The 2016 Topps Series 2 baseball set continues the pattern begun earlier this year by Series 1: Photos that use more of a full-bleed effect, sharp detail in action shots, expressive photography and a background bathed in soft focus.

Here are the basics, although very little has changed: A hobby box contains 36 packs, with 10 cards to a pack. Expect prices to range in the $75 to $85 range, depending on the retailer. Hobby boxes will contain one hit, while jumbo boxes will contain an autograph card and a pair of relics. Collectors who enjoy buying retail will be able to collect 40 medallions that are included in blaster boxes at stores like Target and Walmart.

Like Series 1, there are 350 cards in a base set, with the final number topping out at No. 701. In the hobby box provided to me by Topps, I pulled 315 base cards and one negative parallel. The black and white parallel was of Athletics pitcher Ryan Madson and admittedly looked kind of funky. At first I thought it was some kind of misprint or production error, but after checking with a Topps official it was an intentional parallel. Interesting. Most of the card fronts have a vertical design, but the hobby box I opened had 79 cards with a horizontal look. That’s 25 percent; personally, I prefer the vertical look. When I was a kid collecting, horizontal designs were reserved for league leaders, postseason results and rookie cards. Times have changed.

Other parallels include gold, which are numbered to 2016; rainbow foil, which average three to a hobby box; vintage stock, numbered to 99; black, exclusive  to hobby and jumbo boxes (65); pink (50); hobby-exclusive clear (10) and 1/1 platinum.

Hobby and jumbo boxes also can contain framed parallels (1/1) and printing plates (also 1/1s). The box I opened included six gold parallels and one black one. There also were three rainbow foil parallels.

The big hit in the box I opened was a Scouting Report autograph card of Rockies minor-league catcher Tom Murphy. The signature is on a sticker, and the back of the card has a description that reads like a baseball scout’s report. Murphy was a September call-up for the Rockies in 2015 and homered in three straight games (September 19, 21 and 23), adding eight of the nine RBIs he collected last season in those three games. Murphy is currently catching for Albuquerque in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League, has seven homers and 23 RBIs, and has delivered 31 hits — 20 for extra bases. On the negative side, he’s batting .221.

There are 47 different autograph subjects.

​There are two tribute-like insert sets. Tribute to the Kid consists of 30 cards that honor the career of Ken Griffey Jr.  There were four of these cards  in the hobby box I opened. Chasing 3K is another 30-card set that honors the batting career of Ichiro Suzuki.

Hallowed Highlights contains 15 cards that feature some of baseball's greatest moments. And some additional cards contain codes  free codes for Topps' Bunt app, giving collectors more virtual cards.

Collectors who enjoy buying at retail outlets can try to complete the 40-card MLB Debut insert set, which returns for Series 2. Another retail-only product is the 15-card Record Setters insert. This subset highlights notable achievements of active players.

Building on the success of Series 1, Topps' Series 2 cards follow the same safe pattern. It's relatively easy for set builders to complete the base set, and there are enough inserts to make the product intriguing. The design is clean and the collation is excellent.

Topps Tier One baseball returns in 2016 with a small-sized hobby box, but everything in the lone pack is a hit. Those odds are pretty good for high-end collectors. This mirrors the format the Topps used for its 2015 Tier One product.

Prices will range between $110 and $125, depending on the retailer. If a collector is lucky enough to buy a hot box, there will be an additional relic card.
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Breakout Autographs will feature 81 different stars with on-card signatures. All are numbered to 299 or less. I pulled one of those cards from the box supplied to me, an autograph card of Cubs pitcher Carl Edwards Jr. The card design shows Edwards in an action pose, sharply focused against a marble-like background. This card, numbered to 249, features Edwards’ name and the Cubs’ name in silver foil stamped on the card.

I am not a fan of the typography on the back of the card in terms of the players’ name. It’s an exaggerated serif font that makes a capital letter “C’ letter look a lot like a “G,” for example. It’s a little bit confusing; I wonder what the type looks like for, say, Giancarlo Stanton.

