Heritage 2018 Is Finally Here!

My Heritage shipment has finally arrived and you can expect to see its contents over the next several days.

I'll start today with the base set.  There are 21 Cubs cards and all the major names are included.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course two of these, Arrieta and Davis, are no longer with the Cubs, having signed free agent contracts elsewhere.  Drew Smyly seems like an odd choice to include too.  But it seems like every year Topps has an oddball Cub they latch on to.  Two years ago it was Carl Edwards and last year Rob Zastryzny seemed to be everywhere.  Is this the year of the Smyly?

1999 Bowman's Best Cubs

The 1999 version of Bowman's Best is divided into four groups:

 

Cards 1-85 are the veteran stars.  Grace, Sosa, and Wood are the Cubs' representatives.  That was very easy for Topps.

 

The next 15 cards are called "Best Performers."   The National League's 1998 MVP and Rookie of the Year would be among those.

The next 50 cards, #101 - 150, were for up-and-coming prospects.  The Cubs were shut out, which doesn't say much about their system at the time.

 

The final 50 cards in the set were for rookies, and they were short-printed.  Patterson was the only one of the three the had a major league career of any substance.  Again, this doesn't say much about the Cubs system, or maybe it says something loud and clear -- the Cubs farm system was not very good.

Non-Heritage Versions of the 1969 Set

This year's Heritage isn't the only time that the 1969 set design has been borrowed.  I am aware of two non-Topps sets that used the design.  I'd guess there may be others out there besides these two.

1986 Sports Design...This set features 26 cards of retired players like Billy Williams.  Because it is such a small set, they didn't have different colored circles.  Every player got purple.  The font for the team name isn't a close match to the one that Topps used.  I wonder how Topps felt about having their design "borrowed"?

1990 Baseball Card Magazine... This set has 72 cards and it is a pretty fair representation of the '69 set.  The circles match those used by Topps, as you see that Ryno has an orange one.  They also got the positions correct, "2nd Base" as opposed to what Heritage did this year. "Second Baseman."  How is it that a non-Topps company does a better job than Topps?

Anyone aware of any other sets that used the 1969 design?

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 15,467 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: Topps 1975 #153 Rick Reuschel Big Daddy does not look very happy.  Did the Topps photographer take him away from the breakfast table??

1980s: 1988 Topps #416 Keith Moreland  Zonk taking a wack at Wrigley - nice!

1990s: 1992 Stadium Club #284 Shawn Boskie He can't be smiling about his 1992 performance, 5-11 with an ERA of 5.01.

2000s: 2008 Baseball Heroes #36 Alfonso Soriano If you are wondering why there are so many name free agents not yet signed for 2018, here is the poster boy for overpriced long-term contracts.  It took ten years but the owners are starting to wise up.

2010s: 2017 Bunt #42 Ben Zobrist  It's a good thing Ben is wearing sunglasses, so he is not blinded by that light ray shining down on him.

Topps 1969 Cubs

I'm still waiting on my Heritage, so here's a tile with all of the Cubs cards from 1969.

One big advantage for Heritage is that is won't include any ugly airbrushed or hatless cards.  The '69 Cubs includes four players with their hat airbrushed and three more without any hat.  

I do not miss the days of those nasty looking cards at all!

2018 Heritage Cubs Decals

It was nice to see Topps re-creating the 1969 decals, because I'm sure it was not an inexpensive thing to do.  Decals cost more than cardboard.  Two Cubs were included in the set (just like with the original) which is only available at Walmart.

 

Topps' choice of players wasn't very original.  It seems like if any Cub is going to be in an insert set, it is one of these two, or both.

And how does the Heritage version match up with the '69s?

 

Not a bad job.

But.

 

The 1969 decals, at least for the Cubs players, use a picture that is different from what was used on the cards.  It wasn't necessarily a better picture, but it was different.

 

For Heritage, Topps used the same picture on the decal and card.  Boring!!

1998 Bowman's Best Cubs

...Still waiting for Heritage, still slowly working my way through Bowman's Best.

Here are the four 1998 Bowman's Best Cubs:

 

 

Does anyone have an idea what that green thing is supposed to be?  Ram's horn?

If this was Sesame Street, we could play the "One of these things is not like the others" game.  

Some of you might pick Kerry Wood, since his card is a prospect card.

Me, I'm going with Kevin Orie, the one of the four that was a bad major league baseball player.