While I'm waiting for my 2011 Heritage Cubs to arrive (they should be here any day now), I thought we'd take a look at another of the Heritage insert sets.
The Then and Now set has been around since Heritage began in 2001. The concept is to link a player from the original Heritage year with a player from the current year. Some years the players were linked by position, other seasons it was by a statistic.
There were ten cards in the set for most seasons, except 2004 (6 cards) and 2008-2009 (20 cards). Over the years a total of 12 cards featured a Cubs player, with six picturing a modern Cub and six having a Cub from the past.
I'll start with the six cards with an older Cub. The Cubs of the '50s were pretty lousy, with the exception of one player, Ernie Banks. He is on all six of the cards, two from the 2008 set and a whopping four more from 2009.
2008 Ernie Banks and Jimmy Rollins, NL MVPs
2008 Ernie Banks and Alex Rodriguez, RBI leaders
2009 Ernie Banks (with the same picture as the second 2008 card) and Ryan Howard, Home Run leaders
2009 Ernie Banks and Ryan Howard, RBI leaders, almost...Banks finished third, but Topps decided not to use the leader, some unknown guy named Hank Aaron
2009 Ernie Banks and Jimmy Rollins, Gold Glove Winners
2009 Ernie Banks (repeating another picture) and Michael Young, Gold Glove Winners...I wonder why they didn't match Young up with the AL Gold Glove winner
Of the six cards with modern players, only three players are represented. Sammy Sosa is on the first two, then Kerry Wood, and in 2006, Derrek Lee was on three cards.
2001 Duke Snider and Sammy Sosa, outfielders. The card lists the NL home run leaders, Sosa led the league, but Snider was even in the top ten. Too bad Topps didn't use the leader, Hank Sauer, who like Sosa, was a Cub.
2002 Again we've got the Duke and Sammy, both league RBI leaders
2004 Herb Score and Kerry Wood, strike out leaders
2006 Stan Musial and Derrek Lee, NL OPS leaders, though I don't think anyone kept track of OPS in 1957
2006 Stan and D-Lee Again, this time as NL RBI leaders
2006 This time its D-Lee and Red Schoendienst, NL hits leaders
Lee was the last modern Cubs player on a Then and Now card, five years ago. I hope the drought ends next year because several Cubs led the league in various categories in 2011.
There were five Cubs on the Topps 60 autograph checklist.
I'll start with the best one. The Topps 60 base card of Dawson has him with the Expos, but the autograph card has him as a Cub. It's a good-looking card with a classic signature. Yea, Hawk!
These two were also on the relics checklist, so they get a double dose of Topps 60.
The last two have autograph cards only, so I'll take a look at the trumped up statistic Topps put on their card. I really don't know why Topps considered these guys autograph-worthy.
Blake DeWitt, 2010 Putout Leaders by NL second baseman, finished fifth!
Randy Wells, 2009 NL ERA Leaders, finished 10th. Topps couldn't find anything from 2010, so they had to go back a season and the best they could do was a ten-spot for Randy Wells. Wells had a Peak Performance Autograph card last year, and there must have been a bunch of stickers left over. Why else would he have been included in the 2011 set?
When I was putting my Cubs team issued sets together a year ago, I relied heavily on the Standard Catalog to tell me what sets the Cubs put out. The catalog didn't list a set for 1996, so I never looked for one.
Then I got a bunch of Cubs schedules and the 1996 schedule had a listing for a baseball card giveaway on August 18, sponsored by Gatorade. I went back and double checked the catalog to see if I had just missed it, but there was no Gatorade Cubs set listed for 1996, though 1995 and 1997 were in the catalog.
A quick ebay search turned up a 1996 set, which I bought. It seemed odd that the 1996 set was missing from the Standard, so when I emailed editor Bob Lemke about the Jim Hickman card, I also asked him about the 1996 set. His response was that he was familiar with the 1996 set, but had never seen a checklist.
Well, that has changed, since I emailed him the complete 27 card checklist. One unique thing about this set is that the cards were actually numbered like Topps cards. Usually the only number on Cubs cards was the player's uniform number. But these had actual card numbers, in the bottom left hand corner. The 25 players were numbered in alphabetical order (which is why Sandberg is #18), manager Jim Riggleman was #26 and the coaches card was #27.
This is the back of Ryne Sandberg's card, which you can see is #18. And as with most of the Cubs issued cards, these were oversized, at 4 1/4" x 2 7/8".
Here are the fronts of all 27 cards, featuring an unspectacular team that finished in fourth place
