Pujols Parade - 2002 Stadium Club

 I love the older Albert Pujols cards that show him playing in the field at either third base or left-field. Twenty years later, these cards from the very beginning of his career look a little odd. Albert was originally a third baseman, but moved to the outfield full time after the Cardinals traded for Scott Rolen in 2002. 

Here is the front of the card.  

Great photo of Albert getting ready to field a ball here. Stadium Club always had great photography. Not big on the gray name bar going across the front of the card, but this was also towards the end of the original Stadium Club product line. Clearly, they were struggling a bit with the design here.  Still an above-average looking card.  

The back of the card.  

Stadium Club had these split stats for much of the late 1990s and early 2000s, which I think were great at the time. The write-ups on the bottom were always pretty thoughtful, as is the case here with Pujols. The player information is what it is, along with the small picture at the top.

Overall, this is a very good back that, with the nice photograph from the front, make this one of Topps better base cards of Albert Pujols in 2002.  

A Giant Update Part 12

I am getting so much closer. I had hoped to finish off my 1964 Topps Giants set on this post, but there will be at least one more after this one. Before this post, I was down to 14 cards to complete the set, with only one Hall of Fame player left to find. I also already have all the short-prints. Maybe at some other point in my life, I would have already finished this set. Between kids, work, and garage doors, there has not been much time to find new baseball cards.  

Here are the five new Topps Giants cards.

First up is Senators shortstop, Ed Brinkman.  

Brinkman was a really good defender, but was not much for hitting. He played more than 1,800 games in the Majors, but only had 1,300 hits. In 1965, Brinkman set an American League record for fewest hits in a season while playing in more than 150 games. He ended the year with just 82 hits and a .185 batting average.  

That's bad.  

The back naturally sticks to his defensive skills.  

I like that the card mentions his time as a member of the Raleigh Capitols. 

Next up, Mets infielder Ron Hunt.  

Did he cut himself shaving? That's a pretty wicked looking something underneath his nose.  

All this stuff on the back is impressive, but Ron Hunt is actually from St. Louis. He went to the same high school as Jerry Reuss, just a few years earlier.  

Next. 

Jim Fregosi was a favorite on the first Angels teams in the early 1960s. I knew him best as the manager of the Phillies when I was in middle school and high school. 

This is kind of a lame write up, considering that the Angels were in their third season when this card was produced.  I need to go back and look at my 1999 Devil Rays cards to see if they acknowledge Randy Winn's triples record for their franchise at the time. It's still 9th all-time in franchise history, but all of those higher triple total seasons belong to Carl Crawford.  

Next up is Ken Johnson.  

Before Edwin Jackson, there was Ken Johnson. He seemingly played on a different team almost every year in the 1950s and 1960s. Not really, but it was close. He played 13 seasons with 8 different teams. Considering the number of teams in the league during the 1950s and 1960s, that's a large number.  

The back of the card is interesting.

After reading about his no-hitter loss, I actually went and read a little bit more about his career. He actually seems like a decent pitcher who was on the wrong teams at the wrong times throughout his career.  

For example, he ended up on the Reds in 1961 and was given a rotation spot during the second half of the season. He went 6-2 with an ERA of 3 and helped them make the World Series versus the Yankees. If you are into sabermetrics, he had several 3 and 4 WAR seasons, just screwed over playing on bad teams. 

Last card is Leon Wagner.  

Leon Wagner was a really good player during the 1960s. His career got off to a slow start, otherwise he might have been a little more of a recognizable name. Wagner played college football and then ended up working at an auto manufacturing plant in Detroit while playing sandlot baseball.

The Giants signed Leon Wagner, but he drafted into the Army for the Korean War. 

Leon Wagner returned to the Giants, but was blocked by Willie Mays, Felipe Alou, and others. 

The Giants traded him to the Cardinals, but he was blocked by Stan Musial, Curt Flood, and Joe Cunningham.  

The Cardinals traded him to the Toronto Maple Leafs, the baseball team in the International League.  

The Maple Leafs traded him to the Angels where he finally got to play as a regular at the age of 27.  

Back of the card.  

Once Leon Wagner started playing, he was really good.  He made a few All-Star Games, hit 30 home runs a few times, and received MVP votes in several different season. It's too bad the Giants or Cardinals did not have an open outfield spot while he was a little younger.  

Updated checklist.

I am getting closer.  

