Wandering When This Would Happen

The Minor League Baseball season ended a month ago.  My local rooting interest, the Durham Bulls, had a successful season.  They had a talented roster full of good prospects.  There was not much in Triple A that they did not win this year.  Here is a quick recap:  

Southeast Division crown 🏆
Triple-A East title 🏆
Triple-A National champs 🏆
Final Stretch winners 🏆@MiLB's Best Team 🏆

The accolades just keep coming as we've been named the Best Team in MiLB for 2021!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

— Durham Bulls (@DurhamBulls) November 9, 2021

While the Bulls were successful on the field, I have felt slightly unsuccessful with collecting the cards of the players on this year's roster. Specifically, Wander Franco. All year long I have wanted just one card of Wander Franco on the Durham Bulls. That's it. One card of Wander Franco. I have sat here waiting patiently.  

After months of waiting, my wish has come true. Not only did Topps make a Wander Franco card, they ended up making a total of 5 different cards of the Rays shortstop for the Topps Heritage Minor League set. They are all really nice cards that I managed to pick up over the past two weeks.  

Let me run through the new cards starting with Wander's base card in this set.  

This is easily one of the best Durham Bulls cards that Topps has produced since they starting making the Pro Debut and Heritage Minor League sets. I love the blue and yellow border on the card along with the picture that they used.  The alternative home jerseys for the Bulls are great, but they have never been pictured on a Topps card. A great added bonus. The Bulls have been wearing them for several years.  THat Bull logo has a real vintage feel and I believe was created based on a logo the team used early in their history.  

Here is a better look at the front of the jersey with Anthony Banda.  

The back of the Wander Franco card does not mention much about the Durham Bulls, but considering this was probably written at the beginning of the baseball season, maybe even before that, I cannot really fault Topps for leaving it out the time he spent with the Bulls.  

I was curious about the 555 foot home run mentioned in the write-up.  Did a little searching around the internet.  I came up with a video, but 555 feet seems like an extraordinarily generous measurement.  Yes, it was a long home run, but 500 plus feet is pushing it.  It doesn't help that the video of slightly better quality than a UFO or Bigfoot video.  

Here are the other 4 cards with less commentary.  

This is from the Pack Cover Inserts.  The original 1972 Topps packs had the same wording at the top of the wax packs, but they had a drawing of a baseball player throwing the ball.  I like the look of this card, clean and simple.  

Next up is the Topps Venezuelan sticker.  This is actually a card that I got out of a pack at the local card shop that is now a few miles from my house.  The card shop needs its own post, but that's for a different day.  The scan is not miniature, but the card is definitely small.  Love the green border with the green scoreboard in the background.  I'd track down the specific home run here, but it's a busy Saturday morning.  

Next up is a Baseball Poster insert.  I like the borderless card with the nice close-in action shot of Wander fielding and throwing the ball.  Not sure about the text box at the bottom, but the picture more than makes up for it.  I guess for a product that is styled after a 1972 baseball card, the stylings of the name box are probably pretty spot on for that time period.  

The last card is actually in the base set.  It's my least favorite Wander Franco card in this set, but I still love the card.  Great action shot of him running while he's looking in towards home.  

Overall, I am happy that Topps finally got around to making a few cards of Wander Franco on the Durham Bulls. As a toolsy player, I also really like that Topps used photos of him hitting, fielding, and running.  I was honestly worried that they were going to skip his time with the team earlier in the year.