The Shark Goes Green

There's been a lot of talk about the Cubs/Athletics trade that pretty much shocked everybody. It wasn't necessarily the moving parts that were surprising, but where they ended up and how. On paper, it looks like it'll work out for everybody involved, but only time will tell. I'll probably root for Jeff Samardzija (and maybe a little for Jason Hammel, though I hardly knew ye) in the postseason just as I rooted for Mark Grace and the Diamondbacks back in 2001. What else will I do as a Cubs fan in the post season?

It's been a long time since I posted any kind of custom card. There was a brief flirtation with a season long set (that lasted all of of about three games) but I think I only posted the first one. The Cubs themselves have been uninspiring most of the season, though the game I attended at Wrigley Field the other day has had me doodling some designs again.

Not feeling real original, I recreated some of my lost templates to give Samardijza a proper sendoff. I never got my laptop hard drive recovered so these are from scratch and therefore slightly different from the originals.

I started my blog back in 2012 and this design was what I used for my custom team set that year. It's still one of my favorites to make. For the Cubs version, the number was white like the name (see the Anthony Rizzo is my blog header). But I tried to tweak this one to match the way the A's show the number on their jerseys, green number with yellow border. What do you think?

This was another one of my favorites and I even ran a poll/contest to come up with a name for it. The winner was PASS (Please Autograph Sweet Spot) because the signature area resembles the sweet spot of a baseball. One of the runner ups was FiPS or something like that because many of the cards I made showed some kind of fist pumping celebration similar to Samardzija here. For the record, the originals of these were made before Topps did their Fired Up insert set this year!

I don't think I have any Samardzija autographs in my collection yet, and I definitely don't have any of my customs signed by him, so these are just for fun for now. Maybe someday. Although, I should probably get him to at least sign my ATCRCS card before he goes and wins a World Series and gets expensive!

Hector Rondon

While I'm scanning a bunch of cards from my recent lot pickups, I'm dipping into my draft folder. 

Hector Rondon was selected by the Cubs away from the Cleveland Indians in the 2012 Rule V draft. He made his Cubs/MLB debut on April 3, 2013 with a shutout inning of work against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Despite a 9-36 team record in 45 appearances last season, Rondon himself was 2-1 with a pair of holds.

This season, the Cubs are 4-4 in Rondon's appearances in which he has not yet earned a decision. However, he has a 0.93 ERA and a Save in 9.2 innings of work.

These cards were signed last season with a little help from a member on SCN.

Somebody Please Stop Me!

I've always been a National League guy, growing up watching the Cubs on WGN and the Braves on TBS. As a military brat, I could get those games anywhere I moved with basic cable. At that crucial time when I decided which was my favorite, the Cubs of the 1980’s were much better than the Braves. Fast forward to the 1990’s and boy, did I feel like an idiot.

Ten years ago when I moved to Maine, I knew next to nothing about the Boston Red Sox. But as lousy as they were, for almost as long as the Cubs had been, their fans were just as passionate. The New England Patriots were in the midst of winning three Super Bowls in four years but when the Red Sox went on to sweep the Cardinals in the World Series that year after falling behind three games to the Yankees in the ALCS, New England was electric. I have a loose change 5 gallon water jug fund so that I can make sure I’m part of that in Chicago when the time comes. Any longer though and I might be able to afford to take my whole family!

I’'e always been a pretty big reader. That probably goes back to being a military brat, too. Moving all the time, I got to be pretty good at making friends quickly but there’s something to be said for being able to entertain yourself at any given time. One of my favorite baseball books came from that Red Sox World Series win.

Maybe it was because I've always enjoyed Stephen King books. Maybe it was because I experienced that season myself as a guest in Red Sox Nation. Or maybe, it just gave me hope for my Cubbies.

C’mon, Theo!

I saw the book on my shelf recently and thought it might be fun to try to catch lightning in a bottle for my own team. I’m not going to write a book myself (at least I don’t think I will) but over the past two seasons, I kept track of my favorite team by making a custom baseball card for every Cubs player that appeared in a game.

This year, while I still might do that, I thought I would step it up and chronicle the games as well. I lost my newspapery card template when I lost my hard drive but using the Darwin Barney card in my header as a guide, I made a few tweaks and came up with this:

The format will remain relatively the same with each card but I’d have to update the details for each game. I could probably do this 162 times. Plus playoffs, too, right?  I think we may be a season or two away from seeing more Win flags in the upper right corner than Loss flags, but we’ll see.

