On this day in 2008, John Smoltz becomes the first (and only) pitcher in Braves franchise history to collect 3000 strikeouts. While Phil Niekro and Greg Maddux also are members of the exclusive club, neither accumulated three thousand punch-outs for the organization.
They say you don’t forget your first love. In Hobby vernacular, that often means the year you opened your first pack of cards or perhaps the year you received that first card from a cousin or grandparent. My “first love?” Well, let’s just say I’ll always cherish 1976 Topps (baseball and football). That was the year my mom ignited what mostly has been a life-long love of cardboard by purchasing my very first pack of cards (1976 Topps Baseball). But it wouldn’t be the last love of my Hobby life.
Though my collecting journey started shortly before I turned 7 that Bicentennial year, it took a turn at Fourteen and Busy Street. Other interests dominated most of my teenaged years and let’s be honest: it’s hard enough discovering who you are without that ‘nerd’ label attached. Seven years later, at the pinnacle for “coolness” (age 21 for those of you keeping track), and the irony certainly not lost on me, I decided I’d rather spend my money at card shops or card shows rather than at the bars. Enter my new love- one that I hold with equal veneration, if not more, as I do the ’76 release: 1991 Topps Baseball.
Thirty-three years later, the flame still burns brightly for my hobby rebirth set, which is why I recently reached out to Greg of Night Owl Cards and asked if he would be willing to sign the cover of a copy of the March 2021 Beckett Baseball magazine. You see, Greg wrote the cover story that looked back at that landmark 1991 set. And Greg, awesome dude that he is, happily obliged. (Thanks again, Greg!!)
Rather than sending my actual copy of the price guide, I downloaded a PDF of the cover that I found online, sent it to our pre-press department at work, and had them print it off. After all, the cover featured my favorite ball player of all-time and I sure as Topps wasn’t going to risk it getting damaged through the United States Post Service.
So now I need to decide how I want to display this unique piece of my collection. Perhaps I can create a little shrine that’s dedicated to the set that, in many ways, marked the end of an era. But one that marked the beginning of a new era in the hobby for this collector.
This time of year is always tough. Football season has ended and baseball games haven’t yet begun. I mean, don’t get me wrong: I’m thrilled that pitchers and catchers reported last week and that position players have reported as well. Still, I’m ready for some games.
January and early February also are tough on collectors. For a lot of us there is little on the card release calendar to get us excited about. But once Series 1 rolls out it can get a little crazy for those who collect Topps flagship product. As for me, I’ll be trying to get the team set as well as as many team inserts as I can. Parallels? I’ll probably try to get some of those too.
So to beat the doldrums, I’ve been playing catchup on my want lists. It’s nothing that a few trades off the TCDB website can’t fix. And the 8 PWE’s arrived in yesterday’s mail certainly brightened up what had been a slow day at the office.
Most trades I’ve conducted on the Trading Card Data Base arrive with no surprises. I get what myself and my trade partner agree to. Occasionally, though, an extra card or three are thrown in by a generous collector. In the case of my trade with Cards in the Basement, who supplied the Olson and Albies cards above, it was an additional 8 cards- including the 1987 Topps K-Mart 25th Anniversary Dale Murphy card shown below.
Most of what I’ve been trading for falls in to one of four categories: Topps Heritage; Topps Archives; Topps base flagship; and Topps flagship inserts- including the two Freddie Freeman cards.
While inserts found in flagship are boring and unimaginative more times than not, the inserts found in Heritage tend to be bomb, as the kids say. Speaking of bomb- there’s nothing like getting new cards of guys who were known for hitting homers: Chipper Jones and Henry Aaron. These two were part of a nice 19-for-18 card trade with Benjac33.
Another of my favorite Heritage inserts- New Age Performers- featured recently traded Vaughn Grissom in last year’s set. This ’74 knock-off was one of three cards to arrive from BamaBomb23.
