2008 Topps Heritage News Flashbacks #NF3 Fidel Castro

I honestly did not think I had any Fidel Castro cards but came across the one when doing some weekend paging.

 2008 Topps Heritage News Flashbacks #NF3 Fidel Castro

The Card Title "Fidel Castro Becomes Prime Minister of Cuba" pretty much sums it up. The Back goes into a bit more detail and briefly alludes to Castro's baseball career. 

2008 Topps Heritage News Flashbacks #NF3 Fidel Castro (b-side)

One of the benefits of a SABR membership is access to the Paper of Record archives which includes back issues of "The Sporting News". The late 1950s articles on Cuban baseball are pretty interesting, The Havana Sugar Kings were a pretty successful team playing in a very uncertain environment.

As you can see on the card above Castro took power on February 16 1959. The issue of "The Sporting News" that hit the stands two days later included the following:

The Sporting News (1959 02 18)

The Sugar Kings President Bob Maduro appeared to truly believe that Havana would eventually get a Major league baseball team. According to future issues of the Sporting News Castro did hold up his commitment to throw out the first pitch at the Havana opener.

However any trust between Maduro and Castro quickly ended. In 1962 Maduro fled the country after the Castro Regime confiscated all of his assets.

Bobby Maduro immigrated to the United States and remained in Baseball. He held a variety of different positions with different minor league clubs and worked for Major League Baseball as a liaison with Latin American Leagues and ballplayers. 

Sources and Links
SABR Bobby Maduro Biography - Rory Costello
New York Times

I guess I am rooting for the Dodgers this year (sigh)

Gonna miss these guys

2008 Topps Heritage #408 Keystone Combo Utley-Rollins

My least favorite team as a Kid was the Dodgers, this year I am pretty sure I will be pulling for them though.

This is the first card I thought of when it became evident that the 2008 Middle Infield would be reunited on the West Coast. 

2008 Topps Heritage #408 Keystone Combo Utley-Rollins (b-side)

I like the card because it lives in the spot that was originally inhabited by a White Sox card that featured Nellie Fox and Luis Aparicio. Both of those middle infielders went on to the Hall of Fame. A Dodgers 2015 World Series triumph would certainly help both Utley and Rollins HoF resumes.

 I plan on visiting the original Fox-Aparicio card in the future until then you can check this out:

2008 Topps Heritage #408 Keystone Combo Utley-Rollins 
1959 Topps #408 Keystone Combo Fox-Aparicio

Sources and Links
2015 Playoff Contenders Index
Chase Utley Player Collection Index
Jimmy Rollins Player Collection Index 
2011 Topps Heritage #72 Rollins Utley

TRENDY: Amazing Race - Mr Kim DeJesus, David DeJesus (2008 Topps Heritage #91)

Tonight the newest edition of the Amazing Race debuted.  The show is part of the Team Phungo TV diet and will likely be part of our Sunday Night routine for the next few weeks.

One of the teams featured in this seasons race is Nicky Gets and Kim DeJesus who are baseball wives of players Chris Getz and David DeJesus respectively.

2008 Topps Heritage #91 David DeJesus

David DeJesus has been on the move a lot lately, He was traded from the Cubs to the Nationals and then to the Rays all in a period of a week.  This turned out to be a very good week for DeJesus, He went from a struggling team to a potential postseason squad, then to a team that is a win away from being a playoff team.

Steve Smith
Three years ago former Phillies 3rd Base coach Steve Smith was featured on the Amazing Race with his daughter, Allie. The Greatest 21 Days covered Smith's race in this column.

Swag from White Sox Cards featuring Shannon Stewart!

First up Steve has 2010 Upper Deck Cards Go check his blog now!

2008 Topps Heritage #350 Jimmy Rollins

And He also recently sent me a bunch of Topps Heritage cards. I just started really working on the 2008 Heritage set as a companion collection to the original 1959 set that I am building and Steve was good enough to send over 50 count-em 50 cards that I needed.

That is an AMAZING dent into my want list.

One of the cards that came over was the above Jimmy Rollins that I needed and another was this quality Shannon Stewart Card.

2008 Topps Heritage #264 Shannon Stewart

Of course it isn't as much fun as somebody else Shannon Stewart postings.

2008 Topps Heritage Double Box Break

I picked up two boxes of 2008 Topps Heritage at the Philly Show earlier this month.

I have been working on the original 1959 Topps Set and thought building the companion Heritage set would be an interesting project. The two boxes went for $90.00 combined and these are the results:

Each box is composed of 24 packs of 8 cards each. Within each box there are 3 rows of 8 packs. Within each of the rows, I think 7 of he 8 packs contained either a chrome card, short print or insert. And one of the special cards per box is a relic or auto - usually relic - I think the odds of pulling and auto are about 1:10 Boxes. There is also a 1:2 box chance of pulling a buyback of an original 1959 Topps Card.

Buyback
1959 Topps #161 Frank Baumann
1959 Topps #161 Frank Bamann (2008 Heritage 50th Anniversary Buyback)

Unfortunately the #161 card of The Red Sox Frank Baumann was not one that I needed for my 1959 collection,but I will keep it as part of the 1959 Topps Auxiliary Collection. For even more detail on the opening of this Buyback please check this entry over at A Pack to Be Named Later. This card came from box 1.

