Billy's HOF Autograph

Can you stand to look at another autograph of Billy Williams?

I can!

I picked up #23 last week and it too has a unique picture on it.

It's another postmarked envelope, this one from July 26, 1987...the day that Billy was inducted into the Hall of Fame.  The two pictures are from different era....the swinging picture looks to be from the mid-late 60's (though I'm a little confused about the red sweatshirt he's wearing under his jersey.  The portrait would be from 1972-1973.

The signature is in pen, but I think alot of signed items from that era were in pen.  Sharpie signatures were still a few years off in the future.

I'm still on the hunt for three more signatures to give me a nice 26 autographs of #26.

1951 and 1955 Cubs Scorecards

I was able to pick up two more scorecards at reasonable prices, especially since were 63 and 59 years old.  Usually cards this old are only listed as BINs, and the prices are pretty high. But a seller listed several Cubs scorecards from the 50s in an auction with a starting price of $9.99.  That's more reasonable for me.

There were some bids on them and I paid more than the starting price, but I also stayed below any BIN price, and the seller shipped them for free, too.  I was very happy to add 1951 and 1955 to my collection.

The 1951 scorecard celebrates the 75th anniversary of both the National League and the Cubs.  The 1951 Cubs were not in any mood to celebrate as they finished in last place with a 62-92 record.  My card is from a game against the Dodgers on July 24, 1951.  The Dodger lineup included Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Jackie Robinson, Gil Hodges, and Roy Campanella.  The only notable thing for the Cubs  is that the Rifleman Chuck Connors was the starting first baseman.  The Dodgers beat the Cubs 6-3 in front of crowd of 22, 254.

A box seat to the game would have cost your two bucks, while the unreserved grandstand seats were $1.25.  Want to sit in the bleachers?  You'd need all of 60 cents.

The second card is the 1955 version.  Look at all the people in the stands.  The 1955 Cubs drew just over 800,000 fans for the season, so I doubt that there were too many games that featured a packed grandstand.

My card is from game 2 of a doubleheader on May 18.  The Cubs swept the Phillies, and in game two it was a 7-5 win.  Only 9,329 fans made it to the Wednesday twibill.  I wonder how many scorecards were sold that day and how many besides mine still survive.  An odd thing about the doubleheader is that it was the only day the Phillies were in town.  They came in for just the one day and left as the Cubs played the Braves the next day.  You sure don't see a one day series any more.

Inflation had hit the high rollers, who now had to fork over $2.50 for their box seat.  But everyday Joe could still get his grandstand ticket for $1.25 or the bleacher seat for $0.60.

These two cards leave me only two holes in a run from 1949 - 2014.  I'm just missing 1950 and 1952.  The seller did have a '52 up for auction, but I lost out on that one.  I'll just wait a bit longer for these two to come up in an auction.

My collection now stands at 64 cards, which makes for a nice 8x8 tile.

Barney Rainbow Update... Now Up to 18

Picking up the factory team set gave me another card to add to the 2014 Barney Rainbow.  The count now stands at 18 cards.

What's still left?

I'm assuming there will be another parallel with the update set...Topps has done that the past couple years.  There is also a parallel in the factory complete set.  And the clear /10 card from series one has still eluded me.  Otherwise, I think that's it.

Here's the eighteen

Top Row: Base, Base blank back, Base no foil, Power Player
Row 2: Opening Day, OD blank, factory team, pink
Row 3: Black, Camo, Gold, Red Hot Foil
Row 4: Target Red, Walmart Blue, Green, Toys R Us Purple
Row 5: Yellow, Opening Day blue

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 12,369 Cubs cards from 88 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1977 Topps #586 Steve Renko The 1977 Cubs were the Little Blue Machine and for the first half of the season they were pretty good.  They were in first place from late May through early August.  Renko was in the rotation for the early part of the season but wasn't very good.  He was 2-2 with a 4.56 ERA.  In mid-August, as the Cubs faltered, Renko was sent across town to the South Side Hit Men.  The Sox, too, were having a surprisingly good season and hadn't faltered yet like the Cubs.  He went 5-0 for the Sox in eight starts, but the team didn't make the playoffs, finishing third in the AL West.

1980s: 1989 Donruss Baseball's Best #37 Greg Maddux This card comes from the Baseball Best set, which Donruss put out after the 1989 season.  There are 386 cards in the set and the division winning Cubs grabbed 15 spots on the checklist.  Maddux led the Cubs with 19 wins and finished thirds in the Cy Young voting.  He led the league's pitchers in putouts--no surprise.  But he also was just one hit shy of leading NL pitchers in hits--that was a surprise to me.

1990s: 1999 Stadium Club #250 Kerry Wood  Stadium Club did have nice looking cards.  It will be interesting to see what they come up with this year as they resurrect the brand.  As far as Kerry Wood and 1999 go, it was a lost season.  He spent the entire year recovering from elbow surgery.

2000s: 2001 Pacific #87 Rondell White  This card is from Pacific's final set.  White was a semi-regular in left field for the 2001 Cubs.  He hit .307 in 95 games and added 17 home runs. He became a free agent after the season, but the Cubs didn't really try to re-sign him.  

2010s: 2012 Allen & Ginter Relic #GS Geovany Soto  Here's a nice pinstriped relic from Ginter.  By 2012 Soto had fallen significantly from his 2008 rookie of the year stats.  He hit only .199 for the Cubs in 54 games before being traded to the Rangers.

