"Just do it!"

For the entire time since I got back into collecting, Majestic was the clothing manufacturer for MLB uniforms and thus were the logos that card collectors would hope to get their hands on.  

I've shown off some of my Majestic logo cards in the past.

For those that may forget what some of those Majestic logo cards looked like, here is a recap.

2012 National Treasures autograph 

Nike bought the exclusive right to manufacture MLB uniforms for the 2020 season, which meant eventually we would start to see some Nike swoosh logos pop up on cards. 

Earlier this year I picked up this 2021 Five Star 1/1 Nike Swoosh logo with on card autograph.  

If you follow me on Twitter you've seen this with my MLB Logoman of the same design.  The laundry tag is available on eBay, but it seems the seller isn't willing to budge on his $500 asking price. 

I haven't bought any of the new Nike jerseys that debuted in 2020.  All mine that I wear around are still the Majestic jerseys.

Have you have bought any jerseys with the Nike logo yet?  If so, do they feel different than the Majestic ones produced?

Besides Michael Jordan, who else do you associate with the Nike brand?

Building the Dynasty from Cutch's former teams

Andrew McCutchen had played for 4 teams over his 13 season career through 2021. 

He has played 1,761 games and has amassed 1,826 career hits which includes a shortened 2019 (injury) and 2020 (COVID) seasons.

Before Cutch's 1st regular season game with the Brewers, I thought it would be fun to look at the best team I can put together using only players from the Pirates, Giants, Yankees, and Phillies.  

I am doing this because I have collected an autograph of Cutch representing each team he has been on via 2021 Topps Dynasty.  Topps Dynasty is a beautiful set. On card autographs, big chunky patches, one touch cases, what's not to love????

This will be a fun exercise, but to avoid putting a roster full of mostly just Yankees All Time Greats though I am making some rules.

I can only select 1 player from that team equal to the number of seasons (even if they weren't full seasons) for each team that Cutch played for. This means that Cutch's 25 games with the Yankees during the 2018 season limits me to select only 1 Yankee to be on my roster because he only played for that team in one season.

My 13 player roster must include one player for each position (1B, 2B, SS, 3B, RF, CF, LF, C), SP, and relief pitcher.  That takes up 10 spots on my roster.  I'm also going to include a DH so I don't have to worry about taking out my starting pitcher late in games and the DH is now a universal rule in both leagues.

Now for the real fun, if a player played for same teams that Cutch played for, all teams count.  This means that if I want to use Barry Bonds for Left Field because he played for the Pirates, I can't use any other players who played for the Giants, so Willie Mays and Willie Mccovey are both out because Bonds played for the Giants and Pirates.  I will have to be diligent about my selections.

The player I select can not have played less games than Andrew did for that team.  This means that if I wanted to use one of the greatest second baseman of all time, Ryne Sandberg, and claim him as a Phillie, I can't.  Cutch played 260 games for the Phillies and Sandberg appeared in only 13 games for the Phillies. 

So here's how the maximum number of players per team will breakdown equal to the number of seasons Cutch played with them.

9 Pirates

1 Giants

1 Yankees

3 Phillies

With a team having to consist of so many Pirates, I wanted to look at the All Time Greats, especially those that played their entire careers with the Pirates.

Let's look at the guys who have statues outside PNC Park first

RF Roberto Clemente

SS Honus Wagner

1B/LF Willie Stargell

2B Bill Mazeroski

That's a good start to the team.  It takes care of my basic infield and a key spot in the lineup with Clemente being a middle of order guy and a perennial gold glove winner.  I will circle back to the Pirates after I knock out some more obvious choices

For the Giants there is only one player I want

The greatest player of All Time

CF Willie Mays

If you wish to argue against Mays being the greatest player of all time, I welcome your challenge in the comments below.

The Yankees have such a deep and rich history I could pick anyone from Yogi Berra to Mariano Rivera to Babe Ruth to Lou Gehrig and everyone in between.  So instead I will skip forward to the Phillies.

Let's fill out our infield with the best 3rd Baseman of All Time, Mike Schmidt.

