Baby, you're a firework...

I don't like pop music, but this time every single year I hear a song sung by Katy Perry and am reminded of how beautiful America can be, or at least how beautiful Katy Perry is.  Lol! 

Katy Perry is the only one I know of that could pull off a look like this

Or this

Or this

Regardless, she makes the American flag look fantastic.

One of her most popular songs is Firework and it plays constantly during this time of year.  Personally, I'm more of a Springstein fan with Born in the U.S.A.

Here's a card to celebrate fireworks

It's a 1/1 Black Finite Prizm Fireworks

🎆 🎆🎆 🎆

What are some songs you think of that show American pride?

You like metal?

I've been showing off a bunch of Allen & Ginter cards lately and this will be my last A&G post for awhile.

I thought it would be fun to show off all my metal cards from Allen & Ginter

This is the only non Pirates metal mini I have. It's from 2019 and features him in a Phillies uniform. Strangely enough the 2019 versions didn't have the standard hand numbering that others have.

Above is the 2015 version. The 2015 Rip Cards weren't coated inside with the proper wax sealant which caused all the metal and art cards to get EXTREMELY scratched up.

This is the 2016 extended SP mini metal

And here is the base of which I own all 3 of the print run.

I've talked about being a metalhead on here a few times sighting bands like Vision of Disorder (V.O.D.) and Pantera being two of my favorite bands of all time.  

I am not up with bands post 2005 though.  I don't really have the time now to listen to music other than driving home from work on occasion. 

Having been in a teenage metal band, I think the sounds of guitars shredding, double bass pedal drumming, and deep bass lines will always be in my blood. 

Do you listen to any metal bands? 

239,659?

I've talked on here about not purchasing many cards over the past year (at least in comparison to previous years) because of moving.  Now that things have settled down I finally requested shipment for my COMC inventory over the past two years.

Of course as soon as I submitted my order for shipping, the next day a /10 clear acetate League Leaders popped up.

2015 Topps - [Base] - Clear #127 - League Leaders - Justin Morneau, Josh Harrison, Andrew McCutchen /10

I wish I could have gotten this in hand with my recent order, but considering how far back my COMC order is in the waiting line, I'm hesitant to tempt fate and email them to ask if they can add this to my order. 

Yikes!

I find it hard to believe that they'll have my order ready in a month with that que level.

For those of you that have purchased from COMC in recent months have you seen hundreds of thousands orders ahead of you? 

Have you ever asked COMC to add cards to an existing order?

Who WOOD believe this?

The Topps Allen & Ginter wood parallels 1/1 have long been some of the most sought after e on the after market.  

They are incredibly difficult to obtain as they are only made available inside a rip card.  Rip cards for those that don't know are cards featuring 1 to 2 different athletes/personalities that can be ripped to find bonus cards 3inside. The problem with this is that so many uj collectors and player collectors don't rip their rip cards because they want to keepg the wood parallels legacy, the 2018 batch went missing except the extended numbers.  G

I remember having an opportunity to buy the wood extended Cutch SP from 2018 A&G on release day and balked at the $150 price tag associated with i.  t.  This was before it was revealed that all other wood minis never made it into production.

I am forever kicking myself for not acquiring that card.

I have managed to get the 2015, 2016, and 2017 wood minis in my collection and have had several conversations over the years with the owner of the 2010.  

For now though it looks like these 3 will be the only ones in my collection. 

What cards do you regret not getting before knowing how rare they were?

You're a teenager now!

I forgot to post these items a few days ago so here is a belated Happy Birthday for Cutch's 13th anniversary of his first HR.

This card is from 2015 Topps Tribute and features a ball used in the game for Cutch's first HR game.  

It is not the actual ball Cutch hit for his 1st HR, I believe that belongs to Cutch.

I also own the lineup card from Cutch's 1st HR

I won this in an auction a few years ago for only $100 (plus taxes and buyer's fee). 

It has been authenticated by JSA.

