2024 Cub #37

 The Cubs starting rotation took another hit on Saturday when Jordan Wicks was placed on the 15-day IL with a forearm strain.  He is the third member of the rotation currently on the IL.  

Taking Wicks' spot on the roster is lefty reliever Richard Lovelady.  He pitched an inning in Sunday's game and got through unscathed.  His time with the Cubs organization is pretty limited, so I used a screen shot from the TV broadcast.  

Even getting the screenshot was difficult because during his inning, there was an interview with Shota Imanaga taking place.  Imanaga got more screen time during the inning than Lovelady.

A Couple of Repeat Pictures

 

The Cubs and Topps went the cheap route with the backs of the cards in the 2022 season ticket holder set.  You would think that they would put in more effort when making a set for folks that pay $6,000 - $8,000 per season ticket.

I wondered if they got even cheaper and reused photos from other Topps sets.  It turns out that they didn't go to that extreme of cheapness, thought there were two cards among the fifteen with repeat pictures

 

The picture of Frank Schwindel is shared with Heritage 2022.

 

2022 Gold Label used the same Suzuki photo.

Five Random Cubs Cards

 I've got 21,734 Cubs cards from 316 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1972 Topps #208 Milt Pappas It seems to be very disrespectful to use a hatless picture when the player hasn't changed teams.

1980s: 1986 Fleer #366 Shawon Dunston  I wonder what he is thinking here?  And it looks like this must have been a cold day because he is wearing two jackets.

1990s: 1995 Donruss #385 Mike Morgan Look at the insert picture.  You don't see very many where the player is signaling two outs, or if he is from Texas, hook'em Horns!

2000s: 2004 Topps Total #556 Tom Goodwin  It looks like he is going to trip over his bat.

2010s: 2017 Diamond Kings #100 Billy Williams  Panini gave Billy a hundred number in the set.  That was something Topps did just once during his playing career.  He was #200 in the 1973 set.

Eighties Alphabetically - Classic Cubs

 The title says Classic Cubs, but these are really classic cards.  They are Classic cards.

These cards first came out in 1987 as a part of a baseball trivia game sold by Game Time, Ltd.  The original game contained 100 cards featuring players on the front and trivia questions for the game on the back.  

 

These are the Cubs cards from the original 1987 set (Sandberg) and the 50-card update set (Dawson).

 

Two more sets came out in 1988.  The red came first and the blue is the update set.  Each has 50 cards.

 

 

There were three sets from 1989, the 100-card original set and two 50-card update sets.

Classic cards continued to be issued through 1993.

2024 Cub #36

 Cody Bellinger crashed into the outfield wall at Wrigley Tuesday night.  He was taken out of the game with sore ribs as a precaution.  On Wednesday he was found to have fractured a rib and was placed on the IL.  Called up from Iowa to replace him was Pete Crow-Armstrong.  PCA wasn't exactly tearing things up in Iowa, batting just .203.

He was a late inning defensive replacement on Wednesday night but was the starting centerfielder on Thursday afternoon.  He struck out his first two times up and looked clueless.  But on his third AB he smacked a home run into a stiff wind blowing in.  The ball was crushed and I know that for a fact because...

... I was there!  My friend with season tickets had an extra ticket available at the last minute and I gladly accepted his offer to go the the game.  And now I can say that I witnessed PCA's first MLB hit and home run.

The home run was also the difference in the game as it was a two run shot that gave the Cubs a 3-1 lead.  

The lead held up and the Cubs won the game, completing a three-game sweep of the Astros.

I used a picture of his home run trot for his card. The font size for his last name had to be significantly reduced to get it to fit.   I'm sure that he will have an actual card in series two.  I wonder how Topps will deal with it.

And the 36 Cubs of 2024 fit into a nice 4x9 mosaic.

2024 Cub #35

The Cubs recalled Matt Mertis from Iowa on Tuesday, taking the roster spot of Garrett Cooper, who was DFA'ed.  Mervis was promptly put into the lineup Tuesday night, and he was 0-3.  He was doing well in AAA once again, and it remains to be seen if he can do the same thing in the big leagues or if he is one of the AAAA players.

I didn't have to make a card for him because Topps included him in the factory set.  I'm assuming that he will also have a card is series two.

2022 Cubs Season Ticket Holder Set

I recently picked up another of the Cubs season ticket holder sets, this one from 2022.  Topps and the Cubs partnered up to create a 15 card set using the 19878 Topps design.   I'm assuming they used that design because it was also used in 2022 Archives.  They didn't have to make anything new, they used something already set to go.

Not only did the use a recycled recycled front, but they got very lazy with the backs.  Look at that.  There is a lot of blank space.

 

 

 

 

 

These are the ten cards of players that were currently with the team.

 

 

The other five cards belong to future stars. Of the five, Jordan Wicks is the only one to make any sort of splash with the Cubs.

1976 Motorola Cubs

The electronics giant Motorola gave away baseball cards at their 1976 dealers convention.  Each pack contained one card and a stick of gum.  It was a pretty novel thing to do back then.

The set features eleven old-time players.  The front has a picture of the player while on the back there was information about Motorola products.

There are two Cubs in the set and I thought I had this set done over a year ago, but nope.  I picked up one card but never got the other.  I realized this last week, found the missing card on eBay, and bought it.

 

The two Cubs are Hall of Famers from the dynasty of 1906-1910.

The two cards are printed on two different types of paper. Brown's is very thin and flimsy.  You can see traces of the back on the scan.  The Chance card is on a much thicker paper.  Also notice how the color of the brown border is different.

2024 Cubs #32-34

 Three more Cubs made their 2024 debut.  All three saw action on Friday.  Two came to the team off of the IL, having recovered from back issues.

 

Jameson Taillon started Friday's game and went 5 effective innings against the Marlins, giving up just one run on three hits.  He'll be a welcome addition to the rotation if he keeps that up, with Justin Steele on the IL and Kyle Hendricks struggling.

Patrick Wisdom played right field on a windy afternoon for the first five innings and then moved to third base for the rest of the game.  The Cubs will need decent production from him with Seiya Suzuki on the IL.

Reliever Colton Brewer pitched a scoreless eighth inning but was touched up for a couple of runs in the ninth.  This is a card that I had to make. I couldn't find a picture of him with the Cubs so I used a screenshot off of the TV broadcast.