There was a 2000 Pacific Paramount Update set?
Yes.
Seems pretty random, right?
Yes.
Well, there was a lot of really weird stuff going on with this set. Let's check out a base card, which kicks off the weirdness of this set. Right off the bat, the first card seems a little bit off, if you collected Pacific cards around this time.
Paramount Weird Fact #1- No Garrett Anderson? What about Darin Erstad?
Pacific sets were always set up with the teams arranged alphabetically by the city/state name of the team, with the players organized alphabetically by last name within the team set. The Anaheim Angels were always the first team. How many late 1990s or early 2000s Pacific sets had either Garrett Anderson or Darin Erstad as card #1?
The answer is almost all of them.
Pacific put out 12 different baseball card products in 2000. Nine of the sets had either Anderson or Erstad as card #1. Pacific Prism had Erstad, no Garrett Anderson card, but they included Jeff DeVanon (you may not know him for good reason) who had the first card. I rolled my eyes too. Vanguard had Troy Glaus as the first card, but only two Angels cards in the set.
Same with the 1998 and 1999 Pacific cards, only Jim Edmonds was still on the team, and before Erstad alphabetically.
Beyond Jeff DeVanon and Troy Glaus, there was also this Adam Kennedy card in the 2000 Pacific Paramount Update set, which was the first card in the Paramount Update set.
Weird Paramount Fact #2 - The set was sold through the J.C. Penny Christmas catalog and limited to a print run of just 12,500. I certainly did not get this set from the J.C. Penny Christmas catalog. Instead, I got it from a local card shop in St. Louis whose owner ordered the sets for his store out of the J.C. Penny Christmas catalog, because it was loaded with Cardinals players.
Here are a few.
Here are three of them. There is another Cardinals card later in the post.
Gene Stechschulte is actually a pretty interesting player. He did not have a very long career, playing three seasons all with the Cardinals in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a middle reliever. I believe he had some arm or shoulder injuries. What he is really famous for was hitting a home run in his first at-bat on the first pitch he saw.
The Diamondbacks were winning this game 15-1 when Stechschulte hit the home run. LaRussa put him into the game to pinch hit for the pitcher Mike James. Stechschulte never threw a pitch in this game, but the Cardinals did use Bobby Bonilla for the ninth.
Weird Paramount Fact #3 - I own two copies of this set. I bought one back in 2000, but also ended up with one a few years ago when a co-worker gave me some of his old baseball cards. Pacific was a solid card manufacturer. I cannot remember them ever have major issues with quality control. However, for some reason there are odd sticker pieces that are attached to random cards in both my copies of the set.
Again, weird for Pacific to have quality control issues.
What is even going on here?
The green striped piece on the Bret Boone card actually looks the same/similar to the bottom border of the card. Only it's clearly a sticker if you could be here to touch it yourself. Why is there a giant white sticker over Mike Lamb's head? We will never know.
If there were actually any rookie cards worth owning in this set, there were would likely be tons of annoying "Ebay 1/1" listing with random stickers all over the cards.
Weird Paramount Fact #4- There are 100 cards on the checklist, but I swear at least 50 of the players in this set were not traded or signed as free agents during the year. Lots of cards like......
.....Chipper Jones on the Braves.
There is also a Derek Jeter on the Yankees, Tony Gwynn on the Padres, Cal Ripken on the Orioles, Barry Bonds on the Giants (free agent signing in 1993), Scott Rolen on the Phillies (traded in the future), Mark McGwire on the Cardinals (traded 3 years earlier), and Mike Piazza on the Mets (traded two years earlier).
It feels like someone at Pacific said. "Lets make an Update set!". A bunch of people sat down and started making a checklist.
"Who got traded or signed as a free agent in 2000? Ken Griffey, Jim Edmonds, and Juan Gonzalez."
They probably wrote down a few players who were rookies, a few free agent signings, and they were still 70 cards short of a set.
"Meh, let's throw in an ARod card."
