Some 2014 Opening Day on Opening Day 2014

Thanks to those who answered my last call for the Fantasy Draft yesterday. Who's ready for some baseball?

And speaking of last calls, I'm making one more for the contest I announced last week since the entries have pretty much stopped. I'll announce a winner tomorrow so the deadline is midnight tonight, EST. Just leave a comment on this post if you haven't already.

In anticipation of sitting through two drafts and watching a little NCAA wrestling (basketball? pffffft) on ESPN last night, I hit my local red big box store on my way home from work. Unlike earlier in the week when I only walked away with a repack, this time they finally had the Heritage, Donruss and Opening Day.

But I'm already over the first two and will only be looking to add Cubs from those sets to my collection (or any horizontal and ivy cards). Oh, and if somebody has a spare Ryne Sandberg card from Heritage, I'm looking for one of those, too! Apparently he's a little more worthy than the Cubs new manager, Rick Renteria as Wrigley Wax pointed out this morning with a great post.

As you may have guessed by the title, I did in fact pick up some 2014 Opening Day, two blasters to be exact. I know the complaints about it being mostly a rehash of the flagship Series 1, but for the price point and the stuff that is new, I'm a fan.

When people talk about kids being priced out of the hobby, I think about when I was a kid and there were really only three sets. And then Score. And finally Upper Deck, for a buck a pack (those were the days), was going to price kids out of the hobby. For some of you, there was just one brand. Why do today's kids need more than that? I think Opening Day is a perfectly good option to go along with other brands like Triple Play.

I've collected the base set since 2010 and the Cubs from previous seasons, but never really collected the inserts aside from the Cubs. After starting the 2014 Topps Blog though, I think I'm going to chase the mascots and break them down as well since they share the same basic design template. These were inserted at a 1:5 ratio and I got the four I should have gotten. The missing fourth was an Orioles Bird duplicate that is available for trade. Next year, this set should grow by one as Clark, the Cubs new mascot will probably get a card.

The Between Innings inserts are a little tougher to pull at a 1:36 ratio. If they weren't, I might consider building this set too. I don't know much about stadium entertainment, so I think it would interesting to learn a little more about them by breaking these cards down. Maybe when the prices come down a bit and I've run out of mascots.

I wasn't sure how I felt about these Breaking Out cards. They're a little gaudy for my taste, but I can see how others would like them. The Harper was the first one I pulled so I thought it was a young guys set until I pulled the other three, more established stars. I didn't scan the backs of these and I wish I did because that is what sold me on this set. The blurb ties in the Opening Day theme by recapping the first Opening Day game by the player depicted. Last year, Harper homered twice in a 2-0 victory over the Marlins on Opening Day. Jay Bruce had a double and threw David Wright out at the plate in 2009. You get the point. 

Long time readers of the blog may recall my custom PASS design. The earliest cards from that set featured Cubs players showing emotion like those in this Fired Up set. I love the idea behind the set but the Fired Up graphic is engulfed in flames and too difficult to read. Great idea for an insert, mediocre on the execution. In case you can't read the names, I pulled Jason Kipnis, Jon Lester, Matt Kemp and Sergio Romo. 

I probably should have taken a picture f these 3D Opening Day Stars but I scanned them instead. I could take or leave this set as it's been done before. And by that, I mean if there were Cubs, I would take them and leave the rest. I ended up with five of these when I was only supposed to get four, but pulled a duplicate of the Carlos Gonzalez. All of them are available except for the Bryce, which goes to my son.

Another set that was pretty cool when it came out is Superstar Celebrations but with the addition of similar themed cards in the flagship base set, these may have run their course. Unless, by chance there's a Cub and I'd add that one. All of these are available, including a duplicate of the Justin Upton.

The Billy Butler is earmarked for Chris from View from the Skybox as he collects Royals and blue bordered cards but the rest of these blue parallels are available until he speaks up for them.

And finally, we get to the base cards. I'll tease and say there are some good looking Series 2 sneak previews but I haven't had a chance to scan all of them yet. I did get extremely lucky and managed to avoid any duplicates here and am more than halfway to completing the set. I probably won't take any chances on another blaster so I'll put up a want list soon.

I haven't even looked at the full checklist yet so I don't know if the Cubs have any Series 2 previews. Of the two Cubs I pulled, both were already in Series 1.

