​For collectors who enjoy shiny cards, the 2016 edition of Topps Chrome baseball offers the design of the flagship Series 1 and 2 sets — which includes sharp photography and expressive action shots — and the chromium finish that has been in place for years.

This year’s set will contain 200 cards and will include the big stars and top rookies of this season. There also will be some hard-to-find card front variations, too.

A hobby box will contain 24 packs per box, with four cards to a pack. Topps is promising two autographs per hobby box, and from the product I opened, both were on-card signatures.

The hobby box I sampled had four refractors plus one Blue Wave refractor of Trevor Rosenthal numbered to 75.

The autograph cards are nice and the two rookie signatures I saw were bold and in blue Sharpie. The first signature card was of Rays’ rookie pitcher Blake Snell, while the second one was of Pirates shortstop prospect Alen Hanson. This second autograph is beautifully penned, even if you cannot figure out what it says. Hanson’s full name is Alen Reny (Michel) Hanson, and it looks like he got most of those names in the autograph.

Borrowing from Topps’ flagship product, First Pitch is a 20-card insert set t that features famous non-baseball stars throwing out the ceremonial first pitch before games. This insert should fall one to a box; the card I pulled was of longtime Reading Rainbow host LeVar Burton. Perspective also contains 20 cards and is another carryover from the main Topps set; there were four of these cards in the hobby box I opened.

Topps adds some color in two other inserts — Youth Impact consists of 20 cards and heralds the early career success of 20 players. Future Stars, also a 20-card insert set, offers up a more stained glass kind of look on the card front. Like Youth Impact, this subset concentrates on up-and-coming young stars.

There is plenty to like about Topps Chrome, particularly if shiny cards are your weakness. The photography is nice and the cards stand up well in the design of Topps’ Series 1 and 2.

Futility in sports sometimes can be endearing. The 1962 Mets, who were an awful 40-120 in their major-league debut, were lovable. The Detroit Lions, who went 0-16 in 2008, were not. The Chicago Cubs, who have not won a World Series since 1908, have been lovable losers through the years. The Detroit Tigers, who challenged the ’62 Mets for losses and set an American League mark when they went 43-119, were not.

And then there were the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The franchise set an NFL record for futility by losing its first 26 regular-season games before winning its final two contests in 1977. They were the butt of jokes and a go-to punchline for Tonight Show host Johnny Carson.
In 1976, Tampa Bay did not score until its third game and did not have a touchdown until Week 4. They lost by more than a touchdown 11 times and were ravaged by injuries, sending 17 players to injured reserve. They were last in points scored, touchdowns and rushing touchdowns. The NFL did the Bucs no favors by stocking the expansion draft with old and lame football players.
Lovable losers.

Jason Vuic brings back those memories — painful, humorous and otherwise — in a well-researched, engagingly funny new book. The Yucks: Two Years in Tampa with the Losingest Team in NFL History (Simon & Schuster; hardback; $26; 239 pages) is crisply written and a fun read. Longtime Tampa Bay fans will remember the old stories and the reporters who covered the team. Vuic builds upon his extensive research, interviewing former players, coaches, journalists, politicians, businessmen and other Tampa-area movers and shakers. Not only does he write about football, Vuic also explores the economic impact the team had on the area.

After all, nobody had heard of Tampa Bay when the franchise was awarded by the NFL in April 1974. “Tampa Bay” was a body of water, with two distinct rivals — Tampa and St. Petersburg — on either side of the bay. Tampa was the Cigar City, a rough-and-tumble, blue-collar metropolis that was a crime reporter’s dream. St. Petersburg, with its elderly population, was called “God’s Waiting Room.” The Bucs would be the first instance of mutual cooperation between the two cities, or “unity in the community,” as the late local broadcaster Chris Thomas used to say.

Intentionally or not, The Yucks parallels Promises to Keep by Bill Braucher, a 1972 book by the Miami Herald sportswriter that chronicled the early years of the Miami Dolphins. Both teams had tight-fisted owners (Hugh Culverhouse and Joe Robbie), painful losses and head coaches whose sons were on the team’s first-year roster (J.J. McKay and George Wilson Jr.).

