A Kinder, Gentler Post About Panini Cards

Let's talk about Jake Cronenworth.  One of my favorite players to recently appear on the Durham Bulls, I don't talk about him enough on here, but there is a good reason.  

Cronenworth was on the Bulls in 2019 and had a great year.  He hit for average, got on base, showed a little pop in his bat, and even pitched a few innings as a reliever.  Cronenworth had pitched while he was at the University of Michigan, but the Rays settled on making him a position player.  The great 2019 meant that the Durham Bulls made a baseball card of Cronenworth and put it in the team set.  

 

There are not actually many cards of Jake Cronenworth.  He had a card in the 2015 Bowman Draft set, but outside of that, there are only a few Minor League team issued cards.  Cronenworth got traded to the Padres after the 2019 season and had a great 60 games last season.  No baseball cards during the 2020 season, but Topps put him on their Topps All-Rookie team.  I figured that he was going to get a card at some point.  

He was not in the base Topps set, but has appeared in both the Inception and Topps Heritage sets.  I have spent time looking at his cards, thinking about buying one.  Just one problem.  

This is where I get annoyed.

 

EIGHTY DOLLARS.  

I should buy another Stan Musial autograph.  

I didn't, because I really wanted a Jake Cronenworth card, but I created a list of reasons why people should not spend $80 or more on a card of the Padres infielder.  

1. He's a 27 year old rookie.

2. He's played less than 60 games in his career.  

3. He hit .183 with a .268 slugging percentage during the last month of the 2020 season.  That's half of his career. 

4. He went to the University of Michigan.  

Seriously, I hope Jake Cronenworth has a great year in 2021.  I would love to see him and Blake Snell get a shot at winning a World Series with the Padres.  I also hope the Padres let him pitch a few innings this year. 

Frustrated at his card prices, I went a bit of a different direction to add one of his cards to my collection.  If you are a long time reader, you know that I am not a big fan of Panini.  Buying a Panini card is usually a last resort.  I love team logos and cards that are actually autographed by the player.  I love when the card says, "Cardinals" or "Padres" and not "St. Louis" or "San Diego".  

Welp.  Here is my Jake Cronenworth card from the Donruss set with no logos and an autographed sticker. 

 

I did not spend $80 for this card.  

Not even close.  

Hopefully, the prices of some of the other Cronenworth cards come down significantly and maybe one will find its way into my collection.  In the meantime, I wanted to post one more former Bulls player who also appeared in this year's 2020 Donruss set.  

This is where I say nice things about Panini.  

While I pick often pick on Panini, I will say that the company does a good job of getting some different players to sign autographs for their sets.  Topps always seemingly has the same 3 or 4 players for every team in every set.  Panini sometimes branches out and throws in an unexpected player.  

Like this one. 

Who is Josh Fleming?  

Why should you care about Josh Fleming?  

Josh Fleming was on the Rays last season, started a handful of games, before being sent to the bullpen for the playoffs.  He became a starring member of "The Stable", a group of younger, hard-throwing relief pitchers.  Fleming spent the end of the 2019 season with the Durham Bulls.  I was not really expecting Josh Fleming to appear on any baseball cards this year.  Happy to find this one.  Sometimes Panini does something right in my world. 

I actually got to see Fleming's Triple A debut.  If you read the scoreboard, you will see that he attended Webster University, which is in Webster Groves, Missouri.  I have spent a little bit of time running around Webster Groves, Missouri.  My parents worked in that town and I am pretty sure that a large percentage of my mid and late 1980s baseball cards came from the Ben Franklin store there.  I had an apartment in Webster for awhile as an adult.  Nice place to live and right down the street from Webster University. 

Josh Fleming at Webster University.  

Picture courtesy of Webster University Athletics

Sadly, after finding the Fleming card above, I actually found out that Panini made a card of him at the end of the 2020 season.  I should probably be a little nicer towards Panini and pay a little more attention to their cards.  On card autographs and logos aren't everything, right?   I will have to find a copy of the other Fleming card and post it. 

 

Set Appreciation Post #12 - 1988 Donruss

It has been a week.  I am doing a whole lot of nothing this weekend and it feels great.  Writing a blog post about the 1988 Donruss set seemed like a really huge time waster, so here I am.  Maybe I just hang out with the wrong people and follow the wrong accounts on social media, but the 1988 Donruss set seems wildly unpopular.  Is it just me, or does it often get lumped in with sets like 1991 Fleer?  

