My Top 50 Players On Cardboard #46-Dennis Eckersley

My Top 50 Players On Cardboard
#46
Dennis Eckersley


1976 Topps Dennis Eckersley RC

Hobby Impact-
The Eck really came into his own as a player, and in the baseball card hobby, when Tony LaRussa signed him as a relief pitcher with the Oakland A's.  Eckersley was surrounded by several hobby favorites during his time in Oakland, which certainly helped his hobby value, but he earned a lot of the interest in his cards through his great performance on the field.  In fact, if you look at the run of good Oakland teams from 1988 through 1992, Eckersley is the real standout pitcher on the team.  

While his cards had taken a dive during the mid 80s, they had a bit of a revival and are now pretty popular.  Add in the fact that Eck has always been a good signer with a great signature and you've got a good chance to be pretty popular within the hobby.  While his cards are not necessarily always really high in value, it's not hard to find collectors who are interested in adding a few nice Eckersley cards to their collections.  


2005 Prime Patches Dennis Eckersley Triple Jersey/Autograph

If you are looking for an inexpensive copy, easily found for less than $20, I suggest looking around at some of his 2005 Donruss/Playoff products which featured him as a Cardinal or Cub.  Not the finest stops in his career which is certainly reflected in the price of the cards.  I will say though, that the Cardinals cards in the Prime Patches set feature some nice multiple relic and patch cards.  

On The Field Impact-
Eckersley started off his career with the Indians and later moved to the Red Sox as a dominate starting pitcher.  He compiled really good numbers as a starter, but his career tailed off after moving to the Cubs in the 80s.  Needless to say, there were a few off the field issues around this time with Eckersley.

In the great tradition of LaRussa/Dave Duncan reclamation projects, the A's signed Eckersley, and moved him to the bullpen.  Eckersley became a control pitcher who threw the ball outside and became one of the most dominating relief pitchers in the Majors from the late 80s through the mid 90s.  1992 was his best year when he won the Cy Young and the MVP while leading the A's to a playoff appearance.  



My favorite Eckersley stat factoid comes from his 1989 and 1990 seasons where he walked less than five people each season while appearing in more than 60 games.  In fact, during those two seasons he walked seven batters combined, one intentionally, while striking out 128 batters.  Pretty impressive control.  


Favorite Card-
Easy.  The 1989 Topps Mini.  


1989 Topps Mini Dennis Eckersley 

Eckersley played for more than twenty years and this follow through is what I remember best about him as a pitcher.  He also squinted one eye when he was pitching, had that funny leg kick, and would always touch his hair before throwing a pitch.  For whatever reason, maybe it's just me, this card is what Dennis Eckersley looks like.  If you were looking for a 1A for best Eckersley card you should find a copy of his 2013 Topps Tribute autograph.  A's uniform, mullet, autograph.  Near perfection.  

1999 Upper Deck Ray Lankford Exclusives

1999 Upper Deck Ray Lankford Exclusives 

Picked up a cool card of 90s Cardinals star Ray Lankford this past week.  This card comes from one of the really cool parallel sets from the late 90s that is extremely popular with collectors.  While parallels have lost some of their luster in recent years with all of the printing plates and "rainbow" parallels the last 90s parallels were very limited and highly collectable.  The Exclusives parallel set was the exclusive parallel set for the late 90s and early 2000s Upper Deck sets.  There was not an orange, red, yellow, blue, and purple versions with different numbers of each which really amounted to a whole bunch of cards.

The Exclusives cards were just simply colored differently from the regular base set.  In the case of the 1999 set, the base cards had silver borders, while the Exclusives set featured a copper colored border.  There was also a second set of Exclusives cards that were numbered to just 10.  The copper set was limited to just 100 copies of each card and can be both difficult to find and expensive to purchase.  My Ray Lankford card cost around $5, but have seen copies of star players cross $20.  Commons can be found as cheap as $1 and a definite fun set of cards to pursue and chase down.  

My Top 50 Players On Cardboard-#47 George Brett

My Top 50 Players On Cardboard
#47
George Brett



1975 Topps George Brett RC

Hobby Impact-
I think that Brett is player who flies under the hobby radar frequently.  While the Royals were a good team while Brett was an active player, they have been a terrible team since he retired in 1993.  It's hard to find Royals fans these days, let alone Royals collectors.  It's kind of sad when a team goes into a tailspin that involves using the world decades as an adjective, but that's where the team has been.