“He is probably the biggest story in baseball right now, though not that many people are on to it.”~ Braves manager Russ Nixon (1989)
Great seasons typically stand out in our minds because, well… because they’re great. Joe DiMaggio’s 1941 season. Roger Maris in 1961. Koufax in ’65. Twenty years later, Dwight Gooden’s phenomenal 1985 season. Barry Bonds and his ridiculously great season in 2004. But every once in a while we encounter a season that, while may not be record-setting nor completely dominating, is still judged to be great. Look no further than Lonnie Smith’s 1989 season, when he was arguably- at least according to the advanced metrics- the best all-around player in baseball.
You remember Lonnie, don’t you? Perhaps if I said “skates”- a nickname he abhors- it might ring a bell.
Of course you older fans remember Smith. The 5 stolen bases in a single game. His second-place finish in the 1982 NL MVP race. The cocaine addiction. The plot to murder his GM. Three-time World Series champion with three different teams. Tackling the Phillie Phanatic because the mascot mimicked his footwork, spraining both of the ankles of the person inside the costume. Home runs in 3 consecutive World Series games.
For Braves fans- and perhaps most baseball fans- Lonnie is probably most infamously known for the base running blunder in the top of the 8th of game 7 of 1991 World Series. The gaffe is widely thought, right or wrong, to have cost the team the World Championship. Which is a shame because the team might not have even made it to the Fall Classic if not for Smith, who filled in- and thrived- at the lead-off spot for the suspended Otis Nixon (who, ironically, was suspended 60 games that September for testing positive for cocaine).
For all that we remember about Lonnie, there is one thing that most of us have forgotten: that 1989 season, in which he was named The Sporting News Comeback Player of the Year. It was one of those seasons where the stars aligned for the man whom no other team wanted a year earlier. He once again became an offensive threat, clubbing a career-high 21 homers, driving in 79 RBI (also a career high), drawing 76 walks, along with 34 doubles and 25 stolen bases, not to mention leading the National League in on-base percentage (.415) and in average with runners in scoring position (.427). And if all that weren’t enough, Smith, whose reputation on defense to that point in his career was “liability”, scored an astounding (for him, at least) 2.1 dWAR and 23 defensive runs saved. Perhaps it was only a season that could be fully appreciated through the lenses of modern analytics.
To put Smith’s 1989 season in perspective, his 8.8 WAR was the seventh highest single season output by a position player during the decade. The six above him? All future Hall of Famers. The host of one YouTube channel (Jon Bois) stated that had Smith played a full 162-game schedule that season at the same production level of the 134 games he appeared in, he would have finished with a 10.6 WAR, which would have come in at the highest for a position player during the decade (the highest was Robin Yount’s 10.5 during the 1982 season). How he came to that number, I haven’t a clue; but it certainly is conceivable.
Was Smith’s season ridiculously good, or does it show how ridiculous advanced metrics can be? Take a look at Hank Aaron’s Baseball Reference page and you will see that The Hammer only had two seasons (9.4 in 1961 and 9.1 in 1963) that scored a higher WAR than Lonnie’s 1989 season. And not to take anything away from Smith’s great 1989 season, but would you really rather have 1989 Lonnie over 15 of Henry’s 17 “All-Star-level” seasons?
Each of us at one time or another is faced with the decision of when to ‘hang it up.’ We may not be professional athletes but unless we work until the day we die, retirement (whether freely or forced) will come knocking on the door.
Unlike today, where at 54 it’s closer than I think, retirement was the furthest thing from my mind in the summer of 1987. I had just graduated high school and was just trying to figure out what it was I was going to do for the next 40+ years of my life. Retirement probably wasn’t on the radar for Braves great Dale Murphy at that time either. But after seeing his consecutive games streak end at 740 games the previous summer (and missing just 11 games over the previous 7 years), perhaps the iron man was beginning to feel the wear and tear on his body.
If Murph was feeling a bit older than his 31 years of age, he certainly didn’t show it. Despite the Braves having lost Bob Horner, the power-hitting third baseman who hit behind Murphy in the lineup, Dale would go on to his best career in the majors, setting career highs in Home Runs (44), BB (115), OBP (.417), SLG (.580), OPS (.987), OPS+ (157), WAR (7.7) and led the league in IBB (29- also a career-high). Somehow, the former two-time NL MVP finished 11th in voting for the award that season.