The other autograph card I pulled was part of the 88-card Prime Performers subset. It belongs to defending National League batting champion Dee Gordon of the Marlins, who is currently serving an 80-game suspension for using two performance-enhancing drugs. The signature on the card reads “DeStyle,” or “DStyle,” depending on how you read it. It is bold and beautifully written.

The third card I pulled was a Tier One relic of Mariners third baseman Kyle Seager, numbered to 199. It is one of 76 different subjects a collector might find. Seager is shown in a horizontal design, batting and waiting for a pitch. There is a white uniform swatch that is enveloped by gold foil that runs vertically down the right side of the card.
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Tier One baseball continues to showcase top veterans and up-and-coming younger players. The cards are relatively thick, and the autographs seem to be penned carefully from what I could tell.

Here is a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about a former Boston-area postal worker who was sentenced in the theft of 23 high-end sports cards that were worth more than $68,000.

​www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/ex-postal-worker-sentenced-in-theft-of-high-end-cards/

Here is a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about Boardwalk and Baseball, the Central Florida theme park that had a brief life from 1987 to 1990.

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/boardwalk-and-baseball-set-recalls-doomed-theme-park/

When I was a kid, my family would take long vacations every June. In 1971, for example, we drove in my dad’s 1962 Volkswagen — my parents, my brother and I — from Boynton Beach, Florida, to the Fontana Resort Village near Robbinsville, North Carolina. A long trip, and my brother and I did not have the luxury of today’s kids — smartphones, iPads, tablets, the Internet.

In addition to enjoying the scenery during the trip, I amused myself by looking through The Baseball Encyclopedia: The Complete and Official Record of Major League Baseball, a large, heavy book published in 1969 by Macmillan that came in a slipcover box. Yes, I was a geek. But I loved baseball and reading about it — and still do.

Tim Kurkjian would have been an ideal passenger for those long rides. This is a guy who not only loves baseball, but also enjoys looking into the trivial things, investigating trends of the game, and coming up with the weird or obscure facts that make you sit up and think “Hmm, I didn’t know that.”

Kurkjian shares his insights in I’m Fascinated By Sacrifice Flies: Inside the Game We All Love (St. Martin’s Press; hardback; $26.99; 232 pages). Kurkjian, a mainstay at ESPN for nearly two decades as a writer, reporter, analyst and host, shares some interesting insights about the game, and what he learned from some of baseball’s most astute players and managers.

“The game always tops itself,” writes Kurkjian, who says he has personally attended more than 3,500 games. “It never disappoints, if you are paying attention.”

The man is a vault of baseball knowledge and trivia. Some nuggets that many fans may not know:

• Two men pitched perfect games in their first career major-league starts (Dallas Braden and Philip Humber).
• Drew Butera caught two no-hitters in his career, while Tony Pena caught 1,950 games and never caught a no-no.
• Reliever Tim Collins stands 5-foot-6½. In 2014 he became the second pitcher shorter than 5-foot-7 to appear in a World Series game (Bobby Shantz was the first, when he started Game 2 of the 1957 Series).

While Kurkjian writes why baseball is the best game, he also tells the reader why it’s the hardest to play. He’s a fan of sabermetrics and loves data, but he stresses that “it is crucial to keep the human element as part of the equation.” In other words, sabermetrics “cannot measure heart.”

Kurkjian helps answer some of those questions fans have, like how bad it hurts when a batter is hit by a pitch. Should a player react? Or should he shrug, like Don Baylor, and say that none of them ever hurt. The latter idea is more prevalent, Kurkjian writes, because by showing pain, “you are showing respect to the pitcher.”

Kurkjian also takes the reader onto the field, where batters have to put up with catchers who are trying to upset their concentration, or where players have superstitions that range from the sublime to the ridiculous. He explores baseball’s unwritten rules that are “far from dead.” Showing up a pitcher with a bat flip or slow trot around the bases still can bring a retaliatory pitch some time down the road.

