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.

Gint-a-Cuffs VIII: Pack 19

Carlos Correa: +1 (My Favorite Team Base +1)
Matt Duffy: +1 (My Favorite Team Base +1)
Andy Pettitte: -1 (Yankees Base -1)

Pack Total: 1.00
Running Total: 84.00

Average Per Pack: 4.20
Box Pace: 105.00

At the Trade Deadline 36: The Prowling Cat Cleans Out His Clutter, and I'm Reaping All the Benefits, Part 1

The Prowling Cat has recently been clearing out his clutter, placing excess items from his collection on the block for other collectors to claim before he sends them off to Goodwill. I have claimed a couple of items from the offerings available, and recently received a nice box of goodies in the mail. First up is this 1993 Hostess Baseballs set, which was distributed in 3-card packs paired with baseball-themed snack cakes. It seems that you would need to eat a whole lot of snack cakes to collect the full 32-card set, especially if you pulled doubles. John Kruk seems like a guy who knows his way around a snack cake, so I chose him to headline this post.

The checklist contains many of the big names of the day. I wasn't watching a lot of baseball in 1993, so I don't have many enduring memories of these guys outside of seeing them on the baseball cards I accumulated in my youth. Bobby Bonilla comes up in the news every year because of his annual $1.2 million buyout payments from the Mets, an amount that he will receive annually until 2035. Although that seems outlandish to the layperson, it actually might not be a bad deal for the Mets overall.

It's weird to see familiar names in unfamiliar uniforms. I always associate Gary Sheffield with the Marlins and Darryl Strawberry with the Mets, although both guys spent plenty of time on other teams.

Dennis Eckersley is probably my favorite from this bunch, but that probably has a lot to do with his big-head doppelganger, as featured in 2015 Topps Stadium Club:

The dude's got a serious hair and mustache game, although you can see the real Eckersley has a clean upper lip these days.

Frank Thomas always seemed larger than life. In my memory it seems like he showed up on more posters and magazine covers than most other baseball players of the era, up there in a group with Griffey, Ripken Jr., and Bo Jackson. There are probably other guys who were just as prolific, but those are the guys I remember as being everywhere. 

It's nice to see that colorful Astros uniform make an appearance, with Jeff Bagwell making an appearance on this checklist. He's been on the Hall of Fame ballot for a few years, but his percentage hasn't been climbing at a rate that suggests he'll make it in. I guess it's largely because he played in the steroid era and everyone from that time is under suspicion for PED usage.

This set is pretty heavy on hitters, but a handful of pitchers made it onto the checklist, with Tom Glavine being one of them. This is one of my favorite Rickey Henderson anecdotes:

"During a game in Seattle an on-deck batter overheard Rickey muttering to himself after he struck out. As the next batter was walking past him, he heard Henderson say, 'Don’t worry, Rickey, you’re still the best.'"

Positive self-talk and visualization is a great psychological tool. It seems like there is a line where it can become too much, though. Rickey probably spends a great deal of time on the far side of that line. 

This is probably the most star-studded scan in this post. Most of the others feature at least one guy who falls a bit short or only got hot for a year or two. The lowest guy in this group is Don Mattingly, and he still had an MVP award and six All-Star appearances.

I like all of the cards that used to be packaged with food and snacks. I don't have a lot of them in my collection, so it is nice to add them when I can. The Prowling Cat has been awfully generous with his closet-clearing and has offered up items to suit a variety of interests. I'm gonna have to come up with a good trade package in return for all this goodness.