2022 Heritage Minor Leagues Cubs

 Topps has been releasing sets like crazy over the past month.  Too bad the baseball season is over!  

Heritage Minor Leagues is one of their recent issues.  The set consists of 220 cards with the 1973 design.  There were nine Cubs prospects in the set and I'll show them by teams.

 

 

 

Almost all of these players at at the lower rungs of the system.  Only one card, Brennen Davis, shows a player above A ball.  Here's another oddity... all the players are either shortstops or outfielders.  No pitchers, catchers, or corner infielders.

2022 T206 Wave 2-4 Cubs

 I've fallen a bit behind with these, so let's take a look at three waves at once.  Remember, this year's T206 features monthly waves of 100 cards which are released every month.  A fifth wave was issued in November, but I haven't seen anything about a sixth wave, so I guess that means Topps is done.

Frank Schwindel was the only Cub in the second wave.  That's one Cub out of 100 cards... not good!

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Wave three was twice as good as wave two, but that means just two Cubs cards.  Three Cubs out of 200 cards is not very even team distribution.  Would you care to guess which team got the most cards among the 200 cards of Waves 2 and 3?  It should come as a big shock.  The Yankees have 17 cards, including a whopping 12 in Wave 3.

 

Things improved again in the fourth wave as Topps was kind enough to include three Cubs.

I'll show the fifth wave once I get the cards delivered.

Scanning Like a Mad Man!

 I joined the Trading Card Database in 2019 and promptly entered all of my cards.  I didn't do much with the site since then, other than using the database to complete some Cubs team sets.

But now that I'm retired I have more time to peruse that site.  I was doing that a couple of weeks ago and came upon this.

It piqued my curiosity, so I clicked on the link and saw that I had over 1,000 cards in my collection that were missing images on the TCDB site.  

I have all of my Cubs cards scanned and stored on my computer and backed up in a couple of other locations.  It's nearly 21,000 scans.  I decided to upload my scans onto the TCDB.  That, however, presented a couple of issues.

First, I have to upload the scans one at a time, for each card individually.  There is no way to do a mass import.  It would take some time to go one by one, but time I've got.

The second issue was a bigger problem.  I have only scans of the front of my cards.  The TCDB needs a scan of both the front and the back.  That means in addition to uploading the fronts, I will also have to both scan and upload the backs.  I fired up the scanner.

It was a tedious process because the images missing from TCDB were mostly a random few from tons of different sets.  I would have to find the cards, take them out of the binder, scan then, return them to the binder, and repeat... about 1000 times.

So that is what I did.  I eventually settled into a rhythm and slowly but surely got the job done.  All of the missing cards were scanned and uploaded.

My OCD is pleased to report that I now have...

.... zero cards in my collection that are missing images!

The plan is to keep it that way, too.  I'll be checking the site when I get new cards to add.  If necessary, I upload any fronts that are missing.  If the back is missing, then I'll scan and upload it too.

Five Random Cubs Cards

 I've got 20,852 Cubs cards from 307 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1969 Kahn's Billy Williams  The RNG gets us off to an awesome start!  I do think the folks at Kahns could have done a better job of cropping... maybe zooming in a little.

1980s: 1989 O-Pee-Chee #338 Paul Kilgus Kilgus was a bit player in the major trade that saw Rafael Palmeiro swapped for Mitch Williams.

1990s: 1996 Topps #316 Jim Bullinger After getting off to a great start, the RNG has now given us two consecutive mediocre pitchers.

2000s: 2001 Topps Golden Anniversary #34 Corey Patterson We didn't get a mediocre pitcher, we got a mediocre hitter instead.  To Topps he was hidden gold. To Cubs fans, it was more like obvious coal.

2010s: 2015 Donruss #195 Ernie Banks  Much better!  I'd rather have a logoless Ernie Banks than a Corey Patterson with logos.

Sixties Saturday - 1965 O-Pee-Chee

 Here is the inaugural set from O-Pee-Chee, issued in 1965.  The cards in their set were the first three 1965 Topps series.  Everything is identical between the two brands except the OPC cards say "Printed in Canada" instead of "Printed in U.S.A.."

We end up with a mixture of good players and "who is that" guys since OPC just used series one through three.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another New Cubs Hall of Famer... But No Yellow Postcard for Him

 The Hall of Fame will be welcoming another Cub in 2023, and this one means much more to me that Fred McGriff.  It's not a player, so there won't be another yellow HOF postcard to buy.

It was Cubs radio announce Pat Hughes who was announced as the winner of the 2023 Ford Frick Award, which is presented annually to a broadcaster for "major contributions to baseball."  

Hughes is most deserving of the award. He has been the voice of the Cubs since 1996 and called games for the Brewers and Twins prior to that.  He's done over 6,000 games over his 40-year career.  

No only is he a great broadcaster, but he also is a very nice person.  A few years ago I bought a copy of his scorecard from game seven of the 2016 World Series.

Not only did he personalize the scorecard, but he included thank you note too.

Last year my three boys got me a video from Pat through Cameo.  He came across as very sincere while doing it.  It doesn't seem canned or that he was just going through the motions for a quick buck.

Congratulations to Pat for this great award, and I'm sure that there will be many Cub fans in Cooperstown to see him receive this honor.

Looks Like I'll Be Buying Another Hall of Fame Postcard

I have 53 of these yellow postcards from the Baseball Hall of Fame, one for each player in the hall that spend some time with the Cubs.  I'll be adding another to the collection next summer when Fred McGriff is enshrined.

McGriff was with the Cubs for part of the 2001 season and all of 2002.  His Cubs tenure got off to a shaky start because he initially refused to waive the no-trade clause in his contract.  The Cubs sweetened their offer and ten days later he became a Cub.

He played in a total of 195 games during his Cubs tenure.  He hit 42 homers and drove in 144 runs, so he was productive despite being 37 and 38 years old.  When the season ended he became a free agent and the Cubs showed little if any interest in resigning him.

I have 36 different McGriff cards in my collection.  He is also a relic rule follower, so I have one of him.  There were no certified autographs however.  The 36 cards make a nice rectangular 4 x 9 mosaic.