And I think that wraps up my card spending until the big card show in a couple of weeks. I probably should have saved my $20 for that but with my fantasy drafts and the NCAA wrestling semi-finals, it was a pretty good Friday night.

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.

Nate Schierholtz

I had another post ready to go today but because of yesterday's game, I decided to bump Nate Schierholtz up in the rotation. Yesterday (Sunday) held a mostly meaningless rubber match between the lowly Padres and the even lowlier Cubs.

I don't know if all of the Cubs Sunday games have been televised on WGN this year but it is something I look forward to every week and I've seen most of them. I get up early, try to get my day's chores out of the way so I can relax and just watch the game. Yesterday was no different, except for the length. And when it came time to pick up my son from baseball practice, my wife graciously volunteered to do it since it was going in to extra innings. Nice!

It started with a not-so-veiled-threat before the game from Padres starter and former Cubs pitcher Andrew Cashner that he was going to "shove it up the Cubs' @sses" for trading him (for Anthony Rizzo if you don't recall). And I'm not against that at all. Stick it to your former team. A good underdog story if you can back it up. And for what it is worth, Cashner pitched 7 innings of shutout, 2-hit, 1-walk baseball, effectively following through on his threat.

But on the other side, Chris Rusin pitched an equally effective 6.1 innings of shutout, 3-hit, 4-walk baseball. In fact, neither team scored until the 13th inning which is when the game got really weird and Nate Schierholtz comes into play.

With the bases loaded and no outs in the top of the 13th, Schierholtz hits a ground ball to the first baseman. It looks to be a pretty sure 3-2-3 double play. But Schierholtz stumbled out of the batter's box (later saying he tweaked his back on the swing). After he got up and took off for first, probably lost in thought, frustrated about the turn of events, Schierholtz took the throw from first basemen Jesus Guzman off the bill off his helmet  and his shoulder, sending the ball off towards third base. The runner from third scores and Schierholtz is safe at first.

Everybody was safe.

Something that usually happens to the Cubs was suddenly happening for the Cubs. The Cubs only manage one more run before the third out, but hey, a two run lead in an otherwise scoreless game and your closer coming in will probably hold up, right? A 96% win expectancy at this point according to the boxscore on baseball-reference.

Well, it's the Cubs so I'm sure you know the answer to that. So the Padres scored two in the bottom of the inning to tie it and sure enough, go on to win in 15.

But the whole point of this story is Nate Schierholtz. I wasn't sold on him when the Cubs first picked him up but he has grown on me. And the ability to take a thrown baseball to the face has nothing to do with it. I believe he is tops among Cubs starters in batting average and only behind Anthony Rizzo in RBIs (if you new school Sabermetric fans can trust those outdated stats).

The ATCRCS card above was signed during the Seattle series and I'm glad to have another off the list. For those of you who might remember, I also got my 2013 custom team set card signed msyelf when the Cubs came to DC in May.

Schierholtz stood in the rain signing for the few people there that day, definitely earning my respect then. Hopefully he's just shaken up and nothing is broken or strained or pulled.

Its not much of a siganture, but with a name like Schierholtz, I'd probably scribble the last part too.

The Outfield

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that the Cubs had the same record through the same amount of games as last year. Since we all know how poorly last year ended, I was not impressed. The run differential was a bit better which is a good sign.

 

So how are they faring 20-ish games later? Through 51 games, the Cubs are 21-30 and in 4th place in the NL Central. That doesn't sound great, but compared to last year, it's a pretty big improvement.

 

At the 51 game mark last year, they were 18-33, only slightly better but they didn't get their 20th win until their 60th game. The run differential is also markedly better, with the Cubs scoring 206 runs and allowing 205. It doesn't seem possible, but it says so on the internet, so it must be true. Despite a six game losing streak last week, a pair of White Sox drubbings helped move the Cubs back into the positive.

 

With that said, today I have a quintet of cards featuring players from the Cubs outfield this season. There have been a few others in the rotation as well but they'll come later.

 

 

 

Alfonso Soriano has already matched his stolen base total from last year with 6, which leads the team. Even with the knowledge he is a former 40/40 guy, who would have thought?

 

David DeJesus helping out with his glove and the bat. No errors this season, tied for the team lead in runs and second among starters in batting average.