I am going to hold my opinion to the end of the post, but I will probably give away it's ranking somewhere around the top of the post.  

Special guest appearance by Aaron Boone via screen shots.  I learned this week that I attended his Major League debut.  He was ejected after being tagged out at home on a throw from right-fielder Brian Jordan.  

 

Actual screen shot of Aaron Boone after getting run from the game.  Deion Sanders homered off of Matt Morris.  The Reds won.  The Cardinals fans booed Deion Sanders and none of them could tell you why they booed him. 

Let's go.  

BASE CARD

 

Many of the cards in the post were actually opened by the 10 and 11 year old me.  Pack fresh.  You're going to find this hard to believe, but I have never gone back and worked on improving my 1988 Donruss set.  The first base card in the set is Mackey Sasser.  Actually, the first two dozen cards in Donruss sets were always the Diamond Kings cards.  I will get to those in a few minutes.  

The Rated Rookie cards were always great.  That little logo in the corner of the card is always a bonus in my book.  One of the great things that came out of 1980s baseball cards. 

Shall we talk about the border design? 

 

I never quite understood what was going on with the blue, red, and black lines.  I have looked at these cards from time to time over the last 33 years and I have no idea how this design was picked for a large baseball card set.  If this was the best design option at the time, what did it beat out?  

The back of the card. 

 There were always pros and cons to the card backs in the Donruss set.  The con was when you got a card of some player who had been around forever, but they only put five years worth of stats on the back of the card.  I like the highlight section better than Topps and I also like that they put down how the player was acquired.  You could find some really bad trades on the back of these cards. 

Diamond Kings 

I wanted to pick a Cardinals card for this spot, but the 1988 Donruss set had Jack Clark with a pink background.  I like the pink background, but 1988 was not a great year to be a Cardinals fan and see Jack Clark in a pack of cards. 

Why?  

I am going to slip in a screen shot of Mike Bush from NewsChannel 5. I think Mike is a news anchor now, or somebody serious.  Hopefully Zip Rzeppa is still doing sports in St. Louis. 

It also started the Bob Horner era in St. Louis.  

I decided to pick this Mark McGwire card instead.  Big Mac was coming off setting the Major League rookie home run record.  If you didn't know the year of the card, you can tell it's early in his career, because he looks to be a normal size in the picture.  I like the colored bars in the background too, very 1980s.  

Aaron Boone screen shot. 

There are probably better Diamond Kings cards in this set, but I am sticking with McGwire.  Solid design and he actually had a really good 1987.  

Cool Card of 1988 

I never got the whole idea of spending a ton of money on players with very little Major League experience.  Yes, it's been really bad the past two decades with Bowman, but it's not like that was the start of the trend.  Bowman just made it worse.  The 1988 Donruss set had one of those "hot" rookie cards way back in 1988.  

The 1988 Donruss Gregg Jefferies card was a really big deal back in the late 1980s.  People were pretty sure that he was going to be the next great hitter in the Majors, win a few batting titles, and be in the Hall of Very Good or the Hall of Fame.  

A lot of people spent a lot of money on this card. 

 

Other people just pulled the card from a $0.35 pack of cards from Ben Franklin.  

While we are here.  It really bothers me when people label Gregg Jefferies as a "flop" or a "bust".  He was a really good player who just happened not to live up to very lofty expectations.  I saw him play for the Cardinals for two years in the 1990s, excellent player.  Great hitter. 

Best Non-Cardinal Card 

I am a sucker for flip-down sunglasses.  

Why don't players wear these types of sunglasses anymore?  

I don't wear glasses.

I don't wear sunglasses.  

If I did wear glasses, they would be flip downs.  

Thank you, Aaron Boone.  Yes, Eric Davis is also a really good hitter.  

Best Cardinals Card 

 

Wrigley makes a good backdrop for baseball cards.  The Ozzie Smith card is a Spring Training picture.  The Vince Coleman card was also taken in Wrigley, but he is bunting.  Easy choice here. 

 Thanks, Aaron. 

Best Durham Bulls Card 

Let's wrap up this post.  I thought about going Brad Komminsk on the Brewers, but I am going to fly under the radar a bit here and go with Milt Thompson.  Really, there were not that many great choices.  The Bulls produced a lot of Braves players during the 1980s, but none of them have great cards in this set. 