What if a baseball player pulled a stunt like Joe Horn of the New Orleans Saints, who scored a touchdown and then grabbed a cellphone he had taped to the goal post to “make a call”?

“He wouldn’t finish the call,” catch John Baker told Kurkjian. “There would be balls flying into both dugouts. … Oh my God, the world would stop spinning on its axis. The ice caps would melt.”

You get the idea.

Naturally, Kurkjian explains the title of the book, a statement he made on “Baseball Tonight” in 2007 after Carlos Lee hit his 13th sacrifice fly of the season before the All-Star break to set a Houston Astros franchise record. Kurkjian then unleashes a torrent of statistics related to the sacrifice fly.
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• Eddie Murray is the career leader in sac flies with 128, but never led the league in any season.
• Chili Davis drove in 113 runs in 1993 but did not hit a sacrifice fly that season.
• Pitcher Nolan Ryan has allowed the most sacrifice flies (146) in a career.
• Lee, who seemed a lock to break Gil Hodges’ major-league record of 19 sacrifice flies in 1954, did not hit another one during the rest of the 2007 season.

Great stuff. So are Kurkjian’s look at baseball names, combos like pitcher Bud Black and catcher Steve Decker. Or the Blue Jays’ “Bush League bullpen” that included David Bush and Brandon League.

Through all of this trivia, I did find one mistake. Kurkjian notes that in 1969, Don Money drove in five runs on Opening Day for Milwaukee. Money was actually playing for Philadelphia in ’69.

Kurkjian writes about his “Quirkjians,” a statistical oddity, a peculiar fact, or something that simply makes no sense. They are fun to read and are capable of making the reader laugh out loud. So will tales of his banter with ESPN colleague Scott Van Pelt, who can make Kurkjian crack up with laughter at names pronounced in an exaggerated Baltimore accent (both men hail from Montgomery County, Maryland). Always a name with a “long O” sound, like Kohki Idoki, or Sixto Lezcano.

Kurkjian’s stories about scorekeepers, Earl Weaver, Don Zimmer and Buck Showalter are warm and insightful. And his knowledge about baseball and its inner workings shows how much he truly loves the game.

He would have been a godsend on those long car trips I took as a kid.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the 2015 SP Authentic hockey set by Upper Deck:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/2015-16-sp-authentic-hockey-preview-checklist/​

Here's a story I did for Sports Collectors Daily about the 1967-68 Coca-Cola caps collection. Under specially marked bottles of Coke, Fanta, Sprite, Tab and Fresca, collectors could find likenesses of baseball's top stars.

​www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/1967-coca-cola-caps-brought-cool-drinks-hot-fun/
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Topps Archives continues to put today’s major-league baseball stars (and some of yesterday’s) into some intriguing designs from the card company’s storied past. I don’t always agree with the design choices, but this year I was kind of surprised. One design I absolutely love, and one I surprisingly liked. Also surprisingly, one seemed just a little out of place.
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The particulars for the 2016 set: a hobby box contains 24 packs, with eight cards to a pack. The price for a hobby box should be in the $90 to $105 range, depending on the retailer. Topps is promising two on-card autographs per hobby box. There are 300 base cards in the set, with 10 additional short prints.

There are three different retro Topps designs employed in this set. Cards 1 to 100 have the look of the 1953 set, while cards 101-200 adopt the 1979 motif. The final 100 cards are designed to mirror the 1991 set. Predictably, being a retro Topps lover (retro sounds so much better than old, you know …), I really liked the cards that looked like the 1953 set. The pictures are real, and not the artist drawings like the original set, but this isn’t a Heritage set so taking a little bit of license is just fine. Satchel Paige is included among the 1953 designs; it would have been cool if his name had been misspelled as “Satchell” like it was in the original card that depicted him with the St. Louis Browns. That didn’t happen, and Paige is actually shown from his days with the Cleveland Indians. In the hobby box that Topps provided me, I pulled 58 of these cards.