Vuic is an unabashed fan of the Bucs and has rooted for Tampa Bay since 1982, when he was a 9-year-old and met quarterback Doug Williams during a charity basketball game in Punta Gorda, a 90-minute drive south of Tampa.
Vuic’s sources read like a who’s who of Tampa Bay media since 1976. This is not meant to be all-inclusive, but the talent of the journalists I am going to mention was — and is, in some cases — indescribably good. Forgive my indulgence in giving them a shout-out, as several were colleagues through the years.

Tampa Tribune sources included editor/columnist Tom McEwen; reporters Jim Selman, Chris Harry, Joey Johnston, Ira Kaufman, Tom Ford, and Pat Yasinskas; and columnists Martin Fennelly and Joe Henderson. The St. Petersburg Times sources included columnist Hubert Mizell (who Vuic also interviewed in 2011), Bruce Lowitt, Ron Martz, Ray Holliman, Rick Stroud, John Romano and Tom Jones. There also was Bob Chick from the St. Petersburg Evening Independent, and Patrick Zier of the Lakeland Ledger.
Electronic media included Jack Harris (also interviewed by Vuic), Andy Hardy and Dick Crippen.

Vuic is used to writing about disasters. In 2011 he wrote The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History. As it turns out, the Bucs were the NFL’s version of the Yugo, from their creamsicle uniforms to Bucco Bruce, the winking pirate depicted on the team’s helmets.

Vuic is accurate in his characterization of the Bucs’ first coach, John McKay. McKay won four national titles at Southern Cal and was a proponent of the I-formation — “Student Body Left” or “Student Body Right” were his trademark offensive plays in college — but that offensive scheme did not work in the NFL. Vuic describes McKay as “autocratic, sarcastic, and mean,” who was aloof to his players, even cutting one player who complained about the coach’s cigar smoke. To the media, he was a godsend, because his glib, witty and sarcastic quips made for great copy.

“Well, we didn’t block,” he said after his pro coaching debut in 1976. “But we made up for it by not tackling.”

Vuic also delves into the history of what has been called McKay's iconic quote.

"What did you think of your team's execution, Coach?"

"I'm all for it."

He was also stubborn, insisting on two-a-day drills in sweltering Florida weather during the Bucs’ inaugural training camp. McKay’s version of Bear Bryant’s Junction Boys didn’t work. One journalist described him as a cross between Richard Nixon and Captain Queeg.

It got so bad, reporters were writing leads before the games were played. By 1977, it had gotten so bad that some members of the marketing department at Busch Gardens came up with a “Go for O!” T-shirt.

“The shirts were a huge hit,” Vuic writes.

Vuic called Culverhouse “an exceptionally hands-on” owner. And frugal. He made a point of showing off a second-hand sofa during a tour of One Buc Place, and told reporters the walls were painted white so when players watched film, they didn’t need a screen.

The reason the Bucs were lovable losers, Vuic asserts, is not because fans like them. It's due to the fact that fans love it when losers beat the odds.

Football fans — and Tampa Bay fans — will enjoy this book. The Bucs have tasted glory since those inglorious first two years, going to three NFC title games and winning Super Bowl XXXVII in January 2003. But there has been more heartache than happiness at One Buc Place through the years, and Vuic captures the growing pains of the franchise perfectly. It’s an endearing, but accurate look at the early days of the Bucs.

Topps Bunt has been a fun digital app. While I am a traditionalist when it comes to baseball cards, I have to admit that it’s kind of cool to go onto my smartphone and look at a collection I’ve been building. I may not be as fanatical as some, but it’s still a nice pastime and reflects Topps’ forward-thinking in looking at the digital world.

But interestingly, Topps has put out a card version of Bunt, giving the collectors a chance to actually see and feel cards. And actually add to their digital collections, too.

Topps’ 2016 Bunt is a reasonably priced product, in the $30 range for a hobby box (depending on the retailer). A hobby box contains 36 packs, with seven cards to a pack. Collectors who buy a hobby box are virtually assured of completing the base set of 200 cards. Plus, they will get some doubles.