Schmidt won 3 MVPs over his career along with ten Gold Glove Awards.  He is the most beloved player in Phillies franchise history ahead of notable HOF alumni, Steve Carlton. 

Now as far as pitchers go, Steve Carlton would be an obvious choice.  He started nearly 500 games for the Phillies and won 4 Cy Young Awards.  There is one problem though, he played 6 games for the Giants.  This eliminates Carlton from being used as he played for both the Giants and Phillies and played in less games for the Giants than Cutch did.  Sorry Lefty!

Roy Halladay recently had his number retired by the Phillies and won a Cy Young with the club and pitched a no hitter with them in his first post season appearance.  Unfortunately, Doc doesn't qualify because he pitched in less games than Cutch played for the Phillies.  

If I want to use a pitcher it will likely have to be someone with the Yankees (only 25 games played by Cutch in pinstripes) or be a Pirate or Phillies starter who made A LOT of starts. 

It really is a shame that Carlton played those 6 games with San Francisco disqualifying him from this team I am making.

There is one lefty in the Phillies though had a lot of success with the Phillies, more so than Hall of Famer, Robin Roberts.

I am talking about Cole Hamels

294 games started

3.30 ERA

World Series MVP

Nearly 1,900 strikeouts with Phillies

In addition to those stats he had a better ERA+ and a better WHIP than the HOF pitcher Robin Roberts.

Cole's teammates Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins, and Ryan Howard could all have a place on my team.  I will have to see how the rest of my roster plays out.  I do have one more Phillies spot left on my roster. 

Catchers are thin in the history of the Pirates, I may have to look at other teams.

Buster Posey, Yogi Berra, and Thurman Munson all come to mind. I can't use Buster if I want to use Mays.  Do I really want to use my only Yankees selection on Yogi Berra?  

The answer is no. I am using my ONLY Yankees selection on the ONLY PLAYER TO BE UNANIMOUSLY elected into the Hall of Fame.  

Enter Sandman!

Mariano Rivera is my closer and my only Yankees selection.  This may be viewed as an odd selection since I only get one player to represent the Yankees.  No one dominated as a reliever quite like Mo.  Sure there are guys like Roy Face that won 18 games out of the bullpen for the Pirates, but if I want to ensure the game is won late in the game, give me Mo.

So here's what I have left to use 

1 Phillies

5 Pirates

And here is my lineup thus far

1B Willie Stargell (can also play LF)

2B Bill Mazeroski

SS Honus Wagner

3B Mike Schmidt

RF Roberto Clemente

CF Willie Mays

SP Cole Hamels

RP Mariano Rivera

I still need a LF, C, and DH

For catcher, I'm going with one of my favorite players of the late 90s and early 2000s, Jason Kendall.  Kendall is one of a handful of catchers with 2,000 career hits at the position and because he played his best years on a terrible Pirates team, he is often very under rated.  He was a 3 time All Star and finished his career with more walks (721) than strikeouts (686).  He had a .366 OBP which is a very high OBP for a catcher, higher than Carter, Fisk, and Bench.

As for LF, I'm going to put Ralph Kiner out there.  Kiner hit 301 HR over 8 seasons with the Pirates and is the only player to lead the league in HR for 7 straight seasons.  Kiner also provides another option at 1B.

As for my DH, I'm going with another slugger, Ryan Howard.  Prior to his 2011 postseason injury, Howard put the league on watch and became the fastest player in MLB history to get to 300 HR.  Dick Allen would be a fallback option with his .902 OPS in Philadelphia.

So how would I put this lineup together?

SS Honus Wagner

RF Roberto Clemente

CF Willie Mays

1B Willie Stargell

LF Ralph Kiner

3B Mike Schmidt

DH Ryan Howard

2B Bill Mazeroski

C Jason Kendall

SP Cole Hamels

RP Mariano Rivera

At first glance I was going to move Schmidt higher in the lineup but wanted to split up all the right handed bats (Wagner, Clemente, Mays, Kiner) so I threw Stargell into the cleanup spot.  The amount of HR power the 3-7 spots have without a single Yankee is mind blowing.  