The second design was from the 1979 Topps set. While I was never a fan of the original set, the newer version seems to play well. I pulled 59 of cards with that ’79 design. The final group of cards was patterned after the 1991 Topps set. And it’s odd—I liked those cards when they were released, but for the Archives set it doesn’t seem to work as well. Perhaps the camera angles are to blame, since many of the photographs are action shots and seem a little distant. I pulled 58 of these cards.

A hobby box will typically have parallels, and this one was no exception. There were two blue bordered parallels numbered to 199 — one from the 1953 design (Jason Kipnis) and one from 1979 (Curtis Granderson). There also was a red bordered card of Raul Mondesi, numbered to 50.
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The nicest looking inserts in Archives play off the 1969 Supers. These are regular size, though, and there are 30 cards to the subset. On average, a collector can expect to find four of these cards. The four I found featured Chris Sale, Cole Hamels, Alex Gordon and Andrew Miller; interestingly, they were in the first four packs that I opened.

The other two inserts I saw are patterned after the 1985 Topps set. The Father-Son insert set consists of seven cards; I pulled two out of the hobby box — Bob and Bret Boone, and Tom and Dee Gordon. Another insert in the 1985 design is the 18-card No. 1 Draft Pick. I found three of these cards, and two of them were drafted by Tampa Bay — Josh Hamilton in 1999 and David Price in 2007. The third card I pulled was Astros star Carlos Correia, who was drafted in 2012.
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The final insert is a collection of seven cards featuring cast members of the 1988 movie Bull Durham. The design mirrors the 1988 Topps cards and also features a nine-card autograph set. I pulled two “regular” inserts of characters — Jimmy, played by William O’Leary; and Tony, played by Tom Silardi.

I pulled a third card from this subset, and it’s an on-card autograph of Robert Wuhl, who played Durham manager Larry Hockett.

The other signature card was from the Archives Fan Favorites set and featured former Atlanta Braves catcher Javy Lopez. The card sports a 1991 design; Lopez, by the way, made his debut with the Braves in 1992.
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Topps Archives is a pleasant set to collect, and invariably, the autographs are of players whose names you will recognize. There are lots of Hall of Famers included in the set, too, which is a bonus. I am not always enamored with the years Topps chooses to feature this set in, but at least one of the designs turns out to be a winner.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the night Mike Schmidt hit the speaker dangling from the Astrodome roof for perhaps the hardest-hit single in major-league history. Plus, I also take a look at some Schmidt cards from the mid-1970s.

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/mike-schmidt-baseball-cards/

Here's a story I did for Sports Collectors Daily about this photograph of Joe DiMaggio with his 5-year-old nephew, also named Joe DiMaggio. The younger Joe was the first child of Joltin' Joe's older brother, Mike.



www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/65217-2/

Interviewed during Super Bowl III in January 1969, Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan told a New York Times reporter that “the games of every culture hold up a mirror to the culture.”

Since then, in many variations, we’ve been conditioned to believe that sports — and baseball in particular — mirrors our society and culture. Certainly, that’s true — but explaining why it does can be a difficult task.

That’s what makes Michael Fallon’s look at Los Angeles and the Dodgers of the late 1970s so refreshing. In Dodgerland: Decadent Los Angeles and the 1977-78 Dodgers (University of Nebraska Press; hardback; $34.95; 454 pages), Fallon uses the 1977-78 Dodgers as the main focus of his narrative, but also gives the reader a view of Los Angeles through political, social, cultural and economic lenses. Is Dodgerland a west coast version of The Bronx Is Burning? In an April 2016 blog interview with longtime L.A. sportswriter Tom Hoffarth, Fallon said he wanted to mimic the narrative structure of the 2007 ESPN mini-series that was adapted from Jonathan Mahler's best-selling book “without in any way copying it.”

The inspiration is a good one, since the New York Yankees were the team that defeated the Dodgers in back-to-back World Series in 1977 and ’78.

