ANNIVERSARY: Joe DiMaggio's big Inning - June 24 1936

80 years ago on June 24th 1936 Joe DiMaggio had a two Homer, Five RBI Inning. 

 

2012 Topps Golden Greats #GG-22 Joe DiMaggio 

The event was commemorated on a Topps card a few years back. The front of the card is not very specific about the accomplishment.

However...

2012 Topps Golden Greats #GG-22 Joe DiMaggio (b-side)

The back of the card has all the details.

During the 5th inning of a Yankees 18-11 victory over the White Sox DiMaggio first hit a two run homer off of Ray Phelps followed by a 3 run shot versus Red Evans.

Joe DiMaggio was in his rookie season in 1936, he was playing in his 46th career game. It was his first 2 HR game and the first time that he played Right Field in a major league game. Later that summer on July 31st he would get his first start in his best known location CenterField.

Sources and Links
Phungo Joe DiMaggio HoF Index
Game Dated Cards
Chicago Tribune 1936 06 25
baseball-ref

Happy Phillies Opening Day 2015

Regardless of a teams prospects Opening Day is always a reason for me to celebrate. It is the emergence of spring, the promise of Summer and the return of baseball. I am a fan of the Phillies but also more importantly a fan of the game - this certainly helps makes leaner times for the local nine much more bearable.

2012 Topps Opening Day #196 Cole Hamels

Today is a fairly attractive game in the 162 game marathon that is a Major League Season. Not only is it opening day, but you have a marquee opponent in the Boston Red Sox. In addition both teams are sending out their aces, although the Red Sox #1 Clay Buchholz is coming off a rather poor season.

The Phillies don't appear to have a lot to look forward to in 2015, however I expect big things from Cole Hamels. Here is hoping that Today is the first start in a Cy Young Season for the Phillies Southpaw. 

2012 Topps Opening Day

For the most part I don't get Opening Day as a product. I don't see it as any more budge conscience than flagship, packs are half as much but have half as many cards - thats a push. You do get a handful of images of cards that we won't see until S2 which is nice. The most appealing aspect of OD is that you can build the complete set at less cost simply because it is smaller. I have never analyzed the checker but I assume it has a decent cross section of veterans and rookie sensations.

Swag from Night Owl Cards

Tonight we have another Swag post featuring a couple of highlights from a recent batch of cards that arrived from Night Owl Cards

1988 Fleer Superstars #33 of 44 Mike Schmidt

Mike Schmidt standing in the batter's box wearing the Phillies powder blue road uni evokes his 1987 Base Card. The pix are not from the same session, the above Fleer card appears to be at Wrigley field in Chicago, while the 1987T card appears to be at Montreal.

The 1988 Fleer Superstars was a 44 card set distributed a McCrory's a department store chain (based in York PA) that went out of business in 2001.

2013 Topps #309 Domonic Brown (Green Parallel)

I refer to the Green Topps Instagrams A Christmas cards, especially for the Red teams like the Phillies Reds and Cardinals.

1981 Donruss #284 Sparky Lyle

Sparky Lyle was one of the original hipsters.

At one time Lyle was the manager of the Somerset Patriots of the Atlantic League, he is still involved with the team but in a a more ceremonial role.

1962 Topps #303 Frank Torre

Ok it has some flaws but it is a 1962 Topps of Joe Torre's brother.

There were plenty of other goodies, I just wanted to hit a cross section of the cards sent over by NOC. Not only one of my favorite card writers but a great trader as well.

Sources & Links
Mike Schmidt HoF Index
Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards (Bob Lemke)
Somerset Patriots
Open checklist
Dayton Business Journal

2015 Wallet Card = 2012 Topps 1987 Topps Mini #TM-38 Chase Utley

Here is my Wallet Card

2012 Topps 1987 Topps Mini #TM-38 Chase Utley



I elected to go with a mini. couple of things to note here. It is one of my favorite players and it is on the 1987 design and it is a mini. All things that make me smile.

I think those are all qualities that fulfill the qualifications proposed by Baseball Card Breakdown when they posted this idea last week.

And since it is a mini it the Utley card fits nicely into my brand new wallet that I recently received.

I penny sleeved it - not sure why. Regardless the 3 pix in this post are the first 3 of my 2015 Wallet Card.

I say 3 pix because I am also featuring the flip, so we can get an idea of how that side evolves.

2012 Topps 1987 Topps Mini #TM-38 Chase Utley (b-side)

Links
Chase Utley Player Collection Index

Swag from Cards on Cards

Got home form a typical lousy Monday to have my mood quickly changed by a very nice card package from Kerry of Cards on Cards. Here are some of the highlights

2006 Bowman Heritage Pieces of Greatness #PG-RH Ryan Howard

The picture of Ryan Howard is a little odd as Topps is trying to capture the style of the classic 1949 Bowman here. Cool card with a nice striped Jersey snippet.

2013 Topps Heritage Chrome #HC98 Darin Ruf/Tyler Cloyd (refractor/purple)
2013 Topps #83 Darin Ruf Green Parallel

Couple of nice Darin Ruf parallels. Ruf is a bit of a fan favorite but the Phillies latest moves regarding several bench players seem to indicate that Darin isn't in their plans for 2014.

2012 Topps #243 Justin DeFratus (blue parallel)
2013 Topps #US71 Cody Asche

Two more Phillies RCs for the collection. Kerry must be busy out there getting new product, the Asche card is part of the Update Series - feels like it just came out.

ConC sent over two team bags of cards, here are some of the rest

2012 Topps Allen & Ginter #209 Coco Crisp

The deciding game of the final LDS features the Athletics hosting the Tigers.

2012 Topps Allen & Ginter #209 Coco Crisp

In a series that hasn't had much offesne Coco Crisp is getting a lot of hits batting leadoff and playing CenterField for the A's. At age 33 Crisp is having perhaps the best season of his career. His 22 HR 119 OPS+ and 61 walks are all career bests. Crisp may not have arrived in Oakland as the prototype of the player the A's were looking for but he has become that player - improved OBP with a bit more Pop.

2013 PostSeason A's
Josh Donaldson
Yoenis Cespedes
Josh Reddick

2013 PostSeason Tigers
Max Scherzer
Miguel Cabrera

Sources
BaseballCardpedia.com
baseball-ref.com
ebay.com

Reading the Competion: Paul Goldschmidt 2012 Topps #GF-24

The Phillies 10 game set versus NL West opponents closes with the Arizona Diamondbacks this weekend. The D-Backs were a candidate to win the West before the Dodgers went on their post All-Star break tear.  One of the offensive leaders for Arizona has been First Baseman Paul Goldschmidt.

                                     

2012 Topps Gold Futures #GF-24 Paul Goldschmidt

Paul Goldschmidt emerged as a power hitting First Baseman during the 2011 season. He has continued his hot hitting in 2013. Going into the Series with the Phils Goldschmidt was the league leader in Home Runs (31), RBI(100) , Total Bases, and OPS+. Those numbers were good enough to make him an All-Star for the first time.  Paul Goldschmidt will turn 26 in a few weeks and has his best hitting days right in front of him. I expect him to be an MVP candidate for the next half dozen years.

Local Kid
While looking into Goldschmidt's numbers I found that he was born in Wilmington Delaware, however according to his Wiki bio he was raised in Texas. His 59 career HRs already rank him 6th among players born in the First State.  With a decent 2014 he will surpass top total of 96 held jointly by Randy Bush, John Mabry, and Dave May.

 

2012 Topps Gold Future2012 Gold Rush s
The Gold Futures set is a member of the onslaught of Gold Inserts which Night Owl Cards very successfully lampooned in this column. The design is decent for a subset and carries the look of base cards from a more midline superstars set. Of course this means that one can tell that patch display factored into the design.

In Series 1 the set consists of 25 cards, devoted to upcoming prospects. Notables include Freddie Freeman, Aroldis Chapman, Anthony Rizzo, Mike Stanton, Mike Trout, Jason Kipins and Goldschmidt.  The set continues with an additional 25 players in Series 2. Matt Moore, Buster Posey, Chris Sale, Jason Heyward and Stephen Strasburg are all present in S2.  The Phillies are represented in the second set by Domonic Brown who shows up on #GF38.

Sources
Baseball-ref.com
wikipedia.org
Night Owl Cards
baseballcardpedia.com

2012 Topps Phillies Checklist Series 1 and 2

Thanks to Wrigley Wax for going to the trouble to break down the 2012 Topps Checker by team. 

Here is the list of Phils in the 2012 set for the combined 1&2 Series'. 
  
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28	Placido Polanco
64	Michael Martinez
98	Domonic Brown
117	Carlos Ruiz
120	Hunter Pence
150	Roy Halladay
190	Cole Hamels
243	Justin DeFratus
259	Michael Stutes
280	Ryan Howard
287	Antonio Bastardo
307	Vance Worley
345	Jonathan Papelbon
353	John Mayberry
361	Chase Utley
371	Jim Thome
392	Cliff Lee
449	Shane Victorino
458	Kyle Kendrick
464	Joe Savery
465	Michael Schwimer
551	Joe Blanton
617	Jimmy Rollins
634	Jose Contreras
658	Juan Pierre

As noted by the Phillies Room the most glaring omission would be Ty Wiggington who in the absence of Ryan Howard has seen the most action at first base this season.

Phungo 2 Cents: Whats Your Position Topps??

Muy first complaint with the 2012 Topps design is that the player position is not present. 

2012 Topps #150 Roy Halladay

(image stolen from The Phillies Room - or else you'd be seeing Vance Worely again)

From 1953 until 1986 The Players Position appeared on the player base cards every single year but one (1972).   That is 33 out of 34 issues.  Recently Topps has been more hit or miss with the postion.  In the three years prior to 2012 the position was present.  Both 2007 and 2008 did not contain player postion on the card. 

In such a minimalist design I think it would be easy and nice to add the Position somewhere.  This once again leads me back to the conclusion that 2012 Topps was ripped off of 2002 Topps Football - which also did not have player position. 

lazy topps.

Full Disclosure

Here is a look back at our previous 2012 Topps postings 

2012 Topps Review - Its a Like
First Look
Hanger Pack Phils
Hanger Pack All-Stars
Topps Back-loading Stars into Series 2
2012 Topps v 2002 Topps Football

Next Up on our 2012 Topps discussion - Foil

Phungo 2 Cents: I like 2012 Topps

Notice I say Like - I don't LOVE it, it is a reserved like.  

So what if the design is stolen from 2002 Topps Football, I still ended up liking it. 

A lot of my opinons on everything seems to be based on expectationis, Movies, Music, Books, TV, Linsanity etc.  If something gets overhyped - my expectations will quash it.  Somethings ridiculously panned inevitably I find something about it to like.  I blame myself for this a little - I really enjoy reading reviews and opinions...on everything.   

But part of expectation setting is due to our overexposed world.  I will likely never again see a baseball card design that hasn't been teased on-line for the past 6 months.  I mean when did we first see 2012 Topps - probably before Thanksgiving - certainly prior to the Ryan Braun PED issue emerged.

2012 Topps #307 Vance Worley


Therefore I have seen the 2011 Topps design since clear back in the fall of 2011, which is roughly an eon in internet time.  I have also seen maybe two dozen of this years cards prior to release. 

In a word I initially thought the design was dull. 

This is where expectations come in - A few weeks ago when I got the actual cards in my hands, I liked them.  I had low expectations base on prelease materials and I think largely because of this, I was like hey these aren't bad looking. 


Typically I don't like minimalist design on cards, but some of these designs grow on me.  2012 Topps makes me think of 1961 Topps - There isn't much to it but it is funcitonal.  Maybe it didn't  require much imaginations - and it does make me wonder which designs were rejected.  Regardless I like it well enough.  I like the pictures and I like the fact the design carries quietly through to the card reverse.


I wanted to get this post up because in the future I will speak to some issues that I don't like about the set such as Foil, Gimmicks, and Inserts.  


Full Disclosure


Here is a look back at our previous 2012 Topps postings 


First Look
Hanger Pack Phils
Hanger Pack All-Stars
Topps Back-loading Stars into Series 2
2012 Topps v 2002 Topps Football

2012 Topps and 2002 Topps Football - Separated at Birth?

Is 2012 Topps really just the offspring of 2002 Topps Football?

 2012 Topps #197 Brendan Ryan

2010 Topps Reprint of 2002 Topps Tom Brady

You Be the Judge (click to enlarge)

Both of them have the same Hindenberg in the bottom left and really not much else to the design - right up to the fact that neither card has the player position.   In this particular example Brendan Ryan and Tom Brady are in fairly similar poses, ball in hand and ready to throw.  The fact that Brady can be compared to Ryan may explain his performance in the final quarter of the Superbowl.

Did 2012 Topps Sandbag Stars out of Series One?

While reading reviews and opinions associated with 2012 Topps I notices a handful of bloggers commenting that their packs and breaks lacked star power. 

2012 Topps #319 AL LL Wins Verlander, Sabathia, Weaver 

Indeed 2 of the 3 players on the AL Wins League Leaders Card were not honored with Series 1 base cards.

This poses the following Question:

Did Topps Sandbag Series One in 2012 in an attempt to Backload the Stars into Series 2?

This is an odd assumption.  I have thought that Series 1 was a little more star laden in the past few years, but maybe I am just jaded by the time Series 2 hits the streets.

To look into whether Series 1 is Star Deffered I had to find a way to measure Stardom.  Depending on what the researcher values this can be measured a number of ways.  Baseball-Reference has an incredible warehouse of information easily accesible.  In the end I decided to use something that is pretty unscientific, yet I believe highly fitting -  The MVP Voting.  The MVP voting is definitely a subjective excercise - but so is Superstardom.  Chances are unless your a fantasy geek you first learned about a star player from outside your club via word of mouth, not analyzing their OPS in the Internation League.

Between the 2 leagues there were 72 Players who recieved either an MVP or Cy Young vote for the 2011 season.  Of those 72, 10 were duplicated pitchers who also were on MVP Ballots (ie. Justin Verlander).  I removed 4 players that were either FAs or we expected to move teams during the off-season (Pujols. Fielder, Reyes, Beltran) although in the end 2 of them were sort of issued cards :)

That left us with 58 "Stars" In theory half of these players (29) should have been issued Cards in Series 1 while the other 29 would get into Series 2.  Let see how they fared

In each column pair, the player name is preceded by their series 1 card number.  If no number is given that indicates that the player was not in 2012 Series 1.  Pardon the weird psuedo-alphabetical order.    

Card	Player		Card	Player		Card	Player
213	A Avila		290	Grandrson		288	Montero
130	A Cabrera		150	Halladay		165	Morse
50	A Gonzalez		190	Hamels		120	Pence
294	Axford		300	Hamilton			R Cano
100	Bautista		280	Howard			Romero
	Beckett		76	I Kennedy		117	Ruiz
310	Beltre			I Kinsler			Sabathia
	Berkman			J Shields		185	Sandoval
1	Braun			J Upton			Stanton
103	Bumgarner		250	Jer Weaver		110	Teixeira
155	Cain		330	Kemp		140	Tulowitzk
270	Castro			Kershaw			V Martinez
	CJ Wilson		20	Kimbrel			Valverde
	D Haren		105	Konerko			Verlander
	D Pedroia			Lee			Victorino
206	D Robertson			Lincecum			Vogelsong
	E Longoria		200	M Cabrera			Votto
	Ellsbury		180	M Rivera		195	Zobrist
	Gallardo		55	M Young
	Gordon		174	Molina

From the chart we see that 33 of the 58 stars received S1 cards.  that is 4 more than half, or 57% to be more specific.  Even if you add Fielder and Beltran as misses, Topps was above the 50% threshold. 

This doesn't necessary mean 2012 Topps contains as many stars as years past - it only means that cards were issued for over half of the "stars" in our pool.  There is typically some overlap of some cards between S1 and S2 so that may account for the extra 7%.  In years past this number may have been greater - if I get the energy we will look at 2011 Topps to compare and cotrast. 

There may be some other factors at play - I am only investigating Stars, there may just be more unkown or little known players this year - this adds to the perception of less stars.  The 2011 release calendar may have hampered getting some rookies into 2011 Series 3 and Topps added them to the inaugural 2012 set. 

I also think that there are less know stars in the post-steroid era.  Stars stick around less time and age out sooner.  There is more new talent and we are less likely to know who they are.  Also there is the agism factor - the older I get, the harder these things are to track.

Sources:

2012 Topps Series 1 Checker - Baseball-Cardpedia

2011 MVP and Cy Young Award Voting - Baseball-Reference