Kendall can restart the lineup from the 9 hole and act as another leadoff option if needed. 

Do you agree with my selections?

How would you put together a roster using a max of 9 Pirates, 3 Phillies, 1 Yankees, 1 Giants? 

Keep Grinding for the Super Collection

This will likely be my last big mailday for awhile, but don't worry I have plenty of cards to show off.

The first is actually the highest numbered card of today's mailday.  It is a 2021 Topps Five Star Inscription autograph. 

The card is numbered 9/20 and comes with an inscription saying "Grind"

In my job, our owner often thanks us for all the hard work we do and says "I know it's a grind, but thank you for everything you do." I guess Cutch lives by that same motto...just keep grinding.

The other two cards I got today were both one of ones.  Yup, a mailday consisting of two 1/1s.

Topps Gallery really changed up the product last year.  Rather than using artist drawn cards with a limited number of parallels, this year's set only had artist drawn cards for inserts and really upped the number of parallels this year including a bunch of new shiny sparkly parallels.

The 1/1 red parallel requires sunglasses to look at as the shine on this card is unlike anything I have ever seen from a Topps retail exclusive set before.

My other 1/1 was a very generous gift from a Twitter friend Josh JrNoble1

This is the 2020 Topps Chrome Update cyan printing plate.  I have the magenta and Superfractor. Maybe I will chase after the yellow and black printing plates to complete the set.

can't you read?

I am so sick and tired of Topps lack of quality control and fact checking on the back of their baseball cards.

If it's for a low end, print on demand product where they have to create the card and get it to the presses within 24 hours, I can almost understand it.

But when you're talking about a product line like Topps Dynasty where the cards are produced with big chunky patches and a nearly $600 per card price tag attached, I expect higher quality control.

Topps Dynasty is a beautiful set with 1 card per box release.  Andrew had only appeared in the 2018 release prior to the most recent 2021 release.  

His 2021 release features cards of him in the four uniforms he had played with this far into his career: Pirates, Phillies, Yankees, and Giants.

I set out to get one example of each variation and have gotten the 1/1 for his Yankees card along with images for Phillies and Giants.

I was EXTREMELY disappointed to learn that one of Cutch's most defining moments in his career was being mislead on the back of the card.

The front of the card features a great image of Cutch in his Giants gear, on card autograph, and a large chunky S from the Giants sleeve patch.  It of course is housed inside a One Touch magnetic with the Topps Dynasty sticker holding the case together.

The back, while a nice design, is riddled with errors.

Cutch's "Dynastic Deed" occurred on April 7th, 2018 NOT April 8th.  I know this very well because I have the foul ball that was hit just before his epic walkoff blast.

It makes no mention that the walkoff was a home run.

While still early into his Giants career, it was the 7th game that Cutch wore the black and orange NOT the 3rd.  

Do you ever notice inaccurate statements on the backs of baseball cards?  What are some that you've noticed of your favorite players?

New Year, New 1\1, New Contest!

Since yesterday was 1/1, I thought it would be appropriate to show off one of my latest 1/1s in the collection and compare the image to another 1/1 that I've had in my collection for a few years.

Above is my 4th Yankees 1/1 of Cutch.

It hails from 2021 Topps Dynasty and features Cutch in his clean shaven September 2018 look along with a nice laundry tag patch from the on base machine.

The back discusses how Cutch lead the Yankees in on base percentage (albeit small sample size) in 2018 with a .421 OBP.

The image used for the 2021 Dynasty Yankees card looks a lot like a 2019 Stadium Club card I have.

When this card was released I had a feeling it was photoshopped as there were only 30 games in Cutch's career that sported a clean shave look and they were all in New York.  The problem is I cant determine what game this is from.

As you can see from the back the Stadium Club Chrome card is a superfractor 1/1.  

I have a major problem with Superfractors in Stadium Club because a lot of times the image is a darker image used and the champagne circles used don't look good for Stadium Club cards.  The autograph Superfractor has been on eBay for over a year, but the price is too high.

If anyone is good at reverse image look ups and can identify what game this image was taken from I will give the first correct answer a prize (hint: it's a Hall of Fame autograph and he played on the Phillies).  Please provide source for the image so I can verify that it is in fact from that game.

