Two More of My Favorite Ex-Cub

Even though Darwin Barney is no longer a Cub, I still have a few cards of his to get.  Last week I picked up two.

Topps has again put out a mini version of the base set, so that means I need a mini Barney.

There are also the usual, and dreaded parallels.

So far I've got the gold.  There is also a pink (/25), black (/5), and platinum (1/1), but I haven't seen any of them surface yet.

These two additions boost the 2014 Topps Barney total to 20

Row 1: base, base blank back, base no foil, Power Player

Row 2: Opening Day, Opening Day blank back, Factory Team set, Pink

Row 3: Black, Camo, Gold, Red Foil

Row 4: Blue, Red, Green Purple

Row 5: Yellow, Opening Day Blue, Mini, Mini Gold

And how is he doing now?

I think that his Isotopes picture says it all.  He spent a couple weeks with AAA Albuquerque and he doesn't look too happy to be there, does he?  He's got a "I'm a Gold Glover; what the heck and I doing down here??" look.

Through 9 games, he's batting .257.  Most of his time has been spent at shortstop and he's also played a little at third base.

On Sunday, he was recalled to the Dodgers as Hanley Ramirez was placed on the DL.  It'll be interesting to see if he sticks with the team when Ramirez gets back.

Odds and Ends With the Scorecards

Now that I've got my scorecard collection finished, I found a few interesting odds and ends to share.

Price
The Cubs' scorecards were a bargain for quite a while...
1948 - 1964    10¢
1965 - 1973    15¢
So for 25 years, the increase was a nickel.  Well, that wasn't going to be the case going forward.
1974 - 1976     20¢
1977 - 1980     25¢
1981 - 1985     30¢
1986 - 1987     40¢
1988 - 1990     50¢
1991 - 2000     75¢

The 2000 card was the last one with a price on the cover.  From that point on, I believe the scorecard was part of an official program, which today has a price of $2.

Artwork

The artwork of Otis Shepard first appeared on the 1947 program, and when the scorecard format was adopted in 1948 he kept working on the front.  His work continued on the cover of the scorecard though 1962.

After 1962 they did have the look of a Shepard, though he wasn't the artist, and that continued though the 1981 season, the final one under Wrigley ownership.

Once Tribune Company took over, the look of the cover changed drastically.  The bottom half had an ad on it while the top was usually an action shot of a Cubs player or two.  This basic style was used through 1994.

Starting in 1995, the covers started getting a little more design attention, though they generally still had a player and an ad.  The same template is still being used in 2014.

Backs
While the front changed every year, the back of the card didn't.

 

 
These are the backs of the 1948 and 1971 cards.  Its the same Shepard artwork; just the products have changed.  Imagine that--the same basic back for 24 years.

 

The back was updated in 1972 and that same back design was used through 1981.  Change was not something the Cubs were too interested in.

Since then, there have been other consistencies with the back.  Budweiser had an ad on the back from 1983 - 1996 and a couple were used for many years in a row.

 

The one on the left was from 1987 - 1991 and the right was used the next two year, 1992 and 1993.

Since 1997, there were four sponsors on the back, PrimeCo, FoxSportsNet, Office Depot, and Comcast Sportsnet.

A big change happened this year, as the back was split among four sponsors.  My guess for the reason--with attendance down, they couldn't get one sponsor that wanted to fork over the cost of the entire back.

That about wraps things up with the scorecard collection.  From this point on, it will just be a matter of adding the newest one to the binder.

Scorecard Collection Complete!!

I was able to grab the final scorecard to complete my collection!

A while back I decided that my run of scorecards would cover the era that the Cubs used 4-page card stock 8½" x 11" scorecards.  That would be 1948 to now  (prior to that the scorecard was part of a 6" x 9" program book).  My collection went back to 1949, so I had one more to go, the 1948 card.

And here it is, another Otis Shepard beauty.

Now I can sit back and enjoy a completed collection!

Hopefully you do, too.

Topps Finest 1995

Year three for Topps Finest was the first year that the cards had this...

...the protective coating...

...which I decided to take off.

It took a little while, but I was able to figure out a fairly simple way to remove the covering.  I just lightly scratched the coating in the bottom right corner of the card and that usually lifted the corner enough to grab and pull off.  If that corner didn't work, I tried another.

The set shrunk by half from 1994, down to only 220 cards.

The first 30 cards of the set are rookies.  The Finest logo at the top of their cards is a shade of teal.

 

The Cubs had two of the 30. both pitchers.

