South Bend Cubs Complete Schedule Run

 A few weeks ago I showed the South Bend Cubs' 2024 pocket schedule.  I've been working for a while to have a complete run of their schedules, starting with 2015, their first season as a Cubs affiliate.    Last week I was able to fill the last hole in my collection and now I have all of their schedules.

The first edition, 2015, was a little narrower, and then moving forward they are 2½" x 3½".   The 2015 is also the only one that doesn't have the name of the ballpark, Four Winds Field, on the cover.  In fact, the name of the park is not mentioned anywhere on the schedule.  

The 2018 edition is the first to have a tag line on the bottom.  On that one it was "Where Champions are Built."  After that is has been "Where Everyone Comes to Play."

The Cubs won the league title in 2019 and the 2020 schedule makes note of that.  Since the season was cancelled due to Covid, the 2021 schedule also mentions that 2019 championship and includes a picture of the championship ring.  The 2021 version is also the first to have a QR code.  The code is pretty big, taking up almost a quarter of the cover.  That has affected the size of everything else on the cover.

The 2022 season saw the Cubs as league champions again, so that is prominently displayed on the 2023 cover.

Its disappointing that the big league Cubs no longer put out a pocket schedule, so I'm happy to have the South Bend Cubs fill in.  I hope they continue to have schedules into the future.

The Drought Is Over!

 Well that was quick!  Just a day after my post on the Cubs Living Set drought, a Cub player is added to the set.  My what power I wield!

I suggested that the next Cub to be included would be Shota Imanaga.

I guess I don't wield That much power.  Topps went with Michael Busch.  He got off to a decent start but has cooled off lately.  I have a feeling that the print run for him will not be anything too impressive.  My guess is it will be somewhere around 1,550.

I will be getting one of the 1,550 and I'll show the card when it arrived in a few weeks.

2024 Cub #41

 

Nick Madrigal was sent to Iowa on Sunday and called up to replace him was David Bote.  He was put into the lineup that same day and went 0-3.  

Bote was signed to a five year $15 million contract back in 2020.  It has not worked out at all like the Cubs had hoped.  His career batting average is .230 and he's spent most of the past three seasons in Iowa.  That's a lot of money to pay a guy to play in AAA.  There is a team option to pick up for the 2025 season that would pay him $7 million or a $1 million buy out.  I think it is safe to say that the Cubs will do the buy out.

Living Set Drought

 

This Living Set card of Justin Steele came out the week of November 15.  He was the fifth Cub since July and the sixth of 2023.  It was a banner year for the Cubs in the set.

But lately, nothing.  It's been over six months since the Steele card came out and not a single Cub has been issued.  That's the longest Cubs drought since the set began back in 2018.

Hopefully a Cub shows up soon, and even better, how about a card for Billy Williams.  But if I had to make an educated guess, I'd say the next Cub we see will be Shota Imanaga.

One Final Bowman 2024 Cubs Insert

I showed the basic Cubs inserts from 2024 Bowman last week.  I've got one more today, but it comes from a set that is more limited.  According to Baseballcardpedia, there are approximately 675 copies of each card in the Gladiators of the Diamond set.  The cards in the set aren't numbered, so I'm assuming they came up with their estimate based on the odds listed on the packs.

The set checklist has 25 cards including one Cub.  You can probably make a good guess as to who that Cubs player is.

Yup, PCA shows up in his third Bowman insert set.  I had to get this the old fashioned way, by bidding on eBay.  Ok, the 21st century old fashioned way.  There were some Buy It Nows listed, but they were asking for two to four time the price of what I ended up paying.

With this card I am now officially done with 2024 Bowman. 

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 21,804 Cubs cards from 317 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1957 Topps #55 Ernie Banks Two weeks in a row that the RNG starts us off with Ernie Banks!  The 1957 set is the last one in which you'll see Cubs players wearing a hat with the wishbone C.  They switched to the rounded C in 1957 and those started showing up in the '57 set's late series cards.

1980s: 1985 Circle K #18 Billy Williams  And we follow up Mr. Cub with Billy Williams!  The RNG is on quite a roll.

1990s: 1990 Donruss #647 Scott Sanderson Sanderson was not on the 1990 Cubs. became a free agent after the 1989 season and was signed by the A's.  He had a decent 1990 season for them, going 17-11.

2000s: 2006 Upper Deck #998 Jae Kuk Ryu Its only in a set with 1250 cards that you'll find one for Jae Kuk Ryu.

2010s: 2017 Silver Packs #ARU Addison Russell I never imagined when I got this card in 2017 that Russell would be gone from the team in two years.  Right now he's playing in the Mexican League.

Eighties Alphabetically - Dorman's Cheese

Today's brand is a one and done.  The Dorman Cheese company put out a set of 20 cards in 1986.  The cards came in two-player panels on boxes of their American cheese singles.  And did you know that it was Victor Dorman, son of the company's founder, that invented a machine to put paper between slices of cheese?  I didn't know that nor was I even aware of the company.  The only sliced cheese I knew was from Kraft.

 

Ryne Sandberg and Rick Sutcliffe were both include in the set.  You can see that the set lacked a license from MLB, so we get both a logoless hat and a hatless player.