I was in London last week, and in sports, soccer dominates the headlines. Most of the focus was on Liverpool goalkeeper Loris Karius, who made two key mistakes that resulted in a pair of goals for Real Madrid and was the difference in the Champions League final. Real Madrid won 3-1, and Karius, despite his apologies, was receiving death threats from angry fans.

They take their soccer — um, football — seriously in Europe.
It is the kind of passion that soccer enthusiasts want to see in the United States — minus the physical threats, of course — and that is what Topps is hoping to achieve with its 2018 Major League Soccer set.

This year’s product features a 200-card base set, which include players or the new Los Angeles Football Club. Collectors who buy hobby boxes can expect to find at least two autographs and a jumbo memorabilia card. I bought a blaster box, and that contains one signature card along with eight packs of cards. There were six cards to a pack.

The blaster I opened contained 43 base cards, which includes four Under 24 cards.

The design for this year’s set benefits from the colorful uniforms worn by MLS teams. The photography is sharp and vibrant, with plenty of intensity depicted. Most of the base cards I pulled had a vertical card front design, although several were horizontal. The player’s name is in the lower right-hand corner of the card front, with the team logo located at the middle right side of the card, tilted diagonally.
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The card backs are clean and contain five lines of type about the featured player. Statistics are shown above the story type, and the player’s name, team and vital statistics adorn the top of the card.

There were two different inserts in the blaster box I opened. One was a Multi-Dimensional card of Kellyn Acosta of FC Dallas. The card features three different poses of the midfielder on the card front.

The next two inserts borrow the design of the 1988 Topps baseball set. I pulled one Throwback insert card of New York City FC’s David Villa, and All-Star cards of Montreal Impact midfielder Ignacio Patti and Atlanta United defender Greg Garza.

The autograph card I pulled was a blue parallel of Minnesota United FC midfielder Sam Cronin, numbered to 50. Cronin’s signature is on a sticker, and the design of the card is horizontal.
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With its crisp design and sharp photography, the 2018 Topps Major League Soccer set is a nice product to collect. With the World Cup coming up soon, interest in soccer will be at a fever pitch worldwide. This product, while not part of the worldwide event, nevertheless will stoke interest in the sport.

​In the old days — you know, when there were wrestling territories that were owned by promoters not named Vince McMahon Jr. — fans would get news about their favorite wrestlers from television matches, TV promos and magazines like The Wrestler. 

Who could forget pro wrestling writer Bill Apter taking a heart punch from Stan Stasiak? Or eagerly reading stories with eye-catching headlines like “Bobby Heenan’s Bloody Obsession”?
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The growth of cable TV, the internet and the wildly successful marketing plan McMahon used to become a giant among wrestling corporations changed the game. Topps has recently tapped into the pro wrestling fan base with much nicer looking cards than those that existed in the 1990s. Once again, Topps’ flagship set for WWE wrestling cards brings fans colorful action photos and interesting storylines.

The design for the WWE set closely mirrors the layout of Topps’ flagship baseball set. The layout is vertical, and the backs have a horizontal look.

The only negative is that there were not as many action shots; rather, many of the card fronts were glorified mug shots, or shots of wrestlers coming down the ramp when they were introduced before a match. In a sport/entertainment-based outfit like the WWE, action is what fans demand; the same should be considered in a set of collectible cards.
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The base set includes 100 cards, and there are several variations. There are plenty of options for those who buy hobby boxes, such as autographed cards and relics. There are some nice possibilities for collectors who buy blaster boxes, which is what I did.
A blaster box, which a collector can buy at retail stores like Target or Walmart, contains seven packs, with 10 cards to a pack. There also is an additional pack that contains one relic card.

The box I opened contained six Superstar cards, including The Rock, Undertaker and announcer “Mean” Gene Okerlund. There were two more bronze parallel cards, featuring John Cena and Paige.

