Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 14,881 Cubs cards from 121 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1978 Topps #711 Dennis Lamp This is not the most impressive group of four rookies.  Lamp's career was the best of the four.  His rookie season of 1978 was interesting.  He had a nice ERA of 3.30, but his record was 7-15.  Not much run support, I guess.

1980s: 1989 Fleer #419 Mike Bielecki  Bielecki looks like he really doesn't want his picture taken.  His 1989 season should have put a smile on his face.  He was the best pitcher on the '89 team, going 18-7.  He never came close to repeating that success.

1990s: 1999 Topps #118 Mark Clark  Forget about Clark.  What is up with the ivy?  Red?  My guess is that the picture is from early in the season, before the leaves bloom.  But it should be brown, not red.

2000s: 2004 Topps Total #6 Mark Prior Checklist  Mark Prior was everywhere in 2004.  2003 was a breakthrough year for him.  Unfortunately, the rest of his career was broke.

2010s: 2010 T206 #62 Geovany Soto  These T206 cards are odd looking. Topps tried to copy the style of the original, but it didn't work.

The Worst Cubs Rookie Card

Here is the flipside to yesterday's post.

Coming up with the Cubs worst rookie card is a little harder because the Cubs have had more than their share of flops.  The holy grail would be a card with all of the players never making it to the majors.  Somehow, the Cubs avoided that.  Here are the three with the fewest total number of major league games played.

55 Games total - Ott, 32 and Warner, 33 

This card has special meaning to me...read about it here

22 games total - Bobb, 10 and Cosman, 12

And the worst Cubs rookie cards is...

8 games total - Dunegan, 7, and Skidmore, 1. However, I must point out that Roe Skidmore got a hit in his one and  only MLB at bat and ends up with a career batting average of 1.000.

The Best Rookie Card

I spent some time looking over the multi-player rookie cards in my Cubs Topps collection.  The main run was from 1964 through 1982.  Each year had at least one card, some had several.

My goal was to come up with the best card.  By best, I mean the card with the players that had the best careers.  Often the multi-player cards had one good guy along with one or two busts.  The best card would have nothing but good guys.

It was easier than I thought to come up with the best card.  There was one that clearly had two good guys, and the good part of their careers was with the Cubs.

But first, the second and first runner-ups;

Third place goes to John Boccabella and Billy Cowan.  Both had significant major league careers, though neither did much for the Cubs.

Second place goes to Joe Niekro and Paul Popovich.  Niekro's career went for 22 years, but just the first two were with the Cubs.  Popovich spent several years as the Cubs main utility infielder.  His Cubs contributions are what earned this card second place.

And the big winner?  As I said earlier, it was pretty easy to pick out:

Hands and Hundley were major players for the '69 Cubs.  A twenty game winner and an All Star on the same card.  The only downside with the card is that they are both in Giant uniforms.  What a steal of a deal that was!

Five Ransom Cubs Cards

No, the title is not a typo.

But it came about because of a typo.  As I was doing a recent Five Random Cubs Cards post I inadvertently typed Ransom instead of Random.  I corrected the mistake but also realized that I do actually have five Ransom cards.

This is Ransom, or Randy Jackson, or Handsome Ransom.  He played third base for the Cubs from 1950 - 1955.  He was an all star twice, in 1954 and 1955.  After the '55 season, the Cubs sold high and traded him to the Dodgers.  He never repeated the success he had with the Cubs and was out of baseball by the end of the 1959 season.

Bowman included Jackson in three sets but Topps only had him once.  This was the era of contracts with one company or the other and it looks like Jackson was a Bowman man.

All I've Got of Him: Dave Martinez

Here's a look at all I've got of the Cubs' bench coach.

Dave Martinez spent parts of four different seasons with the Cubs.  He was a third round pick of the Cubs in the 1983 draft.  Three years later he made his MLB debut with the Cubs.  He was with them until being traded to the Expos during the 1988 season.  He later returned to the north side for part of the 2000 season.

After his playing days were done he was a coach in the Rays system and eventually landed the bench coach position for Joe Maddon.  When Maddon came to the Cubs, Martinez followed with him.

I really thought that I had more cards of him than I do.  My total is just eleven.  He spans most of the brands of the day, Donruss, Fleer, Score, and Topps, along with a Starting Lineup and Cubs team issued card.

Happ-y To Add a Relic

I was happy to add another relic to my collection...

...this Diamond King dual jersey relic card of Ian Happ.  The card meets my relic collection rules of showing a player as a Cub during a season he played for the Cubs.


I know its a logo-free card, but at this point there aren't any Topps cards of Happ that meet the rules.  I suppose someday down the line I may upgrade to a card with a logo.  For now, this is fine.  His career is off to nice start, so it is more than likely that he'll end up with a Topps card in the future.

My rule-following collection now numbers 82 different players.

Arismendy Alcantara	Matt Garza	Jose Nieves
Albert Almora	Mark Grace	Mike Olt
Moises Alou	Mark Grudzielanek	Corey Patterson
Jake Arrieta	Jason Hammel	Carlos Pena
Javier Baez	Ian Happ	Felix Pie
Darwin Barney	Rich Harden	Juan Pierre
Francis Beltran	Brendan Harris	Mark Prior
Kris Bryant	Kevin Hart	Aramis Ramirez
Damon Buford	Jason Heyward	Anthony Rizzo
Marlon Byrd	Bobby Hill	Addison Russell
Andrew Cashner	Rich Hill	Jeff Samardzija
Welington Castillo	Todd Hundley	Kyle Schwarber
Starlin Castro	Brett Jackson	Jorge Soler
Aroldis Chapman	Jacque Jones	Alfonso Soriano
Hee Seop Choi	Eric Karros	Sammy Sosa
Tyler Colvin	David Kelton	Geovany Soto
Willson Contreras	Bryan LaHair	Matt Szczur
Juan Cruz	Junior Lake	Ryan Theriot
Ryan Dempster	Derrek Lee	Darryle Ward
Blake DeWitt	Jon Lester	Todd Wellemeyer
Jason Dubois	Ted Lilly	Randy Wells
Jim Edmonds	Kenny Lofton	Rondell White
Carl Edwards	Greg Maddux	Jerome Williams
Mike Fontenot	Carlos Marmol	Kerry Wood
Dexter Fowler	Gary Matthews, Jr.	Carlos Zambrano
Kyuji Fujikawa	Fred McGriff	Ben Zobrist
Kosuke Fukudome	Bill Mueller	Julio Zuleta
Nomar Garciaparra

Vertical Is Better Than Horizontal

I don't know if I'm in the minority or not, but I cannot stand horizontal cards.  Baseball cards need to, no, must be vertically aligned.

My reason is very simple.

Your hand.

Baseball cards are meant to be held, to be handled.  I love having a stack of cards in my hand and then thumbing through the stack.  And it seems that a stack of vertical cards fit perfectly in any sized hand.  They fit in my hand when I was eight years old.  They fit now.

Horizontal cards don't fit in you hand the same way. It is very awkward to thumb through a stack of horizontal cards.

In the series one Cubs cards there are three of these horizontal abominations.

They must be changed.

A quick trip to Getty Images got me the original photos use by Topps. A little more playing around and, voila!

 

  

Vertical cards!