I also have a ticket stub from the game featuring a great image of Joe Mauer.

Congrats to Bryce Harper

Bryce Harper won the NL MVP for the second time in his career.

I like Bryce Harper.

A lot!

I love the way he plays the game

Above are all my Cutch cards that also feature Bryce Harper.  

Another Runner Up Performance

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.  

Isn't that the saying?

I'm not sure if that could be related to Cy Young Awards, but Gerrit Cole has to start feeling like that at this point in his career.

Despite leading the American League in Wins in 2021, it was announced Wednesday night that Gerrit finished second in the Cy Young voting.  

I believe that the "sticky stuff" conversations hurt Gerrit's chances of capturing his first Cy Young award. 

Since 2015 Gerrit has finished in 5th place (2018), 4th place (2015 and 2020) and 2nd place (2019 and 2021).

The 2015 Pittsburgh Pirates were one of my favorite teams to watch and sadly failed to win a single postseason game (eliminated in the Wild Card game).  They had a starting rotation of Gerrit Cole, Charlie Morton, AJ Burnett, and a resurgent Francisco Liriano.  They also had top pitching prospects like Tyler Glasnow, Jameson Taillon, Clay Holmes, and Nick Kingham in the minors.  That pitching staff could have become legendary if they reached their ceiling of talent and stayed healthy together.

I really missed that 98 win team and the way the management tore down the position player core within a year and the entire starting rotation in 2015 was gone within 3 years.

One of the most famous pitchers to have an incredible career, but never win a Cy Young award is Nolan Ryan.

Through their Age 30 seasons here is a comparison of Cole vs Ryan

Cole

117 Wins

3.20 ERA

1,449 Innings Pitched

1,673 Strikeouts (10.39K/9)

1.12 WHIP

5 top 5 Cy Young Finishes

4 All Star Games

Ryan

141 Wins

3.06 ERA

2,234 Innings Pitched

2,426 Strikeouts (9.77 K/9)

1.31 WHIP

3 top 5 Cy Young Finishes

4 All Star Games

The all time strikeout king had only SIX top 5 finishes for the Cy Young Award.  His career 4.7BB/9 may be a reason why.  He was always giving up free passes. For comparison sake yet again, Gerrit Cole's BB/9 is only 2.3BB/9 (twice as good as Nolan Ryan).

Do you think Gerrit will eventually win a Cy Young Award in his career?

Do you think Gerrit Cole's career will be tarnished by the spider tack allegations that occurred this past season?

1,178 Home Runs!!!!

I have been so extremely busy preparing for our closing date of moving into our new house.  

It has been an absolute roller coaster of emotions.  From the fun moments of looking at houses to putting in offers and the anticipating of knowing if the offer would be accepted to all other things this process has been extremely stressful and taxing mentally and physically.  Hopefully we will have everything finalized early in December and I can show off the new Cutch Cave early next year.

About 2 months ago I showed off a box of relics that I never logged or showed off.  I haven't had much time to go through all my boxes still as I prepare for the move, but did come across this nice card from 2015 Topps Museum.

What a beauty of a card!

The Cutch and Josh Donaldson patches are really nice!  I love the tiny sliver of silver from the Stanton patch too.

It's unfortunate that the Trout relic is just a boring grey jersey relic.  

Fun fact, this card has 1,178 career Home Runs between the 4 players featured on it.

Giancarlo Stanton leads the pack with 347 career homers.  He hit 35 last year leading the four featured players in 2021.  He won the NL MVP in 2017 and finished second in 2014.

Mike Trout has the second most career round trippers, but hit only 8 last year due to injuries.  He has 9 seasons of top 5 MVP votes.  He has played only 9 full seasons in the majors, winning the award three times.  He is this generation's greatest ball player.

Cutch has 270 career homers and hit the second most in the 2021 season among the four with 27. He has finished in the top 5 MVP votes in 4 consecutive seasons (2012-2015), winning it in 2013.

