More 2018 Update Inserts

Last week I showed the retail-only Cubs inserts from Update.  Today I've got a few that came from Brent.

Here's a Kris Bryant 1983 insert.  This set was also featured in Series One and Two.  He was the only Cub on the 50-card checklist.

Don't Blink is the name of this insert set, though the word Don't disappears on Bryant's arm.  He is again the only Cub, this time among the 25 cards in the set.

Not many Salutes for the Cubs with Update, just Willson Contreras.  Like the 1983 set, the Cubs are one for fifty.

2018 Update Has Arrived

My 2018 Update cards from BrentandBecca arrived yesterday. It took him a little longer as he had 95 cases to bust and then collate.  He mentioned on Twitter that he was getting 2-3 hours of sleep for the past several days.  He also said that for the first time ever he is going to close his Ebay store while he takes a 3 week vacation.  Good for him!  Its time off, well deserved.

The Cubs snagged 13 cards among the 300 in the set.

 

 

 

The All Star game accounted for five of the 13.  There are waaay too many cards in the set from the All Star game and Home Run Derby.  I really don't need more cards of players that already have a card.  The set is called Update, but your updates are limited when so many slots are for cards that aren't updating anything.

Here are two actual update cards, as Hamels was acquired during the season and Bote was a rookie making his MLB debut.

These guys came to the Cubs last winter, so they get updated too.

  

Strop has been with the Cubs since 2013, Montgomery since 2016.... not much to update here.  The set should really be called "Update, All Stars, and Guys We Couldn't Fit Into Series One and Two."

The biggest head scratched for inclusion is this one...

... of Taylor Davis.  He played in just eight games last year and went back to AAA.  There was no chance of him coming to the bigs before the September call-up unless there was an injury.  Why he was given a slot is a real mystery to me.

The 1972 Cubs

Jim from Downingtown, author of several excellent blogs, emailed me a cool clipping.  He found some clippings he saved from the Delaware County Daily Times and sent me this Cubs-related article, predictions on the Cubs 1972 season.

The author was pretty spot-on with how the season went.

In the pitching part he mentions Fergie, Milt Pappas, and Burt Hooton.  

 

Those three combined for 48 wins, more than half the team's total.

 

 

Here is the infield he considered as good as any in baseball.  They had decent years, though Pepitone was hurt for a good chunk of the season and Jim Hickman saw lots of action at first base.

 

As predicted, here are the starting outfielders.  The author under-estimated Billy though.  Instead of 25 HR / 95 RBI, Billy had a great 1972 season, with 37 homers and 122 knocked in.

  

He was right about the catching.  Hundley did play in 114 games but hit just .218.  Rudolph and Martin picked up the slack.

The team actually ended up higher than predicted, finishing in second place, though 11 games out of first.

They did better than their skipper, as Leo was dumped mid-season.

Thank you Jim for sharing the clipping!

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 16,095 Cubs cards from 135 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1969 Jewel Don Kessinger  I love the photography in the 1969 Jewel set.  Most, like this, were taken at Wrigley Field.

1980s: 1988 Donruss Baseball's Best #138 Rick Sutcliffe The set is called "Baseball's Best."  So was he?  In 1988 he was 13-14.  That's more suited to a set called "Baseball's Middle of the Pack."

1990s: 1994 Fleer #379 Jose Bautista He was coming off his career-best year of 1993, when he was 10-3 with an ERA of 2.82.  The 1994 season saw him return to form, unfortunately, as he was 4-5 and hit ERA ballooned to nearly 4.

2000s: 2006 Greats of the Game Pewter #35 Fergie Jenkins This is from one of my all-time favorite sets.  I went all-in with the 2006 set, picking up the base, pewter, and copper versions, along with the autograph cards.

2010s: 2017 Donruss #67 Javier Baez Javier's arm placement covers up the Cubs logo on his chest, and his head it turned to eliminate most of the C on his helmet.  If you have to make logo-less cards, this is about as good as you can do to still make it look real.

Bowman's Turn

It's Bowman's turn today.

The Bowman run is 37 years, though with a major gap.  My first run stretches from 1949 - 1955.  Even though is is a short seven year span, I couldn't get through with just one player.

From there we jump ahead 34 years to Bowman's reincarnation by Topps in 1989.  I thought I'd be able to use Mark Grace through 2000, but for some reason he was not included in the 1995 set.  He was in Bowman Best, but not regular Bowman.  Sammy Sosa picked things up and then it took three more players to make it to 2018.

The early designs were very plain until the TV set in 1955.  When Topps brought the set back they too used some plain designs early on.  Team logos didn't appear until the 1995 set.  Black showed up in 1997 and then was a predominant color until white replaced it in 2012.

Here are the seven players to run through the brand:
1949 - 1953, Phil Cavarretta
1954 - 1955, Frank Baumholtz
1989 - 1994, Mark Grace
1995 - 2004, Sammy Sosa
2005 - 2010, Carlos Zambrano
2011 - 2015, Starlin Castro
2016 - 2018, Kris Bryant

Doing Donruss

Might as well do the same thing with Donruss as I did yesterday with Fleer.

The Donruss run is at 28 years and going, though it is divided into three parts. The first run went from 198 - 1998.  There was a two year break and then another run from 2001 - 2005.  Panini brought the brand back in 2014 and it has continued through 2018.

I was able to make it through the 28-year span with just four Cubs...
1981 - 1984 Bill Buckner
1985 - 1994 Ryne Sandberg
1995 - 1999 Sammy Sosa
2001 - 2005 Sammy Sosa -  I was lucky here that Donruss made a card for Sammy in '05 even though he was no longer with the team
2014 - 2018 Anthony Rizzo

Full Fleer

So have you ever wondered what all of the modern era Fleer designs looked like?

Wonder no more.

I'm taking a look at the modern Fleer era, from 1981 through 2007, a run of 27 years.

The designs featured....

• a Cubs logo on 19
• borders on 22
• autographs on just 2
• Player's position on 25

My goal when making the tile was to use as few players as possible.  I ended up with four players spanning the 27 sets....

• Bill Buckner 1981-1984
• Ryne Sandberg 1985-1994
• Sammy Sosa 1995-2004
• Derrek Lee 2005-2007