This has to be the all-time record holder for traded/update set with the most players who were never traded, nor signed as a free agent during the calendar year.
Weird, But It's Just The Uniform
One of the best parts of getting out an old update set is looking through the cards to find players you know, on teams you don't remember they were on. Like all old update sets, I found two players who were in unusual places in 2000.
Rickey Henderson started to
the 2000 season with the Mets, but was released and signed with the
Mariners in the middle of the season. He was 41, played 92 games, and
managed to steal 31 bases. Not bad. I actually kind of remember him being on the Mariners, but it's not like I stayed up and watched a lot of Mariners games. He was there, I did not watch very often.
Nomo on the Tigers looks a little strange too. I always think of him as a Dodger, but he played a lot of other places in between his two stints in LA. I remembered the Mets and Brewers, but I went and looked him up on Baseball Reference. The Dodgers traded him to the Mets in 1998, and he went back to the Dodgers in 2001. In between he appeared, or was on the roster of the Mets, Cubs, Brewers, Phillies, Tigers, and Red Sox.
Nomo threw a no-hitter on the Red Sox?
Best Cardinals Player Who Deserved To Be In A Traded Set
Jim Edmonds.
Edmonds was traded to the Cardinals during Spring Training of 2000. He was scheduled to be a free agent at the end of the season. The late 1990s/early 2000s Cardinals were good at trading for pending free agents and getting them to sign before they hit the market. They did this same thing with McGwire and Scott Rolen.
Best Durham Bulls Player Who Deserved To Be In A Traded Set
I am going to put two different Bulls players in this section. I will go with one Minor Leaguer who was promoted to the Majors, along with one Major League who changed teams. I will do the Major Leaguer first.
Klesko appeared for the 1990 Durham Bulls. After a long run with the Braves, Klesko was traded to the Padres for Reggie Sanders and Wally Joyner. Love the facial hair. I believe this was a homecoming of sorts for Klesko, who spent almost all of the second half of his career with the Padres. Not a Hall of Famer, but a very good hitter.
The former Durham Bulls player who appeared in the set as a Minor League call up was Jeff Sparks.
He did not have a really long Major League career. He only pitched in 23 games between the 1999 and 2000 seasons. According to his Wikipedia page, his career highlight was a save against the Yankees at the end of the 1999 season. His Wikipedia page says that he makes YouTube videos with former Dodgers reliever Mike Marshall.
It's true.
The Bulls get a mention on the back of the Jeff Sparks card.
Best Player(s) Who Deserved To Be In A Traded Set
I decided to balance this section with a traded/free agent player and a young player who got called up during the 2000 season. Veteran player first.
Seemed like an easy answer.
The rookie card. Perhaps the only decent rookie card in the entire set.
Two time Cy Young Award winner in the American League. His career was really shortened by injuries, but he was Hall of Fame quality when he wasn't hanging out on the disabled list. He almost had that no-hitter the one time.
How Does It Compare?
The design isn't great. I am not sure all of the weird and quirky aspects of the set are really all that positive. While I love many things about Pacific Baseball Cards from this era, this is not one of their better efforts. Where are the parallels? Where are the interesting die-cut cards? Paramount Update will occupy the 9th spot for the moment.
Better set next week. I will go with something a little older too.
9. 2000 Pacific Paramount Update
This might not be a candidate for greatest set of all-time... but your review was fantastic. Loved the weird facts :D
ReplyDeleteThank you Fuji. I am glad you enjoyed.
DeleteI've never seen this one before, and while I agree that it's certainly not Pacific's best offering, I don't dislike it either. I think part of it though is that I really like the production flaws, I actually went to COMC to see if anyone had another Bret Boone like yours, but no one did. Also, I agree with Fuji's assessment of your review, it really was fantastic!
ReplyDeleteInteresting that there were none with production errors. It could be that COMC filtered them out through the submission process, but there are not any on Ebay either. Could just be horrible luck on my part.
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