#79 - Adam Eaton

What’s that Turtle doin’? Oh just runnin' one down out here by the warning track before a nice smooth landing for the 2nd Rookie Card to appear in the set.

Here, Eaton just makes this running catch look downright easy, but the distance he is airborne, and the bit of blur around his shoes indicate how fast he is running to make this catch — he might have got a late break on the ball, or had been playing a weaker hitter a bit shallow.

Not too many baseball cards show the warning track; usually a player photographed this deep in the outfield is closer to the wall, attempting to steal a Home Run away from a batter, and then photographed up in the air, from the ground, which in turn cuts the ground (& the warning track) from the picture. This card looks like it was shot by a drone camera, or a 2nd baseball sent out to follow the first one, or something. It does make the viewer feel like they are up in the air, too somehow, along with that fly ball.

The photo composition works very well. An odd thing about that is the way his right leg and shoe, extended back upwards in the running motion, help draw the eye to the top of the card, where the baseball appears just as it plunges into the glove. That then draws the eye downwards & following his left leg and the whole result conjures up that nice smooth landing idea I just mentioned. And yet the rotation of Eaton's body so he can see the ball perfectly presents himself to have his live action portrait taken.

Really one of the best motion capture cards in the set, and one more that would make a final countdown of my favorites in the set were I to compile one. Though I'm not sure I would really want to start picking one over another for such a list.

+Bonus points for one of the coolest sunglasses-on-baseball-card shots I can ever remember. How often do you ever get to see The Sun, on a baseball card?

Uniform Hero? Not even close. Though the image on this card might make you think that @ #79, that would make a great # for a Wide Receiver, those uniform #s don't actually start into the 80s range, and #79 is traditionally a defensive lineman so this whole thought now has absolutely nothing to do with this baseball card.

Where’d the egg hatch? Adam was drafted in the 19th round of the 2010 draft by the Diamondbacks.

How about the migrations? Eaton would then debut quickly in Arizona in September, 2012, only a few months before this card was composed. 

Don’t flip over real Turtles.

Here the card back text really kind of battles with the official Rookie Card© stat format with that refusal to acknowledge any MLB stat production before the magical logo was applied to the front of the magical Rookie Card. Which of course these days, is no longer quite a Rookie Card anyway considering how players can have a dozen or more base baseball cards created for them before they reach the Topps Baseball set.

All I can say on the single stat line here is that Mobile and Reno must have some mighty big ballparks for Eaton to have hit only 7 Home Runs with a .523 Slugging % - that, or he was really good at stretching out singles vs. minor league outfielders. I will go with the latter idea there I think. 

So I guess you can gleam something from that weird, one year, multi-team stat line officially created for all Rookies© on the back of their big card. But I will still never warm up to this ever so weird back-of-baseball-card format.

Can the Turtle Catch the Rabbit?

CAREER CHASE: With 2 stolen bases, Eaton is 1,404 away from Rickey Henderson's all-time record of 1,406.

It has been many, many cards since we have seen the Henderson record. I think Jesse Orosco is probably beating out Rickey on this card back line so far.

In the 2010s it is nice to consider players known for stealing bases, when The Data strictly controls the Go sign probably more than the Manager does at this point. So it is nice to see this comparison, but I am slowly realizing that the vast majority of players drafted out of College have lesser chance at baseball immortality in the record books or eventually Cooperstown, given the way counting stat comparisons and age and career length all work, particularly in this century.

Eaton would move on from Arizona to play in Chicago after a 3 team trade (can Arizona participate in a trade any other way? I sometimes wonder), and then in Washington after another high leverage trade, where he had a very nice performance in the 2019 World Series after a couple injury shortened campaigns in '17 and '18. He is signed with the Nationals through this coming (I hope) 2020 season, with a team option for 2021.

However in MLB action he has never stolen even half as many bases as he did in that 2012 minor league campaign. As games commence in 2020 (I hope), Adam Eaton has stolen 81 bases.