 

Milt Thompson, if you did not watch baseball in the 1980s or 1990s.  Good player for the Braves, Phillies, Cardinals, and back to the Phillies for a second time.  I think there might have been a few years with the Astros at the very end of his career.  Good hitter, good defender.  I like the portrait style photo, just wish the photographer had backed up a little bit.  Milt had a really unique batting stance, but I cannot find a good picture of it.  His bat is actually too high in this photo.  Normally it was behind his back shoulder, he stood deep in the box, but stuck his front leg out straight in front of him. 

 Yes.  

How Does It Compare?  

You're probably thinking that this set is going to end up being in the last spot, but that's not going to happen.  I have no problem putting the 1988 Donruss set ahead of the bottom 3 sets.  It's not better than the 2017 Topps Heritage Minors set, so I am really trying to decide whether to put it above or below the Emotion XL set.  

The major flaw with 1988 is its design.  If Aaron Boone had been a design manager at Donruss during the late 1980s, this might be a conversation he had with his team.

Aaron Boone was in high school in 1988. 

Emotion XL has a good design, but some of it's cards are really dumb.  Let's remember that Dante Bichette's "emotion" was "The Heat".  Still think that the Emotion cards are better overall set than Donruss, especially when the quality of the cards is taken into consideration. 

I am going to go ahead and put the 1988 Donruss set in 9th place in my Set Appreciation rankings. 

11. 2000 Pacific Paramount Update 

10. 2010 Topps USA Baseball  

9. 2000 UD Ionix  

9. 1988 Donruss 

8. 1995 Emotion XL 

7. 2017 Topps Heritage Minor League

6. 1998 Topps TEK 

5. 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders 

4. 2001 Fleer EX 

3. 1979 Kellogg's 

2. 2002 Topps Super Teams

1. 1983 Topps 

Sorry, I am out of Aaron Boone screenshots. 

Wandering.

Last week the Rays sent Wander Franco to their Minor League camp, meaning he is likely going to spend a big chunk of his summer playing for the Durham Bulls.  How many times have the Durham Bulls had the top prospect entering a season?  

It's been a few.  

I am really excited to see him play, which would normally mean that I would be searching Ebay and Facebook groups for a few of his cards.  How many have I bought this spring?  

Well, there is this one....

 

That's it.  

I felt well prepared knowing that there is a healthy market for Wander Franco cards, but have you seen the price of his cards?  His autographs are all around/over $100.  Some of base cards and serial numbered cards are kind of pricy for a player with less than 200 games in the Minors. So, after looking at my baseball card budget and weighing whether or not to spend some money on the upcoming Durham Bulls players, I have decided that I am going to skip the entire team over at the moment.  

That's right.  A blog with a heavy slant on collecting Durham Bulls cards is not collecting Durham Bulls cards for the moment.  I am sure that I will find a few players on the team later on this summer.  Surely, someone will be more in the Michael Brosseau price range at some point.  In the meantime, I decided to redirect my Durham Bulls budget for this spring into a single card.  

I know it's a bold move, but I stand by the decision.  

I have a copy of this card, but this one is nicer than the one in my collection and it's Stan Musial.  Do you really need a reason to buy a Stan Musial card?  I cannot think of one, especially considering this autographed card is cheaper than a Wander Franco autograph.  

Exactly Zero Packs.

Whatever day Topps released their Series 1 cards, I ran by Target before work at 7 A.M. when the store opened.  There were no baseball cards.  I went back later in the afternoon.  There were a few display boxes, but the cards were all gone.  I have been to Target since, but I have spent zero minutes looking for baseball cards while I was in the store.  

I am feeling completely done with packs.  

I opened my first pack of cards in 1983 when I was in 1st Grade.  I have been collecting for 38 years and feel like I have better things to do in life than to chase down packs of cards at retail stores. A wife, two kids, a Betta fish, and a teaching job for starters. While we are here, I am definitely not buying any from the people who are cleaning out Target and Wally World, marking the packs of cards, and reselling them online.  

I am going to buy zero packs of cards this year.  

There are still some nice looking 2021 Topps cards that are worth owning, so during the three weeks since my last blog post I managed to track down a few.  All the players have some sort of connection to the Cardinals or Durham Bulls.  

Non-autographs are up first.  

