Late to the Party - 2016 Topps Stadium Club Set

A couple of months ago I finally grabbed a set of 2016 Topps Stadium Club. I think that makes me officially pretty late to the Stadium Club party this year. I picked out a few cards that I liked to scan and post here on my blog. Most of them have probably been seen on the blogosphere before, but I needed a couple more baseball posts to boost my ratio and this seemed like an easy way to do it. I've got thirteen posts in my draft folder right now, and the mix is pretty short on your traditional big four sports:

Baseball - 4

Basketball - 1

Wrestling - 1

Comics - 2

Racing - 1

MMA - 3

Star Wars - 1

I was actually pretty surprised to see so many baseball posts. I don't have a lot of baseball stuff coming in these days. It can be hard to find new cards when your main PC guys are not stars, and in some cases didn't even get back onto the big-league roster this season.

I wish the Astros had built on their success from last year, but the Rangers ran away with the Division and every time Houston got within spitting distance of a Wild Card spot, they would drop a couple of series' to bad teams and lose just enough to keep themselves out of the race. They need something more if they want to be a true powerhouse, but somehow I think they'll keep falling just a little bit short. Maybe I'm just pessimistic right now because they are out of the tournament and other teams are in. Either way, that's a pretty good shot of Altuve and Rasmus.

I like that photo of Dennis Eckersley, too. I don't even know what the A's are going to do now. It seems like they've pretty well blown up the roster, but now what?

That Adam Eaton card proved a little prophetic, as in August he hit a grand slam while blowing a bubble with his gum. That Randal Grichuk photo is pretty epic, and Marquis Grissom is a rare Expos sighting. Finally, we get a picture of creepy Randy Johnson staring over his glove at the backside of squinty Randy Johnson.

Something must be wrong with me if I am posting two Atlanta Braves in the same post, let alone the same scan. I thought the Smoltz photo was pretty good, and I like fielding shots where you can see the faces of fans in the crowd. Just think, that's what you look like when you're watching a sporting event.

That Jorge Soler photo is decent, although wouldn't it be that much better if the photo was zoomed out just a bit more so you could see his whole hand? Same with Smoltz' cap?

I also enjoyed seeing that photo of Robin Yount advertising for Honda. I love my motorcycles, but I never got into dirtbikes. Probably some kind of repressed trauma thing from the time I burnt my legs on the exhaust of my dad's dirtbike. Or the time our new dog attacked me and I fell back into that same motorcycle, knocking it over. I've still got a dimple scar on my forearm from that bite. Apparently the dog's previous owner had been mistreated by their son, who was about my age at the time. Hmm, that wasn't really a place I planned on going with this post.

There are plenty of nice horizontal shots in this set. Here are a few of them. I start things off with a couple of nice batting shots, with Brandon Phillips and Nolan Arenado. The Phillips card qualifies as a Tatooine shot, I believe. Adam Jones gets a nice photo as he prepares to attack a teammate with a victory pie (or is it cake?), a practice the Orioles banned during the off-season for safety reasons.

I thought that Lou Brock play at the plate photo was pretty cool, especially the little details like the bat in the dirt and his helmet about to fly off. Dat butt, tho, on the catcher. Andre Ethier gets a nice circus fielding shot. Again, I wish this photo had been cropped a little differently so that we could see the faces of those four fans in the background. This post closes out with a Cards on Cards picture of Evan Longoria in front of himself on a giant-sized trading card. Meta!

I do like the Stadium Club sets that Topps has put out the last few years. They've got some nice photography. I think the 2014 set looked the most like the Stadium Club sets of the early 90's, but the 2015 and 2016 designs do an all right job of making the photo the focus of the card.

2014 Topps Stadium Club Adam Eaton Trio

I picked up this trio of Adam Eaton cards from 2014 Topps Stadium Club, mostly because of that card up at the top with the foil Members Only stamp. I've been gathering Members Only parallels from the 2014 set here and there, and I am guessing I've got between 15 and 20 of them. There were rumored to be less than 10 copies of each one, so the supply was pretty limited to begin with and I don't see a whole lot of them pop up any more. Most of the copies I've grabbed are lower-end players, like Eaton here, as the big stars and retired Hall of Famers tend to pull in the big dollars. A lot of these other dudes fall through the cracks. Probably the biggest name I've been able to snag so far is Zack Greinke.

I did add Adam Eaton to one of my fantasy baseball rosters recently as a backup outfielder, and he rewarded me with a home run tonight. In addition to the Members Only card, this lot contained the base card shown on the bottom and the Electric Foil parallel in the middle.

There are bloggers out there who have Star Wars-inspired names for cards that show all infield dirt or all outfield grass in the backgrounds, but I can't even keep my own name straight half the time, so I don't remember who coined the terms. The dusty shots are Tatooine cards and the grassy shots are Endor cards. This one falls into the Endor category. Even though it's a fairly simple shot there is a lot going on visually. The lines in the grass give some variety to the background. The ball is included in the picture which gives some good context to Eaton's pose, and he's wearing a nice throwback uniform to boot. I'm glad that I was able to track down another Members Only parallel, as I'm sure there won't be a whole lot more of these popping up in my price range as 2014 fades further into the past. Maybe someday I'll get my card collection all sorted and collated and figure out just how many of these things I've got.