I’m not sure if I’ll even end up printing these or if they’ll just end up as a file on my hard drive (and backed up elsewhere!).

I even took the time to make a backside to further detail the game. Hopefully, I’ll be able to come up with two to three highlights for each game or else there might be some wasted space.

Who knows, I may lose interest in this by the end of the month when the Cubs are already 10 games below .500, but I’d love to hear some thoughts on this. Either on the idea (how crazy I am) or the execution (thoughts and suggestions on the cards themselves). Thanks!

Going a different way...

After messing around with this new-old template, I began thinking how this might make for a much bigger historically significant set. Like 100 Cubs from 100 Years at Wrigley. Or maybe an All-Time 40-Man Roster set. But in either set, there are a bunch of guys that I probably wouldn't be able to find good, usable, color photos of to be included. Guys like Gabby Hartnett, Cap Anson or Hack Wilson.

So I decided against an official set but here are a few cards I put together just for fun.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again. I grew up with the Boys of Zimmer so this is one of my all-time favorite cards I've made now.

I'm too young to have seen Ron Santo play, but he is definitely under represented in these recent Topps sets that include retired players.

One of the newest Hall of Famers, set to be enshrined in Cooperstown this summer is Greg Maddux. I love the look of thought from the "Professor" in this photo so even though he isn't in a home jersey for a Wrigley Field themed set, I used it anyway.

And finally, I can't go wrong with either of these two Hall of Famers. But before Wrigley Wax gets on my case about using these two overused photos, in my defense, there aren't too many good color photos of these guys!

Maybe I can do a 25-man roster of players from the "color photo" era. Or at the very least, a starting nine. I'll save that list for a future post.

Customs

I've been spending a lot of time on the other blog lately but during my break, I was playing around with some customs. They're all variations of each other and kind of evolved. I don't know if these are contenders for my 2014 Cubs team set or not but I was hoping to get some opinions on them. Thanks.

These started out with grey-ish/metallic backgrounds but they ended up looking more like tombstones with all the fancy stuff.

More of the black and white background, position and jersey number on the bottom.

Less of the black and white background, position and jersey number moved to the top.

Same one as above but the team name and swirly thingy switch places.

Any ideas, critiques, comments are welcome. Thanks!

Leon Durham

As promised yesterday, here are a few more Leon Durham autographs.

I have about two dozen Leon Durham cards in my collection so it may or may not surprise you that I went with two customs and a shared card in addition to yesterday's record instead of a more mainstream Topps/Donruss/Fleer issue.

But until I have one, the obvious choice for me to start will always be an ATCRCS card.

Surprisingly, there weren't a lot of great pictures of Durham to choose from when making this card. But the chain, the hair and the glasses are the epitome of a Leon Durham card from the 80's.

Next up is a color photo I found. Again, not necessarily the best photo but for 30 year old color photos, I'll take what I can get. And the effect I gave the type of custom gives him a creepy stare. Oh well, I still love it!

And not but not least, the shared card. This has to be one of my favorite cards (that I didn't make) in my collection now. 

The Jenkins autograph was obtained almost 2 years ago and I was waiting for a Durham signing to come up. Not only do the autographs look pretty good, but the card itself is in great shape for 32 year old cardboard. I would like to see Topps do something like this again, rather than the league leaders.

The ATCRCS card puts me at 99 shown of here on the blog. Number 100 will be a pretty big fan favorite and Durham's heir to first base!

Chris Volstad

First off, I'd like to thank everybody for the support I've received, both in the loss of my beloved dog, Hope and in my newest endeavor, the 2014 Topps Blog. Although I've never met any of you, this is a wonderful community.

I've got about 30 signed ATCRCS cards from 2013 that didn't end up getting a post so I'm going to try to catch up with these without boring you guys to death.

Chris Volstad is a former first round draft pick (2005) of the Florida Marlins. He was traded to the Cubs for Carlos Zambrano, who had worn out his welcome in Chicago, prior to the 2012 season. He started 21 games for the Cubs that year and had numbers consistent with the teams horrible record. He went 3-12 with a 6.30 ERA. In fact, the Cubs lost his first 9 decisions and Volstad didn't pick up a win until his 14 start. In his 12 losses, the Cubs was were shutout once and held to one run six times. Tough to get the win with that kind of run support, no matter who you are.