1 Gary Peters
2 Ken Johnson
3 Sandy Koufax SP
4 Bob Bailey
5 Milt Pappas
6 Ron Hunt
7 Whitey Ford
8 Roy McMillan
9 Rocky Colavito
10 Jim Bunning
11 Roberto Clemente
12 Al Kaline
13 Nellie Fox
14 Tony Gonzalez
15 Jim Gentile
16 Dean Chance
17 Dick Ellsworth
18 Jim Fregosi
19 Dick Groat
20 Chuck Hinton
21 Elston Howard
22 Dick Farrell
23 Albie Pearson
24 Frank Howard
25 Mickey Mantle
26 Joe Torre
27 Ed Brinkman
28 Bob Friend SP
29 Frank Robinson
30 Bill Freehan
31 Warren Spahn
32 Camilo Pascual
33 Pete Ward
34 Jim Maloney
35 Dave Wickersham
36 Johnny Callison
37 Juan Marichal
38 Harmon Killebrew
39 Luis Aparicio
40 Dick Radatz
41 Bob Gibson
42 Dick Stuart SP
43 Tommy Davis
44 Tony Oliva
45 Wayne Causey SP
46 Max Alvis
47 Galen Cisco SP
48 Carl Yastrzemski
49 Hank Aaron
50 Brooks Robinson
51 Willie Mays SP
52 Billy Williams
53 Juan Pizarro
54 Leon Wagner
55 Orlando Cepeda
56 Vada Pinson
57 Ken Boyer
58 Ron Santo
59 Johnny Romano
60 Bill Skowron SP

Random Ray - 1995 Donruss

If you feed different design elements and characteristics of 1990s base sets into a computer, ran an AI program to design a set of cards based on the input, the result would be the 1995 Donruss set.   

Here is the front of the card. 

What generic 1990s design elements are here? I feel like this is one of those Highlights magazine hidden picture pages. Those were always fun.  

-Shiny, redesigned Donruss logo at the top of the card.  

-A home plate cut out on the front of a baseball card.

-A banner with the team and player name. 

-Random Stars!!! 

-Multiple color photos on the front of the card. 

The overall result of merging all of these design elements onto one card? This is a card that I could really take or leave. To be honest, I picked it out of a box with a large quantity of Ray Lankford cards. Whatever I picked out, I was going to scan and write about.  

It's odd that Ray Lankford has a sliding glove or wrist brace in his back pocket. He usually kept his batting gloves on while he was running the bases, none of those extra base running gizmos. Wonder what is going on there? 

No, idea.  

Back of the card.  

How did Donruss do on the back of the card?  

-Giant team logo. 

-Color photo of player. 

-More banners.  

-More home plate shaped boxes.  

-The stat box is made up of other small boxes.  

My. mind. is. blown.  

Completely amazed.  

I have to work tomorrow, otherwise I would keep typing.  

The Pujols Parade - 2004 Fleer Ultra

There are so many great Albert Pujols cards from 2004. I was literally tore between posting five or six different cards for this post. I am keeping it at one Albert card per week, but if you follow my Instagram account, there will likely be more.  

Scratch likely. There will be more.  

If I had to rank all of the non-rookie, non-autographed, non-serial numbered, just-base-cards of Albert Pujols from the past 21 years, this card would probably be in the top tier. I am not going to assign it an arbitrary rank, but it would be really high up there.  

Here is the picture.  

If you have been a regular visitor over the past ten years, you would know that I think every decent Major League outfielder needs a baseball cards with the Wrigley Field ivy in the background at some point during their career. Albert was a full-time outfielder for one season and someone at Fleer was awesome enough to come up with this photograph for his 2004 Fleer Ultra card. 

It's perfect.

You have Albert jumping in front of the ivy with the ball in his glove and the photographer managed to keep every inch of him in the picture. Nothing is cut off.  

I love that the card is borderless and the picture stretches from edge to edge. If I had one complaint here, it would be the size of the player name. It takes up a lot of space and hides the great photography. It's a small thing and I don't want to dwell on the negative though. 

This is really a great card.  

Back of the card. 

If I were not returning to work for the first time in three week tomorrow, I would do a little bit more research on the throwback uniform Albert is wearing in the picture here. I am going to go out on a limb and say this is a St. Louis Stars jersey, which was the Negro League team in the city. The Cardinals have worn these uniforms several times over the years. I know they are breaking them out later this summer for a game against the Royals, who are wearing the Monarchs jerseys.  