In the hobby box I opened, I pulled all 200 base cards and 21 doubles. A hobby box, by the way, contains 36 packs, with seven cards to a pack. There are supposed to be parallels, too, but they are difficult to spot. I went through the set twice and didn't find any, but heck, my eyes aren't so great anymore. I easily could have missed the small print.
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There are several inserts. Future of the Franchise is a 15-card subset that highlights up-and-coming players. I pulled three of these cards from the hobby box I opened.

Light Force is a 25-card insert set that keys on the top stars in the game. I pulled four of these inserts from the hobby box I opened. Program is a 30-card subset that tries to mirror the cover of a game-day program, even down to the scanning bar in the lower right-hand corner. I pulled five of these cards.

Unique Unis is a 10-card set that showcases uniforms worn for special occasions, like All-Star weekend or throwback uniform dates.

Topps also promises 12 cards with digital codes for those collectors who enjoy the Bunt phone app. True to form there were 12 in the box I opened, with some nice virtual cards (including some rarer ones) that I found after entering the code.

The final card I received was a Title Town insert, numbered to 75. This is a 10-card set that also has a place on the back to scratch off for a digital code. The card I received was of the St. Louis Cardinals, who have won 11 World Series titles.

That’s second only to the New York Yankees, who have won 27 Series crowns. The Cardinals’ card features three players from different eras — Enos Slaughter, Ozzie Smith and Albert Pujols. Why Stan Musial wasn’t part of the card is a mystery to me. I mean, Slaughter was a nice choice, but Stan was The Man.

The card design for Bunt mirrors the digital product. The card stock is thin and the backs are different than the digital version. The photography on the front is sharp, but the team logos behind the players’ heads are distracting.

The checklist is a nice blend of current stars, Hall of Famers and stars through the years

Still, Topps Bunt is an affordable product that offers set builders an easy task, and gives phone app lovers a chance to unlock some nice cards. It should be a hit with kids, too, and since young collectors with this product now can build sets virtually in addition to the traditional way, it's not a bad set to collect.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about Hall of Famer Paul Molitor, who turned 60 on August 22.

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/paul-molitor-cards/

​Topps Strata had a nice debut last year as a standalone baseball product, and the high-end product that relied heavily on acetate cards returns with a two-card, hit-only offering.
Look for the price for a 2016 Strata baseball hobby box to be in the $85 to $100 range, depending on the retailer.
This year’s Strata offers one autograph and a relic per box. Lucky collectors will pull an autographed relic, which fall in every other box; I consider myself lucky, since the pack I opened contained a Clearly Authentic autograph relic card of Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia.
The card was printed on thick stock and has a generously large, three-color swatch. It is numbered to 125 and is one of 25 different subjects in the subset. Pedroia’s signature is covered by a sheet of clear acetate, which gives the card a slick look on the front. What’s also notable about Clearly Authentic is the MLB Authenticated logo that is placed near the middle of the relic. 

The main subset is the 35-card Strata Autographs, which has parallels in orange numbered to 125, blue (99), green (75), black (50), gold (25) and red (1/1). The card I pulled was an orange parallel of former Athletics slugger Jose Canseco. The autograph is signed on the card, in a clear spot, and the signature is bold and recognizable. Not only can a collector tell the card is a parallel by the serial number, he or she also can note the color of the trim around the player. In Canseco’s case, the orange is clearly visible.

Interestingly, in the main subset there are no Blue Jays (where’s Jose Bautista?) or Rays (Evan Longoria is MIA), and there is only one member of the World Series champion Royals (Miguel Almonte), but there are four Cubs and three each of the Yankees, Red Sox and Braves. However, Joey Bats does appear in a different subset (Clearly Authentic).

