This is a shortprint and one of the more desirable subsets (with the other being the Sporting News All-Stars). It was an innovative idea at the time and hadn't been duplicated very much recently. OK, quick quiz...name the 10 WS MVPs of the 2000s (answer at the bottom of the post)
The obligatory Phillie. J-Roll come back, the offense misses your sparkplug nature.
An insert of a very starry Gordon Beckham. I am very excited for the hitting potential of this young player, but the general ineptitude of the White Sox lineup is going to limit his counting stats this year (fantasy sell alert)
Brian McCann is looking gazed in his goggles. Hand this guy a mask and a coffee.
These were my favorite cards of the pack. The story of Mantle's HR is legendary. It occurred in Washington's Griffiths Stadium in 1956 and they didn;t use any trajectory estimates for this one. One of the executives of the Washington team strided out the distance to the spot where the ball landed and reported the distance (as the story goes). It remains the longest measured home run.The Big Train hurling shutouts was not as unique. He had 110 shutouts in his storied career. He also had 412 victories, 3508 Ks and numerous times where batters swung after the catcher threw the ball back to the pitcher.
Heritage is a fool's errand to try and complete as a set collector with 75 SPs and a probable update series with more SPs. Therefore, this is the only pack I will purchase. Plus, there aren't any great surprises, value or many cards with intrinsic interest for my collection that will keep me coming for more. I don't understand how the super rare color variations are exciting.
2000 (Jeter), 2001 (Johnson/Schilling),2002 (Glaus),2003 (Beckett), 2004 (Ramirez),2005 (Dye), 2006 (Eckstein), 2007 (Lowell), 2008 (Hamels), 2009 (Matsui)
How many did you get without peaking?
1 comment:
I realize I'm pretty much alone, here, but I love the '61s. First of all, I hate action shots on baseball cards--they never look quite right and, first and foremost, when I grew up, I wanted to see what my heroes looked like. Give me a posed shot or a close up any day over some amorphous blob diving for a line drive (supposedly). The '61s were both clean and colorful--not bogged down by extraneous design elements like more recent issues. Of course, I grew up in the '60s, so I decidedly have a bias for the era. Outside of '68, I can't think of a bad issue until those ghastly '72s. '67 is a particular favorite, with '65 close behind, and '66 not far behind that. Outside of the '52s, in fact, I'd count the 60s as the golden era of Topps design. By the way, the reason for the many hatless photos in the original '61s was the original expansion. 4 new teams within two years and Topps wasn't exactly sure how to plan for it. Somebody must have figured the easiest thing to do to have expansion ready pics was to get everybody without hats. Beats airbrushing.
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