Volstad was claimed off waivers following the season by the Kansas City Royals but DFA'd the next month. He then signed on with the Rockies for 2013, where he spent most of the season with their Triple A affiliate, the Colorado Springs Sky Sox. With a little help from an SCN member, I was able to knock out another Cubs short timer on both the ATCRCS card above and the 2012 custom card set below.

He signed a minor league deal with the Angels in November but is currently listed as a pitcher with the Doosan Bears of the Korean Baseball Organization.

Fiddlin' Around

I've been fiddlin' around on Photoshop again trying to find a little inspiration. While I generally try to stay away from blatantly copying other designs, I really liked the Gold Futures inserts from 2012 Topps so I used it as my starting point. The Strasburg below is the base insert but they also came as jersey cards where a swatch would replace the team logo.

As most of you know, I collect Cubs cards and will try to get them signed when I can. So I tweaked the design a bit to make an autograph-able version. But sometimes I give myself too many options and can't make a decision, which is where I hope you come in.

Below are twelve different versions of the same basic card. Three border choices, with four different backgrounds within each. I've added a facsimile signature to show how a blue sharpie might clash or coordinate with each combo. At the end, there is a tiled grid that will give them to you all together instead of having to scroll back and forth.

First up we have the black border, most similar to the original. But the swatch area has been replaced with a signature area and the position and jersey number have moved down to join the name. The left card has a black and white background behind Starlin Castro. The right side maintains the original color background.

Below, the left side tints the background blue, while the right side tints it red (both Cub colors). 

Next up, I tried to differentiate it a little more from the Gold Futures cards by changing the outside border to Cub blue and you'll see a little marbling to give it some texture. The backgrounds are the same as above, black & white, original color, blue tinting and red tinting.

Thinking it might be a little too blue, I also tried a Cub red outside border with the same four backgrounds. I tried changing the gold border to red with the blue borders and blue with the red borders, but I still liked the gold better.

And the tile. If I did this right, you can click on it and it will blow it up to your full screen.

The easiest to do would be the original color background (first column of the grid). The other three backgrounds all require the same amount of effort, more but not horrible. I don't want to taint anybody's opinion so I'll wait to get a little feedback before I let you in on which one(s) I favor.

Because it is so similar to an existing design, this more than likely won't be my 2014 Cubs team set, but I'll probably still use it for random stuff. Thanks for looking!

Sweeping 2013 Under the Rug

With this post I am wrapping up my 2013 custom Cubs team set. This year, I skipped the manager and coaches cards and still managed to come up with 57 cards in the set. That's one for every player who played a game for the Cubs this season (56) and one card commemorating the Cubs lone All-Star (Travis Wood). No Gold Glove card again for Darwin Barney (or Anthony Rizzo, the only other Cubs finalist). And certainly no other major awards that have yet to be announced.

So here are the latest seven players to make their season or Cubs debut in no particular order. Six pitchers and one catcher.

Alberto Cabrera made his MLB debut last season but was called up again this September. He pitched 6 innings over 7 appearances. He did not factor into any decisions but the Cubs were 0-7 in games he appeared in. It's a horrible position to be in to just come off the bench to eat innings.

Brooks Raley also made his debut last year but had two stints with the Cubs this season. And again like Cabrera, Raley ate up some middle innings with no decisions in 9 appearances. The Cubs were 1-8 in those games.

Chang-Yong Lim made his Major League debut this year after playing 12 years in the Korean Baseball Organization and 5 more in the Japan Central League. When he made his Cubs debut, it was the fifth level in the organization he played for this year. Another middle innings guy with no decisions in six appearances.

Let's switch it up a little and go with a catcher. J.C. Boscan signed with the Cubs in the offseason and spent most of 2013 with the Triple-A Iowa Cubs. With Welington Castillo injured towards the end of the season, Boscan spelled backup catched Dioner Navarro a few times and even got a pair of starts. 

Back to pitchers. Justin Grimm came to Cubs in a multiplayer deal with the Rangers for Matt Garza. He went 0-2 in ten appearances but the Cubs went a respectable-for-them 4-6 in those games. Grimm even makes a cameo on the Boscan card above.

Scott Baker signed with the Cubs last November after sitting out most of 2012 to have Tommy John surgery. He should have been ready to this year but had some setbacks. Baker didn't make his Cubs debut until September where pitched 5 innings of shutout, two hit baseball but didn't get a decision as the Cubs offense provided no help in what was ultimately a 3-1 loss to the Brewers.

