The Great Rookie (and Cup) Debate

Topps rookie cup/trophy cards have been around for a long time.

Over the course of that time, Topps has made a few errors.  In recent years we have seen players have a rookie cup logo in addition to a rookie card logo on the same card because Topps has chosen to release the player's rookie card after the player's actual rookie season.  We saw it happen in 2020 with Yordan Alvarez, 2021 with Alec Bohm (although the year 2020 was a strange year for distribution, player debuts, shortened seasons, etc due to the worldwide pandemic), and 2022 with Wander Franco. 

As much as people get upset (myself included) for Topps not releasing a rookie card during a player's rookie season we have seen this happen many times in the past including HOF guys like Willie Mccovey and Eddie Murray.  Their Rookie Cup cards aknowleding the tremendous performance as a rookie got placed on their cards for their true 2nd year in the big leagues, but they are considered rookies because they didn't get a rookie card when they were actually rookies.

Many of us believe that in the earlier 2010s Topps seemed better at applying the correct RC logos on players and those good enough to make the Rookie Cup award get their 2nd year card to adorn the Rookie Cup. I'm going to prove that theory wrong too.

With the Pirates deep in nearly two decades of losing seasons, Andrew McCutchen's debut in 2009 gave the fans hope of better things to come.  Cutch won the Baseball America Rookie of Year, finished in 3rd for Baseball Writers NL ROY, and was announced as a Topps Rookie Cup winner for his debut season in 2009.

Cutch got a RC logo on his 2009 Topps Update card during his rookie season. 

Cutch's performance as a rookie lead to Topps producing cards of Cutch in 2010 with the Rookie Cup/Trophy logo for Topps Flagship and Heritage releases.

Good things were definitely on the horizon for Pirates fans as it saw the team promote their top 3 positional prospects (Pedro Alvarez, Jose Tabata, and Neil Walker) in 2010. 

Both Neil and Jose received a RC in 2010 due to their early season debuts.

Pedro Alvarez was called up later in the season and didn't appear in 2010 products except Pro Debut (a prospect filled minor league set).  He did not receive a RC in 2011 like what we have seen recently with other top prospects like Wander Franco, Yordan Alvarez, Alec Bohm. However as you can see below Topps didn't put a RC logo on Pedro's 2011 Topps release.

The 2010 Topps Rookie Team can be found here.  As you can see from that list, Pirates 2B Neil Walker was named a Rookie Cup winner.

This meant that Walker would have his Topps Flagship and Topps Heritage cards feature the rookie cup.

One name missing from that list is Jose Tabata, who was good enough to receive one rookie of the year vote in 2010 for his performance.

He slashed .299/.346/.400 with 19 stolen bases in 26 attempts.  After the 2010 season, he was believed to be atop the Pirates lineup for the future for his above average speed and hitting approach. He also provided outstanding defense in left field. 

Tabata had a good rookie season in 2010, but in comparison to Jason Heyward, Mike (Giancarlo) Stanton, and Austin Jackson it just wasn't good enough to receive the cup/trophy honor for his 2011 Topps flagship cards.

However, Topps Heritage did produce a 2011 Topps Heritage card featuring the All Star Rookie trophy for Tabata.

The back mentions Tabata having the second most stolen bases on the Pirates.  Andrew McCutchen lead the club with 33 SB that season. 

This means that Topps produced 4 outfield rookie cup cards for Topps Heritage.

But oddly enough, Giancarlo Stanton was rejected the All Star Rookie Trophy for all parallels while Tabata maintained the logo.

A more recent mistake by Topps was including Ke'Bryan Hayes in the 2021 All Rookie Cup product highlighting players who have earned the distinction of Topps Rookie Teams for the past 70 years.

The problem with that is Alec Bohm was announced as the 3B for the 2020 All Rookie Topps Team, not Ke'Bryan. Again due to the odd year that 2020 was, I am willing to forgive RC mistakes on 2020 products and having them all have to be included in 2021 products, but there's no excuse for putting someone on the checklist for a set called Topps Rookie Cup for a guy that didn't get nominated by Topps as a Rookie Cup winner for the 2020 season. 