Counting Stats?

I hate to say this, but my favorite athlete of all time is getting close to that retirement age.  Far too often we see players retire in their mid 30s.  Very few play until they're in their late 30s or early 40s.  Those that do are often legends and no doubt Hall of Famers.

Again I hate to say this, but I'm not sure there is enough on Cutch's resume to declare a no doubt Hall of Fame nod.

For every Lloyd Waner or Ralph Kiner in the Hall of Fame there are guys like Luis Gonzalez, Steve Garvey, Dale Murphy, Kenny Lofton, and Bernie Williams that never really came close to the Hall of Fame, but had really good career counting stats.

While Cutch certainly has had key moments in his career he never had that one career defining moment, that clutch postseason at bat or that spotlight on him.  Sure he's had the spotlight on him in his early part of his Pittsburgh career, but taking a franchise with 2 decades of losing records into the postseason three years in a row was basically just noticed by the fans of Pittsburgh.  I'm not sure the rest of the nation got a chance to see how special Andrew was to the franchise.  

He was one of the best hitters of the past decade, but largely goes undervalued and under appreciated by the casual fans.

Not to me though (obviously).  

Cutch was and is my favorite athlete ever.  I got back into baseball in 2005 when I attended a Pirates baseball game in Philadelphia.  It was the first time since the 1994 strike shortened season that I attended a baseball game.  

I fell back in love with the game and decided that I would start up a baseball card collection again and researched the Pirates future.  They had just drafted a teenager named Andrew McCutchen and I knew if he ever made it to the majors I would start collecting all of his cards.  I had no idea how difficult that task would become in the parallel era of collecting we are currently experiencing in the hobby.  I also had no idea how much the hobby had changed since 1994 when I gave up on collecting baseball cards.  There were so many rare low numbered cards that I never knew existed.  

I've been told that my player collection has helped inspire others to collect more heavily their favorite players and I'm honored that I have been able to do that.

Someone that inspires others can sometimes be called a luminary.

Andrew McCutchen helps inspire me.

Look closer at this 2021 Topps Luminaries autograph and you'll see why I am being inspired on a daily basis from my favorite baseball player.  

When it comes to my collection I have tried to keep pace with Cutch by having an equal amount of 1/1s to the number of Home Runs hit by Cutch.  They can be printing plates, Superfractors, color parallels (red for Big League Baseball, gold for Topps Now, etc), Logoman patches, sketch cards, etc etc etc...

This Luminaries card has a bold 243 on the front signifying that Cutch has hit 243 homeruns entering the 2021 season.

While this card isn't a 1/1 it does remind me of all the work I need to do to keep pace with Cutch.

Cutch had hit another 27 round trippers over the course of the 2021 season bringing his 270.  

Looks like I've got some serious work to do during the off season as I will need to add 18 more 1/1 cards to the PC prior to Cutch's 2022 debut as I am at 252 one of ones in the collection.

I'll show off one of my more recent 1/1 pickups tomorrow.

Do you keep track of your player collections compared to any of that player's numbers?  

Some examples could be 

Having an Ozzie Smith autograph collection equal to his Jersey number (1)

Having 355 Greg Maddux base cards equal to his career Win Total

Having 73 Barry Bonds insert cards (equal to the historic 2001 season

Having 1,271 Tino Martinez cards equal to his career RBI total 

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?

Researching the 5-8-7

Topps Luminaries has a very fun high end autograph product.  For those that are unfamilar with the product, it features on card autographs of some of the best hit, home run, and strikeout players of their respective eras.  There are of course low numbered parallels to chase (red, blue, black) and all feature a numerical stat about the player.  

Cutch had a card with the bold number 587 on the front.

This card represents the number of extra base hits that Cutch hit between 2010-2020.  

It's pretty impressive that Cutch accumulated 587 extra base hits in the 2010s.  He has hit 676 extra base hits in his career through September 10th, 2021.  42 of them have come in the 2021 season and 47 were in his 2009 rookie season.

I was honestly having a hard time figuring out who is ahead of him for extra base hits in the 2010s.

Some of the first names that came to mind were some of the big boppers like Stanton, Trout, and Harper that debuted in the early 2010s. And of course the future Hall of Fame veterans like Pujols, Beltre, Votto, and Cabrera came to mind.  It's likely that the younger guys to debut 2016 or later like Judge, Vlad Jr, Alonso wouldn't make the list so I didn't bother looking at them.

Let's look at their numbers from 2010 to 2020 since the 587 total doesn't include the 2021 season.

No doubt future Hall of Famers

Albert Pujols 580 (shocked that Pujols 2010 to 2020 numbers are less than Cutch)

Mike Trout 610

Miguel Cabrera 613

Adrian Beltre 527

Likely Hall of Famers

David Ortiz 382

Joey Votto 593

I also decided to look at the stars who had an incredible decade between 2010 to 2020 but were confirmed to be involved in some PED scandals. 

Confirmed PED Users

Robinson Cano 635

Nelson Cruz 650

Ryan Braun 583

Let's look at some HR season leaders of the 2010s along with other stars of the 2010s.

Nolan Arenado 523

Bryce Harper 489

Paul Goldschmidt 574

Jose Bautista 521

Matt Holliday 411

Giancarlo Stanton 569

Justin Upton 566

Freddie Freeman 605

Carlos Beltran 401

Anthony Rizzo 515

Evan Longoria 585

Adrian Gonzalez 469

Jay Bruce 583

Edwin Encarnacion 606

It took me forever to figure out Edwin.  

Edwin for the win

I would say that Cutch is in pretty good company and this further supports that he was one of the best hitters of the 2010s.

Knowing the answers already what players would you have thought would be the top 10 extra base hit leaders of the 2010s?  Are you shocked by any of these guys? 

The Uncle in Ginter

I've been slowly trying to pick up the Andrew McCutchen Uncle Larry cards from 2021 Allen & Ginter, but I have also been doing it while staying in budget.  

When the cards were first starting to show up the prices were very high for the buy it nows on eBay. I maintained my diligence and patience and have been able to snag four cards so far.

Here are a few of the cards I have grabbed thus far.

Abive is the black border mini

This is the short print framed autograph limited to 25 copies.  When Topps announced Uncle Larry would be a part of the checklist and would have autograph cards I was hoping that he would have an unique signature for Uncle Larry instead of his standard ACutch auto.

Above is the hot box foil

And finally a relic card of Cutch featuring Uncle Larry

Have you ripped any Allen & Ginter this year? 

Super Collectors Helping Out

By large I consider myself a player collector more than anything else when it comes to this hobby.  I feel like I have always been a "player collector" since taking up hobbies as an adult.

I've talked before about my collections I have had over the years from 80s toys to comics to sports cards.  

In looking back though I was always a player collector and super collector in the mindset.

The weird thing is I was never invested in the upper tier of collecting.

When I was collecting 80s toys I was focused on Voltron and Thundercats.  Neither of those toy lines had the sports player mindset, but I was obsessed with getting everything that had Voltron on it.  If it had 5 robot lions on some licensed merchandise I needed it for my collection.  Children sneakers in size 3?  Yup I was buying them.  Pencil pouches and folders for my school supplies at age 25?  Yup...I needed them.  

Voltron and Thundercats both had loyal fan bases, but they fall into the second tier of great 80s cartoons behind things like Transformers, G.I. Joe, Masters of the Universe, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Fast forward to my comic book collections.  Growing up my introduction to comic books was the 1992 X-Men cartoon and my two favorite characters were the mutant couple Gambit & Rogue.  Once I got into reading comic books I was hooked on the Flash and Daredevil.  I began buying every comic that featured those characters.

Again, great characters but definitely not top tier like Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Hulk, or Wolverine. 

In 2005 I attended a baseball game for the first time in a decade and decided I was going to root for the Pittsburgh Pirates and began following the career of that year's draft pick, Andrew McCutchen.

For a three year run, many could argue that Cutch was top tier in the league as he was basically the National League version of Mike Trout.  Unfortunately he didn't sustain that level of success for decades like some of the all time greats like Pujols, Jeter, Griffey, etc.

My Cutch collection has been my longest tenured collection in any hobby I have ever been a part of.  It has outlasted everything I ever collected and in the span of over a decade and half of collecting his cards I have made some pretty awesome online friends because of the collection.  

About a month ago I received an awesome random act of kindness from another player collector via Twitter.  

As many of you may be aware Blake Jamieson kicked off his Project 70 checklist with a Cutch card.  Well dmoose8 on Twitter received a signed black ink (not numbered) autograph from Blake and he chose to send it to me.  I've had a few interactions with him and his dad on Twitter over the years.  He collects Erik Moustakas cards to the supercollector level and his dad has a fully finished Man Cave of Steal dedicated to Rickey Henderson.

This hobby is awesome!

I love seeing these super collections and being known for my Cutch collection.

Time for an update

One of Cutch's earliest Phillies autographs was in the product, 2019 Topps Luminaries.

Luminaries in case you are unaware is a very high end release.  Each box contains ONLY 1 card and it is serial numbered to 15 or less copies.  Boxes of 2019 Luminaries currently sell for around $400 on the secondary market.  

In addition to the "base" autographs numbered to 15 copies there were also red to 10, blue to 5, and black 1/1.  

The Luminaries brand celebrates Hit Kings, Home Run Kings, and Masters of the Mound by noting the player's current level of statistics for a given category.  

Cutch was part of the Home Run Kings due to the fact that he is one of the active leaders in the category of round trippers.  

The front of the card you will notice notes 6HR.  

The back discusses Cutch's Walk off Home Run total as 6 entering the 2019 season.  

Only Ryan Zimmerman (11) and Albert Pujols (12) had more Walk off homeruns among active players at the time of the production.

In case you missed it, Cutch blasted a walk off HR versus the Washington Nationals yesterday to steal a 6-5 victory for the Phillies.

I am sure that Topps will produce a Topps Now card for Cutch and I am sure I will buy it as well. 

Absolutely!

Sweet Spot autographs from Upper Deck made all collectors nervous of fading autographs in the future.  

Panini has recently tried the same concept. Time will tell how they hold up over the years.

Absolute Baseball recently came out for 2021, but Cutch signed a total of 12 of these baseball themed cards for the 2020 product. Among the 12 are 6 of the red stitch baseballs, 5 of the green stitch baseballs, and 1 of the red/blue stitch baseballs.  That's it! 12 of them total.

Very few active, non rookie, players signed these style cards.  Most of the checklist consists of retired players, many of which were Hall of Famers or dominant players that are borderline Hall of Famers in their day.  The active players checklist contains Cutch, Jordan Hicks, Shohei Otani, Dustin Pedroia (he hadn't officially retired yet), and Dylan Carlson.  

Retired players in the Hall of Fame include Frank Robinson, Chipper Jones, Pedro Martinez, Cal Ripken Jr, Frank Thomas, Ken Griffey Jr, Dave Winfield, Barry Larkin, Don Sutton, Eddie Murray, Jeff Bagwell, Wade Boggs, Reggie Jackson, Mariano Rivera, Ozzie Smith, Vladamir Guerrero Sr, Randy Johnson, John Smoltz, and Whitey Ford.  That is a stacked lineup for Hall of Famers.  Print runs range from 10 to 50 depending on the player for the standard red stitch baseballs.

Retired, non Hall of Famers include Paul Konerko, Dwight Gooden, Omar Vizquel, Don Mattingly, Roger Clemens, and Rafael Palmiero.

There is a video of the 1/1 Cutch being pulled on a YouTube break and I have tried to acquire it to limited response.  I do have the green foil, green stitches also, but will be sharing that off next March.  

Fish Are Friends, Not Food

Today is the last day of Shark Week programming.  I'm saddened by this as I always enjoy learning more about sharks each year.

I will FINish up the week of celebrating this Jawsome event by highlighting some more former sharks that are teammates with Cutch.

After all... fish are friends, not food

I have shown off a few of my former Jupiter Hammerhead, JT Realmuto, and a few Clearwater Threshers too.  