The back of the card feels really empty. I with that Fleer had put something beneath the stats outside of blank space. Give me an interesting fact. 

Something. 

"Albert won the 2003 National League Batting Title"

"Albert came close to winning the Triple Crown in 2003, but Preston Wilson channeled his inner-Hack Wilson and drove in (not a typo) 141 runs."

or my favorite idea:

"Albert Pujols beat out Juan Pierre for the National League lead in hits during the 2003 season."

Random Ray - 1996 Topps Laser

How great were laser during prior to the 2000s?  

They are everywhere today, but how much cool stuff used laser technology when you were younger?

Every James Bond villain had a laser.  

CD players had lasers.  

Motion detectors in elementary school. Those had lasers.

Not really, but my pre-school aged daughter believes they monitor the class when they have substitute teachers.   

The Pink Floyd Laser Show at The Planetarium.  Lasers.  

Lasers touched every part of our lives and they were awesome. Did you have any doubt that a baseball card company created a laser themed set? 

Yes, the 1996 Topps Laser set was created entirely with lasers.

Sounds expensive.

It's not. 

This set also has a bit of a cult following. I am not a member of that cult.

Fair warning.  

My scanner made this Ray Lankford Topps Laser card look pristine smashed in between the glass and lid, but there are a little of little flaws around the die-cuts. Really common for this set.

Here is the front of the card.  

You can see some of the flaws along the bottom edges. It's a pretty blah photo of Ray Lankford popping out to second base (that's what it looks like) with a bunch of fancy stuff over it.  I feel like the card was designed to minimize the photo of the baseball players on the cards and just ogle the die-cut shapes.  

"Oh, man. A laser cut home plate." 

and not

"This is a pretty lame photograph of Ray Lankford."

Back of the card.  

diahsfhasiofhaeiofhb;oiqwebfiqwebfiaebfwabefiuqewbfuiqefbiowuaebf

That's my reaction to the back of this card. 

Where is the effort? 

Where is the love? 

I get two random stats and a head shot? That headshot photo was likely from the same at-bat as the picture on the front.  

No career stats? 

I can't have his 1995 stats outside of the number of home runs he hit at home and during September? 

The MLB and MLBPA logos are as big as the Cardinals logos?  

The backs of these cards definitely warrant further discussion. I will host a TED Talk one of these days and talk about how there is a Jimmy Haynes card (household name) where Topps projects him to have 3,600 strikeouts by 2010. Another claims Todd Hollandsworth was going to hit more than 300 home runs in his career.  

In summation, we all thought lasers were cool as kids. It turns out that they are not that cool. This Topps laser themed set seemed cool in the mid 1990s. In retrospect, they kind of stink.  

The Pujols Parade - 2004 Bowman Heritage

If Albert Pujols had been on the Dodgers or Angels this year, there is likely no chance that I would write a series of posts about his baseball cards. Since he is on the Cardinals, I am going to write these throughout the season. Same general principle as the Ray Lankford posts. Nothing fancy, rare, or overly shiny. Just base cards.  

Starting out with a copy of Albert's card in the 2004 Topps Heritage set, which borrowed the design from the 1955 Bowman set. However, the card dimensions are normal, no oversized cards here like the original Bowmans.  

Front photo.  

Notice the "Color TV" on the bottom of the frame. There is a parallel set of photos for all the cards in this set that were "Black and White TV". They were not overly rare, I believe they were one per pack of cards. Maybe every other pack at worst.  

This is a supposed to be a Spring Training photo?

I don't think so.  

Leave it to somebody at Topps to airbrush a card that likely didn't need to be airbrushed.  

In 2004, the Cardinals always wore blue fielding hats on the road outside of Spring Training. Not the case these days, but in the early 2000s the Cardinals always wore blue road hats. Pujols is the only Cardinals veteran to have an action photo on his card in this set. Edgar Renteria, Larry Walker, Jim Edmonds, and Matt Morris all have posed photographs taken at the team's Spring Training facility.

Was Topps trying to keep the cards so they all looked like they were Spring Training photos? Did Albert stiff them on photo day?  

I swear Topps.  

Stop airbrushing cards.  

Here is the reason why I think this is an airbrushed card, beyond the fact that the person designing the card made Albert's hat, belt, and t-shirt all mismatched colors of red. 