There were also 12 Raw cards, which included favorites like The Miz, Titus O’Neil, Kurt Angle, Heath Slater and Mickie James. In addition to the base Raw cards, there were bronze parallels of Stephanie McMahon and Maryse.

There were 13 SmackLive cards, which included Shane McMahon.

Of the 13 NXT cards I pulled, there was an interesting mix of announcers (Nigel McGuinness, Mauro Renallo and ring announcer Kayla Braxton), a manager (Paul Ellering) and a general manager (William Regal).
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The key inserts in the 2018 Evolution set are Evolution, a 50-card subset that shows the changes several wrestlers have gone through during their time in the WWE; I pulled 20 of those cards.

​The other insert is the WWE Hall of Fame Tribute, which continues in card Nos. 11 through 20 what began in the Road to WrestleMania set earlier this year. The card I pulled depicted the Ultimate Warrior winning the WWE heavyweight title in WrestleMania VI. According to the type on the back of the card, the Warrior won the title in 1990 at Toronto’s SkyDome by defeating “the legendary champion.” who is unnamed but was Hulk Hogan. 

Blaster boxes contain an exclusive tribute to the late Randy “Macho Man” Savage, and the card I pulled also came from WrestleMania VI. Savage teamed with Queen Sherri (Sherri Martel) in a mixed tag team match.

The relic card was a commemorative medallion in the shape of Brock Lesnar’s Universal Championship belt and was numbered to 299.

The WWE set continues a nice run of cards by Topps. All facets of the WWE are represented, and there is a fine cross-section of stars and up-and-coming wrestlers.
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A nice gesture by the WWE in the future would be an insert set commemorating the long career of the promotion’s first superstar, Bruno Sammartino, who died April 18. It’s a natural, but we will see. 

Here's a story I did for Sports Collectors Daily about a photo being sold at RMY Auctions. The photo was taken during the Cleveland Rams' debut game in the NFL in 1937:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/84424-2/

Jackie Robinson’s contribution to breaking the color line in the modern era of major league baseball has been well-documented .

But while Robinson used a “relentless fighting spirit” to earn his place in the majors, author Gaylon H. White writes that Artie Wilson used “singles and smiles” to help desegregate the minor leagues.
That’s the title of White’s warm, sentimental biography of Wilson, a shortstop who was known as “Artful Artie” during his years in the Negro Leagues and the Pacific Coast League.

Singles and Smiles: How Artie Wilson Broke Baseball’s Color Barrier (Rowman & Littlefield; hardback; $35; 233 pages) follows the career of Wilson, a gifted hitter and fielder who never got the chance to showcase his talents in the majors. Brought up to the New York Giants in 1951, Wilson went only 4-for-22 (a .182 average) before being shipped back to the minors to make room for a young outfielder named Willie Mays.

In fact, White writes, Wilson lobbied the Giants to bring Mays to the majors, even at his own expense. Wilson “focused on the big picture, not the big leagues,” White writes.

The title of the book is mostly appropriate: Of his 1,609 career hits in the minors, Wilson collected 1,365 singles and batted.312, including a .402 mark in 1948. One early criticism leveled against the book was that its title implied Wilson was the pioneer who broke the modern color line. Perhaps inserting the phrase “Helped Break” after his name in the title would have cleared up any confusion. It’s really a minor point: Baseball historians — and even casual fans — know that Robinson was the man who took the first steps toward racial equality in the game.

What’s accurate beyond question, however, was Wilson’s ability to smile. He had a joyous love for baseball and was eager to play it, whether it was in a Birmingham industrial league in his native Alabama, the Negro Leagues, the Pacific Coast League or the majors. Long before Ernie Banks, Wilson was the player who was happiest on a baseball diamond.

Wilson was the second black in the PCL and the first to play for the Oakland Oaks and the Seattle Rainiers. The PCL was one of the first leagues to have all its franchises integrated within a decade of Robinson’s shattering of the color line.