Subspecies? Fortunately for checklist completers everywhere, another Adam Eaton wrapped up an MLB career in 2009 so we have never had to deal with 2 Adam Eatons on one checklist. Topps more generally manages to do that with 2 cards of one player usually.

This is such a champion baseball card image I am a little surprised it does not appear on the Opening Day Checklist. But then the Diamondbacks aren't exactly a team with a long baseball card tradition, so I would expect their portion of the Opening Day checklist is rarely very long.

However given those exciting AA&AAA stats compiled on the back of this card, it is not surprising that this one was chosen for inclusion on the Topps Chrome checklist. And as a Rookie Card© there, that means there is an autographed version and that means there is an image variation for those cards. And that means I am collecting that checklist, although the Eaton card will have to be added here, someday.

Bling That Shell For such a sweet sunlit action card I wanted to go with maximum shiny; I suspect the Topps Chrome parallels of this would make a nice 'rainbow' effort. I am working on one of those for this card, though so far I only have the tough Black /62 parallel.

But given the varying tones and the strip of green grass, I picked up a Blue Sparkle copy of this card pretty early on:

#71 - Kyle Kendrick

What’s that Turtle doin’? I don't know, I'm kinda hypnotized by all that blurry scoreboard action back there. I often enjoy a nice blurred out background on a card.

This card is a good example of the down-side of my frequent blog comments on wanting to see a few more complete baseball players — & this card still does not feature 100% of Kyle Kendrick. After looking through a lot of cards featuring players often from the belt-up, only, one kind of gets used to being as acquainted with the player's face as on a posed/portrait card. 

Then sometimes when Topps decides to zoom out for a change, I end up squinting at the card to get a clear view of the player's face. Here, I also end up flipping the card over quite quickly when it is in my hand, because the near-complete view of KK but with a face so distant quickly leads to an obvious conclusion: Kyle Kendrick must be pretty tall. So the quick flip to the back informs us that he is indeed 6'3", tall but not extraordinarily so.

All this loss of perspective on just what Kendrick looks like may have even confused Topps during production of this card, as we will see later in this post.

A different loss on this view-from-farther-away card is as much of a sense of motion as can be quickly picked up on cards more zoomed to the player. Here, the billowing uniform is the only small clue to the fact that this is a picture of live motion.

Aside from the various pretty lights in the distance, this card has one more eye-catching detail: the patch on Kendrick's left breast. This is the 4th Phillies card in the checklist but only 2nd to show a uniform front, and on the first card #6 - Ryan Howard, this uniform patch addition is not present. What gives?

Turns out, Topps had to go back in time for this picture of Kendrick, for some reason, as that letter "B" memorial patch was worn in the 2011 season "in honor of minority owners Alexander and John Buck, who died in late 2010," as Wikipedia kindly explains. All of which might also tie into how things went during production.

Uniform Hero? Nope. I'm sure Topps still hopes some free spirit can be found that makes us all rise to notice such a high uni #, but we shall see. In 2012, Uniform #71 managed all of 3 At Bats in MLB action.

Where’d the egg hatch? Kyle was drafted by the Phillies in the 7th round in 2003.

How about the migrations? Kendrick then debuted at what is probably a league average for a player drafted out of high school - four seasons later, in 2007. He then settled in as an example of how the draft system is supposed to work - a team drafts a player, they come up from the minors, and become a regular player for the team, as Kendrick had done for 6 seasons before this card was created.

Don’t flip over real Turtles.

And yes, Topps notices the regular every day players too, and often explains why you should notice them, too.

Can the Turtle Catch the Rabbit?

CAREER CHASE: With 54 wins, Kendrick is 457 away from Cy Young's all-time record of 511.

As the card back just explained Kendrick's value as a starter (though he had some stints of bullpen experience, too), this is the natural stat to pick for a Pitcher seeming to profile, in the stats, as a bit of a 'pitch-to-contact' type Pitcher.

Kendrick finished out his contract in Philly and then signed with Colorado for the 2015 season; always a forbidding place to pitch but one that proved especially forbidding for a Pitcher in his Age 30 season. A final pair of starts in Boston in 2017 were the final footnote.

