#52 - CC Sabathia

What’s that Turtle doin’? I'm not completely sure, but I think this Pitcher is smiling at me. I don't think that is going to be a good thing here at the plate in about one more second.

I have never really noticed that before, about this card, or about CC Sabathia in general. Normally, the intensity of concentration on a baseball player's face while they are busy playing the game of baseball produces a whole range of grimaces of various sorts.

Otherwise, there is not a lot to another well executed zoom-in-on-the-torso-there baseball card. We get a perfect, and authentic, view of CC Sabathia playing baseball.

As with Jonathan Broxton, Sabathia is a big man. I like how the billowing road jersey kind of mentally, for the viewer (the unfortunate batter?), adds to the momentum of the pitch about to be released.

And as with the Broxton card just preceding this on the checklist, one focus drawing the eye is the logo on the glove, for a far more common manufacturer - Nike. This card has no less than 3 Swooshes, the most so far in this set and probably the most overall. It would be hard to imagine finding quad Swooshes on a baseball card, but probably not impossible.

The smallest, most difficult to see Swoosh brings attention to one other small detail - a rubber bracelet on CC's right wrist. A zoom in on that reveals it says the word "LITTLE"; Googling around on the concept then brings one to this image:

NEW YORK, NY - MAY 23: CC Sabathia #52 of the New York Yankees wears a bracelet that reads "Little League" during their game against the Kansas City Royals on May 23, 2012 at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)

This probably connects to Sabathia's long-time involvement with youth baseball in his hometown of Vallejo, CA via his charitable organization the PitCCh In Foundation, and/or his regular work with Little League baseball that has included annual visits to Little League fields and bringing whole teams to MLB games. 

Uniform Hero? CC Sabathia wore #52 for his entire career.

Where’d the egg hatch? Sabathia was drafted in the 1st round in 1998 as the 20th pick by the Cleveland Indians.

How about the migrations? He would then debut with the Indians in 2001 and quickly became a key piece of their starting rotation. In 2008 at the trade deadline, he was traded to Milwaukee with 3 other prospects as a 'rental' in exchange for a young Michael Brantley. It took some time for Brantley's value to be revealed, but many years of his services in Cleveland were probably worth it. If Cleveland's ownership had been willing to re-sign Brantley, one could place even more value on that famous trade.

After leading the Brewers to the playoffs that season (check out his "CG" stat on the card back), he signed, and later re-signed, with the Yankees for the balance of his 19 year career, which included winning the MVP in 2009 among many other highlights.

Don’t flip over real Turtles.

7 League Leader in Italics stats always kind of speak for themselves on the back of a baseball card, particularly the 4 here in the single digits.

Can the Turtle Catch the Rabbit?

CAREER CHASE: With 191 wins, Sabathia is 320 away from Cy Young's all-time record of 511.

Sabathia recently finished his career with 251 Wins, which I think will easily stand among the all-time leaders for the 21st century, at least. And although 300 Ws used to be the gold standard for election to the Hall of Fame, I think there is little doubt we will see CC on the podium in Cooperstown several summers from now.

Subspecies? Placing this card in Opening Day and Chrome wouldn't even be a question for Topps. Although there are no other variants of this card # or the image on it, CC will appear again in the Sea Turtle set.

Bling That Shell Here I will once again have to await collecting results. Changing the Wainwright card to a pleasing, cap-matching black parallel and insisting on using the red Target option for the Chris Sale card has upended the parallels on this page and I am still looking for a just exactly perfect one for this card. I hope to find a Factory Set Orange /230 of this card or the next one in the checklist, a daunting challenge for a player as popular as Sabathia. So I will probably eventually settle for a classic Topps Gold effort here. I hope. 

#25 - Mark Teixeira

What’s that Turtle doin’? Human beings look funny when they are intensely concentrating on something. Baseball cards display this pretty regularly for the Pitchers in the act of pitching, in particular. But zoomed-in-close action shots of a Hitter, just after a swing is completed, reveal the same unexpected expressions as we see on so many Pitcher cards.

For some fairly more well famous examples of the phenomena I am describing, just run "Guitar Face" through Google Images sometime.

And that is basically what we are looking at on this card, for the fifth time in the set already, and probably nowhere close to the last time, either. Who knew that so many Hitters need such a strong exhale, just as their swing ends?

This one shows just a hint of something being still 'in progress,' with Teixeira's right sleeve still billowing out at the very end of his swing. But his very stationary-ness doesn't add much to the  overall pessimistic cast of his expression, and then ours, with regard to what is happening on the field of play. 

More telling is where the swing ended - very short. Probably the swing started 1 or 2 hundredths of a second too late and contact was thus made that much of a sliver of time too early, leading to a chip shot out into the field somewhere, with no possibility of much follow-through on the swing to really drive the ball. It's a game of micro seconds.

This card brings a rare evidence of the Nike corporation in Major League Baseball, twice even. I can't recall this being very common anywhere else in the set, either. I think this will be changing in MLB in 2019 and beyond, however - I saw a headline recently, is all I got for yas on that.

Uniform Hero? The Yankees don't have a uniform # on the front of their unis, but this image manages to display it, anyway.

