2024 Cub #48

Pitcher Nate Pearson was acquired in a trade with the Blue Jays on Saturday, costing the Cubs two low-level prospects.  He made his Cubs debut Monday against the Reds and it was an interesting beginning.

He came in for the bottom of the seventh as the Cubs trailed the Reds 6-0.  The inning was pretty easy for him, 1-2-3.  He came back in the eight and got another out before giving up a home run to Jeimer Candelario.  

His next pitch was a 96 mph fastball that hit Tyler Stephenson in the helmet.  It was scary, but the helmet did what it was supposed to do and an angry Stephenson went to first base.  The umps then got together and tossed Pearson, ending his first Cubs appearance.

My opinion is that the umps overreacted.  Pearson had no reason to plunk anyone. The guy is making his debut with his new team and was trying to get off on a positive start.  The game was over at that point with the Cubs down by seven.  There wasn't any showboating by the Reds that would have made the Cubs mad.  If the umps were concerned, they could have given the team a warning.  Ejection seemed unnecessary.

2024 Cub #48's debut didn't last as long as hoped.  But the 48 players fit into a nice 6x8 mosaic, so we have that.

2024 Cubs #46 & 47

 Today I have two new Cubs, sort of.

I should have make a card for Ethan Roberts at the beginning of the month, as he first pitched for the Cubs this year on June 30.  He went on to have four scoreless appearances before being returned to AAA on July 13.  Somehow over that time I forgot to make a card for him and just realized that mistake when I was looking over the Cubs pages at Baseballreference.com.  Sorry about that Ethan!

Catcher Christian Bethancourt became 2024 Cub #47 on Sunday.  The veteran catcher had been obtained off of waivers on July 5 after being released by the Marlins.  When backup Tomas Nido was placed on the IL on July 26, Bethancourt was activated.  

Also on Sunday the Cubs made a big trade with the Rays, getting Isaac Paredes for Christopher Morel and a couple of others.  I'll have the Paredes card in a day or two.

1987 Sportflics Fixed

 Once I got all of the images from the 1986 Sportflics Cubs, I figured I might as well keep going.  I ended up getting the multiple images of all of the Sportflics cards, through their final set in 1996.  

Today I have the Cubs from the 1987 set which has just five. On three of the five there wasn't a portrait picture, so the action sequence has three pictures.  Ryne Sandberg has the weird one in the set, with a portrait and two non-sequential action pictures.

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 21,848 Cubs cards from 317 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1973 O-Pee-Chee #44 Rick Monday  Monday was really rocking the long sideburns in the spring of 1972.  

1980s: 1985 All Star Program Jody Davis  Jody was in the program because they showed all the players on the ballot.  He didn't make the NL squad in 1985, but he did in both the prior and following seasons.

1990s: 1992 Team Issued #16 Fergie Jenkins I'm not sure why Fergie is holding five baseballs.  If I had to guess, it would be for five consecutive 20-win seasons.

2000s: 2002 Donruss Diamond King #14 Sammy Sosa  It makes me cringe a little when I see #14 followed by Sammy Sosa.  14 is Ernie Banks and Sammy is no Ernie Banks.

2010s: 2013 Team Issued #36 Alfonso Soriano  Kudos to Soriano for having a mostly legible signature.

Eighties Alphabetically - Galasso Glossy Greats

 

Anyone who collected cards in the late 70's and 80's would recognize the name Renata Galasso. Though not the first mail order card set seller, she was one of the more prolific advertisers of her era. Her advertising worked on me. The very first Topps complete set I bought, back in 1978, was from Renata Galasso.

The set also came with a bonus; 45 black and white cards of former players. The set was called Galasso Glossy Greats. When I got my set, I remember being ambivalent about these black and white cards, especially since I had 726 full color cards in the same box. I know exactly where my Topps '78 set is; but the Glossy Greats were lost. Actually, they were probably tossed.

The set was produced from 1977 - 1984. There were 45 cards per release, and over that span, six different sets were issued, making for a total of 270 cards. There were 17 different Cubs cards, but since this is Eighties Alphabetically, I will only show the eight Cubs from 1980 - 1984.

Fixed Some More Sportflics

Yesterday I wrote about how I fixed my scan of the 1986 Sportlics Billy Williams card to show his face instead of Tony Olivia's.

That fix job sent me on another fixit project.

This is what many of my scans from this set look like.  Because the Sportflic cards have three pitcures on them, the scans can sometimes look like a jumbled mess.  I decided that each card should actually have three images, not just one.

I grabbed my camera and started taking pictures of the card at different angles to capture all three of the pictures. Then it was off to do some image editing to get the cards at the right perspective.

This is what I ended up with, a look at all three of the images.  Typically in the 1986 set, there is a portrait picture along with two action pictures.  

I wasn't always able to get clear pictures of some of the images, but I think you get the idea as to what the three pictures look like.

Below are the rest of the Cubs cards from the set, with all three images for each.  Except for Ernie Banks, the two action shots are from the same play, so I put them in the order in which they happened.

And since it was a pretty quick and easy process, I made GIFs of the images too, so you can see the action like you were thumbing through a flip book.

Billy Fixed

 

This scan of Billy Williams' card from 1989 Sportflics has always bothered me.  Its from the subset called "Best of the '60s". There are pictures of three players on it, Billy Williams, Al Kaline, and Tony Oliva.  The picture changes depending on the angle that you're using to look at it, which is Sportflics' gimmick.  When I put the card on the scanner bed, the angle gives you the Oliva picture.

It is not acceptable for this Cubs collector to have a Twins player show up like that.  But I've never been able to do anything with the scanner to get the Billy image.

Recently I started playing around with my camera instead of using the scanner.  With the camera you have the ability to adjust the angle at which the picture is taken.  

I can get the picture of Billy to show up, but then the card looks skewed, and that won't do either.  That means I have to add another step to the process and use the perspective tool in Photoshop (actually, I use GIMP, the free open-source Photoshop alternative).

And now I have Billy instead of Tony Olivia!

2024 Cub #45

 The 45th player for the 2024 Cubs took the field while I was on my bike trip.

Reliever Jesus Tinoco was purchased from the Royals on July 16.  He was with the Royals organization for less than a month, as they had just picked him up as a free agent after being released by the Rangers on June 20.  Three organizations in 30 days is not a good thing.

He was recalled from Iowa on July 19 and pitched two scoreless innings for the Cubs that same day.  Here's hoping he can keep up that 0.00 ERA for the rest of the season!