With a book cover that owes more than a passing nod to the 1976 album front of the Eagles’ Hotel California, Fallon, who has written about art and culture and has one other book to his credit — 2014’s Creating the Future: Art and Los Angeles in the 1970s — achieves that goal in Dodgerland, weaving his stories around four men named Tom.

It was a conscious decision, and the first three choices are not surprising: Tom Lasorda, the garrulous manager of the Dodgers who took over the team from taciturn Walter Alston for the final four games of the 1976 season; Tom Bradley, the first black mayor of Los Angeles who weathered a tax revolt, rising crime, and had a vision for his city that included hosting the 1984 Olympics; and Tom Wolfe, the author who brought the story of America’s first astronauts into sharp focus with his 1979 book, The Right Stuff.

The fourth is Tom Fallon, the author’s grandfather. At first blush, this choice seems a bit self-indulgent. But as the narrative progresses, it turns out that Tom Fallon was the perfect choice — a diehard Dodgers fan in New York who moved his family west, settling in the Los Angeles suburbs and working to achieve the California dream through his hardware store.

Fallon the author tells his grandfather’s story straight without sentimentality, demonstrating how the economics of the 1970s affected the small businessmen in California. Following the Fallon family journey is similar to tracing a once-calm Los Angeles that turned raucous in the mid- to late 1970s. The comparisons Fallon draws from all four Toms makes for a bouncy, vibrant storyline. Hardcore baseball fans may not find much new material in Fallon’s writing, but there are some surprises and a much greater attention to detail than previous works about the era.

Michael Fallon’s family moved to California when he was 3, and he spent much of his youth growing passionate about the Dodgers, a trait that had been passed down from his father and grandfather. The heart of Dodgerland revolves around the Dodgers, who would win the National League pennant in Lasorda’s first two full seasons as manager.

Lasorda replaced Alston, who had been the Dodgers’ manager since 1954, when the franchise was still in Brooklyn. Alston won seven pennants and three World Series during his tenure and was known as the “Quiet Man.”

Most of the time, anyway. Los Angeles sportswriter Melvin Durslag once wrote that Alston, incensed when he caught pitchers Sandy Koufax and Larry Sherry breaking curfew during spring training, chased them to their room. When the pitchers locked the door, Alston smashed it in, breaking his World Series ring in the process.

 But by the mid-1970s, Alston was still respected but viewed as aloof, quiet and possibly even out of touch. Lasorda, Alston’s third base coach, brought a more electric, rejuvenating vibe to the Dodgers. In the most eye-opening section of the book, Fallon reveals the apparent dislike between Alston and Lasorda, which had its roots in the early 1950s when Alston managed Lasorda in the Dodgers’ minor-league system. Lasorda was part of a group that tried to pull a prank on their manager, and Alston was not amused. Afterward, Fallon writes, Alston “had nothing but stern, disapproving looks for Lasorda.” When both made it to the majors—Alston as the Dodgers’ manager and Lasorda as a left-handed pitcher — Alston hardly used him.

“That guy Alston never gave me a chance, and I never forgot it,” Lasorda said.

With that in mind, Lasorda set out to grow a new culture in Los Angeles. “It’s simple, really. I show you the loyalty of a father, you show me the loyalty of a son,” he said. “You show me loyalty, I will watch your back forever.”

That demand for loyalty and an insatiable desire to show he was just as good as his predecessor drove Lasorda in that first season, and despite some bumps in the road, that tactic put the Dodgers into the World Series against the Yankees, their ancient rivals. The two teams would meet again in 1978, with the same result: a Series victory for New York.

Fallon sprinkles the day-to-day grind of the season with stories about players. Anecdotes about players like Reggie Smith are instructive. The outfielder was known for a great arm, strong work ethic and was respected for his leadership. “Reggie’s a foxhole dude,” teammate Dusty Baker said. “If it was war or a baseball game, there wouldn’t be another person I want next to me.”
Smith also could play seven different instruments and was called “The Professor” by his teammates because of his intelligence.

