Stained Glass Snell

Topps has dabbled with all sorts of stained glass cards in this past.  I think my favorites were in the late 1990s Topps Gallery sets, but those are long gone.  There have been others along the way, some better than others. This year Topps made a set of stained glass cards in their Ginter set.  It's one of the mini parallels.  

It took me a bit, but I found a copy of the Blake Snell card.  This is a great looking card.  

It reminds me a lot of the acetate cards from the flagship in terms of the materials and how the light goes through the card.  The "glass" portions of the card are translucent, not transparent, or actual glass.  I am not sure about the actual design in the background behind Snell.  Are those palm trees?  That's what I think they are, but I might be wrong. The light provides good contrast with the black frame around the edge of the card, and the shadow looking figure on the back of the card.....

The card back reminds me a lot of the acetates too, but I wish they had done something more with the player image on the back.  I know that the back is black to block out the light, but the shadow figure isn't the greatest for the design.  Not sure what they should have done here, but it feels empty.  

Love the card though.  

A 1980s Card Part 15 - 1989 Topps Traded Ken Hill

Ken Hill was originally in the Tigers Minor League system, but the Cardinals picked him up in trade for catcher Mike Heath.  When you watched Ken Hill pitch, he looked the part of a very good pitcher.  He threw hard, could rack up the Ks, and for a few years he was the best young pitcher the Cardinals had in their rotation.  The front office's patience wained a bit, and he was traded to the Expos for Andres Galarraga. 

Ken Hill was great for the Expos.  He won 16 games his first year in Montreal, and then led the National League in wins during the strike shortened 1994 season. 

I found this video from an Expos broadcast that seems to give a little bit into Ken Hill's career....

Know that the Expos traded him back to the Cardinals where he continued his trend of looking like a really good pitcher, but getting none of the results.  Ken Hill would go on to pitch for 14 years in the Majors, finishing with a 117-109 record, and an ERA just above 4.00.  If only he could have pitched 15 years for the Expos....

On to the card.  

The Cardinals roster started turning over from the WhiteyBall era players in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  Half of the team left via free agency, and there were a lot of young players on the way up to the team.  Todd Zeile was sort of the most highly regarded prospect of the bunch, but the Cardinals also had Ray Lankford, Bernard Gilkey, Geronimo Pena, and Hill. 

I wouldn't say that Hill was a bust, he just turned out to be an end of the rotation starter with a front of the rotation arm.  He was really the Cardinals only decent young arm from the early 1990s though.  The rest all seemed to turn into relievers.  See Rheal Cormier. 

Back of the card. 

Hill was called up to the Cardinals from Double A.  While his Minor League numbers look pedestrian, when the Cardinals sent him back down to work at Triple A, he was pretty much untouchable.  Hill went 6-1 with a 1.79 ERA and 104 strikeouts in just 85 innings.  He pitched with the Cardinals in 1990 and 1991, he the trade with the Expos happened before the 1992 season. 

2019 Blake Snell Autograph Count: 19

I was willing to miss out on this Allen & Ginter X autograph of Snell.  It is serial numbered to just 25, and many of the copies on Ebay had sold for more than what I was willing to pay.  There were several Buy It Nows with the price hovering north of $40.  I lost out on a pair of auctions too, but eventually found one for less than half of the final auction prices I missed out on.

I love the silver ink on the black background.  Great look for the card.

The back is the pretty standard for an Allen & Ginter card.  

One away from 20.  

It's Not That I Am Against Sets......

There have been a whole bunch of 2019 sets that have been released this year starting with Topps Series 1 way back in January or February.

I think I have a Stadium Club set put together.  Otherwise, I just have a bunch of random 2019 cards from a whole bunch of different sets.  Way back at the beginning of the year I thought I would try to put together a couple of small sets.  Have I done that?  

No.  

It's not that I am against sets, it's just that the majority that Topps is putting out at this point do not really hold my interest.  Rather mediocre.  

What to do?  

I am going to try to put together a pair of small Upper Deck insert sets from the early 1990s.  One from the 1992 Upper Deck Minor League set, and the other from the 1993 Upper Deck base set. Different years, different products, but I have always felt like these two insert sets are clones of each other.  

Minor League set first....

This is from the Top Prospects Holograms set.  There are 9 cards, but I only have two of them.  One being the Dmitri Young shown above as a member of the Springfield Cardinals.  The other belongs to Chipper Jones, which is a Durham Bulls card.  The other 7 cards in the set shouldn't be too hard to find.

I already have the red cards. 

TP1 Midre Cummings

TP2 Cliff Floyd

TP3 Chipper Jones

TP4 Mike Kelly

TP5 David McCarty

TP6 Frank Rodriguez

TP7 Brien Taylor

TP8 Rondell White

TP9 Dmitri Young

North Carolina native Brien Taylor card seems like he might be the hardest card left to find.  There is not one on COMC at the moment, so I will have to find one from some place different, I do not always like buying single cards like this off of Ebay.  Might have to go do a SportsLots order, something.    

On to the 1993 Upper Deck set.  If you collected at the time, I bet you can guess the insert set....

This is from the Then & Now set.  There is an older player of the picture in color with the hologram showing a new picture.  There are 18 cards in all.  There are actually a few cards in this set that I am not big on, but the rest of the cards more than make up for it.  

These are the cards I do not like.....

The retired players in the set have a goofy picture of the player wearing an Upper Deck shirt of some sort in the hologram picture rather than an older image.  Why doesn't this Reggie Jackson have a picture of him on the Angels, or his last season with the A's?  Would have made for a better set, but it's only a few cards that fit into this category.  

I am missing roughly half the set.  I already have the red cards. 

TN1 Wade Boggs

TN2 George Brett

TN3 Rickey Henderson

TN4 Cal Ripken, Jr.

TN5 Nolan Ryan

TN6 Ryne Sandberg

TN7 Ozzie Smith

TN8 Darryl Strawberry

TN9 Dave Winfield

TN10 Dennis Eckersley

TN11 Tony Gwynn

TN12 Howard Johnson

TN13 Don Mattingly

TN14 Eddie Murray

TN15 Robin Yount

TN16 Reggie Jackson

TN17 Mickey Mantle

TN18 Willie Mays

I think I can have these two small sets put together by the end of September.  Go team.  

2019 Blake Snell Autograph Count: 16 & 17

Every. other. post. 

What was in my mailbox today?  What will be in my mailbox tomorrow?  You already know the answer.  It's a Blake Snell autograph.  I am making a strong push to get to 25, there are not many I am missing at this point.  They are generally low numbered cards that I am going to have to get for the right price, and probably can never manage to get them all.

On to the cards. 

There are two because they are from the same ridiculous set, but they are two different cards.  I liked these cards when they first came out a few years back.  Now, they are starting to get a little annoying.  These are both from the Topps Archives Signature Series. 

The top card is a buyback of a 2015 Bowman card that Snell signed 99 copies of, while the bottom card is a 2018 Topps card (Aqua Fresh Design) that is also numbered out of 99.  I do not mind buybacks, but it seems ridiculous to do a buyback of a card that is one year old.  Silly.  

The good news is that I have added two more Snell autographs, they were fairly inexpensive, and I am now going to go do some work for my day job.  

A 1980s Card Part 14 - 1984 All-Star Game Inserts Tommy Herr

The other week I made fun of Bob Forsch for having a perm on a 1980s baseball card.  Tom Herr is on this week's card, and he also rocked a perm for parts of the decade.  I am going to skip over the hair and tell you all of the things I remember about the Cardinals second baseman during the 1980s.

1. He had the smallest home run space of any second baseman in the All-Star Baseball game.

It's the number 1 at the top of the disc if you never played.  Give me Ryne Sandberg or Bobby Grich all day long.


2. Walk off grand slam against the Mets on seat cushion night in 1987.

  

3. This sac fly he hit in the 1982 World Series that scored two runs.  Really Gorman Thomas misplayed the ball, but Tommy Herr hit it.  

and I did not really know much about this play during the 1980s.  More like the 1990s when I learned more about the 1982 World Series.  Still counts.  

