Digging into the Past to Look into the Future

When I rather abruptly stopped posting here last August, I had 29 post ideas in my Draft folder here on Blogger. A year later, some of them aren’t real pertinent anymore, while others I would like to revisit.

One example is a feature I called “Where Are They Now?” which focused on Cubs’ minor leaguers that made appearances in the Topps Pro Debut set. Back in 2013 I followed up on the 2010 Cubs team set and last summer I started with the 2011 set before shutting it down.

My recent road trip has me on a big minor league kick and with the Cubs system ranked among the top (even with all the guys that have already been called up and aren't “prospects” anymore), it seems like as good a time as ever. In fact, I may do a quickie post that catches up with everybody from 2010 again too as there have been some MLB promotions within that group. And if you’ve read my trip recap, you’ll know that I have tons of minor leagues team sets I can delve into! 

I thought of starting a new blog to explore such a wide topic, but then I realized I was jumping back in with both feet too quickly. So I’ll take the weekly approach for now and see how it goes. I will probably continue to do the Where Are They Now posts on Sundays like I was before and work on these team sets posts on Wednesdays. I love alliteration so I’m thinking of calling this the Wroad to Wrigley Weekly Wednesday Wrapup. That's a little wordy. Maybe 5Dub for short? Decuple-U?

Here are the stacks of cards I picked up on my road trip that have now all been scanned, front and back. I’ll be working on the cropping and renaming in spurts. That's quit e a few Wednesday posts in my future.

Well over 600 cards!

On this trip I picked up the following team sets:

2015 South Bend Cubs
2015 Midwest League Tops Prospects
2015 Iowa Cubs
2015 Pacific Coast League Top Prospects
2015 Tennessee Smokies
2015 Southern League Top Prospects
2015 Myrtle Beach Pelicans
2015 Carolina League Top Prospects
2014 Daytona Cubs
2014 Kane County Cougars
2014 Tennessee Smokies
2013 Tennessee Smokies
2012 Tennessee Smokies
2011 Tennessee Smokies
2010 Tennessee Smokies
2009 Tennessee Smokies
2009 Pacific Coast League Top Prospects
2008 Tennessee Smokies
1997 Iowa Cubs
1996 Iowa Cubs
1995 Iowa Cubs
1992 Iowa Cubs
1991 Iowa Cubs
1989 Iowa Cubs

With South Bend and Myrtle Beach being first year affiliates, I now have a complete "run" on those team sets. I am only missing 2007 for the Smokies. And I am missing a ton of Iowa Cubs. I may try to fill in some gaps but I am pretty happy with the current runs I have going. I doubt I'll try to go for too many Daytona Cubs as they were the affiliate for a while, but the Kane County Cougars might be easier to track down as a short term team.

If I could just get into my collection to scan my Pro Debut, Heritage Minors, and Bowman Prospects team sets, I’ll have a lot of baseball card source material to work with. Not to mention a great pipeline of Cubs prospects to discuss!