2011 San Francisco Giants Emerald Nuts SGA - Coaches

     For the seventh consecutive season, Emerald Nuts sponsored another team set give away for the San Francisco Giants. For me, that means one more card of Hensley Meulens and Roberto Kelly. Fortunately, this year, the day after Baseball Card night, several people put the sets up for sale on eBay, and one was even kind enough to sell me an extra coaches card for an extra $1, so I could have one for both player collections.

     The design is obviously the main 2011 Topps set design, and disappointly they used the same coaches photos from last year's card, only this time without the fake ballpark crowd background.  As far as I know, the Giants are the only team to have Topps produce them a team set every year as a ballpark promotion, and one of few teams to consistently have a yearly team set give away.  You would think that would be mandatory.  But then you'd also think baseball cards in boxes of Cracker Jack would be mandatory, too.

     Topps does produce a blister-packed team set for each team every year, different from what is issued in the main base set, but those are usually only 17 cards or so, and are intended for sale at the ball park or in retail outlets.  While they are listed in Beckett every year, I don't know how many collectors are aware of them.  The main difference between this set and the Topps retail team set, aside from the Emerald Nuts logo, is the inclusion of the coaches.  I really think that if Topps included the coaches in the yearly retail team sets, more people would pick them up.

     Getting back to the card at hand, the Giants once again find themselves struggling to make the playoffs, and the only reason they are even close is their amazing pitching staff.  I just don't see them repeating as World Champions in 2011.  And some of that will obviously be heaped on their hitting coach, Hensley Meulens, but I would also put some of that on their 1st base/baserunning coach, Roberto Kelly.  The Giants are 13th out of 16 teams in the National League in steals.  This coaches card make a point of detailing Kelly's 235 steals over his career.  While he was pretty good in his early days, stealing as many as 42 in 1990, that's still 235 steals over 14 seasons, for an average of less than 18 a year.  To his credit, Andres Torres did manage 17 steals in the 107 games he played.  Unfortunately for the Giants, Andres Torres can't hit the broad side of a barn, managing a pitiful .219 batting average.  Not something you want from your lead-off man.  I've not seen anything written about replacing Kelly, but I'm curious if he has the same problems as Meulens.

     That brings the focus back to Bam Bam.  The Giants hitting is the second worst in the National League.  One has to wonder if there is some sort of executive problem here.  By all accounts, when players actually follow his advice, their hitting improves.  Yet the team seems to be loaded with guys who simply refuse to be coached.  Quoth Brandon Belt after making an adjustment in the batter's box (emphasis is mine),

“Bam Bam thought that would work.  I finally did what he told me to do. It’s going to help. That pitch I hit (Thursday) night, an inside fastball, I’ve been taking it for strike three. It’s just being in a good position to hit. When I’m just able to react up there, that’s when I feel I’m at my best.”

     How many other players need to finally do what they're told?  Do you blame the hitting coach for a player that refuses to be coached?  Why not just bench them or send them down to Fresno, and bring up someone who actually wants to win?   It was said that the Giants previous hitting coach, Carney Lansford, wasn't a great communicator.  And while Bam Bam is multi-lingual, and seems to have a better rapport with the players, communication is a two way street.  Maybe Carney's biggest problem was that they players just weren't listening.

      In any case, the checklist for the 2011 Giants Emerald Nuts set has been added to the Inventory Manager over at SportsCardForum and TradingCardDB.com.

1983 Fleer & Topps Dave Henderson...what no Donruss?

Not Hendu's 1983 Donruss card

     In 1982, Dave Henderson spent his first full season on a Major League roster, platooning in the outfield for the Seattle Mariners.  Yet despite playing in 104 games in 1982 (but a reasonably productive 104 games, hitting 14 home runs), he was somehow snubbed for a spot in the 1983 Donruss checklist.  Rick Sweet got a card and he only played in 88 games in 1982.  As did Gary Gray who played in 80 games.  Even Jim Essian, who only played in 48 games, got a card!  Al Chambers, who was a rookie in 1983, playing all of 1982 in AAA Salt Lake, actually got a card while the checklist architects at Donruss missed out on the greatness that was Dave Henderson's moustache.  

     There must have been one heck of a backlash from collectors for Donruss to so drastically cut production for the 1984 set.  I'm sure it had absolutely nothing to do with Donruss almost completely repeating their set design from 1982, or having printed far more cards than anyone was going to buy.  Yes, it had to have been fan reaction to the exclusion of Hendu.  So Dave Henderson's 1983 Donruss card is officially Missing In Action.

     Fleer, while not exactly taking the world by storm with their set design, saw fit to recognize Dave with a card.  And the inclusion of Hendu actually seems to have improved the photographic quality of the entire set, as gone were the blurry photos that plagued the 1982 set, to be replaced by the razor-sharp (by 1983 standards) photography of 1983 that gave us major league players in all their stubblacious glory.

     While not exactly blazing any trails, they were the first set of the 1980s to revive the player mugshots on the backs of their cards, something not seen since Topps last employed the feature in their 1971 set.

     Topps, having already made Dave the centerpiece to the Seattle Mariners Future Stars card in the 1982 set, not only made the obvious decision to include him in the 1983 set, they even included him in a photo using their newly discovered Sunlight Photographic Technology^TM, that allowed them to present players in something other than a cloudy, hazy, murky posed photo from spring training. (Just a slight digression here, but why, when 90% of photos from the 70s & 80s that were obviously taken before the season, in spring training camps in Florida....The Sunshine State, were they always apparently taken on overcast days or at dusk?  Players spent upwards of 8 hours in the sunshine!  Were the photographers all vampires?)

     Much like Fleer, Topps also resurrected the close-up portrait shot of every player, including it on the front of the card. In many cases this resulted in very redundant double close-up cards (see #46, Richard Dotson), but it resulted in one of the more popular sets of the 1980s.  Despite landing solidly in the checklists for Fleer and Topps, Dave didn't make it into either company's 1983 sticker sets, so these are the only two documented cards he had that year.

     Dave had a decent 1983 season, usually hitting in the #3 or #5 spot in the heart of the batting order.  He led Seattle in hits with 130 (hitting .269 on the season).  Much like this season, there were rarely any Mariners on base to be driven in, so his 24 doubles, 5 triples and 17 home runs only amounted to 55 runs batted in (good for 2nd on the team).  Dave held his own on a last place team lacking any real stars.

Dave Winfield Cachets In on Induction Day 2001 (then things get hairy...)

     Another week, another cachet commemorating the induction of Dave Winfield into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. This is the sixth cachet for Winfield's HoF induction, with apparently no end in sight.   It has been 10 years since his induction, and I'm still finding new commemorative cachets dedicated to this one event.  For 30-something collectors, the art here probably looks a bit familiar, as it is the same giant-hatted, beaked depiction of Winfield that appeared on his 1987 Donruss Diamond King card, courtesy of artist Dick Perez, the man who basically put Donruss on the map in the early 1980s.  This rendition was perhaps a subtle shot at Winfield's 1983 Toronto Seagull Incident, or perhaps not.  You be the judge.

    This image would be used three times in 1987, in the main Donruss set, in the Super Diamond Kings set (note the slightly different cropping of the photo in the Super, as well as the completely different formatting on the back):

     And in the 1987 Leaf set (with the text on the reverse in both English and federally legislated French):

     Wait...what's that?  Is that a hair?

     It would appear we have a possible new variation discovery here.  I just checked and the hair is actually on the card, it was not just one of a billion stray cat hairs that I'm forever cleaning off my scanner.  It would appear the hair is only on the regular 1987 Donruss version of the card.  But a check of my voluminous box of Winfield duplicates reveals there are actually two versions of this card, both With Hair and Sans Hair (I found about 4 with the hair and about 12 without):

      And because everyone else was doing it, in 2001, Donruss saw the need to trot the card out again (without the hair) in it's Donruss Diamond Kings Reprints sets in honor of it's 20th anniversary:

Dave Winfield - Travelling Man (Part 2): California Bound

     Fast forward 10 years to 1990, and Dave Winfield is making his comeback to baseball after missing the entire 1989 season due to back problems. After a dismal start (hitting just .213 in 20 games) to what would undoubtedly be his last season in pinstripes, the Yankees decided to get something out of him before he became a free agent and in May, dealt him to California for Mike Witt.  Witt was once part of what should have been a great starting pitching staff for the Angels with Chuck Finley, Mark Langston and Jim Abbott, but was now decidedly on the downswing of a surprisingly short career. Witt would do very little for the 1990 Yankees, and even less in 1991. Witt would then miss all of his 1992 season and be released by the team in 1993 and be out of baseball.

     Winfield on the other hand, seemed to find some spring in his step with the move to California, out from under the influence of George Steinbrenner, and would turn his season around with the Angels, hitting .275 with 19HR over 112 games. That revival would earn him Comeback Player of the Year honors. Big Dave went on to sign with the Angels for the 1991 season and have his best power year since 1983, with 28 home runs. Not bad for someone who the Yankees had written off. By 1990, there were now several players in the baseball card market, so Winfield's only real trade was covered by all the major update sets; 1990 Fleer Update, 1990 Score Rookie & Traded, Topps Traded and Upper Deck's High # Series.

     Donruss, although not actually having an update or traded set in 1990, did produce the last of their Baseball's Best sets (which had evovled from the 1987 Opening Day set) in the form of separate Best of the American League and Best of the National League sets.  These sets were released mid-season and were updated to reflect team changes since the previous year.  As a result, Donruss also had a 1990 card showing Winfield in his new duds:

1994 Chicago Cubs Old Style team issue photo card - Karl Rhodes

 
      Arriving from Seattle today is this blank-backed, 3.5"x5.5" black & white photo card, featuring the Cubs greatest opening day lead-off hitter of all time, Karl "Tuffy" Rhodes.  This was in a lot of four, including Shawon Dunston, Jose Bautista and Willie Banks, so I'm dating this "set" to 1994, the only year those four were Cubs at the same time.

      Often called just "photo cards", these types of cards have been issued for over 70 years, usually by the teams themselves, frequently displaying a sponsor's logo.   These cards were long a staple of fan packs (those goody bags sent to fans who wrote to the team begging for handouts), and in the last 30-40 years have been issued in tandem with autograph signings at the ball park or other fan events.

    The Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards does a pretty good job of documenting these types of sets before 1980, mostly thanks to the persistence of Bob Lemke, but they don't seem to have much interest in tracking the more modern issues.  In some cases, the designs can be identical from year to year.  As a result, it can be very difficult to pin down to exactly when they were issued unless one is able to find several that are easily identifiable as being from the same year.  Then the players in question have to be compared to team rosters to see which years they shared a roster.

     These are difficult to track down, especially without already having been signed.  I passed up a chance at a signed copy for $20 last year.  While I was fortunate enough to find this lot of four cards on eBay, I was even more fortunate that it didn't include Mark Grace, Ryne Sandberg or Sammy Sosa, otherwise it probably would have ended well out of my price range.  Here are the other three cards:

*** Checklist Update ***

     Having seen more of these pop up on eBay, I thought I should go ahead and start compiling a checklist for this particular issue.  The year of issue is now completely in question as the recent discoveries don't all tie into the 1994 team.  I'm just going to call these 1994(?) Chicago Cubs Old Style Photo Cards (in alphabetical order):

Willie Banks
Jim Bullinger
Frank Castillo
Shawon Dunston
Jim Frey
Danny Jackson
Wayne Messmer
Mike Morgan
Karl Rhodes
Tom Trebelhorn
Turk Wendell
Curtis Wilkerson
Billy Williams
Mitch Williams
Don Zimmer


1992?
Shawon Dunston

Mike Harkey
Les Lancaster
Vance Law
Greg Maddux
DeWayne Staats

Billy Williams

----------  UPDATE  -----------

After seeing a few more of these, I now think these are two different sets.  The Old Style logo is different on the Dunston, which matches several others I've seen.  I've broken the known cards in to the two separate types.  There is also a third version with a 1990 Chicago All-Star Game logo. I'll list those below.

1990(91?) All-Star Game logo
Joe Girardi
Mark Grace

----------  UPDATE  29 June 2020 -----------

Thanks to a tip from a fellow collector, I can now confirm cards of Shawon Dunston and Mike Morgan in the 1994 set.  When searching eBay's completed items I also found an autographed Billy Williams in that set, as well.

Dave Winfield - Travelling Man (Part 1)

       While Dave Winfield is probably most recognized as a San Diego Padre or a New York Yankee, he was no stranger to the late-season traded set. He first saw action in 1981, when Topps first set forth to formalize the "traded" set they had dabbled in over the course of the 1970s. His first mainstream card as a Yankee was in that inaugural Topps Traded set. Even at this point, Topps should have just called it an update set since a good chunk of the set were rookies who had shared cards with other rookies in the base set or free agents who were signing with new teams. Probably less than half of the set were players who were involved in actual trades. That would actually be the most common reason for Winfield's appearances in these sets, free agency. For this first official Traded set, Topps simply continued the card numbering where the base set left off. As a result, Winfield's card is #855, near the end of the set.

       In 1980, Dave Winfield was the most high profile free agent in baseball history. He signed with the Yankees for the highest salary in baseball history to that point, reported to be around $16 million for 10 years. Thanks to a cost of living clause, the contract would turn out to be worth closer to $23 million. Dave had an impressive decade for the Yankees, picking up a 8 consecutive All-Star appearances, 5 Gold Gloves and 5 Silver Slugger awards. However the 1980s would also be bittersweet for Winfield, as his post-season performaces were less than stellar and he would spend most of the decade feuding with Yankees owner George Steinbrenner over money and contract stipulations. He would also end the decade on the disabled list, missing all of 1989 to a back injury.

       20 years later, as Topps was completely running out of ideas for new sets, they were reprinting almost every card of every star player in their past inventory. As a result, this 1981 Topps Traded card resurfaced in no less than 4 new versions in the 2001 Topps Traded retread set:

     The first was a nice, clean reprint, on modern white card stock, with the "Topps 50 Years" logo in the upper left corner.  The white stock provided a medium that allowed for a slightly sharper photo than the original card.   The backs of all of these are nearly identical to the original, only much easier to read and having the 2001 copyright notice at the bottom, along with the new card numbering for the 2001 Topps Traded set.

     Next, Topps gave the same card the gold foil treatment around the border, and "limited" the production to 2001 pieces, as indicated by a gold stamped serial number on the back.

      Then, Topps went the next of their favorite gimmicks and issued the same card in Chrome, which was the style they pioneered with the Topps Finest set in 1993.  Chrome cards don't show up very well on LiDE (LED indirect Exposure) scanners, which don't actually shine light directly on the surface of the card, so most of the time, it just shows up as very dark, instead of demonstrating the silver, mirror finish of the background and border.

     Topps also issued the set in their other favorite gimmick, the chrome refractor, which bounces the reflected light back at different angles, resulting in the rainbow effect when looking at it.  Interestingly, refractors show up much better in scans on LiDE scanners but, alas, I have yet to find a copy of the refractor version of this card for my collection.