Foil Free Factory Team Set

 

I finally able to grab a 2014 Topps factory Cubs team set. Topps has been putting these out since 2006. The first four years saw sets of 14 cards and since 2010 there have been 17 cards per team.

Once A Cub did a great write-up on the Cubs set along with finding all of the original pictures for the cards. I don't need to repeat what he's got.

Instead, I've got a different slant on the cards. Each of these sets since the first in 2006 saw the fronts of the cards identical to the flagship's cards. Look at the two side by side and you couldn't tell the difference. The only difference on the back was the card number. The factory sets have a team-specific numbering system, The Cubs are always CHC-1 through CHC 17.

This year, though, Topps got a little cheap with the factory set. The fronts are not identical to the flagship cards. Instead, they are the same as the foil-less Opening Day set. Opening Day is priced cheaper, so removing the foil makes sense. But the Factory Team sets aren't cheap. At $5.99 for 17 cards and no inserts, you're paying more and getting fewer cards than you would buying three packs of the flagship set. Too bad they didn't drop the price of the team sets

That means Topps has made cheaper cards that are sold at a more expensive price. And my guess is that future Factory Team sets will be made the same way.

Lower quality with the same price. Yeah Topps.

Anyway, here's the cards in all of their foil free glory. Oh, and check out the last card...a photoshopped job of Jose Veras wearing #31, a number the Cubs retired for Jenkins and Maddux a few years ago. Yeah Topps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Bowman Cubs Prospects From 2010

I've been looking at the 2014 version Bowman the past few days.  Today I'd like to add a wrinkle and look at the Cubs prospects in the Bowman set from four years ago.  Four years should be enough time to tell whether a player become a big league player

How well did Bowman do predicting which players might make it in the majors?  There were eight Cubs prospects in the 2010. Let's take a look and see how many of the eight have had major league success.

First, there is one player that definitely made it with the Cubs...

....Starlin Castro.  In fact, Castro was just coming up to the Cubs from AA when the Bowman set was released in 2010 and he was a pretty hot commodity back then.  He's also seemed to turn things around after a pretty poor season last year, so it's safe to say that Topps was right on with including Castro in the 2010 set.

Andrew Cashner is another successful major leaguer, though not with the Cubs.  He was traded to the Padres after the 2011 season, netting the Cubs Anthony Rizzo.  Since then Cashner has been a starter for the Padres and has done a decent job.  This looks like one of those trades that worked out for both teams.

Another prospect that's with another team is DJ LeMahieu.  Darwin Barney froze LeMahieu out of a spot at second base, so he was traded to the Rockies after the 2011 season.  The Cubs got Ian Stewart, filling a need at third base.  On paper it seemed like a good trade.  It wasn't.  Stewart couldn't hit and was a jerk when sent to AAA.  The Cubs released him last season.  LeMahieu has turned out to be a serviceable infielder and he's become a .280s hitter.  Turns out the Cubs should have kept him and traded Barney. 

Brett Jackson came to the Cubs in August of 2012 with lots of hype.  Many felt he wasn't major league ready, but he was brought up anyway.  Turns out he wasn't ready and may never be ready.  During the two months he was with the Cubs in 2012 he played in 44 games, had 120 at bats, hit .175 and struck out 59 times.  When you strike out nearly half the time your at the plate, you are not ready for the major leagues!  Last year in AAA he hit only .223 and this year his average is .161.  He is the Cubs poster boy for why you shouldn't rush a player to the major leagues.

Hak-Ju Lee was traded by the Cubs after the 2010 season, going to the Rays in the Matt Garza trade.  A shortstop, the emergence of Starlin Castro made Lee expendable.  He's worked his way through the Ray's chain and is in AAA right now.  He tore up his knee in April 2013 and missed most of last year.  At Durham this season he's hitting .189 in 18 games.

The last three players have yet to sniff the big leagues.

Pitcher Jeff Antigua has finally made it to AAA.  It took him seven seasons.  In fact, last year he was in all levels, A, A+, AA, and AAA and was 8-3 altogether.  With Iowa this year he's 1-0 with a 2.70 ERA in four appearances out of the bullpen.  

Jae-Hoon Ha is no longer progressing.  Last year he split time between AA and AAA, but his AAA numbers were anything to impress.  This year it was back to AA where he is hitting only .208.

The last of the eight is Logan Watkins.  He has steadily climbed through the system, spending a year at each level.  Last year he reached AAA and has started the 2014 season there, too.  Right now he's got batting average of .295.  He's also played in the all three outfield positions and every infield position except first base.  It looks like he's trying to show some versatility to win a spot with the big club.

So the final tally...three major leaguers, one with some time in the show, but it wasn't good, and four still trying to make it.

Bowman 2014 Hometown Cubs

Bowman's State and Hometown parallel set has returned again this year.  I've been picking up these parallels since they first came out, so I went ahead and grabbed them again this year.  They're a nice little gimmick and something that you don't see in any other set.  I actually prefer these to the parallels that just change the border color.

The parallels are available for both the current players and the prospects.  That means I had a total of eight of these to pick up.  Most were easy and cheap, all but the Kris Bryant card.  Anything of his seems to be jacked up in price.  I hope it ends up being worth the extra couple bucks I had to pay.

I've made a tile with both the Hometown cards and the base cards so you can see what they look like side by side.