Some of the higher-end cards collectors could find in Strata are the 1/1 cut signature cards, which feature players like Ty Cobb, Buck Leonard, Stan Musial, Babe Ruth and Ralph Kiner. Dual autographs are numbered to five and combine players like Sandy Koufax and Clayton Kershaw, Hank Aaron and Mike Trout, and Carl Yastrzemski and Nomar Garciaparra. The combination of Ken Griffey Jr. and Ichiro also seems to be a nice pairing.

Topps Strata is an attractive-looking set with a clean look. It’s pricey, but there are some fine possibilities that could make it worth opening your wallet.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the 2015-16 Upper Deck  Portfolio hockey set, which will be released on Aug. 17.

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/2015-16-ud-portfolio-hockey/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the quirky 1973 Topps Candy Lids set:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/67089-2/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily previewing the 2017 Topps Series 1 baseball set, which has a February 2017 release date.

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/2017-topps-series-1-baseball-will-provide-crisper-design/

Fifty-five years after his death, Ty Cobb is still fascinating — and still an enigma.

We wonder what made this brilliant athlete tick. If he wasn’t baseball’s greatest player, Cobb was certainly among them. The Detroit Tigers’ center fielder was admired for his intense, brainy approach to the game, but he also was feared and despised. What motivated him to be baseball’s greatest player — and biggest draw — in the first two decades of the 20th century?

Some baseball biographers have told Cobb’s story in broad, general terms. He was portrayed as racist, mean-spirited and vengeful. He retired with 12 American League batting titles, a .367 lifetime average (since adjusted to .366) and was elected to the inaugural National Baseball Hall of Fame class. Intense on the field, he once climbed into the stands and beat a handicapped heckler senseless. He also fought with teammates and even duked it out with an umpire after a game.
He always had a chip on his shoulder.

“He came up from the South, you know,” Cobb’s teammate, outfielder Sam Crawford, told Lawrence Ritter in The Glory of Their Times, “and he was still fighting the Civil War.”

That might not be entirely true, but Cobb’s cultural and social upbringing is at the heart of a new book by Steven Elliott Tripp: Ty Cobb: Baseball and American Manhood (Rowman & Littlefield; hardback; $29.95; 402 pages).

“He brought a distinctive social orientation and worldview that was unique to the turn-of-the-century South,” writes Tripp, who teaches social and cultural American history at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan.

This is not a traditional biography. It is, Tripp writes, “a work of social and cultural history.” And it’s a book that brings to the forefront the subject of manhood and defending one’s honor. Ty Cobb was highly sensitive about preserving his honor, Tripp writes. Tripp is not an apologist for Cobb, but he does provide some interesting insights about why the athlete acted the way he did.

Tripp has written about social and cultural issues before, publishing Yankee Town, Southern City: Race and Class Relations in Civil War Lynchburg in 1999. He uses those lenses in prying open the personality of Ty Cobb.

​F​or example, “Cobb understood fully that according to the ethic of Southern honor, he gained status by humiliating his adversaries,” Tripp writes.
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So it didn’t matter whether Cobb was rattling a pitcher by taking a long lead, sliding into second base with spikes high or taking an extra base. If he could intimidate or humiliate an opponent, he would because it gave him that added edge. If he exhibited that same arrogance away from the ballpark, so much the better.

“After each game, he took his usual evening constitutional,” Tripp writes, “even though it meant he had to walk through the large crowds that assembled outside his hotel to scare him.”

Cobb reveled in an environment of “open confrontations and blood rivalries.”
Many authors have taken a crack at Cobb through the years, including the Georgia Peach himself. Cobb collaborated with Al Stump in 1961 for a “setting the record straight” autobiography, and in 1984 Charles Alexander made an earnest but flawed attempt with Ty Cobb. Stump wrote a magazine piece about Cobb after the Hall of Famer’s death in 1961, and then returned in 1994 with the self-serving Cobb. In 2013, Herschel Cobb wrote a warm, sentimental book about his grandfather (Heart of a Tiger). Armed with new research, Charles Leerhsen in 2015 presented a ground-breaking, thorough and compelling view in Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty.

Tripp’s book grew out of an essay he wrote for the Journal of Social History in October 2009, titled “The Most Popular Unpopular Man in Baseball.”

In Ty Cobb: Baseball and American Manhood, Tripp attempts to answer these questions: Why did Cobb act the way he did? And despite his flaws, why was Cobb the game’s most popular player in the first two decades of the 20th century?

Specifically, Tripp argues, “Cobb was the product of his culture.” He was taught at a very early age by his father — a man he revered — never to back down. William H. Cobb “exemplified mastery, authority, will,” Tripp writes. “William was everything Ty hoped to be in a man.”

The fact that Cobb’s father was shot to death by his mother as the baseball player was beginning his major-league career also took its toll. Defending his mother’s honor at the subsequent trial (she was acquitted) epitomized the Southern manhood that Cobb cherished.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the early Japanese cards of Ichiro Suzuki.
 
www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/ichiro-japanese-baseball-cards/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about Alex Rodriguez, his cards and his legacy.

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/a-rod-baseball-cards/

This is the kind of batting average that a card collector craves.

Bowman Inception baseball is strictly about autographs and relics, and with five hits in every premium pack it’s an attractive product. It’s especially attractive to collectors who crave rookies. A typical box will contain four autograph cards and a signed relic card.

And sometimes you find a box with six hits.

The price for a box will fall in the $75 to $85 range, depending on the retailer.
What was interesting in the box I opened was that two of the on-card signature cards were of the same player—Mariners shortstop prospect Drew Jackson. One was a purple parallel numbered to 150, while the other one was signed in silver ink.

The other signature cards were of Angels catching prospect Taylor Ward and Nationals prospect Victor Robles, a 19-year-old outfielder.

The autograph on the relic card was on a sticker and featured Twins outfield prospect Adam Brett Walker II, who is currently playing for Rochester in the Triple-A International League.

As an added bonus, there was a sixth card in the box that I opened — a redemption card for a rookie autograph purple parallel of Michael Conforto, who has played 80 games for the New York Mets this season.

The design for Inception features an action shot of the player set against a background that I can only describe as looking like the galaxy after the big bang theory. The cards are printed on a nice thick stock, and the dark background does seem to work. The card backs don’t offer much information, other than congratulations for pulling that card.
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And since the redemption card was sort of a bonus, there is no need to bemoan the fact that I won’t see it for a few weeks. It’s unfortunately, part of the game.

​Topps Stadium Club baseball offers a nice look at baseball’s past and present, but what I really enjoyed about this set is the fun spirit in the photography. There are some unusual shots, some celebration shots, some dump-water-on-his-head moments. That’s a good thing. Baseball players don’t always have to be somber or offer up tired, cliché-like poses. And Stadium Club lets the photography tell the tale without cluttering up the design.

There is card No. 271, with Martin Prado about to be soaked by a bucket of ice as he is being interviewed. Or card No. 120 of Mike Moustakas, tearing off his uniform. Or even card No. 129, which shows Adam Jones holding a pie as he sneaks up on an unsuspecting victim. Those are photographs that took some thought and forward thinking.

The design of Stadium Club remains attractive. Full-bleed photography is used, and the players’ names are depicted with large stencil block lettering. What’s also nice are the black-and-white shots of Hall of Famers like Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Babe Ruth, Sandy Koufax and Harmon Killebrew.
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A hobby box contains 16 packs, with eight cards to a pack. The base set consists of 300 cards, and there are 25 variations. In the box I opened, there 110 base cards, and I also found six gold and two black foil parallels.

Topps promises two on-card signatures per hobby box, and that was the case in the box I sampled. The design is very close to the base card, but there is a line beneath the player’s name to identify it as a “certified autograph issue.” The autographs I found belonged to a pair of pitchers — Brian Johnson (Red Sox) and Trevor May (Twins).

​Several of the insert sets should be familiar to collectors. Legends Die-Cuts contains 10 cards and fall one per box. The card I pulled was Hall of Famer Lou Gehrig. What’s interesting about the card is the New York World’s Fair patch on Gehrig’s left-hand sleeve. The World’s Fair was held in New York in 1939-40, and of course Gehrig played very little in 1939. However, these patches were put on the uniforms of the New York Yankees, New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers in 1938 to celebrate the upcoming event. The photo, therefore, shows the Iron Horse in his final full season.

