Starting Lineup Figures, Detroit Style

I came across the Hank Greenberg SLU pictured above while checking out a new card store last week near my neighborhood. I've never been an diligent collector of SLU's, but over the years if I saw one of a Tiger somewhere (and it was under $10) I picked it up. I've got a box of maybe 10 or so different Tigers in the attic at my folks' house.

After picking up the Greenberg I realized that I've never seen a complete checklist of Tigers anywhere, so I searched around the internets and tried to compile one of my own. As I'm sure I probably missed a few here and there or maybe got a year wrong, I would love some input if anybody has anything to correct or add to the list, which looks something like this:


1988
Willie Hernandez
Jack Morris
Matt Nokes
Alan Trammell
Lou Whitaker

1989
Tom Brookens
Matt Nokes
Luis Salazar
Alan Trammell
Lou Whitaker
Alan Trammell - Jose Canseco "One On One" combo
Team Lineup

1990
Kirk Gibson (it must be noted that his figure is a Dodger, but his prominent card is of him with the Tigers)
Matt Nokes
Lou Whitaker


1991
Cecil Fielder

1992
Cecil Fielder
Cecil Fielder Headline Collection

1993
Travis Fryman

1994
Ty Cobb
Cecil Fielder
Tony Phillips

1995
Mickey Tettleton


1996
Hank Greenberg
Ty Cobb 12"

1997
Tony Clark

1998
Bobby Higginson

1999
Tony Clark

It's a testimony to how bad the '89 team was that Tom Brookens and Luis Salazar have figures. It's shame really that the Tigers were so bad during the era that SLU's were produced. I'd love to have one a Team Lineup of the 1984 or 2006 teams.

I really like the Team Lineup set from 1989 though. Where else can you find Gary Pettis, Alan Trammell, Chris Brown, Lou Whitaker, Jack Morris, Fred Lynn, Matt Nokes, Keith Moreland, and Chet Lemon all immortalized in one collectible of one of the worst Tiger teams in their history?


I think my personal favorite is the 1997 Tony Clark with him wearing the awful BP jersey from that era which is identical to the first Tigers jersey I ever picked up.

Researching these led to me looking up info about the subsequent McFarlane figures too, which I'll delve into in my next blog entry.

Anybody got any good SLU stories?

2011 Topps: Miguel Cabrera

By my count Topps has released 5 issues so far this year:

1. Series 1
2. Opening Day
3. Heritage
4. Blister Pack Team Sets
5. Gypsy Queen

Pictured above are Miguel Cabrera cards from 3 of those 5. (This year's blister pack team sets also include separate sets of AL and NL All-Star teams, which is where the last card comes from)

I didn't even bother to include the parallels, which makes the case even worse.

So tell me again why it's a good thing that Topps is the exclusive manufacturer of baseball cards? Or why the hobby is going in the shitter due to lack of interest?

2011 Topps

The 2011 Topps Series 1 cards are here and I have a few opinions and observations. (Don't I always?)

The Base Set: Absolutely beautiful! I thought 2010 was the best looking Topps set of the last 20 or so years and they have blown those away this year. I love the the Old English D over the baseball. I love that the elements of the design are very minimal, yet effective and easy to read. My only knock with these cards (hey, you know it as well as I do....) is the continued use of foil stamping on base cards. It adds nothing to the card. I think the cards would look even better if they replaced the foil with the contrasting team colors. I'll look forward to seeing what they do with the Opening Day series, which in my opinion ALWAYS looks better than the regular series base cards because of the lack of foil stamping. But again, major kudos for an otherwise outstanding design this year.


The Variations: Who doesn't love these? For years I have wondered why Topps doesn't just do these as a part of the regular set. To me, these are about the only cards worth chasing the last three years. Hmmm....maybe I just answered my own question. (I am a little more excited this year, as the Hank Greenberg card pictured is the first Tiger variation that I've added to my collection. I'm on the lookout for the Ty Cobb variation. I have 2010 variations of Walter Johnson and Steve Carlton, and a 2009 variation of Duke Snider if anybody is interested in a trade....) I also like that the baseball on the front of the card has a sepia/yellowed tint compared to the white baseball on the base cards. Subtle, and very nice.


