Well, the Astros laid an egg last night, dropping a game 8-1 to the Yankees in New York. The Yankee bats came alive, the Astros seemed to have some trouble fielding the ball cleanly, and the Houston pitchers couldn't close out innings with two outs and runners on base. To take my mind off of the loss as I wait for tonight's game 4, I decided to take a look at the fun side of Topps Now, with some of the more whimsical cards I've picked up this year.
I'm kicking things off with the Astros, who held a funeral in July for Carlos Beltran's glove, since he hadn't played the field much to that point in the season. Shortly after the funeral, though, Beltran got a start in the field, and presumably the glove rose from the dead to wander the stadium again.
This next one features an animal on cardboard, which always gets me on the wagon. In this case, the animal in question is a donkey that Joey Votto promised to Zack Cozart if Cozart made the All-Star roster. Cozart made the team, and Votto bought him the donkey. I have to admit that I voted for Cozart a few times because of Votto's promise, and apparently a lot of other people did, too.
The Cozart family donkey has a name and his name is...Donald!— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) July 22, 2017
Named after Donald Duck, Cooper's favorite cartoon character. pic.twitter.com/ECmqVay95p
Apparently the donkey's name is now Donald, after Cozart's son's favorite cartoon character, although if the fan voting really led to the name, I'd be willing to place a bet that most fans voted for that name with other reasons in mind. I'm also a little unsure as to why the donkey on the card looks different from the donkey in the Tweet. Maybe one of them was just a placeholder?
The final card in this post features Bartolo 'Big Sexy' Colon joining many others across the country in viewing the eclipse that happened in August. My state was in the path of totality, so it was a pretty big deal around here. We went and viewed it at my dad's farm, although we only got like 99.9% totality there. After it was over, my wife said that she really wished we had gone a little further north to see the 100% eclipse. Either way, we had a pretty good time with my dad and my sister, and I was happy to have a baseball card showing the event.
Those are a few of the fun cards that Topps printed for the Topps Now program this year. The print run on the Astro card was 357 copies, there were 691 donkey cards ordered, and the eclipse card generated 450 orders. I think those numbers are higher than an average order, so there is definitely demand out there for some fun and silly cards during the season. I hope the Astros can find a spark tonight as Lance McCullers Jr. and Sonny Gray duke it out in ALCS Game 4.
I love silly cards like those and since I haven't seen them before I give you my thanks.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you liked this post!
DeleteIf I wasn't a team collector I think this is how I would collect the NOW cards. They were better this year adding some quirky cards to the mix. Add in approved card backs and you have the recipe for some cardboard gold.
ReplyDeleteI don't gather all of the Now cards for my team, but I try to grab the quirky ones and the ones whose profits go to some charitable cause. The only funny one that comes to mind right away from last year was the Royals' rally mantis. There may have been others that I am forgetting, though.
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