 

You;ve seen the next three already because I showed off signed versions earlier this month but here they are again.

 

Nate Schierholtz is the team leader among starters in batting average and second in doubles.

 

 

Despite limited appearances off the bench, Julio Borbon is tied for second in stolen bases on the team. In a 7-0 victory over the White Sox the other day, Borbon hit his first home run since 2010.

 

Another right fielder in the platoon, Hairston hasn't had quite as much success as the others. He was a nice enough guy when I got his autograph at the Cubs/Nats game but he still has some big shoes to fill with being Tony Campana's replacement.

 

Cubs @ Nats 5/11/2013

This is going to be a long one!

The Cubs usually only play one home and one away series against the Washington Nationals over the course of the season. The past few seasons, it's been in the second half, but this year, they were here this past weekend. I occasionally work on weekends so when I saw the schedule released, I made sure I wouldn't be working this weekend and would hopefully be able to catch all 3 games.

My older son had a baseball game on Thursday evening and, as usual, played centerfield. He is a very aggressive player, not afraid to put his body on the line, diving, sliding, you name it. On a ball hit into the gap, he was running full speed to his left (glove side) and laid out to make a catch, arm fully extended. He landed hard on his side/back. He bounced. And didn't get up. That's how I knew he was hurt because if he caught it, he would have gotten the ball back in quickly with a runner on. And if he didn't get catch it, he would have been scrambling to recover it. Just the type of intense player he is.

After taking him to the emergency room and getting x-rays, we were told he had fractured his scapula (shoulder blade). Apparently this is pretty rare and normally reserved for such forces as, you know, being thrown from a car in a car accident. When they called the orthopedic surgeon, he said, "Playing baseball? You mean he fractured his clavicle?" Nope, his scapula. The doctors were impressed with this oddball injury. Unfortunately, there isn't much to do except have a sling and some pain meds. His baseball season is effectively over as it takes about 6-8 weeks to heal. Needless to say, we ended up skipping the Cubs game on Friday night.

Come Saturday morning, he was thankfully feeling much better. I made 2013 team set cards for 24 of the players on the 25 man roster. The lone exception was Ryan Sweeney, a very recent callup. I couldn't find a Cubs photo for anything. We made the trip into DC, parking the car around noon for a 4:05 game. We got to the player's entrance only to find out from the other autograph seekers that we had missed most of the team already, including just barely Jeff Samardzija and Carlos Marmol. Dang!

We hung around a little bit longer and saw Scott Hairston pull up in a cab. The cab stayed out on the street rather than pulling into the player's parking lot like most I have seen before. Hairston signed as he walked to the door. As far as I saw, he signed everything for everyone, including one for each of my sons and me.

Shortly after that, Starlin Castro and Alfonso Soriano pulled up in a cab but this time, the cab went into the player's lot. Neither player stopped. Oh well. We waited a little longer before deciding to walk around a bit. We found a street vendor, got some hot dogs and drinks and went to the main entrance to wait to be let in. At Nats Park, they let you into the outfield stands about two and a half hours before the game starts to watch the Nats take batting practice. Once they are finished and while the visiting team takes BP, they open up the rest of the stadium to the crowd.

During Nats BP, a guy 3 rows behind me and about 3-4 seats to my left caught a home run ball with his bare hands. There wasn't anybody else near us so if he hadn't caught it, we might have been able to scramble for it. But the very next pitch, before he was even done celebrating, was hit to the seat right next to him, smacking his wife on the top of the head. Nobody saw it coming because they were looking at/applauding for the guy who had just caught it, but because they were looking in his direction, everybody saw it happen. There was a loud collective gasp and she was escorted away by an usher. I almost feel as bad for the guy as I do the girl because he won't be able to bring up catching a BP ball with his bare hands without his wife's story upstaging him!

After the Cubs started BP, we headed towards the Cubs dugout. At Nats Park, they put up 20+ foot high protective netting from the end of the dugout to about 3/4 of the way down the line towards the outfield. This is not very conducive for trying to get autographs as the holes it the netting are only about two inches. Nowhere near big enough to slide a baseball or even a card through to get signed. So if you're not the first person, right up against the dugout, you're probably getting shutout. We made it down to the front row but about 4-5 people away from the dugout.