The rest of the players have Finest in gold instead of teal.  The Cubs had seven players.

 

 

 

  

 

When released, a pack of seven cards had a $4.99 retail price, which comes to 71¢ per card.  Nineteen years later I paid $2.99 for nine cards....33¢ per card.

That protective coating really helped the cards keep their value.

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 12,644 Cubs cards from 92 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

 1900s - 1970s: 1968 Topps #279 Bill Hands (Autographed)  I added this card a few years ago when I was on an autograph spree.  Hands was kinda the forgotten starter.....Jenkins and Holtzman were the ones getting most of the attention.  But in 1969 he won 20 games and followed up in 1970 with 18 more wins.

1980s: 1983 Donruss #561 Jay Johnstone  The bat head is up, nicely done Jay.  The veteran outfielder played in 86 games for the 1983 Cubs and hit .257.  He was much better at Wrigley, hitting .310 at home compared to .220 on the road.

1990s: 1994 Upper Deck #122 Jose Vizcaino  Despite being a full-time player in 1993 and hitting a very respectable .287, Vizcaino was traded to the Mets just before opening day in 1994.  In return, the Cubs got pitcher Anthony Young, who the previous season set an MLB record by losing 27 games in a row.  His 1993 record was 1-16.  And the Cubs went out and made a trade for him.  Young went 4-6 and then had Tommy John surgery in August.

2000s: 2002 Upper Deck #21 Mike Amrhein  I have absolutely no recollection of this guy.  Never heard of him, at all.  I must have at least seen the card when I put it into my binder, and again when I scanned the card, but when I saw this after the RNG picked it, I had nothing.  He never made it to the majors.  He spent part of 2002 in AAA, but that was as high as he got and his final season in organized ball.

2010s: 2011 Opening Day #117 Tyler Colvin  Big things were expected from Tyler Colvin in 2011 after he did well in 2010, his first full year in the majors.  He hit 20 homers and had 56 RBIs as the Cubs starting left fielder.  But he got off to a horrendous start in 2011 and never recovered.  In 80 games he batted just  .150.  After the season he was traded to the Rockies.  A week ago the Giants DFA'ed him, and he has yet to hook up with another team.

Kahn!!

I am not a Star Trek fan.  I know very little about it.  What I do know is more from other sources.

Like Seinfeld.



Khannnn!!!

I am a fan of Billy Williams.  I know alot about him from my own stuff, including this newest pickup...

....Kahn!!!!

Kahn's Wieners started putting out cards in 1955.  Being a Cincinnati company, their first sets were just Reds.  They later added Pirates (1957), Indians (1959), Cubs, White Sox, and Cardinals (1959), and Braves (1965).

My card of Billy is from the 1969 set, Kahn's last set.  The picture on the card seems to be from the spring of 1969.  Too bad they didn't crop the card a little tighter; Billy seems pretty far away.

These are fairly scarce and can command a pretty penny.

By now you should know that I didn't pay a pretty penny for the card.  I've been waiting for a couple years for one of these to come up as an auction that starts at a reasonable price.  It was worth the wait.  The cheapest one on Ebay right now is going for $50.  I paid less than a third of that.

When I won the card I was excited.

I let out a little yell

That Rookie Is Really Impressive!

Javier Baez hit two more home runs yesterday, drove in four runs, and his average is up to .286.

But the rookie that really impressed me was yesterday's starting pitcher Kyle Hendricks.  Making his fifth career start, he went eight innings and allowed just two runs on six hits.  He struck out four, with two of the four coming in the eighth inning.

This start comes on the heels of an impressive win against a much stronger Dodger team last Friday.  In Los Angeles, he pitched into the seventh inning, giving up just one run and seven hits.

For the season he is now 3-1 with a 2.10 ERA. and he has pitched well in each of his five starts.  I'm really liking what I see from him.

Hendricks is a 24-year-old Dartmouth graduate who came to the Cubs in the 2012 Ryan Dempster trade.  He's had impressive numbers in the minor leagues and it looks like he'll continue that in the bigs.

Despite putting up a 13-4 record last year between AA and AAA along with a 10-5 record in Iowa this year he has really flown under the radar.  All of the attention has been on the big bats coming up, but pitching wins championships.  Hopefully Hendricks will be part of the rotation for a while.

How far under the radar is he?

I don't have a single card of him.  He wasn't in Pro Debut, Bowman, or Heritage Minors since his trade to the Cubs.  He has 2012 cards from his time with the Rangers, but nothing with the Cubs.

I had to take things into my own hands...this will have to do for now.