Fallon also writes about Glenn Burke, a promising player with a dark secret — he was the first baseball player to reveal he was gay, and believed he was traded by the Dodgers for an older player (Bill North) because of his lifestyle. Future Hall of Famer Don Sutton was a fierce competitor who always seemed to challenge Lasorda’s leadership, while first baseman Steve Garvey cultivated a squeaky-clean image that seemed phony to his teammates. Garvey’s much-publicized fight with Sutton in 1978 reveals Lasorda’s genius in manipulating a potentially bad situation into a positive motivational tool.

What also distinguishes Dodgerland is Fallon’s look at the pop culture of the decade. He references television shows like Three’s Company and Charlie’s Angels, and movies like Star Wars. Frank Zappa, Hugh Hefner, Roman Polanski, John Wayne and Bob Marley also come under Fallon’s microscope. Even the comeback of pitcher-turned-author Jim Bouton is given good treatment.

The only glitches in the book were minor fact errors. Fallon notes that the between 1941 and 1963, the Dodgers and Yankees had met eight times, with the Yankees winning seven of them. That number should have been six, as the Dodgers won in 1955 and 1963. He later writes that between 1949 and 1963, the Yankees appeared in all but two World Series (true) and won 10 World Series titles (they actually won nine).

In the end, Los Angeles mayor Bradley weathers the Proposition 13 controversy and stares down the IOC to get the 1984 Olympics (mostly) on his terms. Wolfe kicks his writing into gear and completes The Right Stuff, and Tom Fallon comes to grips with the grim economic realities of Southern California as society becomes more of a freewheeling, disposable society. Lasorda, meanwhile, has two pennants in his pocket but two disappointing World Series defeats to the Yankees that will gnaw at him until 1981, when the Dodgers exacted their revenge against New York in the World Series that ended a bizarre, strike-ridden split season.

Michael Fallon combines baseball, culture, politics, and social issues into a neat package in Dodgerland. The mid-1970s saw the beginnings of a big shift in maj0r-league baseball because of free agency, and California struggled to emerge from the “Me Decade” that was coined so cleverly by Wolfe in a cover story that appeared in New York magazine on August 23, 1976. Fallon shows that the games of the 1970s culture were a perfect mirror for American culture overall.

It’s worth reflecting upon.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the 1981-82 Topps basketball set.

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/1981-82-topps-basketball-set/

Here is a story I wrote for Sports Collectors DAily about oddball baseball cards from the 1950s to the present.

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/64838-2/

Topps is tipping its hat in a nod toward a new trading card set.
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In a news release Friday, Topps announced a partnership with New Era Cap, the official on-field cap of Major League Baseball. The deal will feature packs of cards that will be available at participating Lids stores in the United States and will include New Era’s nine MLB “ambassadors”: Bryce Harper, Buster Posey, Andrew McCutchen, Joc Pederson, Jacob deGrom, Josh Donaldson, Kyle Schwarber, Dellin Betances and Marcus Stroman.

Fans who buy any New Era major-league baseball cap at any participating Lids, Locker Room by Lids and Lids Clubhouse stories in the United States will receive one four-card pack of limited edition cards — while supplies last, of course. Some select packs will include player autograph and cap memorabilia cards. The relics will feature swatches of player-worn 59Fifty caps, numbered to 99.

In a news release, Tony DeSimone, the category director of baseball for New Era Cap, said the partnership with Topps “was a perfect fit.”

“We believe that creating special cards with on-field caps swatches will resonate with both Topps and New Era’s tremendous fan bases,” he said. 

In the same release, Jordan Greenstein, Topps’ director of sports and entertainment marketing, said his company was “thrilled” with the partnership, and that the limited edition set gives fans “yet another reason to be excited about baseball.”

 “We wish we could be there to see the smiles on fans’ faces when they find these rare cards in packs while wearing New Era caps,” he said.