Kyle Kendrick finished his MLB career with 81 Wins.

Subspecies? #3-4 starters routinely make the Topps Baseball checklist, but they routinely do not make the more star-driven Opening Day and Chrome checklists.

Nevertheless, there is sort of a known variant to this card, though not all collectors would consider including it to 'complete' this set, not even for a 'master set.'

But here it 'tis, you be the judge:

This is just a production error card; it was only ever found in early deliveries of Factory Sets in the early summer of 2013. I was quite happy to see one appear on COMC recently, though my quick purchase of it hasn't arrived at the home of the Sea Turtles as of yet.

But outside of generally quite rare minor printing snafus affecting one card at a time, this is the only known 'error card' in the set, at least as far as I am aware.

My hunch is that someone noticed how distant Kendrick looked on the card, and attempted to 'zoom in' while the image was already part of a sheet about to be clicked along to the next step in the production process. 

Overall, a pretty rare thing in the world of 21st century baseball cards. Now, I just have to figure out where to keep my copy, when it eventually arrives.

Bling That Shell This was another easy selection; I figured all that blurred scoreboard goodness there in the background would make for a fun 'Blue Sparkle' card, and that did not disappoint:

#54 - Jaime Garcia

What’s that Turtle doin’? We're driving to the plate from the southpaw lane this time. Only a 2-seamer on the way though.

Garcia seems a little concerned about his aim or his Catcher's call for this fastball; over here in the on-deck circle, I am starting to get a little optimistic - maybe I'll have an RBI chance when I reach the plate.

This card is still on the same binder page as the Wainwright card, so St. Louis uniforms will get a good look together whenever and wherever collectors take a look at their Sea Turtles. This card was shot neither on a Sunday (regular interlocking STL logo as on the card), nor in St. Louis - their 'road greys' also say Cardinals on them, rather than St. Louis.

Though the lines and image structure of the photo make for a very good baseball card, the plethora of this type of card in an 'action image' set like this once again leads the collector to ponder the glove. This time it is a cool looking 'team color' glove but also features an unusual logo in that it doesn't have the Swoosh or say "Rawlings." Under a little zoom on the scan, it proves to be the letters "Xdl" at first glance but eventually enough Googling reveals that to be upside down - the true letter combo is T-P-X.

Which is something I discovered via a now partially dated, but still fun little web article called "The 20 Prettiest Gloves in Baseball History."

Uniform Hero? Still going strong here at 54.

Where’d the egg hatch? Although Garcia was born in Mexico, he entered the MLB player system via draft, a bit of a rare combo. He went to High School in Texas and was first drafted by the Orioles in 2004, but elected to go to college for a year and was then drafted by the Cardinals in the 22nd round in 2005.

How about the migrations? Jaime reached the majors in the 2008 season, but didn't 'stick' until the 2010 season. He would be a main-stay (and a popular one) in the Cardinals rotation until they traded him to the Braves after the 2016 season. Like many older veteran 'rentals' none of the following trades involved players with very many, if any, MLB baseball cards ever produced.

At the 2017 trade deadline Atlanta flipped him to Minnesota who in turn quite soon shipped him on to New York. This created a unique situation as explained on Garcia's Wikipedia page: "He became the first pitcher to start three consecutive games for three separate teams since 1895."

After his dizzying 2017 season he would sign with Toronto and then give it one last "go" in Chicago late in the 2018 season, after which he retired.

Don’t flip over real Turtles.

What I like most about this card back is a simple pleasant detour in to baseball statistics and pondering how they might show player/team results. In particular what is striking here is Garcia's remarkably consistent WHIP (Walks + Hits / Innings Pitched) ratio but wildly divergent ERA results. A little less obvious is the way the WHIP # stayed the same but Hits / 9 IP increased slightly, but overall those large differences in ERA might well correlate to changes in St. Louis team defense rankings.

Can the Turtle Catch the Rabbit?

CAREER CHASE: With 34 wins, Garcia is 477 away from Cy Young's all-time record of 511.