While Grimm was traded for Matt Garza, Zac Rosscup was traded with Matt Garza from the Tampa Bay Rays prior to the 2011 season. He's been steadily rising through the Cubs ranks since and made his Major League debut on September 3. The Cubs were 0-10 in Rosscup's appearances but he allowed only one run in his 6 2/3 innings pitched for a 1.35 ERA. In those appearances, the Cubs scored 3 runs or less of offensive spport in nine of the ten. Wow.

After that recap, it is probably a little easier to see why it took so long for me to do the writeup on this last group. Ugh. But now it's over and done with. The World Series is over and done with. Bring on 2014!

To see all 57 cards in this set, click here!

First Pitch Friday - Golden Tate

So here I am, getting a start on yesterday's post by branching out and featuring somebody from a different team. If you missed yesterday's post, check it out as I'd like to hear your opinion!

I've mentioned previously that a fellow collector from the Seattle area has been helping me get a few ATCRCS signed for my collection and I have been making him some Mariners cards for some of their new guys. With football underway, I have also been sending him some Seahawks cards for guys that have been appearing at the team Pro Shop for free autograph signings.

Just this past week, Golden Tate was the scheduled guest so I sent a pair of cards (plus extras for him & Tate). Rumor has it Tate really liked them and asked for a business card to have more made. Score! Of the two I sent, one is the first pitch card below:

Tate was drafted out of high school to play baseball by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 42nd round of the 2007 draft. He chose to attend the University of Notre Dame instead and was drafted by the Seattle Seahawks in the 2nd round of the 2010 NFL draft. Not only that, but Tate was also re-drafted in baseball as well, this time by the San Francisco Giants in the 50th round in 2010.

The other card I sent is part of a very basic design that I've been using for the other free Seahawks signings. It's just a matter of changing out the name, position and photo.

I also created a "PASS" custom from his Notre Dame days but I did not send this one in for the signing.

And last but not least, I ran this latest design by the message board on SCN and have come down to these two "finalists" for something new. Let me know what you think.

Inspired

Sorry this is so late but the length got away from me. Hope you packed a snack!

I feel like I've been beating this organization thing into the ground but even with my self-diagnosed OCD, I see a light at the end of the tunnel. After deciding I was going to binder all of my Cubs cards by brand and year, I realized that wasn't really the way I utilized my collection.

While I enjoy flipping through my complete set, autograph and customs binders from time to time, my Cubs cards are a different animal. I tend to focus on one player at time, whether I'm getting autographs or making a custom or doing a blurb here on the blog, so it would be nice to have all the cards of that one player together. Plus, I'm more likely to clean up after myself if I pull a stack of cards out of a box than if I had to replace that same stack back into binder pages.

Space is another concern. Obviously, as my collection grows, I'm running out of space. There are a lot of "team sets" that only consist of one or two or three Cubs. While I don't mind using the fronts and backs of binder pages for a bigger team set, I don't like to mix brands/years so I end up wasting quite a bit of space on a page which uses more pages, which then snowballs into more binders.

So going forward my cards will be alphabetized by the player's last name, oldest to newest, in monster boxes. I'm still on the hunt for brand spanking new boxes which I hope to pick up at the big card show next month. Right now, they're spread out among smaller boxes (although organized) and divided between scanned and unscanned. Can't wait to condense the two and be done! Until there's more...

Since I started this blog almost 18 months ago, scanning any new Cubs cards as they come into my collection has been part of the blogging process. I've also been working on scanning the thousands of Cubs cards I already owned. Scanning both sides of the card, cropping, renaming and copying the card into my photo frame template.

And now tagging. In addition to naming the photo file with the name and year of the set and the players name (1989 Fleer Andre Dawson, for example), I've been adding tags to each file too. If I want to do a post on "double plays" or "Topps All-Star Rookies" or "Ivy" or "League Leader in Italics" etc, I can do a search on my computer to pull up all of the cards that fit that criteria. I can locate all of my relics (jersey, bat or otherwise), autographs, parallels, serial numbered cards in as long as it takes my computer to do the search. Time consuming right now for sure but hopefully when I'm done, it'll be much more practical than thumbing through the binder.

So what is this "inspiration" I mentioned in the title? Like I said, I see a light at the end of the tunnel. So while Night Owl may be streamlining some of his web presence, I may be looking at expanding mine. I've come up with a couple of things that could probably fill my time.

First, I'll focus on making customs. More customs. Better (hopefully) customs. And even branch out into other teams. I may even start taking requests if there's interest.