4. He was traded to the Twins for Tom Brunansky.  

The 1989 Topps Cardinals Leaders cards had Tom Brunansky on it, plus Luis Alicea who replaced him at second base.  Feels like a 1980s troll job from Topps.  

That's it.  That's my Tommy Herr list.  Now for a card.  

This is a card I have picked up in the past year.  I really have not ever gone after any of these cards, but I included one of these in an article over at my other writing gig and I decided to check one out.  This is an All-Star Game Program insert card.  MLB put them in the programs for a few years during the 1980s, people cut them out, and there are a few floating around the internet.  Again, a more recent pick up, not an actual card I had in my collection during the 1980s.  Plus, there is no way the first/second grade me would have ever cut out a card this neatly.

This was already cut when I acquired it.  Here is the back.

No stats, just the All-Star Game logo from 1984, which was hosted by the Giants.  Huey Lewis and the News performed the National Anthem at this game.

A good song from 1984.  Huey Lewis and the News?  

"Facts" About A Bulls Player

I have been working on finding cards of older Durham Bulls players all summer, and this past week I managed to scrounge up a really old one.  In this case, I am not only excited about the fact that the card is really really old, but I am also really excited about the player on the card.  He's a local, from Durham, and played and managed the Bulls for an extended period of time during the late 1920s and into the early 1930s.

He was also on the Cardinals for a stint, so there is that too.  Meet George "Possum" Whitted.

There are several places where you can find information on George Whitted, but I will give you a quick run down on the most important "facts":

-As a 6 month old baby, he fell out of a second story window and was not injured

-He was given the nickname of "possum" because he spent his free time roaming the forests around Durham hunting the annoying creatures

-He was also kicked by a mule as a child, but was not injured. The mule broke its legs

-Possum also hated school, which later burned down. However, he did end up playing baseball at Trinity College, which was the forerunner of Duke University.

There are others out there, but these seem to be the universally repeated "facts" about his early life around Durham.  I feel like the Chuck Norris jokes may all be based on the "real" life events of this former Major Leaguer.

As a Major Leaguer he played for the Cardinals, Phillies, Pirates, and Dodgers.  He won the World Series with the 1914 Dodgers and won the National League pennant with the 1915 Phillies.  There was a break during the middle of this career for a stint in the Army during World War I.  He would last appear in a game for the 1922 Brooklyn Dodgers before he went into managing at the Minor League level.  He started out with the Toledo Mud Hens in the first part of the 1920s, but ended the decade in the Piedmont League with the Bulls as a player/manager.

In all, he managed the Bulls for 6 seasons, and appeared in more than 400 games for them as a player.  Possum was an instant success, winning the regular season Piedmont League title in 1929, but losing in the playoffs.  The 1930 season Whitted led the Bulls to a second place finish in the Piedmont League, but the team won in the playoffs to capture the Postseason title.  Whitted would manage a few other places after the Bulls, and also ran the athletic leagues at the shipping yards in Wilmington, North Carolina during World War II. 

George would end up living out his life around North Carolina.  He died in 1962.  Interesting side note that his sister would go on to become the first female professor emeritus at Duke University.

Now, the baseball card.  Really excited about this one.

This is a 1919 W514 strip card.  This is hand cut, and while there are many who attribute these cards to other years, the Whitted card had to come from 1919 since it lists him as a Philadelphia "Quaker".  He was on the Pirates during the two other years some of these cards are listed under, which was in 1920 and 1921.  I was a little curious about the Phillies nickname here, but apparently they had played around with other nicknames at different points during their time as a franchise including the "Blue Jays".  According to the Sports Logo site this was there 1919 logo....

No use of the word Phillies, but there is a Quaker playing baseball. 

There are not many cards of Whitted, but this is the only one that I could find at a reasonable price.  A 100 year old card for less than $15, I will take it all day long.  His rookie card is in the 1914 Cracker Jacks set, so that one is not going to happen.