As this card was being created, Garcia was firmly established as a member of the Cardinals excellent early 10's rotation, so "W" is again the obvious comp for this.

Garcia would go on to finish his career with 70 Wins.

Subspecies? This is the only Jaime Garcia card on the 2013 'Sea Turtle' design.

Bling That Shell This card has a nice, day-game brightness to it that makes the infield grass a nice bright green. Which in turn made selecting the 'Wrapper Redemption' 'Blue Sparkle' parallel my first choice:

#40 - Chien-Ming Wang

What’s that Turtle doin’? Here is another card quite similar to the just previous Scott Feldman card, but only in my weird little universe of baseball cards. Until I could get rolling on writing this blog, I had the exact same wonderings about Chien-Ming Wang as the Topps card back writer does. How did it all turn out for a perpetual comeback player?

We'll get to that shortly of course; as far as this baseball card goes, it is somewhat the opposite of the previous card. A pitcher that hasn't released the ball yet still might throw a Strike, of course; these "pre-pitch" cards often seem more optimistic to me.

I like the light on this card for some reason. It seems to be a night game, though I can't tell if indoors or out. But overall, the photographer got the focus crisp, and on-point, particularly for Wang's uniform. Even his hair flowing out behind him is perfectly sharp, leading your eye right to the baseball. 

This card is almost identical to the Scherzer card just a few checklist spots back in most every way, and especially with how the "hington" script letters and their nice underline, all courtesy of the Nationals' road uniform, then lift the eye up off the card in anticipation of the flight of the ball. Maybe that is where the optimism derives on this card, I guess.

+Bonus points for the Swoosh on the glove. I did not know Nike makes baseball gloves, too.

Uniform Hero? The road uniform comes through again for Topps here. Plus Topps always likes a good comeback story. Sometimes, perhaps a bit too much.

Where’d the egg hatch? Chien-Ming is from Taiwan, so he was scouted and then signed independently by the New York Yankees in the year 2000. Although the list of MLB players from Taiwan is still relatively short at only 14 players, baseball card collectors are probably the most familiar with them and for collectors a Taiwanese player now seems like just another part of the International flavor of Major League Baseball. But when Wang debuted in NYC in 2005, he was only the 3rd player from Taiwan to have done so.

How about the migrations? Wang quickly lit up the MLB leader boards, particularly in his brilliant 2nd and 3rd seasons. From 2008 and onwards, however, things would never be the same for him as injuries struck repeatedly.

In the year of the Sea Turtle, Wang would actually be under contract with 2 other MLB teams - not the Nationals; those being the Yankees once again, for whom he did not appear in a game, and the Toronto Blue Jays, where he showed flashes of his early success, but ultimately appeared in only 6 games before being released yet again. He did manage to make it to the majors one final time, working as a reliever for Kansas City in 2016.

A puzzling thing about this card is that Wang was released by the Nationals on October 29, 2012 - a standard baseball date for this type of thing, as it was the day after the World Series, when MLB clubs begin making roster moves. This would leave plenty of time for Topps to shift such a player to a Series 2 card perhaps, but players released on that date routinely appear in Series 1, anyway. Given that particular release date, that makes this particular card back...

Don’t flip over real Turtles.

...all the more puzzling. Clearly Washington's hopes don't have much chance if they released him 3 months before this card appeared in packs. I would have to mark this particular card back as a FAIL.

Can the Turtle Catch the Rabbit?

CAREER CHASE: With 61 wins, Wang is 450 away from Cy Young's all-time record of 511.

I guess after all there are only 7 stats that Topps can select for one of these CHASE comparisons, as they must be a counting stat that appears on the back of the card. And since it always has to be sunny on the back of a Topps Baseball card, they can hardly jeer at a player by comparing him to the All-Time leader for Losses, who is also Cy Young.

So another quick go at that famous 511 seems as easy as any of the other 7 here.

Chien-Ming Wang did manage to add a few Wins after this card appeared, mostly from that bullpen stint in KC. He finished his Major League career with 68 Wins.

