The Ivy Collection - 2013 Topps #296 Didi Gregorius

I recently launched a new series I'm calling The Ivy Collection. I probably have hundreds, if not thousands of Cubs cards that feature ivy in the background, but this separate collection will focus more on visiting teams. You can find a link to the cards I already have in my collection in the right hand side bar under the Niches heading. If you come across any I don’t have, I’d love to add them to my collection.

For the past few years, Topps has used Getty Images as a source for their photographs, making today's card a lot easier to place than the older cards I've already showcased. Rather than jump right into Getty though, I decided to try to find the game using context clues first.

From the front, we know that the Reds played the Cubs at Wrigley Field. The ivy is green and full. As a Cubs fan, I know that's Darwin Barney sliding in to break up the double play.

We can also see from the back that Gregorius played in 129 minor league games in 2012, not leaving much room for time in the Majors. The last sentence in the blurb also mentions him being a September call up.

My first stop is over at his Baseball-Reference page.

From there, I see that he played in just eight games in 2012.

And luckily for me, just one of those eight games came against the Cubs and at Wrigley. The next step was to find when Barney got on base.

Darwin Barney grounded out in the 1st, 3rd and 5th before finally reaching on a single in the 7th. But as you can see by the inning summary above, he made it to third base on a single by Anthony Rizzo. Not a potential double play ball.

In the 9th, Barney followed up a David DeJesus single with another of his own. This time however, Rizzo grounded to second baseman Henry Rodriguez (not the former Cubs outfielder nor the former Cubs pitcher with the same name) who fed the ball to Gregorius to force Barney out at second. Rizzo was safe at first, thus no double play.

Maybe that's why Jeff of 2x3 Heroes sent me this card. He knew it didn't belong in his double play collection. Or it was a duplicate. Potayto. Pototto.

One more thing I wondered though, was if Gregorius even made an attempt at Rizzo. I would think that the fact that Gregorius still had the ball in hand and Barney is already underneath him, he would have just eaten it. Usually, the runner is still a few feet away from the bag when the relay is made.

Let's take a look at the original Getty Image.

See? Barney is already at the base and Gregorius still has the ball. Unless Barney was already on the move, which is possible with a first and third, no outs situation, there's probably no shot at Rizzo.

Anthony Rizzo isn't a Rickey Henderson type guy on the base paths, but he's no Cecil Fielder either.

But as you can see by the picture above from later in the sequence, Gregorius did make the throw. I guess since they were sacrificing the run anyway, he may as well try to turn two.

Well I didn't stop there, I found the video too. I tried to embed it, but it wasn't working so here's the link via MLB.com

Rizzo's RBI Fielder's Choice

Sorry if an ad comes up, nothing I could do there. That was closer than it should have been at first. Just saying.

Thanks again, Jeff for the card!

The Ivy Collection - 1989 Upper Deck #55 Paul Runge

I recently launched a new series I'm calling The Ivy Collection. I probably have hundreds, if not thousands of Cubs cards that feature ivy in the background, but this separate collection will focus more on visiting teams. You can find a link to the cards I already have in my collection in the right hand side bar under the Niches heading. If you come across any I don’t have, I’d love to add them to my collection.

I came home to a yellow bubble mailer Thursday evening and to my surprise, it was from PWE aficionado Jeff of 2x3 Heores fame. I'll go through the two team bags a little more thoroughly in a later post (spoiler: lots of Cubs, horizontals and ivys!) but one jumped out at me right away.

Only when I came to write this post that I noticed the other two cards I've written up were also from 1989 Upper Deck. Oh well! I wonder if Upper Deck had a Chicago based photographer?

1989 Upper Deck #55 Paul Runge

Back in 1988, the Braves were oddly in the National West while the more westerly Cubs were in the NL East. Each team hosted two series for a total of twelve games. Despite playing in a career high 52 games in 1988, Paul Runge would only play in three of the six games at Wrigley Field. 

Luckily for me, not only does this card show the ivy, but it also features a mustachioed Cubs cameo by Rafael Palmeiro. Hopefully, a play at second will help me narrow this down even further. How often can that happen? What are the possibilties? A stolen base? A double? A fielder's choice/breaking up a double play? It doesn't look like Runge got off a throw to complete a double play and is applying a tag so probably one of the first two options.

On May 24, 1988 the Cubs and Braves split a double header. The Braves took the first game 3-0 while the Cubs won the second 2-1. Runge played in game two. Let's see how Palmeiro did.

So Palmeiro went 3-4 and I didn’t include it in the screenshot but two of those hits were doubles. Uh-oh. First game and we’re already running into trouble! Let’s look a little closer and see if any would have resulted in a play at second.