Another familiar die-cut insert is Triumvirates, a 30-card set that is divided into 10 different sets of three. Collectors can fit three specific inserts together into a puzzle. Luminous is the most common Triumvirate card, but there also is a Luminescent version that falls once every 64 packs. That was the insert I pulled: a Luminescent card of Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner.

Beam Team is another familiar subset, with one per hobby box. There are 25 different cards, and I pulled one of Mets pitcher Matt Harvey.

ISOmetrics makes its debut this year, and there are three cards per hobby box. This card combines photography with certain relevant statistics. I pulled two regular inserts and a gold parallel of Joey Votto; the gold cards fall one to a case. And finally, Contact Sheet takes on a look that old photographers will remember. You know, before digital, when you had to develop your own film. There are 10 cards in the subset and two on average per hobby box.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about a Bobby Jones autographed golf ball that will be on display at the National this week:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/nyc-time-capsules-holds-1930-babe-ruth-bobby-jones-signed-balls/

Here's a story  I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about an Army veteran who found and reclaimed eight unopened boxes of 1974 Topps football in his parents' attic. He now has them up for auction.

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/1974-topps-football-unopened-box-find/
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The Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro begin Friday, and Topps has put out a card set that could be golden in many ways.

Especially if you open a hot box.
Topps’ 2016 U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Team Hopefuls is a 74-card set with plenty of parallels and some interesting hits. A hobby box will cost in the $75 to $85 range, depending on the retailer. It will contain 24 packs, with eight cards per pack.

Whenever you have a small base set, doubles are going to be inevitable. One would expect, however, to complete the set. It didn’t happen, since every card was there except No. 34 — track and field star LaShawn Merritt. Card No. 37 also was absent, but that’s because it wasn’t included in the checklist.

Here’s where this box, provided to me by Topps, is such a hot one. Typically, Topps is promising three hits per hobby box, including one autograph relic and a commemorative relic.

This box had six hits — two autographs, an autograph relic, two patch cards and one relic card.
The autographs are on stickers, and the first one I pulled was a bronze parallel card of men’s swimming star Michael Phelps, numbered to 25.

​ The second one was of women’s soccer player Megan Rapinoe. The autograph relic was of rugby player Madison Hughes and it was numbered to 50; there are 24 different subjects in this subset.

​There was one exclusive relic card, and it was of women’s basketball star Candace Parker. The last two relics were patch cards, with the first one being a U.S. Olympic Team Commemorative red parallel card of swimmer Matt Grevers, numbered to 25. The Olympic patch is simply a beautiful, colorful card. The second patch was a United States flag patch card that featured women’s basketball star Maya Moore.

​The design of the base set is simple and straightforward. An action shot of the competitor is shown against a blue backdrop that features a “Team USA” banner.  The competitor’s name is shown in the lower right-hand corner of the card in red block letters, with their featured event beneath their name in smaller, gray block letter type. At the bottom left is the logo for the U.S. Olympic team.
The card back features vital statistics and a mini-biography that is labeled “Olympic Pedigree.”

​There are parallels of all base cards, with medals substituting for the team logo in the lower left-hand corner. Gold medal parallels will fall every three packs in a hobby box, silver will appear in every other back, and bronze is featured in every pack. True to the average, there were eight golds, 12 silvers and 24 bronzes in the box I opened.
I found two different types of parallels. The 25-card Olympic Disciplines appear one in every four packs and describe an athlete, their event and the rules of that particular event. There were six in the hobby box I sampled.

​The other parallel was called Closing Ceremony, and it recaps the Games of a particular summer with medal counts and a photo of the final ceremony. The card I pulled referenced the controversial and tragic 1972 Games in Munich, Germany. This set of 23 insert cards falls one to a hobby box.
The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic set offers some nice autographs and relics, and also covers a wide spectrum of athletes who are certain to make a splash in Rio beginning this week.