I would like to tell you that I haven't posted in the past week because I have been on a fun vacation or a regular at the Durham Bulls games.
I have been to one game.
The Bulls lost on a long Tristan Gray home run.
My Spring Break actually ended last week and I returned to work. My free time evaporated.
While I did not find time to type up a blog post, I did find time to find another 1952 Red Man tobacco card. Even found another Hall of Famer, my second in a row.
Here is the card......
Ralph Kiner is easily the nicest card I have added since I started this project at the beginning of the year both in terms of the card condition and significance of the player. The tab is included and the surface and corners are all above average. I have a few other Hall of Famers on the National League side of the checklist. Kiner is my third behind Musial and Schoendienst, fourth overall when I included Larry Doby from the American League checklist.
It's Saturday, the sun is shining, and my youngest wants to ride bikes. Sorry, no time to scan the card back.
I own a couple of thousand autograph cards, the majority have never appeared on my blog. Here is a random autograph that I have never posted.
Today: 2003 Donruss Signature Series Autograph Kenny Lofton.
Why do I own this card?
I actually wrote about this Kenny Lofton a few years back, but it was on a Cardboard Connections article about his best baseball cards. At the time of its publication, Kenny Lofton had very few certified autographs. Since that time, he's appeared in a few more modern products, but I still love this card.
I know what you are thinking, Kenny Lofton played for the Pirates?
Kenny Lofton played more than 1,200 games for the Indians. He also played for the Pirates, Giants, Phillies, Braves, Rangers, Dodgers, Cubs, Yankees, Astros, and White Sox. He never played more than 130 games for any team outside of Cleveland and played less than 100 games for 7 of those teams. Lots of trades and times as a free agent.
Not really an Indians fan, but I always loved Kenny Lofton. He was as close to a 1980s Cardinals player as anyone touched the field during the 1990s or 2000s. He led the league in stolen bases five times and ended his career with more than 600.
When did I get this card?
I pulled this out of a pack of 2003 Donruss Signature from my local card shop in south St. Louis County shortly after it was released. I was so excited about it at the time.
A Cinquain About Kenny Lofton
Kenny
Speedy, Skilled
Hitting, Running, Stealing
Should be in Cooperstown
Lofton
Back of the card.
Love that Rickey Henderson gets a mention on the back of Kenny Lofton's card. Nice write up, great stats, and an awesome baseball card.
I picked up two more cards for my 1952 Red Man Tobacco set project over the past weeks. No big names, but this is a small set, so every card helps. Plus, it's fun to learn more about the 1950s players as I go through and find their cards.
First up, three time World Series winner Murry Dickson.
The Missouri native (Kansas City area) actually started his career with the Cardinals and won two World Series playing along side Stan Musial and Red Schoendienst as an spot starter and long reliever early in his career, but would end up being a mainstay of the rotation by the mid 1940s. Dickson started two World Series games for the Cardinals in 1946 when they defeated the Red Sox.
He spent the middle part of his career on the Pirates where he led the National League in losses three years in a row, but also made the All-Star team and had an ERA in the 3s. I looked around the 1952 Pirates Baseball Reference page and found the team hit .231 and had a .331 slugging percentage. If Ralph Kiner did not hit a home run, they did not score.
Hard to win that way.
His career ended in the late 1950s with the Yankees where he won a third World Series ring.
This card is in good condition outside of the corners, which are worn. It's hard being a 70 year-old piece of cardboard.
My first American League card out of the Red Man Tobacco set is Tigers outfielder and first baseman Vic Wertz. As the card describes, Wertz was a very good hitter, lots of home runs, doubles, and RBIs. He played in a bunch of All-Star Games over his career, but is more a Hall of Very Good Player than Hall of Fame. Wertz ended up getting traded at the end of the 1952 season to the Browns where he was on their final team in St. Louis and their first team as the Baltimore Orioles. He also played for the Indians and Red Sox before ending up back on the Tigers at the end of his career.
I had not played in roughly a decade, but decided to take on a team this year. I figured I was going to be a little rusty, so I just signed up for a team on Yahoo.That's all people do on Yahoo these days, right?