Nevertheless, when I had an opportunity to call over relief pitcher Michael Bowden, I took it. He came over and said if it would fit through, he'd sign. Now, previously my custom cards were printed out on glossy cardstock and glued to regular cardstock for support and thickness. Last year, I ended up with some dinged corners and edges because of the process that is in person autograph seeking. This time however, I printed out the cards on photo paper and did not apply any backing. I didn't even do the final cut on the card, figuring I could trim away any dinged edges and corners. I was able to half-roll the photo (without creasing it) and slide it through the netting. Awesome!

Bowden signed two of these, but I gave one away to a little Cubs fan who had a ball but no way to get it through the net.

Next up was one of the newer Cubs, Cody Ransom. He said the same thing as Bowden, if it fit, he'd sign. The game was in question most of the day as it had poured the night before and was expected to rain again that evening. He signed two of them just as it started to drizzle but there doesn't appear to be any residual damage.

With batting practice now ending, the field staff came and removed the netting. Unfortunately, they had to clear the first few rows to get the netting down and by the time they finished, most of the Cubs had gone by and into the dugout. It was about 15-20 minutes before game time but we were told we could stay until the National Anthem so we hung out a little bit longer. My older son was able to get closer to the dugout and snagged Dave McKay on my card from last year's team set.

Meanwhile, Julio Borbon came over and signed a few. He asked the first guy why he didn't have any Cubs cards of him yet. For those don't know, Borbon was selected off waivers by the Cubs only about 2-3 weeks ago. I was standing right there next to him so I piped in with "I got one!" Borbon looked at me skeptically before I whipped out this card. He even signed in an optimal place considering he was wearing a blue road uniform.

Shortly after that, Nate Schierholtz signed for a few people including this one:

The guy with one of the best mustaches in baseball right now, Carlos Villanueva signed this one for my son a little bit further down the line.

And finally, Hector Rondon signed a couple of autographs near the dugout and would be the last one we would get before the game.

The game itself was awesome. Edwin Jackson got his first win of the season by helping himself at the platein addition to a strong pitching performance. He got the scoring started with a two out, two run double in the 5th inning. The Cubs tacked on two more and followed that up with 4 more runs in the 6th. Fortunately for the Cubs, it was a rare non-save situation so there was no added stress of bringing in Marmol. Even Shawn Camp lowered his ERA by pitching a scoreless 1.1 innings.

In the 9th inning, with a six run deficit, a lot of the Nats fans were starting to head out. We took advantage of that situation to make our way down towards the dugout in hopes of maybe catching a player or two coming off the field but no such luck. So we headed back out to the players' parking lot.

The players' lot is fenced in so the players have to want to sign if you're going to have any luck getting autographs there. They come out of a door, there's some commotion to figure out who it is (it is getting dark at this point too) and then some yelling to get the players attention as they walk towards their car. We saw most of the Nats players as a lot of them live locally and drive to the park. Some of them came over to the fence to sign autographs, some got into their cars and stopped at the lot entrance and signed from their car window and some just drove past. Most of the Cubs took the bus as the only ones we saw leaving this way were Castro, Soriano and Welington Castillo. They barely acknowledged us with a wave before getting into their awaiting car. The funny thing was a Nats player was blocking the exit by stopping to sign autographs in his truck. Castro, Soriano and Castillo must have have been waiting 5-10 minutes, plenty of time to sign everything for everybody who was still waiting around (maybe 15 of us). But they just sat there on their phones, not rolling down the windows.

Now, I'm not somebody who feels entitled to an autograph. I do it for fun and anything we come away with is a bonus. But I do think they could have made several people very happy by signing autographs when they were stuck there anyway. 

With Sunday being Mother's Day, I decided not to push my luck and we spent the day with my family. The Cubs pulled out a come from behind victory, taking the game and the series, 2-1. So, like last year, no star power from the Cubs but we came away with autographs from 7 different Cubs (6 players, 1 coach) and my sons got a couple of Nats autographs after the game on ticket stubs and cards. I think everytime we go, we learn a couple more things to make it a better experience the next time. This time, we found a place to park for free, just a 5-10 minute walk from the stadium as opposed to the $30 lot that's right across the street.

If you made it through all that, thanks for reading!