Today I am going to look at another former Clearwater Thresher who is a current teammate of Cutch.  

I am talking about Rhys Hoskins

Now before I go showing off a pair of Rhys & Cutch combos I wanted to talk about Rhys' 2015 season in Clearwater A+ ball.  

In 67 games with the Threshers, Rhys hit at a .317/.394/.510 slash line good for a .904 OPS.  He also collected 39 RBI, 29 BB, and clubbed 8 homers in those 67 games.

Pretty good numbers for the former Clearwater "ninja shark".

Now for the cards...

Above is a dual autograph from the Target exclusive Topps Fire product.  

It is limited to only 25 copies.

Above is the on card autographs of Cutch and Rhys from 2019 Topps Five Star.  It is limited to only 10 copies.

It's Colossal

Well it's Thursday which means that Shark Week is getting closer to FINishing up.  Oh wow is that punny?!!!!

Even if you don't watch Shark Week and get excited for a week of documentaries like I do, I am sure that you have seen the image below.

Filmed in 2012 and featuring an iconic image for the Air Jaws documentary franchise, the image sees a 16 foot, 3000 pound great white shark breaching the water only 10 feet away from the Seal Sled filming.  The shark was named Colossus, an appropriate name for a fish that is the size of a Subaru Impreza.  I don't know about you but if I am in the open ocean and something that big comes out from under the sea with intents of killing a seal, I would probably have a heart attack from fear.

I like looking at the image of the great white shark named Colossus from afar.

Consequently, I like looking at my 2020 National Treasures Colossal card from up close

What a MASSIVE laundry tag patch embedded in this card.  The autograph only makes it more sweet. Limited to only 3 copies, this is one of my latest cards I "discovered" while going through some moving boxes.  

Have you seen Air Jaws (or any of it's sequels)?

What are some other items you can think of that are 14-16ft long to put into perspective how big the shark Colossus is?

Remembering Memorial Day

Today is a day to remember those who lost their lives while serving our country in the military.

The Pirates have honored the military with military camo jerseys over the years and I am fortunate to own a few cards of Cutch featuring swatches of these camo jerseys.

Panini has used many of these jersey swatches over the years, but they look best in the brand National Treasures.

Growing up I never understood the meaning of Memorial Day.  I always viewed it as a way to welcome the summer, have a BBQ with friends and family, and if chose to work to get double time and half.  

It's not that I didn't know what the actual holiday's intended purpose was, it was just that it had escaped "hitting home" with me.  A few years ago I stated Happy Memorial Day and someone from the blogging community reached out to me reminding me that the holiday should never be viewed as Happy and that it is a day of somber to remember the fallen.

Since that email, I have always viewed the holiday differently and have never said have a happy Memorial Day again.  I have completely changed my viewpoint on the holiday and try to use my new found understanding of the holiday to share with others.  

So for those of you who are celebrating the holiday in the traditional BBQ and family party mindset, please take a few moments to remember those who lost their lives serving this country to allow us the freedom for such events. 

The Gallery Update

First, let's talk about that homerun that Andrew McCutchen hit in spring training versus the Pirates yesterday. Small sample size, (2 for 7 with two walks) but a 1.159 OPS would be a pretty good line for the year if he were to keep up that pace over the season.

I have always enjoyed art and baseball cards.  Baseball cards were my first hobby and comic books (and art) were my second.  

Whenever there is an art based set, I like to look at my favorite players to see who they were drawn by and how well they were drawn.

Andrew McCutchen had been a subject of Topps Gallery since it was revitalized in 2017.  

My favorite drawn card of Cutch came in 2019 Topps Gallery.  It was drawn by Carlos Cabaleiro, who I was able to interview back in 2017 here.

I also got the original piece of artwork for this card's production which can be viewed here.

Among all the different parallels to collect from the set, there was also an extremely limited print run certified autograph card.

They aren't numbered, but I have seen less than five offered for sale on secondary market places (eBay, COMC, sportlots, Facebook, Twitter)

Do you check the artist on Topps Gallery products? 

Who are some of your favorite Topps artists?