#69 - NLCS

What’s that Turtle doin’? Celebration time, c'mon! Who doesn't want a champagne downpour on a baseball card?

I have always wondered about this card - were the Giants celebrating their League Championship out on the field, in a fresh rain, or could this card be from the locker room, afterwards? 

As it turns out, when the Final Out was caught (fittingly, by the player on this baseball card), the infield in San Francisco was already looking like open water puddles. Ahh, life in the 21st Century, where anything that ever happened can be watched again and again.

And thus, this is actually perhaps the most rain ever seen on a baseball card.

Other playoff/WS cards have probably done a better job of showing off a trophy handed to a player, but I don't expect very many such cards include the word "Champion" right in the image.

The only mystery left to this card is — just who are the two guys with grey hair?

Uniform Hero? While I think it would a pretty neat feat of baseball card trivia to somehow link a Playoffs card to some certain checklist #, the number 68 and this player and this event have exactly zero connection points. Which is of course par for the course on most baseball card checklists.

Where’d the egg hatch? The Giants had won the World Series just two seasons prior, making this the middle point of a mini-dynasty in the National League, as it all worked out.

How about the migrations? To reach this NLCS comeback from a 3-1 deficit to St. Louis, the Giants had first spotted the Cincinnati Reds a 2 game deficit before roaring back to win the NLDS, the hard way.

Don’t flip over real Turtles.

14 Hits in a League Championship Series certainly explains the front of this card, perfectly. 

On this card, for once the usually rather plain line score by innings here nicely echoes the text, or vice versa perhaps.

Bling That Shell I don't plan to use the orange-on-red combo often as a go-to choice, particularly with how much more difficult it is to get good combos for the blue teams. But I want to get every (or, almost every) color combination into the project at least once; things are breaking right on this page for the Target Red parallel to meet an orange Sea Turtle:

#67 - World Series Game 4

What’s that Turtle doin’? Oh just gettin' all iconic here some 15 seconds or so after the very last second of live baseball action in the 2012 MLB season.

This is pretty much THE image that I now connect to on any stray thought of the 2012 World Series, and as a Tigers fan, I have more stray thoughts on it than most. But to have this image in my mind about that Series pretty much indicates how much time I have spent with this set over the years.

And some of that might actually flow from my experiences with the 2016 World Series, which has some definitely more well-known images of Bryant-to-Rizzo-to-History from the fielding of the final out there. Which is something I never saw on TV and in fact actually heard called by the great Cleveland radio broadcaster Tom Allen. But afterwards, Topps came to my rescue on that with several cards depicting the play, and in their low end sets, too.

So it goes here. I think most collectors would prefer some World Series cards in their Topps Baseball set, even if it is a card depicting basically the lowest point for their favorite franchise in an entire decade.

One thing that is striking about being a Tigers fan is the high levels of bitter vitriol one will encounter in the fan base. In the 2010s, Detroit went on a roll winning 5 straight AL Central titles. But not only did they not "win it all" in the end of any of those 5 years, their one World Series trip resulted in a sweep. And to twist the knife just a touch more, it is worth recalling that the photograph used on this card was shot on the Tigers Home field. It is quite easy to miss that Romo and Posey are wearing their road greys here, amidst all the other baseball goodness. I have long thought that if Detroit could have at least played a 6 or 7 game Series in 2012, Tigers fans wouldn't be quite so cynical and bitter about things, ever afterwards, really. It also doesn't help that by being swept, the Tigers didn't get even one World Series card of their own.

Another angle to the sadness of it all, for a Tigers fan, can be seen in one of the Associated Press photos from the game, which also captures just about this exact same moment:

FILE - In this Oct. 28, 2012 file photo, Detroit Tigers' Miguel Cabrera walks away after striking out to end Game 4 of baseball's World Series against the San Francisco Giants in Detroit. Cabrera will be remembered for two things during the baseball season of 2012: Becoming baseball's first Triple Crown winner in 45 years, and striking out on an 89 mph, belt-high fastball to end the Giants' 4-3, title-clinching win. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)

Yes in a phrase 20th Century Tigers fans can connect to this all too very well, Miggy stood there like the house by the side of the road to officially end the 2012 World Series. It was almost a bit of a blessing that Ernie didn't have to see this one.

Despite all that, I do like this baseball card quite a bit. Even half-sleepy baseball fans who can't even pick a favorite to win a given World Series will stir to action in the bottom of the 9th (or later) inning when the Series is on the line and the big celebration is about to erupt. So this is an excellent moment to immortalize on cardboard. Topps had no shortage of photos to pick for this particular card, from multiple photogs and angles, but this was a good choice.

Minor things I like on this card include seeing all the orange accents on Posey's catcher gear, and the way the World Series logo gets repeated on the card and on Romo's right shoulder. I work with trees for a living, and routinely work in Oak trees, so to get a few Oak leaves mixed in with my love of baseball is always nice, for me.