Josh Donaldson has 251 home runs and hit 26 in 2021.  He was the AL MVP for the 2015 season and has finished in the top 5 three times. 

Overall these are extremely impressive numbers for the four players featured on the card.  

How many of these guys do you think will be immortalized in the Hall of Fame one day? 

Belated Star Trek Day

Star Trek

To boldly go where no man hs gone before...

Even if that means going back a day from the future.

Yup, I forgot to tie in a Star Trek Day post yesterday because quite frankly I had no idea such a thing existed. 

Star Trek Day is celebrated every September 8th in memory of it's original airing on September 8th, 1966.

I was never a big Star Trek fan.  

Star Wars was more my thing.

Truth be told though the Alien and Predator film franchises are my true Sci-Fi loves.

To celebrate (a day late) Star Trek Day I thought I would look at some Andrew McCutchen cards in my collection that tie into the Star Trek Mythos.

Let's get started with an actress I have neglected from including as part of my SaveSecondBase event.  I am talking about Jeri Ryan who plays the Borg drone character, 7 of 9 on the show Star Trek: Voyager.

7 of 9

You may recall that a few years ago I attempted to make a Frankenset of Andrew McCutchen cards numbered to 9 copies as part of Daniel's 9 year blogging anniversary contest.  I couldn't quite fulfil that request because I was missing a 7/9.

That all changed when one follower on Twitter hit me up that he had pulled a Cutch 2020 Triple Threads gold parallel numbered...

7 of 9.

Speaking of 9, there was a series called Star Trek: Deep Space Nine that ran for 3 seasons from 1993 to 1995.

This September 8, 2014 issue of Sports Illustrated features Cutch on the cover and the main article is called Andrew McCutchen Goes Deep.

Star Trek debuted in 1966 and Cutch has been featured on several 1966 Topps designed cards.

The 2015 Topps Heritage design used the 1966 Topps design and pictured above is a 3 card advertising panel found in the box toppers.

Star Trek: The Next Generation followed up the success of the original Star Trek and it debuted September 1987.  Now I could easily show off some of the 1987 designed cards I have, but I'm going to boldly go beyond and show off one of my favorite Superfractors in my collection.

Above are the 2015 Topps Finest Generations red parallel /5 and Superfractor 1/1.  These cards pop!!!!

So there are some of my Cutch cards and magazine article that I could tie into some Star Trek items.

What is your favorite Sci-Fi franchise?

Do you like Star Trek?

Celebrating 40

1981

Not only is it my birth year, but it also represents the first year for Donruss and Fleer to produce licensed baseball cards.

In 2014 Panini revitalized the Donruss brand and the following year (2015) they were creating a retro design similar to the 1981 design found as a subset of the base set.  They would recreate a "heritage style" design for each subsequent year (2016-1982, 2017-1983, etc).

The 2015 Donruss retro design came with a limited number of parallels to chase after. 

Pictured above are the base (left) and bronze press proof /299 (right).

I still need the Hot off the Press (unnumbered) case hits and blue press proof /199. 

The backs of the card have the same kind of retro look as the original design.

I'm not sure what today will bring to celebrate my 40th, but I know I will search all the traditional sites I frequent to see if I can add one of the 2 missing parallels I need for this Cutch rainbow. 

Rediscovering The Hobby Fun

So I did a thing while still (temporarily) living with the in laws.

I dug out some of my boxes of Cutch cards that I never scanned or sorted or entered into my spreadsheet.

This is just one of the five boxes of relics, autos, printing plates, and manufactured relics boxes I have to go through.

I am certain that there will be cards in here that I forgot about and I am certain I will find cards that I scanned but never entered into my spreadsheet and vice versa. 

I found so many awesome cards just hanging out in these boxes.

My goal is to knock out one of these boxes every ten days to sort, enter into my spreadsheet, and maybe even find some gems to blog about.

One card that caught my eye was this 2015 Topps silver frame league leaders card.

The 2015 silver frame cards were limited to only 20 copies and followed the success of the 2014 Topps Gold Label framed inserts.

The fronts and backs are identical to the standard base card, but they have a very heavy and sturdy silver frame outlining the card along with a serial number marking on the front of the card.

If you were playing NL Batting Title Bingo at the begining of the season and you had Ben Revere, Jonathan Lucroy, Josh Harrison, Denard Span, and Jayson Werth you just might have won.  

It's always fun to look back at some of the stat leaders and who were the guys you wouldn't expect to be in competition for that stat leader.

Cutch finished third in the batting title race in 2014 behind teammate Josh Harrison and former teammate Justin Morneau.

I thought it would be fun to look back at that 2014 batting title race between three guys who finished the 2013 season with the Pirates.

By the rules to qualify for a batting title, a player must have 3.1 at bats per game in a 162 game season.  This equates to 502 at bats to qualify for a batting title in a standard season.

Coincidently Justin Morneau had exactly 502 at bats in the 2014 Season and played in only 135 games.  On September 26th, Justin Morneau had his 501st at bat of the season and was substituted out of the game after a 2 for 3 performance at the plate and raising his average to .319.  The 4th place Rockies chose not to play Morneau in the second to last game of the season and would use him as a pinch hitter in the 7th inning to close out the season.  He got out, but kept his batting average at .319 if you round it up from it's original .318725 mark.  This pinch hit at bat on the final game of the season gave Morneau the opportunity to clinch a batting title.  If he had walked or gotten injured before completing this pinch hit at bat, Morneau would not have qualified for the batting title and the Rockies who finished the season with a 66-96 record would have one less thing to celebrate in a pretty forgettable season.

The Pittsburgh Pirates were battling for their second straight postseason push and were within a few games reach of winning the division heading into the final week.  

The Pirates had to play their stars to continue to make the push for their best shot at the postseason.  

In the final four games of the season, Cutch went 4 for 12 with an additional 4 walks.  Had Cutch gotten 3 more hits over the course of the season while maintaining his 548 at bats, Cutch would have won the batting title with a .319343 mark.  

The last Pirates player to win a batting title was Freddy Sanchez in 2006.  

Do you remember these silver frame parallels?

Who was the last player on your favorite team to win a batting title?

A kaleidoscopic look at life lessons through baseball cards

I have been rummaging through my binders and I have to say, I never truly appreciated some of my cards as much as now.

When I was getting a new McCutchen card nearly every day it was just buy it and put it away.  I never took the time to really appreciate what I had as I was always looking for what I didn't have.  

That's the problem with being a completionist rather than a collector.  However, it is absolutely impossible to collect every unique card of a modern star player.  Not only are there hundreds of 1of1s being produced these days, but even the cards numbered to 50 are becoming difficult to acquire.  Case in point, not a single Mother's Day pink parallel from 2021 Series 2 Andrew McCutchen has hit eBay yet and the product has been out for nearly 2 months.

I have been looking back at what I have more than what I don't now and that is a pretty cool feeling.  Don't get me wrong I still do daily searches on my usual sites, but the buying has been far more limited than before.

It wasn't until I dug out a binder and looked at some parallels that I noticed the kaleidoscope type refractor the Topps Chrome prism refractors give off.

When shined in the right light, these things are awesome!!!!

Ooooh, the 2015 Prisms look awesome!

The back for all the prism parallels don't have any distinguishing identification like Refractor or a numbering system unique to prisms.

Personally I think the 2016 (seen below) is the best of the prism refractors.

Here is the 2017

Here is the only McCutchen Giants prism refractor from 2018

And the 2019 is McCutchen's first Phillies prism Refractor

Cutch didn't appear in 2020 Topps Chrome so he didn't have a prism refractor released last year.  I am curious if Cutch will appear in 2021 Topps Chrome.

Has there been a parallel that you never appreciated until years later?