While it looks like his regular card, there are a few differences. First, this has the rookie cup, which his base card is missing. Second, there is a National League logo on the card. That is because this card is from the 17-card NL All Stars factory set.
It was great that Castro was included in the set. There is just one little problem. Castro wasn't an All Star! Zach Greinke, Buster Posey, David Wright, Ryan Zimmerman, and Steven Strasburg are also in the set and they too were not All Stars. Cliff Lee is also in the NL set, though he played for the AL in the All Star game. That would be seven of the 17 players in the set that were not on the All Star team.
So what was Topps using as it's definition of "All Star?" To include all of these guys it would be....
"Any player on last year's All Star team, or any other year, or the Topps All Rookie team, or the Big Hype All Star tea."
Or else it was "Any current or past All Star or any player we think might be an All Star some time in the future."
It's nice to see that Topps is predicting that Starlin Castro will some day be an All Star. I hope it happens this season.
Although it might be a commentary on the lack of "stars" on the Dodgers, I am much relieved that there are no Dodgers in this set.
ReplyDeleteI really dislike the foil stamp parallels.