Relics

Fortunately these Game Used Relic Cards found the right collector. I don't open a lot of boxes, and I doubt I have ever pulled a Phils auto or relic. I usually just pick them up via trade or auction. Still it is neat to actually get one in a box I have opened. I fall in the camp of Phillies Fans that appreciated Bobby Abreu - He had his shortcomings but I always thought he was a strong contributor and he was fun to watch. The Howard Relic is nice with a stripe on the jersey and is from the most common Relic Group D. The Abreu bat card came from Relic Group C (1:90).

Both relic cards were pulled from a pack in the leftmost row of the box - Howard was the 7th or 8th pack in the row from Box 1. Abreu was the relic from box 2, column 1, 2nd pack. Bollocks for me as I typically pull my Packs from the Right Hand side of the box.

Parallels - Chrome

Box 1 yielded 4 Chrome Cards one of which was a refractor parallel - Unfortunately the Ubaldo Jiminez card has a slight scar on the Right Hand side.

Box 2 yielded 5 Chrome Cards. Pudge is a Refractor. Box 2 also feature a 2nd Refractor of Ryan Braun which I did not feature here as his regular chrome card is above. The Refractor Chrome cards are numbered to 559 while the regular chrome are numbered to 1959.

Flashbacks




Between the 2 boxes there were 9 Flashback cards 4 News FBs and 5 Baseball Flashbacks. The Brooks Robinson Card was present in both boxes. The Top set of 4 cards above is from Box 1, while the latter set is from Box 2.

New Age PerformersGood and Bad here - The Good is that one of the New Age Performers Card was of Ryan Howard. The Bad is that both boxes contained Mr Lackey. Between the two boxes I got duped on both the NAPs and on the BB FBs. The Howard Card was contained in box 2.

Then and Now

No Dupes here. Only observation from here is that both of the "Then" halves of these cards are higher Cache players. Johnny Podres was the pitching coach of the 93 Phils and will forever be the Yoda Like Zen master for that staff. And of course Eddie Mathews is far to cool to be paired up with Diva Rodriguez. Mathews and A-Rod were from Box 1, Podres and Bedard Box 2.

I placed the Short Printed Ichiro All-Star card here as well. Box 1 yielded 9 SPs while Box 2 had 8, although 2 of the Shorts in Box 2 were from Box 1. Between the two boxes I received 15 unique short prints.

The Numbers

Box 1
Base = 165/420 (39%)
Shorts = 9 (11, 315, 381, 427, 430, 431, 457, 464, 493)
Chrome #d1959 = 3 (24, 40, 43) Chrome #d559 = 1 (77 Jiminez)
Baseball FBs = 3 (1, 7, 10)
News FBs = 2 (4, 6)
New Age Performers = 1 (8 Lackey)
Then and Now = 1 (Matthews/DivARod)
Relic = 1 #CC-RH Ryan Howard
Buyback = 1 #161 Frank Baumann

Box 2 Base 169/420 (40%) - numbers in red below are dupes from box 1.
Shorts = 7 (11, 433, 437, 454, 464, 479, 490, 492)
Chrome #d1959 = 3 (37, 57, 90 ) Chrome #d559 = 2 (24 Braun, 28 Ivan Rodriguez)
Baseball FBs = 2 (5, 7)
News FBs = 2 (3, 8)
New Age Performers = 2 (8 Lackey, 10 Ryan Howard)
Then and Now = 1 (Podres/Bedard)
Relic = 1 #CC-BA Bobby Abreu
Combined Set Building Stats
Base 276/420 (65%)
Shorts 15/80 (18%)
Dupes 58

Ok, I made up my own rules for set building. The first thing I did was throw out differentiating between the Green and Black Back Parallels. If I had one of the two cards for that card number, I crossed the number off my list - I will not let Topps control my set building - It's my hobby and I will collect as I see fit!

Secondly I have decided to build the base set threw #425. There are 5 Short Prints in there (11, 231, 315, 381, and 409). Above 425 is mostly short prints with a few base thrown in the mix. Perhaps at some point in the future I will verify that I have all the "Hi" Base cards but not right now.

Overall I came up with just under 2/3 of the base set, which is about what I expected. The Cards that I already had in the Phungo Collection that did not overlap the box break numbered about 40(including short prints). I still need 127 cards to complete the base set.

The only disappointment was having FOUR duplicates (5 if you include the Braun Chrome) in the insert cards. That is a bit high I think, I purposely picked two boxes next to each other in hopes that would minimize collation issues.

And one other complaint and a curiosity - I received very few of the hero numbered cards in this box. I didn't get any of the cards that ended in hundreds, and only 2 of the 4 '50' cards. I didn't pull #1 Vlad Guerrero either. Mathematically I would of expected to pull 6 of these 9 hero numbers but only came up with two. Could it be that some of the star cards were quietly short printed?

If you need even more 2008 Heritage info click here for the A Pack to be Named Later entry for a pack from box 1.

Or click here for a little bit more insight on the buyback.

Sources and Links
Ryan Howard PC Index
Bobby Abreu PC Index
Bob Gibson HoF Index
Eddie Mathews HoF Index
Minnie Minoso Index