Do you pay attention to the rookie cups and rookie card logos on flagship or Heritage releases?

Do you think there should be a clear deadline for Topps to release rookie cards of players so a Rookie Cup and Rookie Card logo don't appear on the same card?

Are you aware of any Rookie Cup logos being added or subtracted in error for Flagship or Heritage products?

 

Winning WARriors

The SaveSecondBase event takes a lot of research and planning.  In addition I normally work extra overtime the first few weeks of November (63 hours worked last week!!!).  It's because of these factors that I tend to not ship out prizes until things slow down a bit. I completely forgot to do the randomizer last Friday for the Lou Brock card so I did it today.  

If you remember, I asked everyone to name their favorite War movie to try and win the pink card with the late great Lou Brock.  I was surprised to find out that Lou Brock's WAR stat is basically the same as Andrew McCutchen's current level.

Before I get to show off the winner of the Lou Brock card, I want to show unique card 3,020 in the Cutch supercollection.

Topps has been putting these camo parallels in their sets since 2014.  Some Look better than others, but I have to say that the 2019 camo looks amazing in hand.  No pun intended, but many other years have the camo get hidden so they don't pop so much.  In 2019, the camo is featured all over the card, not just the right and bottom true borders of the card.

The cards were numbered to only 25 copies in 2019, making these one of the rarer parallels to chase from flagship.

All contest winnings will ship this Wednesday so please email me bstryker81 AT gmail.com with your address so I can get the cards to you.

Now to the Lou Brock autograph.

There were 21 valid contestants.

Cardinalsfan16 was on top after the first random

Diamond King was atop after the 2nd

Peter was on top after random 3

Night Owl flew to the top for the 4th random

Swinging in to the top spot on random 5 was Spyda-Man

But in the final random, number six, Jeff Laws rose to the top.

Jeff, please email me your address so I can get this to you.

Thank you to everyone who participated last month.

The New Order!

You may be thinking that the title of this post may have ties to what is going on in the world.

It doesn't. 
I will not get into politics on this blog. 

Instead it is the first thing I thought of when I was grabbing some cards to scan in. 

Nothing but blue cards.

On a Monday.

You could say it's a Blue Monday.

Tell me, how does it feel...

To treat me like you do...

A few of these cards I have written about wanting for a long time.

I wrote about the 2018 Bowman Holiday Blue card here.  It was a key want card when I redid my Wanted List last December.

And I have recently written several posts showing off the 2019 Austin Barnes card which features a Cutch cameo here.  I now have the Father's Day Blue to go with the mini blue I showed off less than 2 weeks ago.

And I just mentioned a few days ago about needing to up my Charlie Morton game in 2020.

And on Saturday I showed my Gold Medal blue parallel I needed to complete the rainbow excluding 1/1s, pictured below.

I have been getting a lot of blue parallels in the mail between my COMC shipment from April and some recent eBay purchases.  I also have gotten 3 new pink cards to show for October.

Jeremy Bentham and the LOST Penguin Connection

I am not sure what the rest of the world is doing in this concept of isolation, but I have been rewatching some of my favorite shows I haven't seen in nearly a decade.  From Veronica Mars to Lost to The Simpsons, I am on an endless assault of streaming.

One of my favorite shows ever produced is the TV Series Lost.  I made sure to watch every single episode each week.  The show became a mainstream success and one of the best "water cooler" shows to talk about each week.

Without giving away any spoilers, the show focused on a group of plane crash survivors and how their lives connected before the crash.  There were many great characters featured in the show, but one of the most polarizing figures was that of John Locke played brillaintly by Terry O'Quinn.

In the shows fifth season, Locke was revealed to be named another character, Jeremy Bentham.

To create a Lost style post I decided to make a connection to Locke/Bentham's birthday.