Nine-plus years ago, I “retired” the Card Chop blog- primarily from burnout after having creating so much Braves-related card content the previous five years. I wanted to feature more non-Braves related stuff and felt the ‘blog brand’ restricted what I created. And so I began a journey of doing other card blogs. By 2017, my collecting habits moved more towards the base Topps sets that I was working on and Seattle Mariners collectibles. I had been an M’s fan since my childhood- second to the Braves, of course- but at this time (’17) I had gotten angry at a number of things within the Braves organization and vowed I was done with them. Essentially, retiring myself as a fan and card collector. However, I was going through some old cards a little over a week ago and came across the Braves that I still had in my collection. It got me reminiscing about the good old days, beginning in 1981 when I became a fan, and I found myself a little saddened that my stubbornness prevented me from the joy of watching the team win a second World Series (not to mention the frustrations of the losses to Philadelphia in the next two playoffs).
I soon found myself on TCDB and ended up trading for this Dale Murphy, the first Braves card I’ve picked up (other than something for a set) in close to seven years. This reconciliation also has me really excited about the upcoming baseball season- something I haven’t had in a couple years. And after blogging (very) sporadically about football cards (among other things) in recent years, I’ve decided now is the time to bring the CardChop out of retirement. Hopefully I can get at least another good 5-year run.
Two of my most recent Chipper Jones acquisitions are from 1999 products: Upper Deck Retro and Stadium Club Triumvirate- both of which feature some of the nicest designs from the third baseman’s MVP year.
Amazin’
According to wikipedia (which features an ESPN article as a reference, although the link is to Chip’s career stats), Jones became the first player to ever hit over .300, slug over 40 homers and doubles, draw 100+ walks, collect 100+ runs batted in and runs scored, and steal 20 or more bases. Whether or not he was actually the first player to do so, you’s gots to admit…them’s some pretty amazin’ numbers.
Thank God It’s Friday!! Tomorrow’s Friday!! Happy Friday!! How often we hear each of those refrains over, and over, and over again in the workplace or anywhere else we have contact with others. Even those sad souls who have to work on the weekends can be heard saying, “Monday (or insert day here) is my Friday!!” Yes, we American’s love our weekends.
Like everyone else, I always look forward to having a couple of days off (unless I have to work Saturday- boooo!)- and receiving a check every other Friday- but I also look forward to a couple of other things that have become Friday traditions: Food-Issue Friday here at the Card Chop and Movie Nights. Unfortunately, those two traditions have been lagging here of late.
How times have changed since the days these two MSA Discs showed up with your favorite popcorn. If I wanted to watch a movie back then, it was more-or-less either on cable or at the theatre. Sure, video stores could be found, but they weren’t nearly as ubiquitous as they would soon become. Today, my wife and I watch our movies primarily at home by streaming through a little box called the Roku, or we pay a visit to the nearest Redbox.
Like it or not, the hobby has also changed a lot since the mid-late 80’s. Cards and discs such as these are no longer distributed in food products like they once were; and, just as video content has moved more towards the digital world, card companies are also beginning to experiment in the digital realm. Topps’ Bunt app is extremely popular- but will it replace actual physical cardboard? Let’s hope not. One thing that the internet has affected: the LCS. Like the video store, there’s much easier (and cheaper) ways to buy product today. And while it’s still possible to find a card shop (and video store!), they aren’t on every corner in every town.
Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down
What I love about the designs of the two series represented here is the incorporation of baseballs on the ’88 release and the ’87 set made to look like a baseball. While the ’87 design seems to have been done before, it still works really well. Another great feature on the ’88 is the circular design and its inclusion of the balls, product name and edition. The pennant and its sharp cuts is also a nice inclusion. The back of the ’87 is pretty meh, with a look that has been overused on MSA products.
