Anyhow, a nice 21st century baseball card, showing an outfielder In Action, about to catch a live batted ball, a complete twin to the Adam Jones card. There is at least one more of these in the set, and as we go to press here on card #17, the Fielding cards have taken the lead away from the Hitting cards. Will Fielding be able to hang on to this lead? Stay tuned, but note that the Pitchers are still out in the bullpen, getting warmed up.
Although the silvery Topps logo can appear in either corner on the cards in this set, I like how here Topps cannily picked the left corner coincidentally helping draw your attention to the live baseball plunging towards Choo's glove - this is the Topps Baseball set, after all. I like seeing a baseball on my baseball cards.
All the way around, a just about perfect example of a live action baseball card, with that baseball and Choo's face and no distracting interaction between his body parts and the frame of the card, just that nice cool grass, everywhere. For Fielding cards, yup, this could be worthy of a Black Label grade.
Now perhaps as time marches on with this card, more and more collectors of the future will wonder - what's up with Chief Wahoo there? This bright, clean design certainly spotlights whatever piece of iconography Topps chose for each team. In 2018, the Indians announced that the Chief would be nudged off into retirement, and would no longer appear on any uniforms in 2019. Topps, however, has not waited on this, and switched to using the red block letter "C" on Indians cards, as seen on Choo's cap here, mostly starting in 2017, although miscellaneous insert set creators must have missed the internal memo. This makes 2019 the last year that the Chief graphics will appear on a Topps card of a contemporary player, from inside the photos only, I would expect.
I know that discussion of Mr. "Wahoo" can rage on with no conclusion once it starts, but I would just like to add a personal note about my life experiences working in remote, "backwoods" parts of the United States. Quite often, quite near-by, there is a Casino, frequently serving as a nice refuge with bits of civilization, with things like a Sports Bar showing baseball games on the TV to be found inside. I have frequently read claims that "no one really cares" about the use of Chief Wahoo for so many decades now. All I can say is, well, if you really think that, you can try wearing this image on your clothing, or a ball-cap, to one of these Casinos I like, and find out for yourself what people think of the whole thing, up close and personal, in 3D life.
Oh and what is a "Tatooine Card," you may be wondering? That is a nickname I first found on the long-time card blog Garvey Cey Russell Lopes, that was probably first applied to the more than memorable 1971 card for "World Series Game 5," starring Brooks Robinson. The link I just included there leads to a nice post on a collection of such cards, and includes a link back to the original, as well.
Meanwhile, I'm still waiting on a nickname for cards like this one. Golf Card?
Uniform Hero? Naturally.
Where’d the egg hatch? Choo is the second International player in the set, hailing from South Korea, and thus was never part of any draft process. Probably not too surprisingly for an Asian player, he first signed with a West Coast club, in his case the Seattle Mariners, for whom he debuted in 2005 but for whom he ultimately only turned in 27 At Bats because...
How about the migrations? ...early in the 2006 season he was traded to the Cleveland Indians for Ben Broussard. I would hesitate to evaluate that trade, which eventually tangles up in varying amounts of service time for each player on each club, though Choo's excellent seasons in Cleveland resulted in his spot right here on this uniquely performance driven baseball card checklist. And then value comps get more complicated when Choo became part of a complex, multi-player, 3-team trade including several current MLBers, just as this set was going to press, on December 11, 2012.
The result for Choo was playing in Cincinnati for the 2013 season, before signing a 7 year deal with Texas before the 2014 season. His post-Sea Turtle years have been a mix of quite good and more ordinary. In 2018, he was selected to his first All-Star Team after a torrid first half performance, news of which Choo declared "one of the best days of my life."
Don’t flip over real Turtles.
Lately I have been wondering about the dichotomies of selecting a starting Outfielder, as I was babbling about recent Tigers Centerfielder Jacoby Jones on my other blog the other day. Do you pick speed, to catch more balls hit by the opposition, or do you pick power, to hit more balls the opposition can't catch? Obviously, you pick "both." Topps knows.
I would say this is one of the few cards where it left me wondering if Choo had been largely playing in Centerfield, or one of the 2 'corner' spots. Quite a bit easier to just write "OF" - I think some day I will look through some sets to see just when Topps got into this tiny detail, and when they didn't.
Can the Turtle Catch the Rabbit?
CAREER CHASE: With 265 extra-base hits, Choo is 1,212 away from Hank Aaron's all-time record of 1,477.
If one were to read a lot of 2013 Topps card backs, one might find it rather simple to glance over this one, see the name "Hank Aaron," and respond by looking at Choo's Home Run totals, which include two 20-20 years but don't really scream "slugger." Even though Topps doesn't use Hank Aaron in connection with the All-Time Home Run record on this part of the cards.
And I would wager not very many baseball fans know who holds the All-Time record for Extra-Base Hits, or XBH in the stat columns, though not on the backs of baseball cards. You just never know what you might learn when you turn over a Topps baseball card.
By the conclusion of the 2018 season, Choo had almost doubled his Doubles or better, to 521 XBH.
Subspecies? Players set to appear in Series One that then change teams definitely put Topps to work, subsequently. Choo will appear in the set again with his new Cincinnati duds, in Update, but also 2 other Topps sets, ultimately placing him among the Leaders for most Sea Turtle cards, which we will check out during the Playoffs, when Update comes out. Which Playoffs? Dunno. But all of those other cards are in the future; this is a bit of a Farewell, Cleveland card and has no other variants.
Bling That Shell This is another card I have long known exactly which parallel would represent it in a parallel set, probably ever since I first saw the 'Wrapper Redemption' Blue Sparkle cards - the same calculus as the Adam Jones card. I must confess it is tempting to use the Emerald parallel for one of these all-outfield-grass cards; maybe I will procure one and make an 'in-hand' decision. But the green field on the Blue Sparkle cards really is nice.
However this particular Choo parallel has not arrived here at Sea Turtle HQ, just yet, though it has been procured. As per usual, please refer to the every-9th-card page summary post due to arrive now in just 2 more posts, for up-to-the-minute details.
Blog Update Highlight So as the Emerald parallels have a very high print run, they are generally cheap. I quite easily added a copy of this card to my exciting new COMC shipment - my 2nd ever - for about 90¢. Now I can pick between my original goal of using the Blue Sparkle card...
However this particular Choo parallel has not arrived here at Sea Turtle HQ, just yet, though it has been procured. As per usual, please refer to the every-9th-card page summary post due to arrive now in just 2 more posts, for up-to-the-minute details.
Blog Update Highlight So as the Emerald parallels have a very high print run, they are generally cheap. I quite easily added a copy of this card to my exciting new COMC shipment - my 2nd ever - for about 90¢. Now I can pick between my original goal of using the Blue Sparkle card...
...which I do like quite a bit.
Or, I can roll with the idea of letting the grass take over the entire card:
Maybe I can just save that card for a go at making an All-Parallel version of my pages of just the horizontal cards in this set. Oh dear, more parallels to track down. Not sure if I will pull a trigger on that nutty idea.
Switching to the Emerald on this page would necessitate finding a new parallel for the Votto card though.
The better news is that there are actually at least 2 more of these "Golf" cards in the set, though they are off in the distance of many hundreds of cards and many years of posting on this blog away from making the same choice again later.
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