Anyway, my team is doing well. I am currently in fifth place a few games out of first place in a 12 team league. My team is heavy on offense, I tend to fill in my pitching stats by picking up probable starters. I have always used that approach with my teams and it has generally worked well.
Anyway, besides playing fantasy baseball for the competition, I learn a lot about some players I might otherwise miss. It also is a great excuse to go find some baseball cards of these new found players. There are several non-Durham Bulls/non-Cardinals who have helped my fantasy baseball team this year and four of them have also joined my baseball card collection.
Hope these guys can still help my baseball team and my card collection.
First up, Braves pitcher Bryce Elder.
He's won a bunch of games and has a low ERA. Not the best strikeout pitcher, but a solid contributor to my baseball team. I worry that his first half performance has been "smoke and mirrors", but I am not really attached to starting pitchers. I will move on to someone else.
In the meantime, Bryce has some nice on-card autographs. Picked up a 2021 Heritage Minor League card from his time in the Gulf Coast League.
Next up is Yandy Diaz.
Yandy has also been a good average and on-base player, but the extra base hits have been a pleasant surprise this year. I originally had him on my roster to balance out some of my power guys who hit for a lower average, but Yandy is actually hitting home runs this year.
Yandy is on the Rays, so it might be a little surprising that I don't own one of his autographs already. However, Yandy was never actually on the Durham Bulls. He came up with Cleveland, played part of two seasons with the Guardians, and then was traded to the Rays. Yandy never touched Triple-A with the Rays and won't at this point barring an injury-rehab assignment.
Yandy has only two certified autographs, both stickers, and they are messy. Yandy has a really tall signature and should not be trying to squeeze it onto a sticker autograph.
Next.
I kind of dig this card as much as I have enjoyed Mitch Keller's wins and strikeouts during the first half of the baseball season. When did this guy turn into a good player? He's like the one pitcher on my roster, not quite, that I won't release after every start and resign two weeks later.
The card is a Bowman Tek, which only lasted one year. It was like Topps Tek, but with prospects. I am guessing it was not a very successful set and this card only cost me $2.
Last one.
Bryan Reynolds is my glue guy. I have Ronald Acuna, Corbin Carroll, and Wander Franco doing a lot of the heavy lifting for my offense, but Bryan Reynolds helps out everywhere. His average is decent, he hits for power sometimes, and he steals bases. At the end of the week when I look at my totals and see that I won a category by 1 home run/stolen base/run, I can look down and see that Bryan Reynolds is the player that put me over for the week.
Fist bump.
Reynolds was good last year and I guess his cards are becoming more popular. At $12, this is the most money I have spent on a modern Pirates card in at least a decade.
The 2023 baseball cards feel a little slow. It's the middle of April and all we've got so far is Topps Series 1 and Bowman Heritage from 2 years ago. Maybe some delayed 2022 products too. Where is Topps Heritage and Bowman?
Anyway, strep has been making its way through my house this week. I have avoided it so far, but I spent my Friday hanging out with my middle schooler who felt miserable. Lots of rest, fluids, and some amoxicillin and we are feeling better today. Still, I needed a little entertainment to keep myself going yesterday, so I picked up a few packs of Topps Big League.
I don't care that Topps Big League is made for kids, it provided a little bit of entertainment on a long day at home with a sick kid.
Here's what I pulled out of the packs.
The base cards are missable, but I picked out my favorite three........
This Molina card is actually a foil parallel, hard to tell from the scan, but it has a silver finish. I did not pull a Pujols base card, which was a little disappointing, but it's a 300 card set and I opened a Blaster box with roughly 100 cards.
My two other favorites were former Durham Bull Blake Snell and current Durham Bull Jonathan Aranda.
I am honestly surprised that Aranda has appeared in both 2023 Topps products. I think he's a Major League player, but he's not high up on the Rays prospect list and he is buried in Triple A at the moment.
Can I bring up the most annoying base card?
Topps airbrushed a bunch of the players who were traded or switched teams with free agency this offseason. Several are really bad, but Andrew McCutchen is easily the worst. It's really obvious that the photo on this card was airbrushed.