The background of the outfield wall beyond Pujols on this card looks a lot like the corner of the left field bleachers and visitors bullpen in Busch Stadium II. The low wall with plexiglass windows and the green wall in the back of the bullpen all fit, along with the placement of the fans in the bleachers. If you look closely behind Albert's belt on the card, there is a slight dark spot, which is likely an advertisement for Ameren.  

Here is a photograph of Busch II.  

Back of the card.  

Albert is listed as an outfielder, which is where he played most of 2003. Many people do not remember those days, but the Cardinals moved him to left field after they traded for Scott Rolen.  Everyone remembers Albert was a third baseman, right?  The 2004 season was his first full year at first base after the Cardinals traded away Tino Martinez. 

Good riddance.  

The stats are great and Albert did some stuff that only a guy in the Hall of Fame did.  

It's Opening Day

It's Opening Day.  

I am not sure how excited I should be for the Cardinals or Durham Bulls this year, but it is always nice to have baseball to watch. To celebrate, I ventured to the local Wally World and found a pair of Opening Day boxes. After the dearth of current year cards posted on my blog over the past two years, I thought it would be fun to open a few packs for a change.    

This is the design of this year's Topps flagship set, as well as the Opening Day set. 

That little logo in the bottom corner is the only thing that separates the two sets.  

I do not want to get into the design with Opening Day too much. At some point I will post some of the cards I have pulled out of packs of Topps Series 1.  I will wait until that post to be more opinionated about the design and appearance of these cards. For this post, I am going to post some scans of the insert cards that make Opening Day unique.  

Yes, I did land a copy of Wander Franco's rookie card out of one of the packs of Opening Day.  

I had thought about doing some sort of Wander Franco rookie card count as the year went along. 

It might need some work.  

On to the Opening Day cards.  

This is the first insert, which shows the Opening Day from 2021 for each of the teams. I pulled 9 cards out of two boxes.  My favorite two cards here are the Tigers and Red Sox, which are in the bottom row.  

I like the snow on the Tigers card.  

Opening Day also has mascot cards. These are the highlight of the Opening Day set, right?  Seems like one of the bright spots that collectors frequently talk about with this product.  I pulled a total of 15 cards from my Opening Day packs.  

Orbit is easily the best mascot here.  Sorry, Fredbird, but any mascot who trolls J.P. Arenciba is quality in my book. I have a funny story about his wife, who is some famous country singer, but that's for a different post.  Here is some of Orbit's quality work with J.P. 

Here is the second set of mascot cards.  

Billy the Marlin is great, but I will go with the Pirate Parrot as the best card in this group of mascots. Can you think of another mascot who was found guilty of selling Joaquin Andujar and Keith Hernandez cocaine? 

The Pirates have updated the mascot costume over the last 30 to 40 years. That's honestly too bad.  

Are those the same legs as Big Bird?

Next up are these perforated cards. I pulled a total of six cards in two boxes. In retrospect, this was not the best way to present these cards, but I am not going to go back and rescan all of these cards.  I feel like some of these trios are a little questionable.  

The Blue Jays had the Cy Young Award winner last year in Robbie Ray, but he did not get a place on their card? 

On the Dodgers card, there are about five players that could be substituted for Bellinger.  

Verdugo deserves to be on as few baseball cards as possible. He had some questionable behavior as a Minor Leaguer. Questionable, like police investigation.  I don't boo, but I would boo Verdugo.  

The Padres card and the inclusion of Eric Hosmer was covered by Fuji over at San Jose Fuji.  He also posted cards from Opening Day.   

The last card with Acuna, Little Vlad, and Tatis is fine, although I prefer the team cards.  

Last group of cards.....

These home run themed cards are not very interesting cards.  

I am happy that Opening Day is here, not sure I can say the same thing the Opening Day baseball cards.  

Random Ray - 1998 Donruss Collections Donruss

In the late 1990s, many large hobby companies were really big into repeatedly reprinting cards with minor aesthetic changes and hyping the rehashed cards up as some great new product. This phenomenon still exists within the world of baseball cards today. If I had been blogging about cards in the late 1990s, this topic would have received a lot of attention.  I guess it still could, but I have just given up on complaining about redundant and repetitive baseball cards anymore.  

Perhaps, I will take back up the cause.  

Here is an example of the redundant world of late 1990s baseball cards, if you were not collecting at the time.  Three Ray Lankford cards.  They look the same, but they are not the same.  