A lack of interest in the team, in my opinion, has often hurt the cards of Brett.  Don't get me wrong, they can still make a collector a good dime, but I often feel like I have to be really patient when I have a Brett card to sell or trade.  His rookie card hails from the iconic, and vibrant, 1975 Topps set and is still a very popular card with vintage collectors.  Graded copies can push $100 and nice raw copies can still bring in $30 or $40.  Autographs?  He has a lot of them with a nice signature and they sell.  Autograph issues from the late 1990s and early 2000s can bring in more than $50 quite easily.

I think that if the Royals were ever competitive for a number of years, reconnected with their fan base a little bit (see Pittsburgh), then I think you will see an uptick in Brett cards.

On The Field Impact-
Brett won a three batting titles, almost .400 one year, and won an MVP award.  He also supposedly won a World Series thanks to Don Denkinger.  Here's a picture of Jaquain Andujar asking Denkinger about his dinner plans after Game 7 of the 1985 World Series.

Seriously, the Royals were a good team in the early 1980s and Brett was the star of the team.  The Royals seemed to frequently run into the Yankees in the ALCS and lose, but Brett was great in defeat.  His career ALCS batting average was .340.  Not too shabby.  His biggest moment was obviously the Pine Tar Incident against the Yankees in 1983.

Favorite Card-

Easy question.  The last regular issue Topps George Brett card in 1994.  I love this card because it's got a picture of George Brett, the scoreboard in Kaufmann Stadium, and part of the fountains in the outfield.  If you had to make a list of iconic items and features of the Kansas City Royals those three things would all make the list.  

1994 Topps George Brett 

My Top 50 Players On Cardboard-#48 Dave Winfield

My Top 50 Players On Cardboard 
#48
Dave Winfield

1974 Topps Dave Winfield RC

Hobby Impact-

I have never been super huge on Winfield cards, but he's always had a pretty decent following.  I think much of his what drives his card values is owed to his Yankee years, but I know a few that dig the old 70s Padres cards.  He's also pretty legendary around Minnesota and I am surprised he was not referenced in Fargo.  Almost every "good" Winfield card in my collection is a Padres card.  While I am personally not invested very deep with Winfield cards, he seems to frequently pop up in important sets and is a good and willing signer.  He's appeared recently in high end Topps products like Triple Threads and Topps Sterling as a signer, but also appeared in some really important sets in the late 90s and early 2000s as a Yankee including the Greats of the Game releases, UD Retro, and Topps Archives.  

On the Field Impact-

He is obviously a Hall of Famer, but I consider him a compiler.  He's got some nice numbers and good seasons.  He hit more than thirty home runs a few years in the early eighties when that was a feat.  Really, at the end of his career his numbers look pretty good.  Winfield won a World Series with the Blue Jays in 1992 as the team's DH.  All-Star games, check.  Gold Gloves, check.  Sounds good.  

Favorite Card-

Like many players, Winfield bounced around quite a bit at the end of his career making appearances for the Angels, Blue Jays, Twins, and Indians.  While some of those years were still productive, the last year with the Twins and the season with the Indians was not pretty.  Luckily, in 1993 Upper Deck put out a cool insert set of some older players in the 1993 Upper Deck base set, who at the time were in some serious decline.  As a Cardinals fan, it was nice to see a young Ozzie Smith instead of the old guy who could not throw the ball to first base anymore.  

1993 Upper Deck Then & Now Dave Winfield 

Upper Deck also treated us with a Dave Winfield in the set complete with the old Padres unis and cool 70s sideburns.  The background is a hologram which shows Winfield as a Blue Jay.  It was hard to get the hologram part to scan, but he can kind of see the picture of Winfield swinging on the right hand side of the card.  

Bird of A Different Feather

I spent my last Tier One post complaining about the lack of new signers that Topps has offered collectors during the 2013 baseball card calendar.  As a Cardinals fan I was quite happy to see that the the card maker brought back Cardinals first baseman/outfielder as a signer in this year's product.  Craig has signed before in the past for several different Topps and Bowman products, but none so far in 2013.

2013 Topps Tier One Allen Craig Autograph 

Craig has a great signature and has kept it consistent since he first started appearing in Bowman products about four years ago.  His career got off to a bit of a slow start since he was frequently injured and blocked at first base by Albert Pujols and in the outfield by Lance Berkman and Matt Holliday.  Craig was a key contributer during the 2011 postseason run for the team and was moved into the lineup at first and in the outfield during the past seasons.

There are always naysayers with any baseball player, but Craig seems to have a large number of them who do not see him as a quality player.  I get that people are going to argue about All-Star appearances, and whether or not players are deserving, but Craig is a solid candidate and was deserving of the honor.  I know that the stats nerds, I can be one too, will argue that RBIs really are not that important.  However, when you are batting .454 with runners in scoring position that says a lot about the quality of the player.

