The checklist for series one of the 2022 Topps flagship came out last week. It is a major disappointment for Cub fans. Of course the team has been that too, lately, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
There are 330 cards in the first series. Just five of those belong to Cubs. It hasn't been like that since the dark days of the last rebuild ten years ago,.
Things weren't much better with the inserts. There are ten basic insert sets and only five of them include a Cub. And even worse, there isn't a single active Cub player in the five insert sets. The featured Cubs are either retired or with a different team.
I've got 19,748 Cubs cards from 300 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.
1900s - 1970s: 1973 Topps #70 Milt Pappas This is Pappas' first Topps card after his 1972 no-hitter. It was not mentioned on the back. Instead, the cartoon is about him winning his 200th career game.
1980s: 1988 Star #63 Andre Dawson This one of the better pictures of Dawson among the nine in the 1988 Star set.
1990s: 1996 Team Issued Jaime Navarro An innings eater for the 1996 Cubs, Navarro threw in 236. He led the league in hits allowed, at 244. He managed to put up a winning record, though, going 15-12.
2000s: 2002 Classics #136 Steve Smyth In his one and only big league season, Smyth's performance was not classic. In 8 games he was 1-3 with an ERA of 9.35.
2010s: 2017 1987 Topps #117 Kris Bryant Bryant was the starting third baseman for the NL in the 2016 All-Star game. He hit a home run in the first inning off of White Sox pitcher Chris Sale.
The 1975 Topps set is one of my all-time favorites. And I really like how the did the Cubs, with many of the pictures showing the home uniforms. Even better, for the first time since 1970, the team card has an actual team picture, not the floating heads.
There are lots of goodies in the Cubs set.... pinstripes, Jose Cardenal's super-fro, long hair and bushy mustaches, a rookie cup, even some bad airbrushing. The only downer is that there is just one '69 Cub left - Don Kessinger.
It's crazy that I'm not finished with all of the 2021 cards, but that is where we are at in the age of covid.
The 2021 version of Bowman's Best was released on the last day of 2021. Talk about coming in just under the wire! The set consists of 100 cards of veterans, rookies, and prospects. With their biggest names traded during the season, the Cubs have just two players in the set, a rookie and a prospect.
Hernandez is a 17-year-old that spent the summer playing in the Dominican Summer League. Madrigal has yet to play an inning for the Cubs as he was injured before being traded from the White Sox. His picture is a total Photoshop job.
So what do Alec Mills and Burt Hooton have in common?
No hitters!
Mills threw his on September 13, 2020 while Hooton's was recorded on April 16, 1972. There are some similarities between the two.
Both were tossed in abbreviated seasons. The 1972 seasons was cut short by a players strike while covid wiped out a big chunk of the 2020 season.
Both pitchers were relatively inexperienced. Mills was making his 15th career MLB start while Hooton was just his fourth.
Not many people witnessed either no-no in person. The attendance at Wrigley on a cold wet April Sunday in 1972 was just 9,583. Mills was thrown in front of an empty house in Milwaukee.
And by getting the Hooton autograph, I now have a signed card from every Cub pitcher that has thrown a complete game no-hitter in my lifetime (I was born in November, 1961). There have been eight complete game no hitters since my birth, thrown by six pitchers.
Ken Holtzman threw two no-hitters.
The first was on August 19, 1969, at Wrigley Field against the Braves. His second came two years later, on June 3, 1971, as he held the Reds hitless at Riverfront Stadium
Hooton's was next in April, 1972.
Milt Pappas was nearly perfect just five months after Hooton.
He retired 27 of 28 Padres at Wrigley Field on September 2, 1972. I had seen four Cubs no-hitters since really becoming a fan in 1969. I thought they were a pretty common thing.
They weren't! The next Cubs no-hitter wouldn't come for another 36 years!
Carlos Zambrano accomplished the feat on September 14, 2008.
His was unusual as it was in Milwaukee, but against the Astros. The game was moved out of Houston because of Hurricane Ike. The Astros were not happy because Miller was wasn't a neutral site. At the time it was often referred to as Wrigley Field North.
The wait until the next Cubs no-no wasn't 36 years, it was just seven. Jake Arrieta did it on a Sunday night in Los Angles.
The Dodgers went hitless against Big Jake on August 30, 2015.
Just ten starts later, Arrieta did the trick again as the Cubs walloped the Reds 16-0 on April 21, 2016.
Alec Mills tossed his five years later.
In 2021 four Cubs pitchers combined to no-hit the Dodgers. I'm on the fence with what to do about that one. Right now I'm ignoring it. Some day I have to decide to continue to ignore it, get an autograph of the starter Zach Davies, or get signatures of all four pitchers.
When I picked up the autographed card of Alec Mills, it inspired me to get another autographed card.
The card is from the 1989 Pacific Legends set. I wanted to get a certified card, but the only certified autographs of Burt Hooton that I could find showed him as a Dodger. That would not do, so I settled for this card. I'd like to think that the autograph is authentic because I don't believe that there are many Burt Hooton forgers out there.
You may be asking why I felt the need to get a Burt Hooton autograph after getting one of Alec Mills. There is a definite Cubs connection between the two.
You can leave your idea in the comments and I have more on this tomorrow.