Our local minor league team (the Boise Hawks) recently ended its decade-plus affiliation with the Chicago Cubs. It’s rather unfortunate because we’ve seen a number of top-tiered prospects roll through Boise over the years, due to the Cubs good scouting department (too bad for Cubs fans that hasn’t translated into wins at the major league level). Saying goodbye to the Cubbies means that a new parent club is in place: the Colorado Rockies.
Geographically, an affiliation with the Rocks makes perfect sense. The only major league team closer to us is the Mariners, and they already have a team in the Northwest League. But to be honest, I just haven’t encountered any Rockies fans. Denver Bronco fans- yes (there’s an abundance of them here), but no one sports the purple and black around here.
I may not be a Rockies fan, but I do have a few cards in my collection of men a man who wore the black and purple. In fact, the latest addition to my Dale Murphy collection features Murph wearing the uniform of the team in its first year. The 1993 Pacific Spanish edition card (#432) is one I hadn’t even been aware of until about a month ago. Needless to say, I had to snag it as quickly as possible. Now, if only Topps would include a similar card in one of its ‘retro’ designs.
When you’re a fairly focused collector and working with a pretty small card budget the last thing you want to do is pull off an impulse buy. I can say with pride that very rare is the occasion when I do such a purchase. And when I do, it’s usually a couple of packs from Target.
Today’s card was the result of an evening on eBay recently, where I saw this Jason Heyward Jersey King with the opening bid of 49 cents and no bidders. For that low of a price, why shouldn’t I bid on it, I asked myself. Well, 1) I don’t collect Jason Heyward and 2) I’m trying to stay away from Panini products (except cards of those who I collect).
Well, I just happen to bid on it- I mean, it is a pretty sweet looking card. And let’s face it, these cards are about as close to oddball cards as you’ll find these days- and I loves me some oddballs!
So I’ll either keep it in my oddball collection or the Braves will sign JHey long term and I might just have to begin collecting him.
Cards from the early 1990s are often maligned by us collectors- and for good reason. The designs were terrible more times than not and the print runs…well, they were higher than our national debt. That being said, there are still some gems out there and, believe it or not, they might just be solid investments (if you care about such a thing- I certainly don’t want to pay top dollar for something that I can get for pennies on the dollar later on, but I digress).
From the day he was drafted I put a lot of stock into Chipper Jones. Not necessarily monetarily (although that would eventually happen in cardboard)- but hope. He was going to be the savior of a sorry franchise and, as time would tell, he turned out to be pretty good.
When I re-entered the hobby in 1991, I began collecting his cards- both the major league releases as well as his minor league cards. I think it’s safe to say that at one time I had most of his minor league issues, with the exception of the 1992 Durham Bulls team issued set. Unfortunately I dumped them when I got out of the hobby for a few years in the early 2000s.
One card I’ve really wanted to reclaim is the 1992 Classic Best Durham Bulls team set #1 card. I recently picked up not only this card, but the entire team set, for $8.50 on the ‘Bay. It’s quite simply one of the most perfect cards you will find. Let’s take a look, shall we?
The Pose
You have the classic pose of a hitter waiting to unleash his baseball fury- destroying the ball and crushing the hopes of his opponent. Only this photo is taken down the right field line. Look at that face: it exudes focus and determination. He will make it to the majors.
The Setting
Durham Athletic Park, former home to the Durham Bulls. There’s nothing like minor league parks, and most can’t hold a candle to the one made popular from the movie named after the Durham, North Carolina team. I get tired of advertising infiltrating itself into every aspect of our lives- but I will never tire of advertising on the outfield fences of minor league parks.
The Innocent Bystander
Gotta love it when players or coaches find their way, unintentionally, onto cards like this. We call this a photobomb in today’s vernacular. Has anyone started a mini collection of cards featuring these innocent bystanders?
The Uniform
While goofy names and logos have been the style du jour for minor league baseball the past twenty years now, the Durham Bulls have maintained the classic look. I had one of these burnt orange caps a number of years ago and am seriously thinking of getting another one.