Remember when Andrew McCutchen was on the Pirates for 9 years at the beginning of his career? You're telling me that Topps could not have used one of those photos? I would rather see a dated photo than one where he in on the Brewers and Topps airbrushed him into a Pirates uniform.
The insert cards are much more kid-friendly.
We've got graffiti name tag.
Babe Ruth and graffiti. Peanut butter and jelly.
I did pull an Albert Pujols card. Nice looking insert.
Yes, it's a video game reference, which seems kid-friendly, but most current kids also think 8-bit games are really lame. My fifth graders talk about NBA 2K. I talk about NBA 96. They don't care about Reggie Miller or Charles Barkley. Not truly kid-friendly. Really, this card appeals to the average Topps customer. Middle-aged, white guy who collects cards and owned a Nintendo, Sega, or PlayStation at some point between elementary school and college.
I am more of a 16-bit guy.
These are "Fun Box" inserts.
These two cards made me think that this insert set was somehow an ode to ballpark food or Lunchables, Ballpark food is okay, Lunchables are gross. I ended up with a few other Fun Box cards that had different backgrounds without the food.
These feel like leftover Topps Project 2020 or Project 70 leftover cards. The Alonso card with the cartoon is goofy, but I like the Willie Mays with the swirled colors. Might be amongst my favorite cards out of these Big League packs. I guess someone at Topps was not able to quite pull this insert set together, but something decent came out of the effort.
There are also City Slickers inserts, which are just advertisements for the Nike City Connect jerseys, which are available now at your team's store or at Nike dot com. There are a lot of base cards with City Connect jerseys as well including several Rockies players, which is why I included C.J. Cron in the scan.
Although, those Rockies jerseys feel like an advertisement for the Colorado DMV.
Don't forget to renew your license plates.
Last two cards are the best two cards.
I love the mascot cards.
These are just incredible cards. I don't think I have a Rally Monkey card in my collection and that Fredbird card is one of the better ones out there. There is no Opening Day set this year, so these are going to have to tide everyone over on mascot cards for the year.
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.
I am still working on my 1964 Topps Giant set project, even if I am posting here less often. The last card I added to the set was Mickey Mantle, so I have had a limited a budget the last few weeks. The Mantle card is not one of the short-printed cards in the set, but it's still way up there in price.
In case you missed it, here is the Mantle.
Last week, I was able to add another pair of cards from the set. No Hall of Famers this time around, but two players I would classify as being in the Hall of Very Good Players if you followed baseball in the 1950s and 1960s.
The first card is a short-print and cost a little more. Not Mantle expensive, but more than the normal card for this player.
I was a little thrown off seeing Bill "Moose" Skowron on the Senators. Happens every time I see one of his mid to late 1960s cards at a show. The 1950s and 1960s Yankees teams had plenty of Hall of Famers, which Skowron is not, but he was a very good supporting cast member on many of those teams. Skowron was good for 20 home runs and 70 to 80 RBIs a year hitting 5th or 6th behind players like Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris. In all, Skowron played in 8 All-Star Games and won 5 World Series with the Yankees.
His play in the 1963 World Series is actually the subject of the "news story" on the back of his card, only he was playing against the Yankees as a member of the Dodgers. This was Skowron's 5th and final World Series ring.
Skowron was a really good Postseason player which is summarized on the back of this card. The numbers speak for themselves. Skowron never won any Postseason Awards, but had some really good performances in years where the Yankees lost. In the 1960 World Series against the Pirates, he had 12 hits in the 7 games for a .375 average with 2 home runs, 2 doubles, and 6 RBIs. Not bad for a guy hitting 6th in the lineup. Skowron jumped around at the end of his career. He spent time with the Dodgers, Senators, White Sox, and Angels. Again, I am always a little weirded out to see him in a uniform outside of the Yankees.
Speaking of the 1960 Pirates, my second card is an important member of that team.
Bob Friend was on the Pirates forever. He played 16 years in the Majors, 15 of them were with the Pirates. In 1955, he led the National League in ERA. In 1958, he led the National League in wins. In an average season, Friend won a bunch of games and pitched a ton of innings. Friend had some shaky years mixed in too, but ended his career with almost 200 wins and 2,000 strikeouts and a ton of innings pitched. I looked up his comparable players on Baseball Reference, some of his similar players were Curt Simmons, Claude Osteen, Rick Reuschel, and Jerry Reuss. Wins and innings.