Where’d the egg hatch? It always strikes me as a tad unfortunate that "Tex" Teixeira didn't remain with Texas, who drafted him in the first round (5th overall) in 2001, after a collegiate career. He had also been drafted out of high school by the Red Sox in the 9th round in 1998.

How about the migrations? With 1.5 seasons left on his first contract, in 2007 the Rangers traded him to Atlanta for an impressive haul of 4 future MLB regulars, including an eventual Rookie-of-the-Year (Neftali Feliz) and a two-time All-Star (Elvis Andrus). With just a half season left on that contract, Atlanta in turn traded him to the Angels for a much less notable return.

Before the 2009 season he would sign with the Yankees and eventually play 8 impressive seasons (really, he was quite good everywhere he played) with them before retiring after the 2016 season.

For me, that classic career arc of earning one of the premiere salaries in the game, but having that salary being paid by the New York Yankees like so many stars before, well, I never really warmed up to Teixeira. I have a hard time considering the Yankees at any given point without considering salary structures in other sports leagues.

These days, I like Mark Teixeira a fair bit more, as I am always happy to luck into finding a television with access to the MLB Network, where he works routinely as an analyst now.

Don’t flip over real Turtles.

As I write this post, just after opening up my first copies of a brand new edition of Topps Baseball cards for 2019, Topps has returned to printing complete career stats on the backs of the cards, as opposed to 5 or so recent years of stats.

Stats like these speak for themselves.

Can the Turtle Catch the Rabbit?

CAREER CHASE: With 338 home runs, Teixeira is 424 away from Barry Bonds' all-time record of 762.

"Tex" hit 26 Home Runs as a Rookie for Texas and reached 43 HRs in just his 3rd season - the kind of career launch that might generate a shot at an all-time record. Being an excellent switch hitter playing in Yankee Stadium later in his career certainly didn't hurt his chances, though ultimately multiple run-ins with the Disabled List probably ended any serious possibility for this one for Teixeira.

He would finish his career with 409 Home Runs, placing him 54th All-Time.

Subspecies? Teixeira appears in both Opening Day and Chrome with this same image, but no other Sea Turtle cards.

Bling That Shell Yet another card where I am quite grateful for the existence of the mass-produced parallels without which a project like this would be impossible, at least for me. For a star player on the Yankees, the Target Red edition is an efficient choice.

#2 - Derek Jeter

What’s that Turtle doin’? This is a tightly cropped image, something that initially seems like we might see a lot of in this set. But overall, photos zoomed in so far as to not see a player's belt are not all that common. Generally this can create a pretty good baseball card, revealing a baseball player face as they truly appear, in the midst of live game action.

Here, Jeter has just completed a swing and is following the flight of the ball, but I can't say he looks all that optimistic as he seems about to let out a downer exhale, rather than taking a breath to start hustlin' down towards First.

Uniform Hero? Yes! Our first card # = uniform #, clearly seen on the card. Seems apropos for a # now retired in Yankee Stadium.

Where’d the egg hatch? Jeter was a first round selection by the Yankees in the 1992 draft, picked 6th overall.

How about the migrations? Derek spent his entire obviously probable Hall of Fame career with the Yankees. 

Don’t flip over real Turtles.

This card back features nearly complete career stats; of note is the .313 career Average going into his next-to-last season. It also includes our first League Leader In Italics, something Jeter was able to do in the Hits category some 13 seasons apart.

Can the Turtle Catch the Rabbit?

CAREER CHASE: With 3,304 hits, Jeter is 952 away from the all-time record of 4,256.

Topps is intimately connected to Major League Baseball, and as long as the All-Time Major League Hits Leader is 100% banned from Major League Baseball, he will be banned from Topps baseball cards too. It's always sunny on Brooklyn's baseball card backs, and Topps has consistently approached the most vexing controversies in the game by completely ignoring them.

But that begs a certain question about the CAREER CHASE tidbit on the previous card, which uses Barry Bonds' Home Run 'record' - is his almost-ban from MLB not on the same level as Pete's? I guess not. Another curiosity is that Barry Bonds did not appear on any baseball card of any type, by any manufacturer, in 2013, and has not appeared on a Topps card since the instant his career ended in 2007. But I guess the card back writers can still print his name on the back of a baseball card all they wish.

Derek Jeter finished his career with 3,465 Hits, 791 short of the all-time MLB record.

Subspecies? A bit surprisingly, there is only one other Derek Jeter Sea Turtle card, a photo variation SSP or 'Super' Short Print, thought to exist in an edition of /25, which was not issued until inserted in packs in the Update set. The cataloging title is #2.2 "With Trophy" but I am not sure which trophy it is, and don't expect to own it any time soon.

I also believe this is the first card from the 2013 set to be re-printed in a newer Topps product - 2017 Archives. As a collector of all things Sea Turtle, I will be picking up a copy of that card, which only adds a stamp to the image on the front.

Bling That Shell This was an easy selection for what is now probably one of the Top 5 most expensive cards in this set. I went with the "Target Red" 'retail' parallel issued in packs at Target stores. I was never able to pull any parallel copy of this card, and had a bit of luck trading for it with a blogger early on in the construction of the All-Parallel set.