Leading off the second, Palmeiro doubled to short left center. That could easily mean a play at second with no other runners to worry about. In the 3rd inning Palmeiro grounded out. In the 6^th…

…he doubled to third base. That’s a phrase you don’t hear very often. Sounds like a hustle play where he just kept running on a fly ball that didn't get caught. Still could have resulted in a play at second.

In the 8^th inning, Palmeiro singled which was followed up with a double play ball off the bat of Vance Law. But as I said, it looks like Runge was applying a tag, not trying to make a throw to first so I’m going to rule this one out as a possibility.

Runge got the start the next day (May 25, 1988) as well but Palmeiro went 0-3 with a sacrifice.

Fast forward all the way into August and the Braves return to Wrigley. Runge and Palmeiro both played in the August 21, 1998 game.

Palmeiro went 1-3 with a walk and a stolen base. Sounds like at least one play at second.

Palmeiro flew out in the second but singled in the fourth.

But the next batter single as well and Palmeiro went from first to third, so no play at second.

In the bottom of the 6^th, Palmeiro walked and stole second base. Definitely a play at second kind of thing. His last plate appearance was a lineout to left field.

So we have three possible plays in two different games. In the past, I’ve been able to use the ivy in the background to justify an early season vs late season decision. However, this time, late May ivy can be just as lush as August. They were all day games (even game 2 of the double header) so that’s no help. There’s got to be something to help make the choice between a double and a stolen base.

Some of you may have caught this right away, but I tried to slow play it for dramatic effect. A closer look at the card gets you this:

Palmeiro is holding his batting gloves. I’ve never seen a player take off his batting gloves while running out a double which leads me to believe that this photo was taken in the bottom of the 6^th inning on August 21, 1988. Final answer.

And since I’ve made a habit of showing the backs of these, here’s the one for this card.

D’oh! Another ivy shot!

He’s wearing a different jersey than the front so I thought I could rule out the August 21^st game but then I remembered this was before the “alternate jersey” era. Back then teams had Home jerseys and they had Away jerseys. Only very rarely did they have a throwback jersey, and not that I can recall, an alternate jersey.

I don’t know Braves uniforms very well but I’m guessing this is a warmup jersey? If so, this could be any of the three games at Wrigley I previously mentioned. In fact, if it was just pre-game warmups, it could be from before any of the six games that the Braves played at Wrigley. Everybody warms up, right?

Still, this is great card that double dips into the niche collection. Thanks, Jeff! And as I said, I'll get back to the package after I scan more this weekend.

On a final note, Paul Runge did not retire and become the umpire with the same name like I may or may not have thought as a kid. The umpire Paul Runge was actually around long before the ballplayer Runge. Back then, I thought former players could become umpires just as they became coaches or broadcasters. Not that they can’t, but its still funny when I remember that.

The Ivy Collection - 1989 Upper Deck #194 Rick Reuschel

I recently launched a new series I'm calling The Ivy Collection. I probably have hundreds, if not thousands of Cubs cards that feature ivy in the background, but this separate collection will focus more on visiting teams. You can find a link to the cards I already have in my collection in the right hand side bar under the Niches heading. If you come across any I don’t have, I’d love to add them to my collection.

Today I'm dipping back into the 1989 Upper Deck pool with this Rick Reuschel (#194). As a Cubs fan, I hated the 1989 San Francisco Giants. Will Clark. Kevin Mitchell. Matt Williams. And of course, former Cub, Big Daddy Rick Reuschel.

In 1988, when the photo for the front of this card was presumably taken, Reuschel started four games against the Cubs, two at Wrigley.

As you can see, not only did the Giants win all four games, but Reuschel would have four of what would become known as quality starts and get the win each time. Run support isn't just the plight of today's Cubs pitcher (I'm looking at you, Jeff Samardzija) as the Cubs scored just 8 runs in those four games.

As for the two games at Wrigley, the ivy in the photo is a little too full for an early May game, which leaves the July 19th affair.

Reuschel faced the minimum number of batters through six innings by giving up only one walk in the second but inducing a double play to get out of it.

The Cubs broke up the no-hitter in the 7th with back to back singles and a double play ball of the bat of Mark Grace plated the only Cubs run.

The only other real trouble Reuschel ran into came in the 9th when he was pulled after again giving up a pair of leadoff singles. But the Giants bullpen held up and Reuschel got the win.

The Cubs are now 0-2 (with Sutcliffe as the opposing pitcher both times). Hopefully the next one can turn this around.

The Ivy Collection - 1989 Upper Deck #94 Tim Leary

It’s been a few weeks since I last brought up an ivy card. I have a few in the bank now, so I’m going to go ahead and launch a new series I’ll call, simply enough, The Ivy Collection. I probably have hundreds, if not thousands of Cubs cards that feature ivy in the background, but this separate collection will focus more on visiting teams. You can find a link to the cards I already have in my collection in the right hand side bar under the Niches heading. If you come across any I don’t have, I’d love to add them to my collection.

Because of its price point, I didn’t buy a lot of 1989 Upper Deck as a kid. This Tim Leary card from that set must have come from a repack over the last year or so.

My first stop with this card is over at Baseball-Reference.com. This being a 1989 card, I’m working under the assumption that the photo used on the card came from 1988 so I pulled up Tim Leary’s game log for that season. After sorting by opponent, I found three games that Leary pitched against the Cubs in 1988.

Fortunately for me, Leary only pitched once at Wrigley that year. Unfortunately for the Cubs, Leary got the win after pitching seven scoreless innings. There’s no way for me to know which one of the 94 pitches Leary threw that day this photo shows but I didn't want that to be the end of the story.

Most of you know that the Dodgers ended up winning the World Series in 1988. But aside from Dodgers fans, I think most people associate Orel Hershiser, Kirk Gibson and maybe Fernando Valenzuela with that team. I do anyway. But Leary ended up with 17 Wins that season. And the NL Silver Slugger for Pitchers after batting .269 with three doubles and 9 RBIs.

And to put this 1-0 win over the Cubs in perspective, look at the Cubs lineup that day.

In 1988, the Cubs sent six players to the All-Star game, including five that played in this game (Greg Maddux was the 6^th). Ten of the eleven Cubs that played that day were an All-Star at some point in their careers and went to a collective 37 All-Star games.

Dunston – 2x All-Star (including that year)

Palmeiro – 4x All-Star (including that year)

Dawson – 8x All-Star (including that year)

Sandberg – 10x All-Star (including that year)

Grace – 3x All-Star

Law – 1x All-Star (including that year)

Davis – 2x All-Star

Martinez – not an All-Star but had a 16 year MLB career

Sutcliffe – 3x All-Star

Sundberg – 3x All-Star

Mumphrey – 1x All-Star

The managerial matchup of Don Zimmer and Tommy Lasorda combined for 367* years of MLB experience.

Cubs starting pitcher Rick Sutcliffe went the distance himself and only gave up the only run of the game early in the second inning.

Like most pitchers’ duels that don't involve a no-hitter or playoffs, this was probably a snoozefest at the time. Hopefully I added a little fun perspective to an otherwise junk wax card.

*estimated

2013 Topps Series 2 Nate Schierholtz

A few weeks ago, I did my my brief writeup on Nate Schierholtz because I got my ATCRCS card signed. But today I have the breakdown of his 2013 Topps Series 2 card.

The zoom Topps has used recently has been discussed around the blogosphere and I'm ok with it, within reason. In general, I'm not a fan of cropping off appendages. Well, arms anyway. The bottom crop on this card is acceptable. But hacking off Schierholtz's right arm is not.

Let's take a look at the source photo to see what's going on.




Photo by G(reg) Fiume (courtesy of Getty Images)

 Gasp! It's worse than I thought! Phillie red everywhere!!! Just kidding. With the turnover the Cubs have had in recent seasons, it's perfectly logical that Topps was going to have to photoshop some players into Cubbie blue. I'm no expert on the Cubs uniforms but I probably wouldn't have even done a double take if I wasn't taking a closer look at these cards. And knowing he was an offseason pickup and Topps wouldn't have had time to get him in a Cubs uniform, even for Series 2.

But back to the arm. I'll concede that zooming out to include the arm probably wouldn't have looked better. It might be a little nitpicky, but that being the case, I probably would have chosen a different photo.

The caption on the Getty website goes so far as to tell me that this is a single in the third inning against the Nationals on August 1, 2012. Since this was a Phillies game, I'm not even going bother doing any further research.

Ok, I lied. I was bored. Schierholtz ended up stranded on third but ended the day going 2-5. His other hit was a 5th inning home run solo home run that ended up being the game winning run in a 3-2 victory over the Nats. Prior to the single, Jimmy Rollins hit a solo home run. Also prior to Schierholtz's home run, Rollins led off the 5th with his second home run of the game. Three Phillies runs, three solo home runs.

The back of the card is pretty standard. i did find it interesting that Schierholtz was both a "part-timer elsewhere" and also managed to be among the "NL top five in right field assists" twice. I'll also take it as a not-so-subtle dig that he can start for the Cubs but was a part-timer elsewhere for six years. Ugh.

