Longball Legends

Making its debut in Series Two is the insert set Longball Legends.   The cards show a player and have details on one of his long home runs.  Four Cubs were included.  I've got them alphabetically and that also, by coincidence, has them from longest to shortest home run distance.

I've also found clips of each of the homers, so you can look at the card first, and then the homer.

Bryant's 495 foot blast was hit on September 6, 2015 at Wrigley Field.

The 491' blast off the bat of Willson Contreras was a post-season homer, coming on October 18, 2017 against the Dodgers.

Rizzo's big bomb was hit on April 18, 2013 against the Rangers.

The Schwarbomb was hit on May 23, 2017, and landed on Sheffield Avenue.

Cub #39

On Wednesday James Norwood made his MLB debut and became the 39th player to see game action for the 2018 Cubs.  He made it through the 12th inning unscathed and had two strikeout.  He retired the first two hitters in the 13th but then ran into trouble, giving up a walk followed by two singles.  That was the ballgame.

I couldn't find any pictures of him from the game and he never pitched for the Cubs in spring training, so those are out too. I ended up using a screen capture from the WGN telecast for the card.

 Here's the cards of all 39 Cubs....

2018 Series Two 1983 Cubs

Let's start taking a look at the Series Two inserts Cubs.

There are two 1983 insert sets and I'll star with the All Star set.  The actual 1983 All Star set was a subset of the main set.  It consisted of the eight starting All Star position players from each league, plus three pitchers for each.

 

 

Four Cubs are in the All Star set.  None of the three active players were on the 2017 All Star team, so why are they in the set?  Also, Ryne Sandberg wasn't on the 1983 All Star team.  Why is he in the set?

The other 1983 set is a rookies set.  There was no rookie set  in 1983 for Topps to copy.  They just made regular looking cards for the players they consider to be the top rookies.

  

Both of these have had brief appearances with the 2018 Cubs that have not gone well.  Tseng's ERA is 13.50 and his is the better of the two.  Maples has an ERA of 16.88.    I would argue that they are not among the top rookies!

Series Two Vs. Factory Set

There are six Cubs that have cards in both the factory team set and series two.  Four players have the same picture in both while two players have different pictures.  Let's take a look at those two and see which set has the better picture, series two or the factory set.

Up first is Albert Almora.

  

The factory card is on the left, series two on the right.  I'm voting for the factory set, which gives a better look at his face.

Kyle Hendrick also saw his picture change.

The factory card is on top, series two is on the bottom.  I again give the nod to the factory set.  The series two card is horizontal, which always loses point in my book.  But it also shows him with the ugly grunt face.  I don't like the pitcher grunt face cards at all.

So it is a clean sweep for the factory set.  Agree with me?

Why would Topps downgrade the pictures for Series Two.  In fact, who looks at the factory set and says, "We can do better" and then fails?

2018 Series Two Cubs

Better late than never, here are the 2018 Topps Series Two Cubs cards.  The set has the team card, 12 player cards, and a checklist with a smiling Cubs bench.

 

 

 

 

Topps was rolling the dice by including Dillon Maples,Drew Smyly, and Jen-Ho Tseng.  So far that gamble is a bust.

The Zobrist card is nice because it includes a rare glimpse at stirrups.  Ben has been wearing stirrups and black spikes whenever the Cubs play at home during the day.  The black spikes got him in some trouble with the MLB uniform police, but he continues to wear them.  Ben's a rebel!

The Arrieta Could Have Been and Is

I'm back!  Mrs. WW and I had a great trip.  We ended up doing 123 miles on the bikes over six days and saw some great sites.

My Series Two cards have arrived and instead of starting with the Cubs cards, I'm starting with a could-have-been Cubs card.

This is the card Topps put out for Jake Arrieta.  I figured it was a photoshop job.  Digging around Getty Images I found the original, which was take during the 2015 NLCS.  I wonder why they used a picture from so many seasons ago?

So what would the card have looked like if Jake was still with the Cubs?

This!

HItting the Road

I'm doing something this week that I've never done with the blog before.  I'm taking the week off.

Mrs. WW and I are taking a bike trip vacation as we celebrate our 35th anniversary.  When I've gone on vacation before I wrote and scheduled posts for those days.  This year I just haven't had time to do that.  So instead, it will truly be a vacation; from work, from home, from WW.

We'll be heading from Charlevoix, Michigan up to Mackinaw City, then spend a day on Mackinac Island, then ride to Cheboygan and back to Mackinaw.  We're spreading the trip out so that the longest daily ride is just 26 miles.  We're looking forward to a nice relaxing week.

See you on July 9.