik Report

I recently got to thinking about O-Pee-Chee and Topps Hockey sets from 1980-81.

I’m guessing that Topps hockey cards sales weren’t great in the late 1970s and early 1980s, because Topps tried using gimmicks for their wax packs before putting hockey cards on hiatus for two seasons.

For 1980-81, Topps tried two gimmicks, as mentioned on this wrapper (which I saved from my first packs).

The gimmick I liked was an “Team Pin-Up” insert in each pack, similar to the posters Topps did in late 1960s baseball. These were printed on thin paper and were folded twice, so the end result was roughly 4-times the size of a standard-sized card.

Rabbit hole #1 came from looking at the checklist for this insert set. There are 16 team pin-ups, but I knew that there were more than 16 teams in the NHL at the time.

One of the missing teams wasn’t hard to figure out. The Atlanta Flames had moved to Calgary over that summer, so Topps probably didn’t want to airbrush 20-or-so player’s uniforms to remove the logo.

The other four teams are less obvious: the Jets, Nordiques, Oilers and Penguins. Now the first three had come over from the WHA the year before, but the Whalers also came over and they had a team poster. My guess – and it’s only a guess – was that those teams either didn’t take a team photo or didn’t provide Topps with one.

Moving on, the 2nd gimmick was one which made me abandon the set after opening just a couple of packs.

As you may have noticed on the wrapper above, there was a graphic which promised this:

WHO AM I? COIN RUB-OFF QUIZ ON EVERY CARD

Almost every card in the 264 card set had a scratch-off coating covering the player’s name. Even the All-Star, League Leaders and Team Leaders subsets had the scratchoff. I think only the Checklists and the Stanley Cup Playoffs cards were spared.

Here’s an unscratched Mike McEwen card from my collection. The black oval on top of the “puck” is the scratch-off layer.

When I came back to this set a few years ago, I decided I would only collect those cards which are already scratched. It’s cheaper and less personally irritating that way. Here’s a scratched Mike Gartner rookie card.

…and here’s the back of the card which, you may notice, tells us that card #195 is for a Capitals right wing but it doesn’t mention Gartner by name.

Later on, in Canada, the O-Pee-Chee hockey set was issued without the scratch-off layer, but interestingly the players name is still in light text like you’d find under the Topps scratch-off layer. On the front of the card, the main tip-off that this Mark Howe card is an O-Pee-Chee card and not a scratched Topps card is the bilingual player position (defense defenseur).

These cards carry over the Topps back design, which makes me wonder if Canadian kids ever noticed that the card backs don’t ever mention the player’s name. The main difference between the Topps and OPC backs is the addition of French and the copyright / printed in Canada line.

At this point I went further down the rabbit hole and wondered what the O-Pee-Chee wrappers looked like, since they wouldn’t be touting the “Who am I?” quiz. I got an image of the wrapper from TCDB and compared the two.

As you can see, they replaced the scratch-off graphic with “NEW GIANT SERIES” in English and French. 1980-81 O-Pee-Chee was the same size as the previous year’s hockey set, so I’m guessing that it’s more about the “NEW” than the “GIANT” part.

I also noticed that the OPC wrapper doesn’t mention the Team Pin-Up insert, and sure enough, I can’t find any reference to such an insert set anywere… Again, maybe OPC just said “We don’t need them, the cards sell fine up here”.

Some 1971 Topps Yankees Because

Posted on March 21, 2026 by The Shlabotnik Report

When I go to a regional card show – something that’s up in the air for me because the venue for my favored regional show closed down – I am armed for bear when it comes to my wantlists. Set completion needs? Got a list. Oddball Mets collection needs? Got a list. Vintage Steelers? 70s & 80s Capitals? 1961 Topps Sports Cars? Got a list.

When I go to a local show, I try to keep things streamlined. I usually have my Big Book Of Wants in the car in case someone has insane deals on vintage cards, but for the most part going to a local show is less about chasing goals and more about “It’s fun to buy cards”.

Because of this I have a condensed wantlist I carry with me into a local show, and for a set like 1971 Topps where I have many, many needs and the goal of chasing the set is in the “Probably someday but not now” category, I limit my searching to cards from four particular teams that are somewhat more of a priority than other teams.

Which is a very long way of saying “Hey, look at these 1971 Topps Yankees!”

Mel Stottlemyre has the honor of being in the “Yankees I regard with neither disdain nor indifference” club. He spent his entire 11 year career with the Yankees, was a 5-time All-Star, was the Mets pitching coach for much of the 80s and was father to two Major League pitchers (Todd and Mel Jr.)