I like that there are still Blake Snell cards in a Rays uniform.  He does not have any autographs in Series 1, but he has plenty of other cards in there.  Probably work on adding those in the coming weeks.  Not sure how I will feel about his Padres cards.  I will cross that bridge when they start rolling out.  

Next up is Dylan Carlson.  I am still not sure how good of a player he is going to be, but he's at least going to be a starter for the Cardinals this season.  People were crazy about his cards while he was in the Minors.  Settled down a bit last year, but seems like they are picking up in popularity again.  

Patino seems like a good bet for the Durham Bulls this year.  He was part of the Blake Snell trade with the Padres.  Maybe he will start in the Majors, but that would be surprising given the Rays can probably save money in the long run by keeping him in the Minors for a short time.  

I like his signature too, which brings me to my final card.  

Why isn't this a Cardinals card?  

I still like it.  

Until next time.  

A Giant Project: Update #4

I have slowed down a bit this month with my 1964 Topps Giants project.  I am nearing the half way point with the set, but still need a few more cards to get there.  This past week, I managed to track down two more cards for my set.  One Hall of Famer, the other would be considered a great player of the era. 

The Hall of Famer is up first.  

The small cost of these cards amazes me, but I was surprised to land a clean card of Harmon Killebrew from the prime of his career for less than $5.  It's not Billy Ripken, but the number 29 caught my attention when I saw this card.  Killebrew wore 3 with the Twins.  After digging into the 1963 Minnesota Twins roster, this bat likely belongs to long-time Reds outfielder Wally Post, who ended his career with the Twins.  

The write-up on this back of this card is actually incorrect.  In 1963, Killebrew did win his second consecutive home run crown, but it was his third overall.  He led the American League in home runs during the 1959 season, but missed out in 1960 and 1961 to Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris.  Killebrew won the home run crowns in 1962 and 1963.  Unless, they are not counting the 1959, because he tied with Rocky Colavito.  

Last card.  

I always think of Frank Howard as a Washington Senator.  It's easy to forget about him on the Dodgers during the first half of the 1960s.  Those teams had so much pitching, but Frank Howard was the Dodgers  best offensive player.  He won the 1960 National League Rookie of the Year and hit more than 20 home runs in every full season he played with the Dodgers.  That does not sound that impressive, but the National League was loaded with pitching at this point in time.  

The back of this card is another where half of the space is spent on his Minor League career, but I still found it interesting.  The fact that Howard was in the Minors for a season, hit .333 with almost 40 home runs, and the Dodgers let him play a whole season there would never happen today.  Topps mentions the high batting averages in his second season, but he got up to 43 home runs.  Crazy to think about those sorts of numbers in a single Minor League stop these days.  

Updated checklist.  21 out of the 60 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

A Series Of Infrequent Posts

This has been a busy last few weeks.  I have been transitioning from being a virtual school teacher to being a hybrid school teacher.  That means that I am teaching half a class online while also teaching half a class in-person.  There were a lot of rules to follow to set up my classroom and a lot of logistical work to make it so that I can teach both simultaneously, but I think I have it set up well.  

Let's hope.  

After a two week break from this space, I have dedicated a small portion of my Sunday to writing a post about a few of the cards that have shown up during that time.  There are others.  Hopefully, I will get there during the next week.  

My first two cards are from fellow collectors that I have met online.  First up is a Ray Lankford from the 1999 Pacific Private Stick set.  The card is a mini, but the scan is not. 

This card was from Jon at A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts.  You can also follow him on Twitter at @pennysleeves.  Great blog, one of my favorite reads.  He found this on the Trading Card Database and thought of me.  Very generous and another reminder that I don't do anything on Trading Card Database, but I should.  

This is a parallel to the base version of the mini.  

The base version had blue backs, the parallels had red backs.  Really nice card that I did not have in my collection.  I will have to send Jon a few cards in return.  Man, I really miss Pacific.  I am 100% positive I write that every time I post one of their cards.  

Next, a few cards that I picked up from a long-time Facebook trading/buying/selling partner.  He always holds onto his Cardinals cards for me.  These cards included an autograph of Cardinals catching prospect Ivan Herrera.  

Sometime last month, I posted an Ivan Herrera autograph out of last year's Bowman's Best.  I always like when non-licensed card manufacturers make cards of catchers with their equipment on.  You can't tell that they have to airbrush all the logos off the card.  

