Going For the Gold

Yes, I've caved in and gone after most of the inserts. But I haven't abandoned my original goal of completing the base set. In fact, I've gone a little crazy there, too. I've got the base and the Platinum Diamond Anniversary cards.

So up next would have to be the gold cards. I have never gone after these in the past, but since they have the anniversary logo on them, I figured, why not. Being numbered to 2011 makes them plentiful enough to pick up, and cheap enough, too. But there should eventually be some value to them.

I also went for the gold because that gives me three variations of each card, which looks really nice in the binder. Here is what 2011 page one looks like...



....We've got the base, then the sparkly, and then the gold. And since there are only three pockets per row, that means I don't have to bother getting the Walmart, Target, or Black Border/60 cards. I can quit now. Yes, really, I CAN quit...I do have will-power....Serenity now, serenity now!!

Here are the golden boys:

Opening Day 2011 Cubs

It took just a week for my Cubs Opening Day set to arrive.

The more I see Opening Day, the more I wish it was the design used on the base set. The foil on the base makes it so hard to read. Maybe my almost 50 year old eyes have something to do with that, but the Opening Day cards just seem easier to look at. The names are more visible and the Topps logo is too. Maybe Topps could make more money if Opening Day was marketed to old guys with bifocals instead of kids!

There were ten Cubs included in the 220 card set, which means more Cubs than a lot of other teams. I wonder why? They weren't very good last year. But hey, I guess I shouldn't complain. I'd rather there be too many than not enough.

Of the ten, four players were not in series one. So is this what their series two card will look like? Last year that was the case, the Opening Day card was the series two card. Here are the four:









I especially like the Soto card. You don't often get to see the face of a catcher in an action shot, but on this one you do. The card also gives a good shot of his personalized chest protector with his name on it.

And the other six should look familiar, since they are in series one.

I Caved: The Relics

So I went ahead and picked up all of the Topps 60 relic cards for the Cubs. There were eight total Cubs, but I didn't have to pay more than $3-4 for each card.

It has been pointed out elsewhere, but the really dumb thing about these cards is the statistical category listed at the top and on the back of the card. Topps makes us think that they are recognizing the player for some sort of accomplishment, but in truth, they just had to find a category for the players that they had jerseys to use. You'll know what I mean when you see some of these categories and where the player finished.

First up are the three cards that have a gray road uniform.



Marlon Byrd, 2010 National League Singles Leaders (really, singles!), Byrd finished tied for 8th



Starlin Castro, 2010 MLB Rookie Average Leaders, Castro finished second



Tyler Colvin, 2010 MLB Rookie Home Run Leaders, Colvin finished second

Three more cards have plain white home jerseys:



Kosuke Fukudome, 2010 MLB Average Leaders from the Second Spot (wow, how hard did Topps have to dig around to come up with this category!), Fukudome finished first!



Carlos Marmol, Highest Single Season Strikeouts Per Nine Innings, Marmol is now the all time leader. This is a stat that seems card-worthy.



Aramis Ramirez, Most RBIs, NL Central History, Ramirez is fifth...Sammy Sosa is first until Albert Pujols knocks in 61 more runs.

And finally, two cards with a home pinstripe



Geovany Soto, Most Home Runs as a Catcher, 2008-2010, Soto is second



Carlos Zambrano, Best 2010 NL ERA After All Star Break, Zambrano was first (1.58, pretty decent, considering how awful and psychotic he was in the early part of the season)

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 8,554 Cubs cards from 49 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.



1950s / 1960s: Topps 1959 #113 Taylor Phillips This guy was well before my time, so I knew nothing about him. So I looked him up on baseball reference. They used this card for the picture of him. Phillips played for four teams over a six seasons, with the Cubs being his second stop. He was not very good for the 1959 Cubs. He made 7 appearances, mostly in relief and was 0-2 with a 7.56 ERA. On May 12 the Cubs traded him to the Phillies.



1970s:Topps 1973 #21 Randy Hundley This picture was taken at Shea in 1972. After an injury plagued three year span, 1973 was Randy's last season as a full time regular with the Cubs or with anyone else. He played in 124 games but hit only .226. It would be safe to say that by 1973, he had broken down. After the season, he was traded to the Twins.



1980s: Upper Deck 1989 #107 Shawon Dunston Here is Dunston's card from Upper Deck's first set. Dunston had an OK year in 1989, as the Cubs came out of nowhere to win the NL East. He hit .278 (a career high up to that point) with 9 homers and 60 RBIs. He started out the season slowly, hitting only .215 through his first 50 games and then got hot and hit .329 in his next 50.



1990s: Fleer 1998 #239 Lance Johnson The One-Dog. This is a great looking card. Known more as a member of the other Chicago team, Lance came to the Cubs towards the end of the 1997 season. A hand injury kept him on the DL for most of the first half of the season. He was activated on July 14 and hit .313 for the rest of the year.



2000s: O-Pee-Chee 2009 #555 Moments July 31, 2008 You would think that something special would have happened to the Cubs on this date, but it didn't (though the Cubs did spank the Brewers that day 11-4). This card talks about how the Cubs ended the month of July with the top record in the National League. But on July 31 the Cubs were five games better than the next team in the NL. That isn't a "moment" in my book, but hey, what do I know??

My Opening Card from Opening Day

Opening Day has been live for about a week. When the set was released, there was one card in particular that caught my eye. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to have it. So it was off to eBay for me.

I won the auction on Tuesday and the card arrived on Thursday. That was the quickest I had ever received a card. This is my first Opening Day card of the season and today, I'll show it off:



It's from the Presidential First Pitch insert set, showing RR at Wrigley Field on September 30, 1988. Reagan was coasting, with less than four months left in his term. At this point, I'm sure he had a list of things he wanted to make sure he did before leaving office. Things like balancing the budget, winning the cold war, and throwing out the first pitch at Wrigley Field.

You can see from the card that the game was not well attended. Look at the empty bleachers (though part is empty because of the batters eye). Also notice that the ivy has begun to turn red.

Once the game began, Reagan spent some time in the booth with Harry Caray. This was the post-stroke Harry Caray, so what we had were a couple of goofy old guys and Steve Stone. Reagan told stories of his time doing Cubs play by play for an Iowa radio station and then did a little play by play.



The back of the card says that Reagan helped with the radio broadcast, but since Harry did the first three innings on TV, the card is wrong.

And The Ernie Goes To...

Last week I presented the last of my baseball movies as a part of Flick Friday. Today, it's time to pick the best Flick Friday movie of 2011. The winning film will receive the coveted


"Ernie" award.



The nominees are:


Bull Durham

Rookie of the Year

The Pride of the Yankees

The Natural

Bang the Drum Slowly

The Bad News Bears

A League of Their Own

Vote For Your Favorite Friday Flick of 2011

I'll leave the polls open for a week and then have the prestigious accounting firm of Pricewaterhouse Copper complete the final tabulation.

Please vote!

Hostess IS Topps and Topps Is Hostess

Remember this post from Monday where I was lamenting the fact that Hostess was just as bad as Topps? Well, now I know why.



I saw this Hostess 1978 card on Ebay and as soon as I saw it, I knew it looked familiar. Check out this post from a few weeks ago on a item available from the Topps Vault. I couldn't understand why Topps would take the time to airbrush a photo, but not use it on a card (and instead make a really ugly Kingman card instead). Now I know.



Here is the vault item along side the Hostess 1978 Kingman..

It looks like Topps was doing the design work for the Hostess cards. That would answer the question about the airbrushed Kingman photo from the Topps Vault.



But still unanswered is this question, "Why make a card this ugly??"