The Parallels: The gold cards are gold cards. The diamond cards are nice and sparkly. That's about the best I can do. As a one year thing, the diamond cards are slightly interesting, but if they never return to future Topps sets I won't be heartbroken. They kinda remind me of the 1994 Topps parallels with the funky varnish pattern over the player photos. I'm not too sure about that Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull thing replacing the OED though.


The Inserts, Part I: I'm going to divide this up into two groups. Part 1 is going to be about the reprint cards. If I were to subtitle this even further, it would read something like: Enough With The Fucking Reprints Already. Let me preface this by saying that I have held true to the vow I made last year to not purchase any more packs of baseball cards. 2011 Series 1 has come and gone and I've managed to find all the base cards and almost all of the inserts at the local card show circuit. I found the two Tigers pictured for 25¢ each. No big deal.

I can muster a little love for the reprints that date back before 1980. I suspect that's why Topps continues to do this. But if I was still buying packs and trying to build sets (and I was not a Tigers fan) it would piss me off to no end to pull an insert card that's a reprint of a card that was issued just five years ago!!! Crap like this is exactly why I have given up trying to build sets (Ok, along with a lot of the other insert offerings.....and the fact that you have to buy $100 worth of packs to finish one series when you can spend $50 for a factory set in August.....but I digress......).


Giving credit where credit is due, I dig the "pre-Topps" older cards that have the designation with which I have no clue what it stands for (CMGR = Cards My Grandpa Rolled smokes with?). I'm not a huge fan though, mostly due to the abundance of Tobacco era related cards in the last few years anyways like T206, Turkey Red, Chicle, etc......but I can dig pulling cards of HOFers AS OPPOSED TO REPRINTS OF PLAYERS FROM SETS THAT ARE ONLY FIVE YEARS OLD!!!!! It may be time for me to grab another beer, and to move on from reprint cards......


The Inserts, Part II: There is nothing noteworthy here. Just a lot more bloated, uninteresting sets. Diamond Duos = Legendary Lineage. Nothing more, nothing less. At least Legendary Lineage sounded cool. As for Topps 60, I don't even really get the point? The random statistical categories assigned to these make these humorous at best. Miguel Cabrera: 2008 American League Home Runs? I would be much more interested if it read Miguel Cabrera: My Top Ten Favorite Brands of Scotch. Who knows, maybe that's in the works for Series 2.....


IN CONCLUSION.....I have nothing but high praise for the base cards. It's a magnificent looking set (even if the Tiger selections for Series 1 are pretty sketchy.....I know that by that end of the year there will be cards for everybody....). But Topps has missed the mark on all of the insert sets. Again.

PS: 2011 RobbyT Cards are in the hopper. I'm just waiting on some spring photos to start rolling in. I saw a really great looking mugshot this week to use as my first one.....

RIP Sparky

I guess it's somehow fitting that the Skipper of the Tigers has passed away in the same year that the Voice of the Tigers passed on too. Sparky Anderson and Ernie Harwell were easily the most iconic Tigers of my youth and two of the game's great men. It's a shame that Sparky is not in the Hall Of Fame as a Tiger, especially since it stems from a tiff with ownership over refusing to manage the replacement players in the spring of 1995. Sparky was the only one in the game to have sense enough to refuse to be a part of that nonsense, and for that he should always be recognized. In fact Mr. Ilitch, it's far past time that a statue went up at Comerica Park to honor Sparky. This should have been done when he was well enough to have a day of his own. Do it now.

The images of Sparky are everlasting. Heaping praise on the next big prospect, only to ship him out three weeks into the season. Yelling at Kirk Gibson that Goose Gossage was not going to walk him before one of the most memorable HR in Tiger history. Talking to the media in that "aw shucks I don't know nuthin" persona he carried even though he was usually the smartest man in the room. It seems hard to believe he walked away from the game fifteen years ago and never once looked back. Baseball coulda used a lot of Sparky since then.


I have a couple of pretty cool pieces of Sparky memorabilia. One is a life sized cardboard cut-out of Sparky that was part of a Fantastic Sam's promotion from some time in the 80's. I picked it up at a card store in Memphis for $1. I used to have it set up in a two bedroom apartment I once lived in. The way it was placed in the room it was the first thing you saw when you exited the bathroom and I can't count the number of people who jumped back startled when they saw ol' Sparky standing there. I still laugh thinking about it.


I also have a game program from 1984 that I got Sparky to sign that summer at Tiger Stadium. My friends and I went to many games that summer and we would always sit in the lower deck right field bleachers so that we could cheer for Kirk Gibson. On several occasions we were the first ones in line when the gates opened, but there would always be this guy already sitting in the stands listening to a boom box and chatting with the players on both teams. (When I got older I figured out that the must have been the official Detroit dope dealer to the visiting A.L. players....)

This particular day was in the fall, when it was apparent that the Tigers would be making the postseason. The guy was badgering Gibby about getting him some Series tickets. Gibby told him he'd see what he could do. The guy then asked Gibby to get Sparky for him. Gibby put two fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly at the Tiger dugout and waved his arm. Immediately Sparky came trotting out to the right field fence. There were only a handful of us standing there as the guy begged Sparky for Series tickets. I walked up to the fence and held my program and pen out to Sparky. He grabbed it and signed it without ever looking up. He told the guy he'd see what he could do and then trotted back to the dugout. To this day I'm more amazed that hippie got Gibby to get Sparky to come out there and talk to him about Series tickets as anything I've ever seen in baseball.


My other favorite Sparky story is the one that never happened. Earlier that summer, my family from Arkansas came to visit us. My uncle grew up with Glenn Abbott, who was a Tiger pitcher at the time. My uncle was hoping to be able to say hi to Glenn at the game, which my 15 year old brain took to mean that I was going to get to go into the clubhouse before the game and meet Sparky and all the players. I had visions of getting a ball signed by all the players and getting to sit in Sparky's office with him and discuss the great summer of Tiger baseball that we were both enjoying.

Well, we went to the game that night and Abbott was nowhere to be found. We looked high and low for him and never saw him once. I sat and brooded for the rest of the night while we got swept in an old fashioned twi-night doubleheader against the California Angels. My dream of getting to meet Sparky was crushed. The next morning when I got up, my dad handed me the sports pages and showed me where Glenn Abbott had been released the day before we went to the game. And so it goes.....


Luckily I did get the autograph from him later that summer. But whenever I think about Sparky, I always think about the time we never got to meet and hang out. Hopefully, a long time from now of course, we will be able to spend that time together and catch up on baseball after all. We'll have a lot to discuss.

Rest In Peace, Sparky. You were the best. Bless you, boy.

1986 1987 1988 Topps Mini League Leaders

The first of a two part series called "Things Topps tried to revive in the 80's that would not catch on until years later....."

Here a couple of months back I came across a website that had a lot of cheap wax boxes from the 80's. I remember messing with these a little bit way back when, but I don't think I ever collected full sets. Since the boxes are cheaper now than they were then I went ahead and picked up a box from each year. Hell, a box of these are about the same price as one rack pack of 2010 cards and these were chock full of HOF.

I'm on a quest to collect all of the 80's oddball stuff and these rank up there among the best. An obvious throwback to the '75 minis, as the name suggests this set is composed of the the statistical leaders of varying years. They are smallish sets (66 cards the first year, 77 cards the following two years) and Topps produced these for 5 years before giving up on them. As per usual with Topps, distribution within each box is awful. I got two of some guys and seven of some others. But I got a complete set out of each box and that's all I was after. Even though the design is minimal, I really think that's a positive thing coming from the 80's.


There's a mostly great representation of Tigers in these sets, Walt Terrell notwithstanding (Walt ranked tied for fourth in shutouts in 1985 with 3, hence his inclusion). Anyways.....

The 1986 Topps Mini-League Leaders Detroit Tigers:
13 Darrell Evans
14 Jack Morris
15 Lance Parrish
16 Walt Terrell

The 1987 Topps Mini-League Leaders Detroit Tigers:
53 Kirk Gibson
54 Willie Hernandez
55 Jack Morris
56 Alan Trammell

The 1988 Topps Mini-League Leaders Detroit Tigers:
10 Darrell Evans
11 Jack Morris
12 Alan Trammell
13 Lou Whitaker


Nowadays the tobacco card inserts that are roughly the same size are pretty popular. They are much harder to get of course, but these cards are available for a fraction of the cost and are pretty cool sets. It's a shame these never really caught on, but it seems like none of the oddball wax products that came out in the 80's were that popular.

2010 State Of The Blog Address

It's been a slow summer blogging about Tigers cards. The Tigers collapse after the All-Star break put a damper on the baseball season, but it did not put a damper on collecting. Overall it was a good year of collecting, with many hits and just a few misses. I have fully incorporated something old and something new as collecting tools this summer, as well as made some decisions on what I will and won't be collecting from now on. Hopefully I can tie everything up into one well written essay on my card collecting experience in 2010, but chances are I will just end up with several empty beer cans. In either case that'll be good enough for me.....

First off: The death of the Topps base set. I finally finished off my 2010 Topps base set about a week after the factory sets hit the stores. Sadly, this will be the last year I put together the base set by hand. It just doesn't make sense anymore. I probably dropped a couple of bills on packs and boxes this year. I still came up about 20 cards short of the set, while ending up with a couple hundred crappy inserts that I don't give a damn about. I was able to flip most of the inserts on ebay, but the whole process is far too cumbersome to continue anymore. In 2011 and beyond, I will just wait until August and pick up a factory set for a fraction of the price that I spend on trying to put one together myself. (And this year I would've gotten a Strasburg RC, plus variations of Austin Jackson and Brennan Boesch. I may still end up buying that set before it's all over with....)

I have been pretty outspoken in my disdain for the plethora of inserts that riddle the Topps base set. But one cool discovery led to another, which led to me really never wanting to pick up a pack of Topps base cards again. The local card show circuit.

I found a cool website this summer that lists quite a few card shows across the country by state. It turns out that I live about 10 minutes away from both Bloomingdale and Schaumburg, which between the two have a show almost every Sunday afternoon. Since I found the link, I have been to just about every one of them. They're not huge, ranging anywhere from 5 to 15 dealers a show, but I've come to know a few of the dealers from my frequent attendance and it's been fun to actually talk to guys who do this as a weekend hobby.


The first show I attended was a pretty good sized one. It was there that I noticed at least a half dozen tables covered with Topps base cards and inserts. At almost every table I saw the inserts weren't priced any higher than the base cards (10¢ each). It completely makes sense since there are so many inserts. The thing I really like about it though is that if there is ever a cool insert set that I like, I can likely pick it up for next to nothing.

Given that I have come to loathe inserts, it only reasons that this year Topps would put out an insert set that is totally cool, and that's the Vintage Legends. They have taken 25 HOF players and put them on cards from years that they weren't originally on. (The Ty Cobb pictured above, Nolan Ryan on a '52, George Sisler on an '88, Jackie Robinson on a '76, etc.) The concept is not new by any means, but these look outstanding, and I was able to get almost all of them for 10¢ each.


I was able to finish my set of Vintage Legends from a website I found called Sportlots. I'm sure this is not new to a lot of people, but for set builders and team collectors like me, it is solid gold! I have absolutely fallen in love with this site for having the hard to find commons needed to finish my old sets. There must be millions of cards listed with the majority of them selling for 18¢ each. I am surprised at the quality of cards you can get for that price. I pretty much assembled all the base cards for 2006 and 2007 Topps Heritage Tigers for that price. I finished out the Vintage Legends set as well. And....I finished out a set that I never thought I would.....

2010 Topps Heritage! (Well, sorta.....) This was my first year to try and put a Topps Heritage set together. I was still 100 something cards short when I hit the card show circuit, but within a month I'd completed the base set. (There's the catch...) I do however have 40 something of the 75 SP cards and every time I place an order on Sportlots I try and pick up one or two more. Hopefully I can finish off the entire set before the 2011 cards come out next year.

I've really enjoyed collecting Heritage this year and I plan on this being the set that I will collect by hand going forward. It's always the best looking set of the year, it's not overloaded with lousy insert cards, for the most part the insert cards included are ok, and it's not a huge set to put together vs. the cost involved to assemble it. I probably have spent three bills to get what I have, but it sure seems like I have a lot more to show for it than I do with the Topps base set.


As for the rest of it.....it's been a slow summer for new stuff. The Allen & Ginter and T206 cards do nothing for me. Hell, they look like the same cards every year. Same with Finest. The National Chicle cards were ok, but nothing to write home about. I dig the Pro Debut cards (where the hell is the Jacob Turner card?) but their player selection is atrocious. The only Tiger with a remote chance of being something someday is Casper Wells, and he's already been featured on a Bowman card. I sort of get the feeling that this set is Bowman's illegitimate brother, primarily made up of the leftover minor leaguers who weren't good enough for inclusion in Bowman.

Speaking of Bowman, I have noticed a trend that really pisses me off, has pissed me off for some time, and yet nobody has been able to give me a reasonable explanation for it. The RC logo. I have noticed many dealers selling cards with the RC logo at a premium, despite that fact that none of these cards are true rookie cards!!! I refuse to pay $1 for an 2010 Austin Jackson RC that is not a RC. Even worse is asking a dealer why it's priced more and he looks you in the face and tells you it's a RC. C'mon guys. Let's cut it with this stupid fucking logo that is nothing more than a tool for card buyers to get ripped off.

As for Upper Deck, I can't say I will miss their mediocre product, but I dug last year's O-Pee-Chee and I'm disappointed that it won't be continued. I hate that Topps has the monopoly on the baseball card market, but if they continue like they did this year of only releasing a product every 4-6 week I could learn to live with it.


I am anxiously awaiting the release of the Updates & Highlights series this month. I'm looking forward to the cards of Boesch, Rhymes, Wells, Oliver, Valverde, Raburn, Kelly, St. Pierre, Peralta, Galarraga, and Avila, just to name a few.

One last note before I wrap it up. I spent a whole week this summer dividing up about 15,000 doubles into teams, so if there are any team collectors out there looking to deal, please drop me a line. I broke up several factory sets to take Tigers cards out of, so there are many complete team sets of stuff included.

Happy collecting everybody! (Only 4 empty beer cans......)

Will The Real Brennan Boesch RC Please Stand Up?

Go to ebay and type in "Brennan Boesch RC" to see what pops up. There seem to be three different cards that make up the majority of the search results, which leads me to one obvious question: Why is a 2008 card listed as his RC by so many people when there are TWO 2007 cards of Boesch? To top it off, all three cards are Bowman cards. Are people that desperate to make a few bucks that they'll flat out lie to do it? Hell, who am I kidding.......

WARNING: DISHONEST BRENNAN BOESCH RC BELOW!!!


Of the two remaining candidates, there is a HUGE oddity with one of them. Boesch is pictured wearing a Padres uniform. Huh? Boesch has never suited up for the Padres. It's readily apparent that this is a Topps Photoshop job, but why? And why the Padres? As far as I can tell there is no corrected version/variation. I don't get it. I'd love to hear from somebody who knows. This would explain why it's not in the team set I bought back in 2007


Based on the above, I'm going with the 2007 Bowman Heritage as Boesch's RC (pictured at the top). Actually, my basis is on the fact that it's the only one of the three I already own......