Five Random Cubs Cards

 I've got 19,507 Cubs cards from 285 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1958 Topps #66 Lee Walls  Walls had a great season for the Cubs in 1958 as he blasted 24 homer, drove in 72 runs, and hit .304.  He even made the All Star team.  It was by far the best season of his career.  

1980s: 1981 Cramer #33 Ernie Banks  Cramer put out 30-cards sets for four years starting in 1980.  The cards were number consecutively throughout the run.  That explains why he has card #33 from the 1981 set that had just 30 cards.

1990s: 1991 Upper Deck #742 George Bell  A card from the one and only season Bell was with the Cubs.

2000s: 2007 Just Minors #5 Darwin Barney  This is one of the few non-Cubs cards in my collection.  I went all-in on Darwin Barney and got all the cards from his college and minor league days, too.

2010s: 2014 Tribute #76 Billy Williams This is one of my favorite modern cards of Billy Williams.

70s Saturday - 1973 Kelloggs Cubs

 Kelloggs nailed it in 1973, with three Hall of Famers.  The pictures are all recent too, all from 1972.  

But despite nailing the pictures, Kelloggs really blew it with the cards.  3D was replaced by regular cardboard.  They wisely corrected this mistake the next year and with each year moving forward.

 

Ex Cub Factor 2021

 The Ex-Cub factor, popularized by the late, great columnist Mike Royko, states that if a team in the World Series has three or more ex-Cubs, they will lose the series.  

So how about this year?

It should be interesting...

The Braves have three ex-Cubs.

Soler is the only one of the three to have significant time with the Cubs.  Chavez and Pederson were with the the team for less than a season. Chavez' tenure was short enough that no card showing him with the Cubs was ever made so I had to make one

The Astros have two, Brooks Raley and Martin Maldonado.

Raley was with the team for bits of two seasons and Maldonado was a Cub for just two weeks (and I had to make a card for him, too).

However, the Astros are led by..

...an ex Cub manager.

If you include Dusty in the count, then each team has three ex-Cubs.

I guess that means that no one will win the World Series!

Actually, the ex-Cub factor has been cited ten times since 1945.  Seven of the ten teams that had the three or more ex-Cubs lost.  They include some heavily favored teams like the 1981 Yankees, the 1990 Athletics, and the 2019 Astros.

2021 Homemade Cubs:

 Nothing new has come in so here's four more homemade cards.  They've got some empty seats and a couple of frustration shots.

 

 

2021 Topps 206 Wave 7 Cubs

 The Cubs were shut out in wave 6 but came back with two cards in the seventh wave.

 

Nothing too exciting here.  Bote hit .199 and Happ's average was .226.  I would consider these guys not wave 7, but ripple 7.

2021 Homemade Cubs: Still Cranking Them Out

 I'm still cranking them out a few at a time... here's the next batch of four.

I didn't pick the pictures with this in mind, but look at all the empty seats in the Megill and Martini cards.  That's not something you saw a few years ago.

 

 

Had to Pick Up A Couple of the Parallels

 I posted recently that I picked up the 2021 Ginter X card of Billy Williams for the player collection.  It was the first card this year for the collection.  That didn't sit well with me.  

Billy hasn't been included in many sets this year.  Ginter was the one chance I had to add a few more cards, so I went shopping at Sportlots for any of the parallels.  I found a few of the mini variations, so I went ahead and picked up three.  None cost me more than two bucks shipped.

 

This would be the A&G back version.  Still to come are the mini black border and the silver portrait

Five Random Cubs Cards

  I've got 19,506 Cubs cards from 285 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1970 Topps #265 Randy Hundley The 1970 season was the beginning of the end for Hundley.  He got hurt in spring training and missed the first week of the season.  a week later he blew out his knee and was out until mid-July.  He played in just 73 games.

1980s: 1988 Fleer Team Leaders #7 Andre Dawson  Dawson was clearly the Cubs team leader in 1988.  He led the team in games played, runs, hits, triples, home runs, RBIs, and slugging.

1990s: 1990 Star Nova #139 Ryne Sandberg Ryno's post season stats are good.  He played in the NLCS in 1984 and 1989.  His average was .385 over the ten games.

2000s: 2003 Topps #578 Antonio Alfonseca  They guy was not very good in 2003 but Dusty kept putting him out there.  He made 60 appearances and posted an ERA of 5.83.  

2010s: 2013 Team Issued Season Tickets #7 Bobby Murcer  Murcer wore #7 with the Cubs and was given card #7 in this set.

70s Saturday - 1974 Capital Publishing Cubs

Today's set features cards issued in the '70s, but the players were definitely not from the '70s.

Capital Publishing Company issued a black and white set in 1974.  The players were not active.  In fact, many were old-timers from long ago.  The checklist in the Standard Catalog lists cards numbered from 1 to 104 though #102 is listed as "unknown".  The cards are large, 4 1/8" x 5 1/4".

The backs have the player's yearly stats along with a few career highlights.  The card number is on the bottom left. Capital's name is on the bottom right.  There is no copyright year, so I'm going by what the catalog says for the date.

The cards do not have any team designation, so I went with the team checklist from Teamsests4u and ended up with eight that they called Cubs cards.  Most of them are Hall of Famers or well-known Cubs... and a guy named Cliff Aberson, who played in a total of 63 games over three seasons.

#75 Cliff Aberson

#21 Cap Anson

#23 Mordecai Brown

#17 Frank Chance

#41 Johnny Evers

#7 Clark Griffith

#15 King Kelly

#85 Hippo Vaughn

2021 Homemade Cubs: Another Batch of Four

 Here's the next round of four, which includes two more of the backup catchers.

I had to cheat a little with the Tyler Ladendorf card. He was with the team for just two days at the end of the season.  I couldn't find any pictures so I had to use a screen grab from the TV broadcast.

I believer I may have written about this before, but I saw Ladendorf play in Little League when he was 11 years old.  He grew up in Des Plaines, Illinois, which is where I was living in the spring of 1998.  My #2 son played Little League and he and Ladendorf were on opposing teams.  I clearly remember watchin Ladendorf and thinking that this was a potential big leaguer. He was so much better than anyone else on the field.  He was smooth, quick, strong, had a strong arm, and could smash the ball.  He was a man among boys.  It was nice to see him have a brief stint with his hometown team.

 

 

I Got Nothing

 There's a lull with new cards coming out. The Cubs season was a dud and is over.  I'm really busy with work.  I'm getting tired of making homemade cards.

I've got nothing for today other than a card celebrating a happy day from five years ago.

2021 Homemade Cubs: One-Third of the Way Finished

 I knocked off four more cards and now I'm one-third complete.  That's 16 down, 32 more to go. 

 

 

2021 Homemade Cubs: The Next Four

 The next four homemade Topps cards are finished.  I'm working my way through the alphabet and these are D through F.  Coincidentally, those are the letter grades the team earned this past season.

The picture on the Deichmann card is also an apt representation of the season.