This is a card I think of when I hear people complain about horizontal cards, though only one of many.
Basically, this baseball card has a lot of baseball on it. The second baseman seems to be taking a step towards some anticipated action; perhaps the batter is swinging at the pitch.
Yet Justin just finished his motion so recently that his necklace is still slung out there towards his just exactly perfect leg kick, captured completely for a nice change afforded by the horizontal format.
And out there beyond all this glorious baseballness is the visiting bullpen, and the yellow Home Run line, and some fans, and there off in the distance, the back wall of Comerica Park, that we all know the batter has very little chance of reaching, against this Pitcher. A classic Made in Detroit baseball card, which Topps makes a lot of.
Topps liked this photo so much they used it on one of the "sell sheets" for Series One.
See, the brain of the turtle is of course: "Topps"
Uniform Hero? Oh yes. We are right in the middle of a virtual Murder's Row of Aces here.
Where’d the egg hatch? Justin Verlander was a #1 draft pick for the Tigers in 2004, selected as the 2nd overall pick. I actually went to see the Tigers the year they lost 119 games; this was their reward. A couple of Verlander nemeses were drafted several picks afterwards, as we shall see soon, and later. Meanwhile with the first pick that year, the Padres got Matt Bush.
How about the migrations? Unlike some of his checklist neighbors, JV would not remain with the Tigers forever, much to the chagrin of the Tiger fanbase. The Farm was mortgaged for multiple exciting shots at The Series, and eventually a price had to be paid.
And somewhat literally, by the Tigers, as when they traded Verlander to Houston in 2017, they had to agree to pay $8 Million of his $28 Million salary. This is a trade structure that somewhat allows a team to purchase some additional prospects, in a sense.
They received a CF, Daz Cameron, a C, Jake Rogers, and a P, Franklin Perez. The jury is still out on that return, at least for Detroit. Houston won a World Series already, though their club is pretty stacked all the way around, anyway.
One key piece of the trade, Perez, spent most of 2018 injured. Detroit's strategy to climb out of the cellar is to build around a young, cost-controlled core starting rotation. Doing that with plenty of Catcher prospects being battery mates with all the Pitching prospects spilling ink in Tigers coverage seems like a good strategy.
Verlander will be a free agent for the 2020 season, and likely to keep pitching.
Don’t flip over real Turtles.
12 League Leads, pretty impressive, and a definitive new Lead on the cards in this set. Though I'm not sure anyone would really want a Lead in Losses to really count. It might take another Tiger to recapture this Lead in the set, we'll see.
That post-1917 streak Topps discovered on this card back almost seems to be crying out for an insert card to be created around it. But a streak is not quite a chase, and this is the year of The Chase.
Can the Turtle Catch the Rabbit?
CAREER CHASE: With 124 wins, Verlander is 387 away from Cy Young's all-time record of 511.
The classic stat line of being a "20 Game Winner" seems to be an increasingly rare thing in Major League Baseball, but Justin Verlander has one of those on this card back. He still has just about zero chance of ever Winning 511 games.
After the 2018 season, Verlander has 204 Wins.
Subspecies? This classic baseball card image is also found in 2013 Opening Day and Chrome, but there are no other Justin Verlander cards with this design.
Bling That Shell I think I had a couple different strategies to build the binder page this card is on before I realized that a) the Tigers, sort of, if you think about it, have a secondary team color, though it is never on any of their uniforms, and b) there is a parallel card of that color. Luckily, this card features a nice bright sunny day, because this team parallel harmony is nicely bright:
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