Here is the back of the Bob Friend card.
All-Star Game stats are fine, but Bob Friend had a great year in 1960 until the World Series. He was in the top 5 in the National League in wins, ERA, and strikeouts that season. Nothing about that?
Picked up a few new Topps Giants cards for my set project. There are a total of four cards in this post, they were all pretty easy to find and inexpensive. My next update is going to have some really good names. Thought about waiting a week, but I think the next group of cards deserve their own post.
First up for this post is Reds pitcher Jim Maloney.
Here is the back of the card.
Solid player. Made a few All-Star games, struck out a ton of batters.
Next up is Bob Bailey. I know him mainly as an Expo in the 1970s, but he started out with the Pirates in the early 60s. Kind of an interesting career path. Here is the front of the card.
He was much more of a fielder at the beginning of his career who hit the occasional home run. Then he got sold to the Expos before the start of their first season. He started hitting home runs in bundles and was one of their offensive stars.
The back of the card focuses on his defense. The second sentence was generous in describing his offensive talents at this point in his career. Love that action picture on the back. Very nice.
Next.
I was a little disappointed in the top to bottom centering on this card. I bought it from an Ebay seller who had multiple copies. I paid for one copy, got another copy. Tried to return this copy, got my money back, and the guy told me to keep the card. I might replace this one at some point, but for the moment it's staying.
Back of the card.
Another great action shot here with the pitch almost over his head. I also like that the mention his basketball career at Duke on this card. Groat's career with the Pirates was far more notable than his time with the Cardinals, but he did win a World Series with them in 1964.
Last card.
I did not know too much about Gary Peters before writing this post. He had a really good beginning of his career, but was out of baseball by his mid 30s. He won the 1963 American League Rookie of the Year, two ERA titles, and once won 20 games.
Back of the card.
Looks like he had a really odd motion.
Here is my updated checklist. I have 14 out of the 60 cards, roughly a quarter of the set. A few new cards will be posted next week, a good name or two is included in the next group of cards.
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
Last year, I was really surprised to see the pitching match-up for a Cardinals and Pirates game featuring James Marvel. I saw that name, honestly I had to go look it up and make sure it was the same person I knew from a few years back.
Way back in the day, James Marvel went to Duke. He did not pitch many games while he was in Durham, and was always overshadowed by Michael Matuella. Matuella was a potential first overall draft pick until arm injuries derailed his career.
Marvel?
He's just one of those college players I never thought I would see play in the Majors. I guess he might have been better than I remembered....
but still surprised that he made it to the Majors.
It was even more surprising to see James Marvel pop up in the Topps Chrome set this year on the autograph checklist. After making the Majors, Marvel only appeared in three games. I can't find any packs or boxes of Chrome in stores, but there are plenty of these autographs floating around on Ebay.
Here is the card....
That's a great photo on the front of the card.
The back of the card mentions that Marvel attended Duke.
Happy to add this one to the collection. A few more Topps Chrome cards later in the week.
Basic Design
The EX sets were some of my favorite products in the late 1990s. Good designs. Innovative product. There wasn't much not to love about the first two designs that Skybox used for this product.
The 1998 set is my favorite of the two. I will have to do a write up on this set one week down the road.
The 1999 EX set is also very good, but a notch down from the original in my opinion.
Same basic formula and format for both the 1998 and 1999 sets. Transparent plastic cards with a raised photo of the player. Unfortunately, someone at Skybox went and did something really dumb the year after. They changed the product in 2000.
It was terrible.
The card stock was thin and the front of the cards were actually stickers that placed on the cardboard. Over time the adhesive lost its stick, and you had these catastrophes. Note the peeling at the bottom of the card.
I had some really low expectations for the 2001 E-X set when it came out. In fact, when it was first released I did not touch it until I saw someone else open a pack. The cards were re-branded to Fleer and the were much better quality. Thick card stock (The 100 card base set fits nicely into a 300 count box) and the printing was directly on the card were good repairs from the 2000 set.