I signed up for a Twitter account last year but very rarely log in. I follow a bunch of athletes and fellow collectors but find myself only logging in when I get a spam/reminder email from Twitter saying "So and so retweeted this guy! Check it out!" I don't really care about all that. But after getting a few compliments about the cards from the athletes signing them, I may "tweet" a daily custom and include the athlete if they have a Twitter account. Who I make will depend on what images I can find and I'll check the SCN database to see if they are good about signing their mail or make a lot of public appearances. Not that an autograph is the be all, end all, but I don't want to waste my time making a card that won't ever get signed. This isn't necessarily worth a new blog and I'd like to keep this one fairly Cubs related, so Twitter sounds like an interesting venue for that.

My next adventure won't actually start until January/February. I like the idea of these Frankensets some of you other bloggers are working on and I will pursue one of my own in the form of 2014 Topps...with a twist. Rather than building the set with parallels though, I will complete the 990 card base set (Series 1, Series 2 and Update) plus any cards from the Factory Team sets that are not included in the base sets. That will make the task quite a bit more expensive but could be worth it for a truly complete 2014 Topps set. I'm on the fence right now about the SPs. They would also add to the expense considerably...but complete is complete, right?

And this ties into my last idea. One of my favorites types of posts is where I find the original Getty photo used by Topps for their cards and dissect the card a bit. They seem to get above average views (for my blog anyway) and even *gasp* the occasional comment. There are several set specific blogs that I follow and am thinking about doing one for my 2014 Topps Frankenset when it comes out. I'll probably do the same as I have been with the Cubs cards from this year with pertinent game information, as well as a link to the original Getty image, the boxscore on Baseball Reference and maybe some witty commentary if the mood strikes. With a template, it shouldn't take up too much of my time, although with 1000+ cards it could! What do you think, one a day for a couple of years or several a day and squeeze them all in from February to December?

I would love to hear any feedback on these ideas, either encouraging, discouraging, requests for customs or offers for help tracking down the local Factory Team sets when they are released!

Miscellaneous Mariners

In an effort to avoid ATCRCS overload for you readers, I'm going to change things up a bit here and show off a few things I didn't think I'd add to my collection.

I've been working with a great member from over on SCN, justgreg, getting some of my various Cubs customs signed. He was full of positive feedback and always passes along any comments from the players themselves, which I enjoy. It keeps me motivated, especially when I get into a creative slump.

Since he lives outside of Seattle and pretty regularly gets autographs from the Seattle Mariners and their Triple-A affiliate, the Tacoma Rainiers, I decided to send him a couple cards for those teams. I sent him a few extras to give to the players, just in case too.

These first two, Bobby LaFromboise and Brandon Bantz started the year in Tacoma and made their Major League debuts later in the season. I thought these would be good to start with since at any given time they could be in Tacoma or Seattle so he would have a pretty good chance to get them signed. And I don't think either of them have any cards aside from Minor League team sets. No Bowman or Pro Debut or Heritage Minors that I know of anyway. You may recognize the template as my 2012 Cubs team set, with a few tweaks to make it more Mariners friendly.

I also made a Michael Morse because at the time it was one of the first Mariners images that showed up in a Google search that met the size and layout requirements I need in a photo for this custom template. It didn't hurt that he was one of my son's favorites during his time with the Nationals.



And finally, I have one of the newest Seattle Mariners with Taijuan Walker. He recently started 3 games for the Mariners before being shut down for the season. In his MLB debut, he pitched 5 innings of 2-hit baseball. Not too shabby. At the time I made these, he hadn't made his debut yet so I didn't have a horizontal photo to use for the design above. With a Spring Training Photo Day picture I found, I put together one of my PASS customs. It didn't quite get signed in the right spot but that's ok. Maybe he didn't want to sign over the Mariners logo.



As I mentioned, when I made these, the intention wasn't for me to get any signed for myself. I was just trying to extend a courtesy to a fellow collector who has helped me out a lot. Once I got a couple of positive reviews from the players themselves, I became more interested in getting one to keep for myself as a souvenir. I mean, hey, if they're a fan of my work, I can be a fan of theirs too, right? If there are any Seahawks fans out there, be on the lookout for a couple of football cards to show up in a post in the future.

I made a few football customs last year but only printed out a couple and I don't think I ever sent out any TTM like I had planned. I have very few non-Cubs items left in my collection but I think a new binder is about to be started...