Include with the Team Set?

Topps shows this card as a National League card.

My question - do I add this to my Cubs team set?

Before I get to the answer, a little about the card itself....

Why?

Why pair these two together?  If it was Rizzo and Bryant, I get it.  Bryzzo.

I could understand a pairing of Bryant and Harper, too, as they are both Las Vegas natives.

But putting Rizzo and Harper together and then corrupting Bryzzo and using Rizzarper?

That is just dumb.


So does this belong with my other Cubs cards?

I'm leaning towards yes.

It's wouldn't be the first time I've included other National League cards.

What say you??

2018 Kris Bryant Highlights

As far as I'm aware, this is the first time a Cubs player has been given his own insert set.  Two years ago there was a Wrigley Field insert set, but Kris Bryant becomes the first Cubs player to be so recognized.

The Kris Bryant highlight set has 30 cards.  As I said in a previous post, it seems like a stretch to come up with 30 career highlights for a guy with three years under his belt.

The highlight years break down like this:
2015 - 13 cards
2016 - 13 cards
2017 - 4 cards

It  looks like they should have done this set in 2017, since last season there wasn't much to add.

The set not only has the regular cards, but also blue and black parallels.  I got one of each when I bought my blaster and didn't even realize it.  Apparently many Sportlots sellers were in the same boat because of the 26 cards regular cards I ordered, I was given seven blues and one black.  For consistency, I'll probably go back and replace all the blues and blacks with base cards.

Two More Insert Sets from 2018 Series One

I've got the Cubs from two more insert sets.

Heyward won his fifth Gold Glove overall, and his second in two years with the Cubs.  Notice how Topps calls this a fielding award.  They must not have any sort of agreement with Rawlings to call this a Gold Glove.

Anthony Rizzo won the Roberto Clemente Award for his off-the-field accomplishments.  A cancer survivor himself, his foundations raised over $4 million for cancer research in 2017.  He is also a frequent visitor on the cancer floor of different local children's hospitals.  

We also saw last week how he cares for others, as he left spring training and went back home to Florida, to his high school alma mater (to which he had earlier donated $150,000 for lights for the baseball and softball fields), the site of the horrific shooting.  As good as he is at baseball, he is an even better person.

 

 

Three of the 50 Superstar Sensations are Cubs, Bryant, Rizzo, and Russell.

So far I've shown 21 different Cubs inserts from the first series.  Tomorrow I'll more than double that number with the Kris Bryant Highlights set.

2018 Series One Salute Cubs

Topps again included the insert Salute in the 2018 set.  There are 100 cards and five feature Cubs.

 

 

These four salute Mother's Day, Father's Day, and Memorial Day.  The Cubs were on the road for all three of these games so we see their road uniforms re-shaded for the day.

Andre Dawson was the only Legends Cub in the set.  I'm happy that the Cubs have hired Dawson after he was purged from the Marlins by Derek Jeter.

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 15,462 Cubs cards from 130 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1971 Fleer World Series #43 1945 Series  I am so thankful that this card no longer represents the Cubs last World Series appearance.

1980s: 1987 Fleer #557 Jody Davis  The picture on this card is from the 1986 All-Star Game, held in the Astrodome.  I was at first baffled by the card, because Jody is wearing a home uniform, but with that video screen in the background, this is not Wrigley Field.  When I saw on Baseballreference that he was an all star in 1986, it was easy to surmise the location.

1990s: 1990 Topps Stickers #48 Mitch Williams Wild Thing was really bad as a closer in 1990, a 1-8 record and just 16 saves.  The Cubs traded him after the season.

2000s: 2005 Topps Factory Complete Set Bonus #5 Brandon Sing This card comes from a Cubs-specific Factory Complete set.  In addition to the complete 733-card set, you got five bonus cards of Cubs prospects.  Sing never made it to the majors.

2010s: 2016 Stadium Club #207 Anthony Rizzo  And what is he celebrating?  This picture was taken on October 13, 2015, as the Cubs just won game four and the Divisional Series against the Cardinals.

2018 Series One Inserts - 1983 Cubs

The Cubs netted just 10 of the 350 spots in the series one checklist.  They did much better in the 1983 insert set, with eight of the 100 cards.

Ryne Sandberg was in the 2018 version as well as the original back in 1983.  This gives us the opportunity to compare the two side by side.  I see several differences with the new version... the purple is lighter, the name box is bigger (see the extra space above "RYNE", the CUBS lettering is larger, SECOND is spelled out.

The other seven Cubs in the set are the usual suspects.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flick Friday: It Happens Every Spring

We go way back for today's flick, It Happens Every Spring.  This comedy was released in 1949. 

Vernon Simpson is a struggling college chemistry professor.  He is also a big baseball fan and each spring his mind wanders off of school and onto the diamond.

He's been developing a formula for a chemical that would keep insects and rodents from penetrating trees.  It is nearly finished and would allow him to earn enough money to marry his girlfriend, Debbie, who is also his student and the daughter of the college president.

An errant baseball comes crashing through his laboratory window and ruins his formula.  He figures he's ruined.  Instead he discovers that the ball that smashed his window got covered with his chemical and is now resistant to wood.  When he tries to hit the ball with a tree branch, the ball jumps over the wood, never making contact.

Simpson decides to leave the college and head to St. Louis, to help his team win the pennant.  He get a tryout, strikes out everyone, and becomes a pitcher.  Not wanting to be discovered by the college he left behind, he names himself King Kelly.

The team assigns a veteran catcher, Monk, to watch over the oddball Kelly.  Kelly has great success, though later Debbie discovers who he really is.  He eventually wins 38 games for St. Louis, leading them to the World Series.  He takes the mound for game seven and....


....you'll have to watch the movie to find out how it ends.

It's a mildly entertaining story, though in today's world it would never fly.  He cheats by doctoring up a ball and he's dating a student.  No, not today.

The baseball in the movie is not very good.  The teams are always referred to by city only, not by name.  We assume that the St.Louis team is in the National League because they play Brooklyn.  The uniforms are very simple, with no attempt at authenticity.

The majority of the baseball scenes were filmed at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles.  Those retangular windows in the upper deck are unique to that old park.

Here's a look at a generic "Chicago" player.

Check out the Philadelphia Stadium.  That's actually Wrigley Field with the marquee getting doctored.

This is a scene from when St. Louis was playing New York in the World Series.  It too, is obviously Wrigley Field.  There were several times when stock footage of the Cubs was used in the movie.