I also picked up two Tink Hence autographs.  He was a two-way player in high school who was committed to play baseball at the University of Arkansas.  The Cardinals drafted him in the second round and offered him enough money to get him to turn pro.  I am not sure its been decided whether the Cardinals are going to develop him as a pitcher or position player.  

A draft card from Panini's Extra Elite.  Nice looking card.  

I also ended up with a copy of his purple Bowman Chrome autograph.  The border looks a little ridiculous with the red Cardinals stuff on the card.  I am excited to see what the Cardinals end up doing with this guy. 

Last card.  A Cardinals player on a non-Cardinals card.  Still a really nice item though.  

Edmonds signs baseball cards as infrequently as I post on this page.  I cannot pass up his cards when I see them at a good price.  

A Giant Project: Update #3

I worked hard on my 1964 Topps Giants set during the past two weeks.  I am posting five new cards tonight, which includes three Hall of Famers and a great of the era.  Really happy with how well this project is going.  

Here are the new cards, saving the better cards for later in the post.  

I did not know much about Max Alvis outside of seeing the occasional card of him in common boxes at card shows.  First, he went to the University of Texas and was a two sport star at the school with the football and baseball teams.  More impressive was the fact that he played both fullback and linebacker on the football team.  A two-way player and he started at both positions.  Alvis choose to play baseball.  He was a good young player with the Indians, but ended up getting spinal meningitis during the 1964 season.  

He stuck around for a few more seasons, but was never the same player.  Alvis made the 1967 American League All-Star team.  He was not having a particularly good season, but the Indians traded Rocky Colavito and Alvis was the most popular player remaining on the team.  

Next.  

Boyer is not a Hall of Famer, but is definitely a great from the 1960s.  Boyer probably has a much better case than most people would think.  Boyer's uniform number, 14, is the retired by the Cardinals.  The only non-Hall of Famer with a retired number with the Cardinals.  Boyer was the National League MVP in 1964 and helped the Cardinals get to the World Series against the Yankees.  Boyer hit a Game 4 Grand Slam, which was the turning point in the Series, and added another in Game 7 that put the game out of reach.  

I am not sure where Topps got the 10 number from on the back of the card.  Boyer appeared in seven All-Star games at this point in his career.  I guess they could be including Minor League All-Star games too, although Boyer was not in the Minors very long.  He rose quickly and also spent time with the Army during the Korean War.  

This is the part of the post that I am most excited about.  There are a lot of Hall Famers on the 1964 Topps Giants checklist and I have quite a few of them left to find.  Some are going to be harder than others.   Bunning was an easy Hall of Famer to find and not very expensive.  The right corner, near his forearm, has a slight scratch, but it's only on the surface.  

I like the back of Bunning's card.  Some of the newspaper headlines on the back of the cards feel like a bit of a stretch.  Max Alvis has a fancy headline about leading a last place team in home runs and then meanders into him playing in the Pacific Coast League.  Bunning has a perfect game on the back of his card.  If I recall the details correctly, the perfect game was thrown on Father's Day and Jim Bunning had a Philip Rivers amount of children.  

They also mention the fact that Bunning threw a no-hitter for the Tigers.  Solid work here pairing an accomplishment with another good accomplishment.  Nice that Topps stayed on topic here.  Sometimes they drift.....

Another Hall of Famer, a little bit better than Jim Bunning.  Just my opinion.  This is a nice portrait style photo on the front of the card, but I really like the back of Marichal's card.  

The super-high leg kick was Marichal's claim to fame while he was playing.   The Topps Giants cards do not have action photographs on the fronts of the cards.  They really missed out here.  If I ran a card company in the 1960s, every Juan Marichal card would have a picture of his leg kick.  I also like that Topps gives him a headline for his no-hitter against the Astros in 1963, but it goes downhill after the picture and headline.  

Remember at the bottom of Jim Bunning when I mentioned drifting card backs?  

I am a little puzzled why they spent half of the back talking about where he played in the Minor Leagues. It's Juan Marichal.  Won a lot of games, struck out a lot of batters, crazy leg kick?   Do we need to know about how he pitched in Tacoma or the Eastern League?  Could we have squeezed another sentence out of 25 wins or 248 strikeouts? Talk about the leg kick.    

Last card of the post.  

This is a big one off the checklist.

I will let the card do the talking.  

A little wear along the left edge on the front of the card, but otherwise this is in really good shape.  Not nearly as painful as I had imagined it was going to be.  

Updated checklist.  19 out of the 60 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