February 15, 1948

There is likely only one blogger I know of who can immediately recognize what baseball player was born on that day.

If you knew it was Ron Cey, congratulations.  I'm sure the Night Owl is happy that the former Dodgers 3rd Baseman got a mention on my blog.

Coincidence or maybe it's "The Island's way of controlling things" I sent Night Owl an autograph card of Ron Cey on Mr. Bentham's expired passport (December 17, 2017) date and he received it a few days later.

He posted about it here as it was his Secret Santa package for 2017.

It should be noted that Ron Cey was nicknamed "The Penguin" by his former teammates for the way he waddled around the bases.

On June 13th, 2017 Andrew McCutchen hit a homerun against the Rockies with the recent Stanley Cup Champions, Pittsburgh Penguins, in attendance.  The Penguins who clinched the cup just 2 days earlier were there to celebrate with the rest of the city.

Cutch made sure to step up for the celebration.

The image of Cutch looked familar in the final clips of the MLB video so I decided to do some research about the game and see what Getty Images had to offer.

Well that looks familiar...

That homerun was used for Cutch's swansong flagship Pirates card in 2018 Topps Series 1.

Here are 9 of Cutch's 2018 Topps Flagship Series 1 parallels.
Negative, Base, Purple (TRU exclusive)
Vintage /99, Father's Day Blue /50. Mother's Day Pink /50
Independence Day /76, Black /67, Gold /2018

Sorry for scanning them all grouped together and not following social distance rules.

So just as the great show Lost connected a sequence of completely ordinary events and showed how they all connect together, I was able to do the same via CollectingCutch.

Did you watch Lost when it aired?

Have you ever gone down an internet rabbit hole and tried to connect it to a baseball card?

Cardboard Cameos: Party of 5 (more or less)

It is incredibly tough to find my favorite picture of Jennifer Love Hewitt. There is so many good ones.

Jennifer Love Hewitt is one of those girls that despite a brief time in her career she has aged extremely well.  She is currently appearing in the Fox TV series, 9-1-1.

I mentioned last year that I would highlight Jennifer Love Hewitt this year as part of my annual SaveTheBoobies event.

She was always one of those women I crushed on

I remember sitting around with some old classmates discussing actresses we all thought were hot when we were in high school and Jennifer Love Hewitt was the unanimous selection for still hot.

She starred in movies like I Know What You Did Last Summer

And it's sequel

My favorite comedic actor at the time of it's release, Jason Lee, starred in Heartbreakers opposite of her.

How about her role in Suburbans?

Or even Garfield?

The way she stole the show in the teen comedy Can't Hardly Wait

For much of the 90s and early 2000s she was the girl many of us had at the top of a hot list.

The show that started it all though was Party of Five

She was stunning in that show

Her jiggly bubbly personality, well....it made the show very entertaining.

Party of Five, thanks for the memories

Speaking of memories...
This 2016 Topps Team card discusses the 2015 team on the back.  It was a team that won 98 games a few years ago, but surprisingly has had a lot of turnover as only 5 position players from that club played for the Pirates in 2019.  That list includes Francisco Cervelli, Starling Marte, Gregory Polanco, Elias Diaz, and Jung Ho Kang.  Neither Diaz (only two regular season at bats and zero innings in field) nor Kang (injury) played in the 2015 Wild Card Game that saw the Pirates eliminated by the Chicago Cubs by a Jake Arrieta complete game shutout.

Baseball can be so cruel sometimes.  

Just ask the Brewers.

Another member of that 2015 season, Charlie Morton, will be pitching tonight for the Tampa Bay Rays as they play the Oakland A's for an opportunity to move on to the Division Series.

With the season wrapped up here is the list of players to play in 80 or more games for the Pirates in 2015 AND 2019:
Starling Marte

Yup, only Marte is left from the retooling of the organization that started in 2016.

Fret not though as a Starling Marte with McCutchen cameo will make an appearance tomorrow.  It will feature another of my favorite actresses from the late 90s/early 2000s.