Sunday, May 16, 2021

Five Random Cubs Cards

 I've got 19,233 Cubs cards from 284 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.



1900s - 1970s: 1977 Topps #586 Steve Renko The 1977 Cubs were the Little Blue Machine and for the first half of the season they were pretty good.  They were in first place from late May through early August.  Renko was in the rotation for the early part of the season but wasn't very good.  He was 2-2 with a 4.56 ERA.  In mid-August, as the Cubs faltered, he was sent across town to the South Side Hit Men.  The Sox, too, were having a surprisingly good season and hadn't faltered yet like the Cubs.  He went 5-0 for the Sox in eight starts, but the team didn't make the playoffs, finishing third in the AL West.


1980s: 1989 Donruss Baseball's Best #37 Greg Maddux This card comes from the Baseball Best set, which Donruss put out after the 1989 season.  There are 386 cards in the set and the division winning Cubs grabbed 15 spots on the checklist.  Maddux led the Cubs with 19 wins and finished thirds in the Cy Young voting.  He led the league's pitchers in putouts--no surprise.  But he also was just one hit shy of leading NL pitchers in hits--that was a surprise to me.


1990s: 1999 Stadium Club #250 Kerry Wood  For Kerry Wood, 1999 was a lost season.  He spent the entire year recovering from elbow surgery.


2000s: 2001 Pacific #87 Rondell White  This card is from Pacific's final set.  White was a semi-regular in left field for the 2001 Cubs.  He hit .307 in 95 games and added 17 home runs. He became a free agent after the season, but the Cubs didn't really try to re-sign him.  


2010s: 2012 Allen & Ginter Relic #GS Geovany Soto  Here's a nice pinstriped relic from Ginter.  By 2012 Soto had fallen significantly from his 2008 rookie of the year stats.  He hit only .199 for the Cubs in 54 games before being traded to the Rangers.

4 comments:

  1. What got be back into the hobby was a box of junk wax I was given. And one of the weirdest things to me was 1989 Donruss Baseball's Best--why do some of the 1989 Donruss cards have a different back design to the rest? I suppose trying to find the answer to that helped me discover the blogging world, so it's all good!

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  2. I'm not a fan of most relic cards, but the A&G ones are pretty good. And Soto really had a decent career. Never near his RoY numbers, but 13 years in the bigs is right about 13 more than most of us.

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    1. I agree, the mini framed relics are aesthetically pleasing.

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