White excels at examining the careers of players who, while not famous today, were notable during their heyday. His last book, a collaboration with former major-leaguer Ransom Jackson, was an engaging look at the player brought to the Brooklyn Dodgers to replace Robinson. Even though he could not wrest the starting job from Robinson in 1956, “Handsome Ransom” overcame the pressure and carved out a respectable career. In Singles and Smiles, White follows the same formula to show how Wilson did not allow pressure or disappointment cloud his sunny outlook on the game and in life.

White, who interviewed Wilson before the player’s death in 2010 at age 90, coaxed several opinions out of the former infielder. Robinson, Wilson said, was the only man who could have endured the abuse and vitriol hurled at him during his rookie season with the Dodgers in 1947.

“He had the tools, the know-how,” said Wilson, who was one of several black stars passed over in favor of Robinson. “I’m not saying these other guys couldn’t do it now. I just don’t think they would’ve gone through with it like Jackie.

“That is why I like Branch Rickey. He picked the right man.”

Wilson also thought that Jim “Junior” Gilliam should have been the first black manager in major league baseball instead of Frank Robinson.

“I would’ve taken Gilliam over any of them,” he tells White.

Wilson was such a consistent hitter that other managers employed shifts to prevent him from slapping singles to all fields. Wilson also had a penchant for fouling off pitch after pitch, frustrating pitchers until they threw him what he wanted to hit.

White expands one of the more entertaining anecdotes about Wilson’s time in the majors when he made an appearance in the Giants’ home opener. The story originally appeared in an essay by John Lardner and featured a battle of wits between Leo Durocher and Charlie Dressen in an April 20, 1951, game at the Polo Grounds. Durocher sent Wilson to pinch hit for the Giants in the seventh inning and the Giants trailing 7-3.

Dressen brought Carl Furillo in from right field and stationed him at second base, putting three infielders on the left side of the infield. Dressen was daring the Wilson to pull the ball; instead, he hit a one-hopper to the mound and was retired when Don Newcombe threw him out.

Dressen had managed Wilson at Oakland, so he knew a way to foil his former player. Durocher’s reaction, as expected, cannot be printed.

After an eye injury ended his career in 1957, Wilson found success for nearly a half century as an automobile salesman in Oregon. A flashy dresser who was called “Dude” by his teammates, and with a love for children, Wilson made a smooth transition from the game to business. He retired in 2005, but not before making a new group of friends. Wilson never seemed to try and pressure potential buyers, White writes. He was more content to talk baseball with customers. Invariably, that led to a sale.

White’s research included delving deep into newspaper archives, but he also did interviews with more than 30 former players, including Mays. A former sportswriter and businessman, White writes with an easy conversational style that tells a compelling story. His interest in West Coast baseball and integration shows in his approach to the Artie Wilson story.

Wilson was more than a footnote in baseball history. His legacy, while not widely known, still resonates today. Wilson’s sacrifices — he experienced racism firsthand and never flinched, doing it with a smile and a friendliness that did not mask his competitive spirit — helped make integration a reality in leagues like the PCL.  In Singles and Smiles, White adds a needed chapter to baseball history.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily previewing Topps Five Star Baseball, which is due to be released the week of Aug. 29:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/2018-topps-five-star-baseball-offers-high-end-hits-for-collectors/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily previewing the 2018 Bowman High Tek baseball set, which comes out in August:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/2018-bowman-high-tek-baseball-preview/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about John Tassoni Jr., a former Rhode Island state senator who once was a pressman for a company that printed cards for Topps back in the 1990s:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/pressing-matters-printing-topps-cards-led-to-a-political-career-for-john-tassoni-jr

Here's a podcast I did with Jesse Berrett, author of Pigskin Nation: How the NFL Remade American Politics, by University of Illinois Press:

newbooksnetwork.com/jesse-berrett-pigskin-nation-how-the-nfl-remade-american-politics-u-illinois-press-2018/