The base has some of the same design elements as the 1998 and 1999 sets, minus the transparent plastic section on the side. While the design shifted back towards the first two sets, the player picture is not raised on the card like the originals.
Here is the back of the card.
The stats are a little weird. The players performance against their division is included on the back, along with the playoff teams from their League and Interleague play. The bottom features some really generic stat line of their best game of the 2000 season.
I think that they could have made the backs a little more streamlined and simple. It would have worked just fine in this set.
Best Former Durham Player The answer is Chipper Jones.
I feel like that is going to be the answer whenever I write about a 1990s or 2000s set on my Set Appreciation posts. I have done four of these Set Appreciation Posts, and the answer has been Chipper Jones twice.
Shall we look at the back?
The Cardinals did a pretty good job of keeping Chipper in check during the 2000 season. Although, the 1 home run he hit against the Cardinals was a game winner off of Mike Timlin.
I might have to select my best Durham Bulls card on the picture after this post, which means that 50% of these posts will still have a Chipper Jones card.
Favorite Cardinals Card(s)
One of the best parts of writing these set posts is that it gives me a chance to dig through my card closet and find some cool cards that I have not shared yet. It forces me to look in boxes where I normally do not venture.
Two months ago, I spent an hour digging through my 2001 sets pulling out Albert Pujols rookies for this post. I thought I had them all, but I missed this one. Find this missing one also led me to look in another box, where I found another. That's two new Albert Pujols rookie cards from writing this post.
This was really a no-brainer once I saw it in the box. However, there is also another Cardinals rookie card in this set that is a little bit of an early 2000s cult classic. I am going to split the best Cardinals card between Albert Pujols, and the guy below.
Meet long-time Triple A catcher Keith McDonald.
The Cardinals called him up in early July 2000 to backup catcher Mike Matheny while Eli Marrero was on the disabled list for a short stint. His first at bat came towards the end of a July 4th blowout against the Reds. He hit a home run.
Plenty of players hit home runs in their first at-bat. Not anything too extraordinary, right? McDonald also managed to hit a home run the next night in his first at-bat to become the second Major League player to hit a home run in his first two at-bats. The other was outfielder Bob Nieman, who actually played a few seasons with the Cardinals in the early 1960s.
To make the story even more bizarre, McDonald ends up getting a few pinch hitting opportunities over the next week, but he doesn't get any hits. Last weekend he was in the Majors in 2000, he gets to pinch hit late in a game and hits a home run. Three hits while he was up, all home runs. The Cardinals send McDonald back down to the Minors, but call him up in 2001 for a few games. Bounces around in the Minors a few more years, never gets called up. Never gets another hit in the Majors.
Keith McDonald is the only Major League player to have one than one home run, but no other types of hits. He has an autographed card in this set too, but I do not own it. Yet.
Favorite Non-Cardinals Cards
These were fairly easy choices this week.
First up is Vladimir Guerrero.
If you ever watched Vladimir Guerrero in person, you know that pitchers really had to work hard to walk him. He was not going up there to take a bunch of pitches. The crazy thing was that he hit balls most players would take, and hit them hard.
The ball actually looks like it's at his knee in this picture, but his swing looks really odd here. Bet this ended up being a hit. A few years back, someone made a mash-up video of 50 Cent's first pitch for the Mets and Vladimir Guerrero hitting a double. The 50 Cent first pitch missed home plate by 10 feet, it's always on those terrible first pitch blooper videos.
I also have another favorite rookie card in this set, but I own the autographed copy of this one.....
Juan Pierre was always a fun player to watch. One of the last players, might be the last, to wear his fielding hat underneath his batting helmet. Always one of my favorites. In some ways, Juan Pierre was a 2000s player who probably would have fit in well with the 1980s Cardinals.
How Does It Rank?
The 2001 Fleer EX is much better than Ionix, but not nearly as good as the Super Teams set. I spent a few minutes thinking about this in comparison to the 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders. I like the Mini League Leader set, but this has some nicer bells and whistles. Also Keith McDonald. I am going to place this set second on my list.