Yes, I made the pictures really small.  You are not missing much, because they are the same damn card over and over again.  On the left, we have Topps Chrome.  It's a photo of Ray Lankford hitting, which looks similar to the regular Topps card in the middle.  What is different?  The "Chromium" finish*. The card on the right is the Topps Opening Day, which also features the same picture of Ray Lankford hitting.  The Opening Day card does have a silver frame, rather than gold, and Topps made a cool little logo for the bottom left corner of the card.

*Patent pending for the last 20 years.  

Have you ever seen the movie Zoolander?  

At the end Will Ferrell's character, mean fashion designer, questions the talents of Ben Stiller's character, a really good-looking male model, because he only has one look he can use while he is modeling. The scene has been turned into a meme that could be easily manipulated to describe late 1990s baseball cards.  

I am going to put that on my list of things to do.  

What does this have to do with this week's Random Ray post?  

Here is the card from the 1998 Donruss Collections Donruss set.  

If you did not collect cards at this time and are thinking, "Is that a fancy way for saying this card is in the Donruss set?", the answer is complicated and involves redundancy at its finest. 

Yes, in 1998 there was a Ray Lankford card in the Donruss set.  It looked like this.....

Pinnacle also produced the Leaf, Donruss Elite, and Donruss Preferred baseball card sets. Obviously, everyone loved them, which is why the company decided to produce all the cards from all four sets over again, but they threw some foil finishes on top of the cards and merged them all into one set.

The Donruss Collections set was born. A grand total of 750 cards that were all reprinted from another set from the same year. Even better, you had to put the set together by purchasing packs with 5 cards. The quick math tells me that's 150 packs of cards assuming you do not get any duplicates.  

The scan above really did not do the shiny surface justice. Here is another look at the front.  

Did I mention that Pinnacle went bankrupt after releasing this product?

Back of the card.  

We get another photograph of Lankford, a decent little write-up about him setting a personal-best in home runs, and then the standard Donruss stat line from this era. The Cardinals logo in the background makes the back seem a little busy. 

Also note that there is a "Donruss Collections" logo and the number 13 underneath the stat box. This is the card number for the Donruss Collections set.  The 13 from the top of the card is from the original Donruss set. It just so happened that when Pinnacle merged the four sets into one set, the Donruss cards all kept their original card number.  

That "Four Sets In One" thing is borrowed from an Ebay seller.  

$109 for this box?  

It's got Travis Lee on the front. 

Obviously the "4 SETS IN ONE!" selling point got one person to bid on this item. If you bought this and you are reading my blog post, please email me.  I have cards to sell you.  

I really want to like this Ray Lankford card, so I take it out and look at it's shiny surface and ignore the fact that it is from a horribly conceived product that had a picture of Travis Lee on the box.  

Sunday Simbas

Yesterday, I posted a gaggle of former Durham Bulls players who signed for the Topps Heritage set this year. However, I did not forget about the Cardinals. They also have several players who signed for Heritage, but after looking at the checklist, there was an easy to choice to be made here. 

I bought a Ted Simmons.  

Of all the Cardinals in the Hall of Fame, he is easily the player who is grossly under represented on baseball cards. Up until last year, I think there were more Dennis Eckersley autographs as a Cardinal than Ted Simmons. 

That's not good.

I am not sure if the lack of interest was from Simmons not wanting to sign or card companies not asking him to sign.  If he did not want to sign, I completely understand.  That's his choice.  If card companies did not ask, I would be a little disappointed.  

I like this card a little more than the one that Topps released in the 2018 Archives set pictured below.  

Both are great cards, so really I am splitting hairs by telling you that I like one card over another.  

While I am here talking about Ted Simmons, I also wanted to take a moment and share a pair of cards I found/received in the last month, but did not post. I do not do much with the Topps Now cards, but this was a card I got because of combined shipping. 

I did not realize that Topps gave players a card when they were elected to the Hall of Fame. Sweet that old Ted Simmons still has the long hair.  

Last one.  

I think that this was a stadium giveaway from the Pirates of some sort, but Ted Simmons worked for the team in several different capacities during the early 1990s after retiring from baseball. For a time, he was the general manager, but resigned due to stress related health problems.

The centering is not great both side-to-side and top-to-bottom, but I got this card in a random box of cards that a parent sent into school.  Hard to argue with free.