Five Random Cubs Cards

 I've got 20,572 Cubs cards from 304 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1977 Burger Chef Jose Cardenal  It would have been more appropriate for Jose to be on a disc or card put out by Oscar Mayer, since he was quite a hot dog.

1980s: 1983 Team Issued Tom Veryzer  He's crouching so low that he doesn't even cover half of the card!

1990s: 1991 Star Millennium #3 Ryne Sandberg  It looks like they snapped a shot of Ryno fielding grounders during infield practice.

2000s: 2004 Studio #40 Aramis Ramirez   I really liked the look of this edition of Studio, with the Chicago skyline in the background.

2010s: 2016 Allen and Ginter #125 Carl Edwards  He recorded two of the three outs in the last inning of the 2016 World Series, so Edwards will always be thought of positively.

70s Saturday - 1979 Hostess Cubs

The 1979 set was the last of their box bottom sets.  It has the best of that team, though it was a very good team.

 

 

 

1972 O-Pee-Chee Cubs

Set Size: O-Pee-Chee - 525, Topps 787  

Cubs in set: O-Pee-Chee - 21 , Topps - 32 

The 1972 O-Pee-Chee set is made up of the first five series from the Topps set.  

There are no differences between the two card fronts.

Typical bilingual changes were made to the backs.  I do like that the OPC cartoons used the hand drawn lettering at a reduced size instead of using a type-style font.  The background color used by OPC is a brighter red.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2022 Cubs #36 - 38

 I'm having a hard time keeping up with these!  I missed a player from this past weekend and then on Tuesday two more players made their Cubs (and MLB) debut.

Pitcher Conner Menez was recalled from Iowa on May 9.  He made one appearance, on May 13, in Arizona.  He pitched on inning.  Four days later he was sent back to Iowa and his roster spot was taken by...

... Brandon Hughes.  The lefty was drafted by the Cubs as an outfielder but converted to a pitcher a few years ago.  He made his MLB debut on Tuesday and it was a pretty impressive debut.  He pitched 1.2 innings and all five outs were strikeouts.

Also making his major league debut on Tuesday was outfielder Christopher Morel.  He was called up from AA, bypassing AAA.  He entered the game as a pinch hitter in the bottom of the eighth.  He blasted a home run onto Waveland - not a bad way to kick off your MLB career.

Below are the 38 Cubs of 2022.

A Look at All of the Diamond King Cubs

 Donruss has included a Diamond King subset in almost each one of their sets.  It debuted in 1982, their second year and has been a stable for each set with the exception of 1997 and 1998.  It seemed that early on, at least for the Cubs, a different player was selected each year.  The first Cub repeat king was Ryne Sandberg.  He was the king in 1985 and again in 1991.  Ryno was named a third time in 1993 and at that point, it doesn't seem like Donruss tried to spread the wealth.

Mark Grace was a repeat, with both 1989 and 1996.  Sammy Sosa was named king five times, in 1995, 2001 - 2003, and 2005.  The modern sets saw Anthony Rizzo getting names five times also, in 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, and 2021.

Below is the complete court of Cubs Diamond Kings.

2022 Cubs #35

 Another Cub regular went down with an injury and player #35 made an appearance.  Shortstop Nico Hoerner was injured on Wednesday when he sprained his ankle after a collision with umpire Dan Iassogna.  Recalled from a rehab assignment to replace him is Andrelton Simmons.  He came into Sunday's game as a late-inning defensive replacement.

The Cubs have now passed the halfway point to equaling last year's 69 players.

2022 Donruss Cubs

 As had been its custom for the past few years, Donruss is made up of several subsets.  It starts with the 30 Diamond Kings.  They are followed by 50 rated rookies.  Next come the base cards, 150 of them  The set wraps up with 50 retro designed cards, this year's being the 1988 set.

Willson Contreras is the Cubs Diamond King.  

There is one Cubs rated rookie, Greg Deichmann.  Deichmann didn't make the team coming out of spring training.  He was released to clear a spot on the 40-man roster in April.  No other team claimed him, so he is now in Iowa as insurance.  That's not exactly a rated rookie as far as I am concerned.

 

 

 

Five Cubs are in the base set including Ryne Sandberg.

 

These are the last two Cubs cards, with the retro-1988 look.

 

This is what the actual 1988 cards looked like.  I'm not sure why they made a couple of the corners white instead of blue.