My 70s-oriented brain thinks of Stan Bahnsen as a journeyman pitcher, but he was the 1968 A.L. Rookie Of The Year and won 21 games with the 1972 White Sox. The guy in the background is simultaneously annoying and awesome.

Similar to Bahnsen, I think of John Ellis as a catcher with the Indians and Rangers, but hey – Topps All-Star Rookie! He’s listed as “catcher-1b”, but he played mostly 1st base because his teammate on both the Yankees and the Topps All-Star Rookie Team was Thurman Munson.

Distant ‘action’ shots in 1971 Topps are always fun. When I was a kid Lindy McDaniel was an “old” (39) pitcher who was hanging on as long as he could.

Oh, Peachy!

Posted on March 13, 2026 by The Shlabotnik Report

I’ve got six recent pickups that are all O-Pee-Chee cards from the 1970s. The four baseball cards are part of a project where I keep pushing out the goals, and the other two are Canadian Football League cards.

A number of years ago I started collecting 1977 O-Pee-Chee baseball .cards, but I wasn’t collecting the entire set or even team sets… I was collecting any cards which were either unique to that year’s O-Pee-Chee, or those cards which were different enough from Topps that you didn’t have to have both cards in front of you to notice the difference. Once I got all of the cards on my original wantlist, I declared myself done with 1977 OPC Baseball… but then I started to stray.

Side note: Highly recommended for anyone who has interest in O-Pee-Chee baseball cards is the dormant (but tremendously helpful) Oh My O-Pee-Chee! blog.

Of course, the first card I’m going to feature *is* one where you pretty much need to compare it to the Topps version of the same card. O-Pee-Chee did a re-airbrushing of Dave Hilton, plus a change in how the faux autograph is presented.

The two main changes from the Topps card are the re-done (but really not any better) cap logo and the collar, which is navy – white – light blue, more in line with how the Blue Jays uniforms actually looked.

Here’s the Topps card, which has a red – white – blue collar.

Dave Hilton never played for the Blue Jays… in fact he didn’t play in the Majors after 1975. He *did* play in NPB, and was featured in the 1979 TCMA Japanese Baseballs set.

This Rusty Staub doesn’t have the All-Star banner that 1977 Topps has, so we can see Rusty’s right foot. Truth be told, having grown up with 1977 Topps, it’s more about the banner not being there than it is about what you can see without the banner there.

This Ron LeFlore card is also missing the All-Star banner but it’s not like it’s exciting to see what had been covered by the banner.

Toby Harrah loses the All-Star banner but also gets a position change; 1977 Topps lists him as a shortstop, OPC has him at 3rd base. Toby moved to the hot corner to make way for free agent acquisition Bert Campaneris. For what it’s worth, Campy is a Texas Ranger in both sets, but I guess it took OPC to realize what that meant for Toby.

Moving on from O-Pee-Chee baseball to some O-Pee-Chee football.

You may remember a post I did a few months ago about the explosion of players named Nettles in the 1960s and 1970s. The TL;DR for that post is that all seven Nettles who have played in a major North American sport did so between 1965 and 1988.

When I wrote the post, I shared an image of the 1970 O-Pee-Chee Canadian Football League card of Tom Nettles. I didn’t own the card at the time, but this card is now in my collection. I just love the staged action and the empty stands at what I’m thinking is Clarke Stadium in Edmonton, the original home of the Edmonton Eskimos (now called the Edmonton Elks)

While shopping on COMC for that Tom Nettles card, I started poking through other cards in that 1970 OPC CFL set and it looks like each team was photographed by a different photographer, or at least in a different style. For example, most of the Toronto Argonauts and Hamilton Tiger-Cats are shown from the waist up, standing in their respective stadiums. Many of the B.C. Lions players are shown from a distance doing football poses. The Saskatchewan Roughriders are generally shown in various poses or staged action shots involving a football.

And that’s when I saw this Wayne Shaw card and fell in love.

Honestly, I’m not sure I can even put into words why I love it. It’s different and it’s fun, but there are other similar “Toss a ball, take the photo” Roughriders cards that didn’t grab me like this one. I think part of it is that the ball is such a focus of the card, if the ball were closer to Shaw and not so dominant in the photo, it wouldn’t be the same.

I should also point out that this 1970 OPC CFL set uses the design from the 1969 Topps NFL set. Why that is, I don’t know. There wasn’t a 1969 O-Pee-Chee football set, so… SHEER CONJECTURE ALERT — maybe this was originally intended to be a 1969 CFL set and for whatever reason it didn’t get issued until 1970 as a 1970 set? I don’t suppose there are any OPC experts out there who can leave a comment about this.

I’ll close out with the backs of these cards, as I’m sure many of you have never seen a card from this set.