Yes, there are players who hit more home runs.  Yes, there are players who drive in more runs.  Craig hits when it counts though.  In fact, recently Craig knocked out his first grand slam of his career.  The home run came in an important game against divisional foe Cinicinnati with the Cardinals trailing late in the game.  Take a look.

While Craig's clutch hitting does not always get him respect with fans, his popularity has been pretty steady with card collectors.  His Topps autographs issued over the past two or three years tend to fetch between $10 and $20 with his 2009 Bowman autographed rookie card fetching between $20 and $30.  

It's true that Allen Craig is a little bit different type of player, but he's good at what the Cardinals need him to do: drive in runs.  It's nice to see that the collecting world is a step ahead of some baseball fans on this guy.  

Tier One Snoozer

We are most of the way through the calendar year for the 2013 baseball card releases.  Last week Topps issued it's latest Tier One product.  Like in the past, Tier One is a higher end product with some nice looking on-card autographs.  Like in the past, I went and searched trade pages and secondary sales sites looking for cool autographs from Rays and Cardinals players.  Big yawn.....huge.

There's Matt Adams, Alex Cobb, Chris Archer, Jon Jay, Allen Craig, Wil Myers.....the same seven or eight players who have signed for all the other Topps products this year.  I love Wil Myers and will collect his autographs, same with Allen Craig, Jay, and Archer.  Can I get a different Cardinals player? Why don't we get Trevor Rosenthal or Mujica to sign?  I'd take a James Loney autograph in a Rays uni at this point too.  Seriously.  Variety is the spice of life.  Big Yawn again.

So, pleading with Topps to change their ways is kind of like watching paint dry. It's going to happen, but worrying about when is not productive.  It might be a long time.  Throw on some coffee.

So, I branched out and decided to find an autographed card of someone missing from my collection who would be worth adding.  I searched the Tier One autographs high and low and came up with....

2013 Topps Tier One Jean Segura Autograph 

Caffeine kicking a little bit.  If you did not see the Jean Segura picture on the top of the page, or the link you clicked on to view this post, this card seems a little bit of left field for this blog.  This is about the most exciting card that I could of a player whose autograph I do not already own.  Segura is having a decent season, but there is just so little diversity in who signs for Topps products these days.  Sad.

While I was picking up my Jean Segura autograph I also picked up a favorite player autograph.  Again, this guy has signed for almost every Topps product this year.

2013 Topps Tier One Chris Archer Autograph 

I also understand that Archer is having a great rookie season for a contending team, but again, let's see some new players signing.  I have a few more Tier One autographs en route and will post them next week some time.  The caffeine has kicked in, time to go.

My Top 50 Players On Cardboard-#49 Kerry Wood

My Top 50 Players On Cardboard 
#49
Kerry Wood

1997 Bowman Kerry Wood RC

Hobby Impact-
Wood's card were highly sought after for a few years in the late 90s and early 2000s and still have a pretty solid following to this day, but the price has come way down and the availability has gone way up.  As a Cardinals fan, I was never a huge fan of Wood's, but I still rock some nice Kerry Wood cards in my collection.  It's not hard to find his autographs for under $10 and rookie cards for a few bucks.  There are still a few cards that still fetch some high dollars.  Always bothers me to see him on cards as something other than a Cub.  I have three players on my list who are Cubs, I also had Mark Prior on my initial list, and Wood is the third of the three.  However, sometimes when talking to Cubs fans I feel like some of them might right him higher than a certain bunny hopping outfielder and a second baseman turned manager.

On The Field Impact-
The one drawback to Wood always seems to be the fact the Cubs fans lament the fact that he did not live up to "the hype".  He was still an above average starter for four or five years and almost got the team to the World Series in 2003.  He had a couple of nice seasons as a relief pitcher, but I often feel like many cannot move on past the 20 strikeout game in 1998 against the Astros.  The slider to Derek Bell at the end of the game is my favorite pitch.  If Bell had been using a six foot bat I am still not sure he would have hit that pitch.




I don't get the obsession with this game or why it almost held against him, used as a measuring stick of what could have been, by Cubs fans.

Favorite Card-
I almost thought about putting the 1997 Bowman card down here again, or scanning a copy of his Bowman Chrome rookie.  To avoid redundancy, I am going to go with his 1998 Bowman's Best Autograph.  Wood signed a lot of cards during his career and was really generous with signing even later into his career.

1998 Bowman's Best Kerry Wood Autograph

Many of Wood's autographs were even on-card.  This one is a pretty hard one to find, is an on-card autograph, and features Wood in a Cubs uniform.  Good card to track down if you had to own an autograph from Wood.  Finally, I would like to share one of Wood's finer moments of his career captured on film: