My Two Favorite Cards of 2022...And Why I Don't Like (Maybe Like) Topps Stadium Club

 

Hi

            Hello.

            It’s been a few weeks, hasn’t it?

            A touch longer than I anticipated.

            Well, you know what they say?

            How do you make God laugh?

            Make a plan.

            Or…shit happens.

            Anyway, I hope you all had a good holiday and New Year. Mine ran the gamut from blizzard to jury duty. I didn’t get selected…yeah! And, I guess I made somewhat merry in between those two things. I got to, sort of, see family in Buffalo during that blizzard mess. And the road Gods were kind enough to have the I-290 and I-90 cleared quickly enough so that I could get down to Pittsburgh to see even more family.

            And I got to act like a real card collector too!

            I went inside a Wal-Mart and came across one of those rows packed with sports cards.

            You know, the kind of rows we see in pictures that collector’s post on Twitter or Instagram.

            Images like this:

            Honestly, I felt like a kid in a candy shop.

            I grabbed a lot of these.

            Yes, my new collecting obsession is completing the 2022 Score football card set. I need approximately 30 cards to complete. And no, I don’t know why I’m doing this to myself. I have a year’s worth of blog post psycho-analyzing myself or brow-beating myself for always drifting toward building sets. The best I can come up with is that I still value the common card, and can’t just stack them away like some breaker on a YouTube video.

            Everything must form a function.

            But let’s not talk about set building…again.

            And, I know, I promised some year-end wrap up. But those are kind of boring. Besides, if you’ve read this blog on a regular basis, you can pretty much sum up my collecting year by what I’ve posted.

            No…this week I want to talk about my two favorite cards of 2022.

            Here they are.

            I’m going to write something that’s maybe a touch taboo in card collecting circles: I don’t care for Stadium Club. There…I said it. I will concede that Stadium Club has great photography. But, to me, it’s gimmick photography. 

            Mookie Betts in a fedora. 

            Ted Williams in pilot’s gear. 

            They may work for others, but if I’ve learned anything about myself as a returning collector over the last three years, it’s this: I’m as conservative as they come.

            Yeah…I was shocked to realize it too.

            I always fancied myself a fun card collector.

           

            I guess those days are over.

            Being a card conservative kind of sucks.

            It runs counter to my actual politics.

            But the truth is the truth.

            I’m a conservative collector.

            I want my baseball cards to look like baseball cards. Hitters hitting. Fielders fielding. Pitchers pitching. A player posing with a bat on his shoulder. Or in a stance. Maybe some dude sitting in the dugout like they used to do it.

            Just not Freddie Freeman having a quiet moment of contemplation.

            Oh, why did I leave Atlanta?

            That said...I do have my occassional exceptions to the rule:

            My biases being what they are, 2022 Topps Stadium Club Oneil Cruz and Rickey Henderson are my two favorite cards of last year. Maybe it’s because they are conservative cards. Both are true baseball action shots. The Cruz is a personal favorite. If you’re a Pirates fan, it’s pure Oneil. That look between excitement and giddiness as he rounds the bases, are what we’ve come to expect whenever he does damage to another team’s pitcher. It defines what us fans hope to see from home for a long time.

            Although judging by everything going on with Bryan Reynolds, the odds aren’t they good.

            As for the Rickey.

            I don’t collect Rickey Henderson cards.

            I appreciated him as a kid, but I was never a big Rickey fan.

            And I don’t like horizontal cards.

            So, why did I buy it?

            I…I was drawn to it. Baseball cards have captured so many good Rickey on the basepath cards. Here are a few.

            Rickey belongs on the base paths.

            And I believe 2022 Stadium Club has enhanced that bunch. You can tell by the uniform that it’s young Rickey. Hungry Rickey. Rickey’s who’s in the midst of a 100-stolen base season. The look on his face is pure concentration. He’s going to break for second at any moment. I loved it so much, something said, ah, just get it. Throw it in with the modest Henderson cards that you have, and take it out to look at from time to time.

            Also…I’m going to be starting this book soon.*

           *A brief aside...I feel like I have at least three blog posts where I say I'm going to be starting the Howard Bryant Rickey Henderson bio"soon." And I have meant to start it...soon. It's just that things like 680-page biographies on former Beatles keep getting in the way.*

            But I digress....            

            So, who knows where the Rickey collection is going to go?

            The card is an oddity to me too, because I don’t make it a habit to collect many post-playing day cards for players. I do that with maybe a handful that I’ve mentioned here: Ruth, Robinson, Aaron, Clemente and Stargell. Certainly not Rickey Henderson. But…this isn’t the first time Stadium Club got me like this.

            Let me present to the court, my favorite card from 2021.

            Hell, it wasn’t even just Stadium Club. Topps got me twice with Mr. Murray and 2021.

            So was I just bullshitting about my not liking Stadium Club. Or finding it gimmicky? Well…no. I mean, maybe, no? I think, for me at least, that Stadium Club has so many wonderful in-action shots. That Cruz card should’ve been his base image. The Henderson image was taken when card companies weren’t doing the whole horizontal card thing, so I get it. And for two years now the release has had some of my favorite images. Then I think: go buy a box and have some fun.

            But I know they’ll be images like this:

            And...sigh...I just can't.

Thanks for reading! Happy collecting!

NEXT FRIDAY: Bowman Draft and the perils of prospecting...when you're a Pittsburgh Pirates fan.