Subspecies? Nope. This would actually be Wang's final MLB Topps card as Topps declined to include him in 2016 Update, despite 3 months of steady work before the '16 trade deadline; I guess Topps could no longer hold out hope for him. His final actual baseball card was a Minor League Leaders card in 2015, for Innings Pitched. Probably, that is a unique baseball card epitaph.

Bling That Shell With the simple two-tone background for this image, I figured this would look nice on the Blue Sparkle design:

#24 - Dan Haren

What’s that Turtle doin’? Getting back on track with established MLB veterans now, Dan Haren goes into his wind-up from the stretch and heeeeere's the pitch...

I like how action cards can so easily trigger a pleasant baseball audio flashback, like this one does. Different sets of uniform wrinkles doing different things betray the multiple things going on in a pitcher's delivery.

I also like how the infield dirt and the infield grass cleanly cut the card in half - methinks this might make for an interesting parallel version. And then the chalk of the first base line nicely parallels the line of Haren's arms, and vision to the plate, making it oh so easy for your brain to contemplate the flight of the baseball just about to begin.

And my final click on the Like button for this card is that it is _not_ a horizontal card. Although I like horizontal cards, I don't always care for Topps' propensity to use all that space just to show off a Pitcher's upper torso and fully extended arms, in a photo like this. It is nice to see how the legs contribute to the delivery, something seen here a bit more than on the Kershaw card.

Uniform Hero? Smack dead center on the card and right on that perfect visual break line of the infield grass, too, this is another card with a pretty easy to remember card #.

Where’d the egg hatch? Haren was drafted by the Cardinals in the 2nd round in 2001 and would debut with them just 2 summers later.

How about the migrations? St. Louis was soon unable to resist trading their young right-hander to Oakland in exchange for established Ace Mark Mulder during another one of Billy Beane's teardowns. If I were to include various General Managers in the labels on these posts, I am confident I know which GM would get the most.

Not surprisingly, Haren would not retire as an Athletic as he was traded to the Diamondbacks and then the Angels in complex multi-player trades involving several other eventual MLB starting Pitchers. 

Just as this card was being created, Haren finally reached the end of a contract and could test the Free Agent waters for the first time. This led to a one year deal to pitch for the Nationals in 2013, followed by stops in L.A., Miami, and finally Chicago in 2015, where his final start yielded a 6 Inning, 3 Hit, 1 Run, Win on the last day of the regular season. Subsequently, he was left off the Cubs playoff roster for their run to the NLCS that year and retired shortly afterwards.

He is currently still part of Major League Baseball, working in the Front Office for the Diamondbacks.

Don’t flip over real Turtles.

Can't go wrong just letting the #s from 11 years of Major League action speak for themselves. I am always intrigued by the way WHIP and ERA can correlate so differently from year-to-year for basically successful Pitchers like Dan Haren, as they do here in 2006 and 2007. The '07 Athletics must have drastically improved their defense, is all I can conclude.

Can the Turtle Catch the Rabbit?

CAREER CHASE: With 119 wins, Haren is 392 away from Cy Young's all-time record of 511.

This particular Chase stat gives me a pleasant flashback to 1970s Fleer stickers, as one of those efforts (which I peeled and stuck on something) gave me something on the back: a simple illustration of a gigantic triple set of numbers 5-1-1 and a brief explanatory text in small type. Even as a child, I knew that was a record that couldn't possibly be broken.

Haren finished his career with 153 Wins. 

Subspecies? Given his December Free Agent signing, Haren will get another card in Update. He did not crack any other Sea Turtle checklists in Chrome or Opening Day, something not common for just a solid mid-rotation starter.

Bling That Shell With all the clean background elements in 3 basic portions, I figured this one would look good on the Blue Sparkle parallel. Let's take a look:

#17 - Shin-Soo Choo

What’s that Turtle doin’? No mystery here, just the opposite of a "Tattooine Card" - has anyone made a nickname for these pure outfield grass cards? I have not read one, yet.

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...

...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.