Uniform Hero? I wish I could tell you that Topps slyly gave some baseball card love to that one bench player who had that key hit in the middle of Game 2 of the Series, but neither S.F. nor Detroit had a player wearing #67 in 2012.

One thing I completely do not understand about this card is why it appears as the first World Series card on the checklist. What does this mean? Will there be other World Series cards? I wish I had a shelf full of perfectly organized Topps Baseball sets to consult on this question - how have other Topps Baseball sets handled this, of which World Series card goes where on the checklist. All I can note here is - I will be looking into that particular bit of baseball card trivia when I read about other World Series in other sets of Topps Baseball.

Where’d the egg hatch? The San Francisco Giants were organized in 1883 as the New York Gothams, only becoming the Giants in 1886.

How about the migrations? One can only imagine what it must have been like to be a huge baseball fan in New York in the 1950s, when not one but two NYC teams moved to California; the Giants became the San Francisco Giants in 1958.

Don’t flip over real Turtles.

I noted on the first post-season card back in this set how there often seems to be only a 50-50 chance that the hero of the card back is the hero on the front of the card. So it is nice that Sergio Romo makes the cut here; Closing games in the World Series is a definite feat of skill. But there will be many more Giants-in-the-Postseason cards to come in the set, so I think the other Giants mentioned will be OK.

But overall, given how it must often be a four letter word spelled w-o-r-k to create baseball card backs, I often wonder why the post-season cards can feel so phoned in, quite often. A line score reveals so very little about a baseball game, compared to a box score, or even just two paragraphs of easy to compose text, rather than this short one. 

Bling That Shell Of all the parallels of the 2013 Topps Baseball set, I think there is only one that is just exactly perfect enough for each card, such that complete binder pages of just that parallel would actually look nice. And that is the classic Topps Gold. So for such a key card in the set, it feels like the right choice:

#42 - 2012 ALDS

What’s that Turtle doin’? Just celebratin' a playoff victory here. I mean, it's not like a post-season card is ever going to show something not all that happy.

I don't think cards for the playoffs have been all that common in Topps Baseball sets. Some years yes, most years no. Far more years probably include World Series cards, but only those.

But overall, I would have to think cards for the Division Series, or the Wild Card, would have to have been made much less often than for the League Championship Series.

I hesitated on how to label this post. The Topps checklist lists it as "Detroit Tigers®" but that doesn't feel right to me, even though the Tigers are my favorite team. There are 2 teams in every series of course. The Tigers won the series, so that is plenty of satisfaction for them already. I also think labeling such a card by the actual series will be more useful later, perhaps, when I'm really old and forgetful.

On this particular card, the Series One cover player, Prince Fielder, takes center stage. The true hero of that particular game is on the left side of the card, being hugged by some other team-mates. Fielder went 1-for-5 in this game, with an RBI, from just a single, and contributed little in the rest of the series. Tigers fans never had much to celebrate about Fielder in October.

So it goes with "celebration" cards, which seem to have about a 50% shot at accurately depicting the player that did the most to create the celebration. On some such cards, Topps accurately shows off a game hero. On others, not so much. That's about how I feel about these types of cards - once in a while, I think "heck yeah" - other times, not so much.

Uniform Hero? Topps finesses this checklist decision quite well, with the first non-player card in the set. Otherwise, they would have only one choice of player to place here: Mariano Rivera. 

Clearly, some star players have to be held every year for inclusion in Series Two, which is where we will eventually find Rivera. Still, the decision seems a little puzzling, given all the All-Star power assembled in the first 1/13th of the checklist, overall. 

It has always seemed to me that everyone around MLB was always quite contented that the last player to wear #42 was an obvious future Hall of Famer, so I will always be a little bemused that Topps didn't show off the uniform<>checklist connection a little extra explicitly, right here.

Where’d the egg hatch? The Detroit Tigers first played a baseball game in 1894. In 1901, their league, the American League, declared itself a "Major" league, and their stats and history are recorded as part of MLB from that year forward.

How about the migrations? The Tigers have not had any franchise moves since that 1901 debut. They have gone 4-7 in the World Series, with their last victory coming in 1984.

Don’t flip over real Turtles.

On this side of the card, Topps does celebrate the true hero of the series for the Tigers, including some thoughts and stats for his Win in Game 1 as well. 

I have never seen the point of printing a line score of a game on the back of a baseball card.

A complete box score would be far more entertaining, and given 21st Century type sizes and printing technology, I have always felt one could be printed on a card rather easily. Plus, the Topps card back writer could take a break, and let the box score do all the work.

Bling That Shell I didn't really find access to the Orange parallels all that early in this project. I was mostly avoiding single card purchases on eBay, as with $3 shipping on every card, I would never be able to get many cards that way for this project. Over time, I found non-eBay sellers where I could purchase multiple cards for a single shipping charge. When I found a seller with a couple dozen of the /230 Factory Set Orange parallels that I could use, I pounced on this one: