Into the Sunset: The AL Central Team

It's a little hard to believe that my blog basically ran on theme posts way back in the day.

I guess my themes are still active, at least in the technical sense of the word -- it's been about eight months since my last Sunset post, and that last write-up way back in June itself ended a nearly year-long hiatus. Theme posts were once the lifeblood of this blog, but they've devolved into more of a rare delicacy now.

But there's a part of my blogging heart that still loves theme posts, and enjoys putting them out there -- especially these Sunset squads, since I'm always up for discussing overlooked cardboard finales. Today's roster features the best farewells from the AL Central, a division that's honestly been kinda dull in recent history. But I think it has a chance to erupt into one of the more exciting groups in baseball, mostly because I think the White Sox are gonna be a lot of fun to watch very soon.

But I still don't think it'll be half as fun as the Central's sunset team turned out to be.

Pitchers

1956 Topps #200 Bob Feller

Bob Feller -- 1956 Indians, 19 games, 0-4, 4.97 ERA (sunset season)

We begin with one of the crowning jewels of my sunset collection -- a 1956 Topps Bob Feller!

If the mediocre stat line is any indication, Rapid Robert was definitely on the downslope of his HOF career by the time this card came out. He posted the highest single-season ERA of his life and failed to so much as win a single game. It wasn't the prolific farewell he deserved.

Still, you'd never know any of that from the beauty of his sunset card -- this is '56 Topps at its finest, even giving aging superstars like Bob Feller a proper ride into the night.

1981 Fleer #462 Mark Fidrych

Mark Fidrych -- 1980 Tigers, 9 games, 2-3, 5.68 ERA

Sometimes sunset cards are sad.

Though he didn't know it yet, Mark Fidrych had already pitched his final big-league game by the time this card came out. It's a bit painful to know that "The Bird" was only 27 years old here -- he's got a five o'clock shadow and just looks generally tired, nothing like the youthful phenomenon he'd been just a few seasons before.

Proof that sunset cards aren't always the fond farewells we imagine them to be.

Steve Carlton -- 1988 Twins, 4 games, 0-1, 16.76 ERA

Am I the only one who thinks Steve Carlton looks like he's 84 years old here?

The back tells me Lefty was only 43 in 1988, but I don't really believe that -- kinda like the way I don't really believe he ever played for the Twins.

Catcher

2018 Topps #231 Joe Mauer

Joe Mauer -- 2018 Twins, 127 games, .282 AVG, 6 HR, 48 RBI

While Joe Mauer didn't get any true sunset cards with full stats on the back in 2019, he's part of a dying breed in today's game -- he spent his entire career with one team, and one team only.

Catching is a tough enough job to begin with, which makes me even more fascinated by guys like Mauer who can actually hit, too -- I can barely imagine just being able to walk after wearing the tools of ignorance day after day, much less trying to hit 98-MPH fastballs.

First Base

2015 Stadium Club #112 Paul Konerko

Paul Konerko -- 2014 White Sox, 81 games, .207 AVG, 5 HR, 22 RBI

Paul Konerko has always been special to me because his career pretty much exactly aligned with my coming of age as a baseball fan.

Konerko broke into the bigs in 1997 -- I was five years old at the time, and just starting to become a baseball fan. He was traded to the White Sox two years later, right around when I started picking teams and players to root for. And the next 16 years on the South Side of Chicago solidified him as a fan favorite you couldn't help but respect, a guy who always seemed to be there at first base every time I turned on a Sox game when I was growing up.

I suppose it all had to end sometime, but few player's goodbyes hit me more than Paul Konerko's -- even though, in true White Sox fashion, his final season was mostly overlooked by some guy named Derek Jeter who decided to retire that same year.

Second Base

1996 Score #487 Lou Whitaker

Lou Whitaker -- 1995 Tigers, 84 games, .293 AVG, 14 HR, 44 RBI

I've never gone through and counted, but Lou Whitaker seems to have more double play cards than any other guy in my collection.

I guess it only make sense, then, that he'd be turning two on one of his sunset cards, looking as spry and agile as ever -- a fitting final tribute to a rare talent up the middle.

(Also, please put him in the HOF already!)

Shortstop

1997 Collector's Choice #105 Alan Trammell

Alan Trammell -- 1996 Tigers, 66 games, .233 AVG, 1 HR, 16 RBI

I don't think we'll ever see a double-play combo like Lou Whitaker and Alan Trammell again -- two immensely talented infielders who spent their entire careers with the same team, at almost the exact same time.

As a card collector and baseball fan, it only seemed right to reunite them on this roster -- though Trammell gets a few extra points for that excellent "Final Tribute" banner from Collector's Choice that I so dearly miss.

Third Base

1994 Topps #180 George Brett

George Brett -- 1993 Royals, 145 games, 19 HR, 75 RBI

I've heard people say this is a bad baseball card, and not the final tribute a legend like George Brett deserved.

All I'd like to know is if they'd be willing to pass whatever they've been smoking.

Outfielders

1975 Topps #4 Al Kaline HL

Al Kaline -- 1974 Tigers, 147 games, .262 AVG, 13 HR, 64 RBI

Al Kaline's sunset saga is still incredibly strange to me -- Topps included him in the "Highlights" portion of their 1975 checklist, but for some reason neglected to give him a card in the regular base set.

It's kind of a strange way to go out, but to me this qualifies as a true sunset card, even if it doesn't feature a single stat line on the back.

1997 Upper Deck #415 Kirby Puckett

Kirby Puckett -- 1995 Twins, 137 games, .314 AVG, 23 HR, 99 RBI

Another strange sunset tale here -- Kirby Puckett actually received his final baseball cards two years after he'd played his last game.

Puckett retired due to vision loss in 1996, and his farewell came so suddenly that a few brands chose to dip into the following year's cards to grant him proper finales -- Upper Deck provided a particularly memorable final tribute in their '97 set, a card that tugs on the heart-strings given how Puckett's career (and life) came to an end far too soon.

2008 Upper Deck #129 Kenny Lofton

Kenny Lofton -- 2007 Rangers/Indians, 136 games, .296 AVG, 7 HR, 38 RBI 

There must've been something about Cleveland for Kenny Lofton -- he played there three different times in his career, including his final season in 2007, coming back to his adopted home via a trade with the Rangers earlier in the year.

It was a proper goodbye to one of my all-time favorite players -- and if this excellent sunset card is any indication, he remained the cool dude I know and love right up until the end.

Designated Hitter

1976 SSPC #525 Frank Robinson

Frank Robinson -- 1976 Indians, 36 games, .224 AVG, 3 HR, 10 RBI

I managed to restrain myself from mentioning Harmon Killebrew on the Royals! for the 732nd time in this blog's history and actually give the DH spot on this roster to the more deserving (and historic) nominee with Frank Robinson here.

Robinson, of course, became the first black manager in baseball history when he took over the reigns as Cleveland's player-manager in 1975. General day-to-day concerns aside, I always thought the weirdest thing about being a player-manager would be when the time came for him to insert himself into a game. I always wondered how those decisions went down. 

Robinson did that a handful of times during his two years as the Indians' player-manager, and had a fair amount of success doing it -- he even homered in his first at-bat with the club. Safe to say the game of baseball wouldn't be the same today without Frank Robinson's historic sunset stint in Cleveland.

That's it for this sunset team -- thanks for tuning in, and let's hope it doesn't take me eight more months for me to do another one of these.

My COMC order, a year in the making

It'd be an understatement to say 2020 wasn't exactly a banner year for COMC.

The delays and general snafus have been well-documented by many others already, so I'll just say this: way back in July, I remember wanting to put a shipment through with all the cards I'd accumulated on COMC during the year. So I checked the schedules and found my order had an estimated shipping date of mid-January, as in, last month. So, of course, I chose to wait. And I waited. And I waited. Building up my cart all the while, spending money on cards I only "owned" virtually.

I don't think I was ever afraid of COMC going under like a bad stock and losing all those cards -- but I was a bit worried about the great unknown of when I'd actually see everything I'd been buying. I can't enjoy cards virtually. I need them in my hands. A pandemic tends to make things tough for businesses, sure, so I was perfectly content to wait while COMC got everything sorted out. Baseball cards were a very minor concern in the grand scheme of things. 

But still, the hunger and anticipation of that card-crazy side of my brain grew and grew as the year went on, especially without any shows to tide me over -- a hunger that finally, near the end of 2020, led me to finally hit the REQUEST SHIPMENT button on the overflowing COMC cart I'd been building since last February.

Given what the shipping windows looked like during that July episode, my order actually made good time -- I think I requested it in November, and it arrived a couple weeks ago, beating the original mid-February estimated date.

If 2020 had been another normal, non-dystopian year, this order probably would've been divided over two or three separate shipments. But we all know that didn't happen, and so my cards came to me in a huge box with about a year's worth of accumulated cardboard inside -- nearly 300 in all. Obviously, I wish things had gone differently in 2020, but holy cow was it fun seeing all those cards show up at once. Every stack I pulled out was a surprise -- oh wow this is so cool! OH WOW I forgot I ordered that! Pure bliss.

I'd particularly forgotten how many minor league cards I bought -- in addition to this quartet came the excellent Ozzie Guillen at the top of this post, the only card I've ever seen of his brief stay as a young prospect in the Padres' system.

I'm just gonna leave these here and try not to think about how many other minor-league jewels are out there right now, floating undetected in the infinite baseball-card universe.

(I'd also like to note that neither of these guys made it to the majors, which somehow makes these cards even cooler to me.)

People scavenge COMC for many reasons, but I mainly use it for the oddballs.

There's just so much stuff there I'd never have a prayer of finding anywhere else -- heck, I don't even know what that Chuck Klein is, or how I found it in the first place, but I'm sure glad it's mine.

For the Did You Know? files: Fergie Jenkins once coached in the minors, and Schottzie (2) received her very own baseball card.

Put those together with a Japanese card of future Mariners closer Kaz Sazaki, and an image of an elderly Cy Young telling a bunch of youths to get off his lawn, and you have a good indication of why COMC remains a prime collecting haven for me.

Regionally-issued cards are always a treat, since I doubt many cards from the coasts show up in the tiny Illinois suburb I call home.

Modern oddballs don't have near the aura that surrounds Drake's and Mother's Cookies cards of the past, but they still exist, and deserve our attention.

That Ichiro was given out as a wrapper redemption at an All-Star FanFest party on the other side of the country, which talk about a card I would've bet good money on never owning. The DeRosa is another West Coast-centric oddball, courtesy of Emerald Nuts, and that Starlin Castro earns the distinction of being the first Card-Gen in my collection not sent to me via a Zippy Zapping.

Also, that Posey is from a set that came packaged with New Era hats a few years ago -- a real steal at 35 cents considering I haven't worn a baseball cap since the 4th grade.

WHOA: a whole sheet of Orioles Reggie(!) including a card of Orioles Reggie signing autographs(!!!).

(Yes, I've since split this panel up into the three separate cards, as god intended.)

More random goodies -- I couldn't really demonstrate it in the scan, but that Mo Vaughn does indeed fold out into a miniature seat (although I'm already dreading trying to stick it into a nine-pocket page).

And yes, another Orioles Reggie!

Here's Babe Ruth with the popular wheels of his day, and a rare Astros sighting of Eddie Mathews, with a box score embedded in for good measure.

Whether intentional or not, it seems like every post I write mentions minis at some point, and this COMC haul sticks to the trend.

Best I can tell, those Yankees cards were part of a stadium giveaway at Yankee Stadium, sponsored by the Wiz (nobody beats him!).

Baseball card ornaments, and baseball cards that come with a pouch for smaller baseball cards (aka "Card-Supials").

Why did Pacific stop making cards again??

This post is gonna go a while, partly because of the year-long accumulation of cards, but also because there's just so many trap doors on COMC, and it's way too easy to fall into 'em.

Photo variations remain a begrudging enjoyment of mine (especially that Rizzo!), and one of my most frequent COMC searches.

Horizontals too!

If you want a good indication of how much wax is being broken these days, go look for these Silver Pack inserts on COMC.

They're supposed to be somewhat scarce -- you get one special four-card Silver Pack per box, I think -- but none of these cost more than 50 cents, which more fun for me because I think they're spiffy.

I admit, part of me enjoys sticking it to the cash-grabbers when I find supposedly "expensive" cards cheap on the secondary market.

Topps Now singles, of course, retail at $9.99 a pop, but the Ichiro was the priciest of this lot at a whopping two dollars (and well worth it). The Arenado and Kemp were a measly buck a piece, which seems like a steep loss for the seller sitting on those, not that I'm complaining.

That's also the first and only card I've found of Curtis Granderson's brief stint with the Dodgers, and I'm sad it came in a dull Topps Now set that a lot of people might never see.

One of the other fun uses I've found for COMC is picking up singles from the litany of online-only sets that seem to come out every year.

I'm still not sure why Topps asked Bryce Harper to curate a set, or what exactly you get out of being part of Topps's Montgomery Club, but I'll sure take the cards for a few quarters a pop, because they're a lot more interesting than a lot of what's on the shelves right now.

I was a bit skeptical when I threw these newfangled 3-D Topps thingies into my cart, but having them in hand now, I can assure you they're absolutely fantastic up close.

As much as I love Topps's Throwback Thursday series, I can't bring myself to plop down good money and buy them directly from Topps.

Especially when I'm continually finding them on COMC for loose change.

Like any good card source, COMC often comes up big on the vintage front.

It takes a bit more sleuthing than the modern stuff, but there's deals to be had on the oldies -- like this stunning '53 Bowman Color Hank Sauer I found for a scant $1.50.

A few other vintage biggies from the uber-COMC order, including a couple HOFers and a pitcher at the plate I somehow didn't know about until now.

Also my brain hurts a little after seeing that Eddie Yost -- I've had his standard portrait card from that set in my binders for years, but apparently '62 Topps features a few photo variations which seem to exist for no other reason than to confuse us poor collectors.

If I use COMC for vintage, and I use it for oddballs, then it only makes sense that I'd use it for...vintage oddballs!

Another chapter in the Things I Learned From COMC chronicles: there's OPC versions of the famous '69 Deckle Edge inserts, which, as seen with that awesome Dick Allen, feature distinct black facsimile signatures and less-deckled edges.

A downside to buying cards online is that it's sometimes hard to tell what size said cards are.

You can't really tell from the scan, but both of these cards are oversized (the Dent is particularly massive) -- I won't be able to slip them into standard nine-pocket pages, but they're still welcome additions nonetheless.

TCMA and Kellogg's, two of my vintage oddball heroes.

The SSPC brand is basically a one-year wonder, but people kinda forget they had a few other releases throughout the '70s.

These four (Luis Tiant, Tommy John, Ron Blomberg, and Bake McBride) hail from the less-common '78 SSPC team checklists, and darn if that Tommy John isn't one of the strangest baseball cards I've seen in my life -- the sour face, the knock-off T-shirt, everything.

SSPC also issued a couple smaller sets in 1975 -- I'm not sure if they're actually that rare or what, but I seem to have trouble finding these for anything I'd call affordable prices.

Thankfully, COMC helped me land a couple spectacular '75 SSPCs of a couple of my favorite '70s dudes with Dave Kingman and Dick Allen here.

At just a hair over four dollars, this beauty of the late Tom Seaver was the "big-money" purchase from my year-long COMC saga, and the rightful star at the end of a towering stack of cards.

It's been almost exactly a year now since I dropped the first card from this order into my COMC cart. Obviously, best case scenario, I would've like to have had it on my doorstep a lot sooner than the 12 months I ended up waiting. In the end, though, I'll admit it was a whole lot of fun seeing a year's worth of COMC adventures all wrapped up into one nifty box, and mesmerizing myself all over again with the cards waiting in that box.

But still...let's just hope my next order makes it here before 2022.

Levels of absurdity in Heritage High Numbers

It's no secret that Topps's last few releases of 2020 were, let's just say, rushed.

Update was mostly a last-minute disaster brought upon by the weirdness and uncertainty of the 2020 season. Basically a Monty Python-esque non-sequitur of a baseball card product. Update's insanity has already been well-documented around the blogs. But another set snuck onto the market late in the calendar that, for my money, might well be more absurd than Update: Heritage High Numbers.

From what I can gather, the design and production of HN got so screwed up that it was never even sold in retail stores. In the snap of a finger, a retail staple became a hobby-only product, which means I'd never open any because I haven't bought packs from a card shop in about a decade. Thankfully, I was able to find a Sportlots dealer who had pretty much every base card I needed for a mere 18 cents a pop.

But as I flipped through the cards I bought, I realized High Numbers had so many levels of absurdity that it deserved its own scale -- a scale which I'd like to detail for you here tonight.

Level 1 -- Kenta Maeda

Heritage High Numbers is basically an old-school version of Topps Update -- its job is to properly address all the transactions and general goings-on from that particular baseball season.

So the inclusion of guys who played for new teams in 2020 (like Kenta Maeda) isn't absurd at all, and gets to the heart of what HN should be.

Level 2 -- Salvador Perez

Late-season checklists are chiseled in my head as guys-on-new-teams sets, so I'm a little taken aback when I see guys like Salvador Perez in the same uniform they've always worn.

But while he didn't change teams, Perez is a solid candidate for this set -- he missed all of 2019 due to injury, but came back to play a fair amount in 2020, which makes his appearance in a set of "updates" reasonable.

Level 3 -- Corey Kluber

Corey Kluber pitched exactly one inning of baseball in 2020, but I can't really fault Topps for including him in their sets this year since his season was abbreviated due to a shockingly quick injury no one could've seen coming.

This is actually my eighth card of Kluber with the Rangers, and his presence in that binder will always be weird to me given his whopping one-inning stint in the uniform.

Level 4 -- Hunter Pence

Now we're starting to veer into the truly absurd.

Hunter Pence retired after being released by the Giants shortly into the 2020 season, and probably isn't the most deserving candidate for these end-of-year roundups, but here he is.

Level 5 -- Cameron Maybin

Keep in mind that, despite their general weirdness, I voluntarily bought all the cards you're seeing in this post -- because my player collections don't listen to those does this card REALLY need to exist? cries of absurdity.

This includes guys like Cameron Maybin who didn't even finish the 2020 season with the team they're pictured with in HN -- the Tigers traded him to the Cubs midway through the year, apparently too late for Topps to get the memo.

Level 6  -- Jonathan Lucroy

This is one of the strangest HN inclusions to me -- Jonathan Lucroy wasn't expected to be much more than a fringe player (at best) with the Red Sox this year, and he proved it by playing in exactly one game with them in 2020.

Lucroy's entire season consisted of two innings behind the plate, and he never even made a single plate-appearance in Boston, yet he'll always have that lonesome spot in my Red Sox binder.

Level 7 -- Michael Kopech

Still, whether it was a full season or a single game, everyone I've shown thus far can at least say they played baseball in 2020 -- a fair amount of dudes who showed up in HN don't even meet that criteria.

White Sox phenom Michael Kopech was still recovering from Tommy John surgery this year, and decided to opt out of the season regardless of whether he was ready to pitch or not -- yet here he is with a late-season "update" card in 2020(?).

Level 8 -- Felix Hernandez

King Felix was another opt-out candidate -- but what makes his appearance in HN a bit more absurd is that he did so without playing a single inning for the new team he'd signed with for the 2020 season.

So, yes, I already have a few cards of Felix Hernandez in my Braves binder, but there's a very good chance he'll finish his career without that stint ever actually appearing on his stat sheet (also, I don't know what number the Braves were trying to make him wear here, but it sure doesn't look like his famous #34).

Level 9 -- Carlos Gonzalez

When I first saw the HN checklist, I thought this was the most absurd card of the lot.

I honestly didn't even know that Carlos Gonzalez was ever involved with the Mariners. A quick search explains why: Seattle released him in June, before the 2020 season even started. But for whatever reason, he's got a card with the Mariners in a set that was released a couple weeks ago. Either the final blueprints for HN were turned in a long, long time ago, or someone seriously dropped the ball here.

Yes, I'll always treasure this as a hallowed zero-year card, but I'll also be the first to admit it probably shouldn't have existed in the first place.

Level 10 -- Ben Zobrist

Upon further review, however, the most absurd member of 2020 High Numbers has to be Ben Zobrist.

Ben Zobrist never signed a professional contract in 2020. He was granted free agency at the end of 2019, and stayed a free agent. I don't think Zobrist ever officially announced his retirement, but his career looks to be just about finished right now. So why in all hell is he getting a card in a 2020 "update" set?! You tell me.

Heritage High Numbers leaves me with so many questions, questions that'll probably always remain unanswered, never solved. An end-of-year set filled with guys who retired, guys who played single innings, and even guys who never played at all. It's puzzling, head-scratching, all the question-mark adjectives.

But now that I think of it, maybe a weird set like High Numbers is exactly what we deserved in 2020 -- an absurd year wrapped up in an equally absurd bow.