2013 Topps Series 2 Josh Vitters

Topps had high hopes for Josh Vitters going into 2013. He had an autograph card in Opening Day and was one of the three Cubs featured in the Spring Fever promotion which included a base card and another autograph. He also had Million Dollar Chase autograph, as well as a wrapper redemption autograph. Whew! I wouldn't even doubt that I'm even missing a few more.

I think I was putting this one off, waiting for Vitters to make his 2013 Cubs debut. That never happened, so here we are. Aside from that, the card itself is pretty good. Tight, well cropped shot. You got some eyeblack and an interesting, though not completely embarrassing tongue biting facial expression. 

Photo by Brian D. Kersey (courtesy of Getty Images)

The caption for the photo only states that Vitters is making a throw to first base on August 31, 2012 against the San Francisco Giants. Not much help narrowing down the play but at least I have the game. How many plays does a third baseman make in a game anyway?

In the top of the second, Vitters started a double play off the bat of Hunter Pence but threw to second, so not that play. Joaquin Arias led off the seventh inning with a groundout to Vitters. And in the bottom of the 8th, with runners on first and third with 1 out, Hunter Pence hit a weak ground ball to third base again and was out at first.

Based on the sequence of photos also available from that game, I'm going to say this is the Arias ground ball from the 7th inning. Another photo shows Vitters on the infield grass throwing the ball to first base, something more indicative of a weak ground ball. And you'll notice the Getty Image numbers is several hundred numbers higher leading me to believe it came later in the game.

Same photographer, different location.

The Cubs would win 6-4 for their 51st win of the season.

The back of the card shows a lot of minor league experience for Vitters. You can see why he got the call with the numbers he put up in Iowa in 2012, but unfortunately, it didn't quite translate to the Major League level. We'll see what 2014 brings the Cubs at third base. Maybe Vitters will get his 100th career at-bat.

It had to be hard for the guys at Topps to pick Career Chase stats for guys with a just a handful of games worth of experience. I don't think Tris Speaker has anything to worry about with his doubles record.

2013 Topps Update Scott Hairston

Back-to-back Scott Hairston posts. Don't worry, there's a method to the madness.

Yesterday, I showed off my Hairston ATCRCS card, but I'm still trying to figure out which Series 2 Cubs cards I need to break down before I get to the Update cards. When I came across another card from my parallel pickup the other day, I knew I wanted to look into it as well.

You got Hairston's history with the team yesterday, so today, let's just look at the card.

These red teams look pretty good framed in the Wal-Mart blue. I would have preferred Hairston zoomed out just a smidge more to get some of the bat in there, rather than cut off part of his hands, but otherwise nice selection on the photo.

I like how it appears that the older fan underneath Hairston's left elbow looks like he's wearing a Smurf hat.

I'm no expert on the Nationals uniforms but I think it looks pretty good. And I say that because this is actually Hairston's Halloween costume....

 



Photo by Scott Cunningham (courtesy of Getty Images)



It started off as a Cubs uniform! I'm a little dissapointed to not get a Hairston Cubs card when it was very possible (more on that when I eventually get to the Update Cubs). No Series 1 (set released before Hairston signed), no Factory Team set (probably same issue), no Series 2 (best option) and now, no Update.

So how about the game? If Hairston was a Cub, it had to have been fairly early in the season since he was traded in early July. The Cubs were still in it back then, right?

The caption on Getty Images dates the photo back to April 7, 2013 in a game against the Atlanta Braves. A quick search on Baseball Reference gives me the boxscore.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/ATL/ATL201304070.shtml

Scrolling down and it looks like Hairston pinch hit for a pinch hitter. Say what?

Well with two outs in the top of the 7th, Braves starter Tim Hudson walked third baseman Luis Valbuena. The next batter, second baseman Alberto Gonzalez (remember when Darwin Barney was hurt at the beginning of the year?) popped up to his Braves counterpart but it resulted in an E4.

Now with runners on 2nd and 3rd, Steve Clevenger is announced as a pinch hitter for Cubs relief pitcher, Michael Bowden. The Braves make a move on their end, relieving Tim Hudson with Luis Avilan. The Cubs pull Clevenger back and send in Scott Hairston instead.

Hairston proceeded to hit a ground ball to third baseman Juan Francisco who threw to second to get the force out and end the inning. With a 2-0 count and no other at bats in the game, this photo appears to have been taken during that ground ball.

The Cubs would lose the game 5-1 and drop to 2-4 on the young season.

I forgot how fun these were to do. I can't wait to dive into the rest of the actual Cubs cards!