​Apex Major League Soccer made a splashy debut last year for Topps — splashy in the sense that the design made it look like players were sloshing through a puddle of water or through a wading pool.

This year’s design shows a background that gets its inspiration from free-form painters. There is some splash, but it looks more like paint on a rough canvas.
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Artistry aside, the 2016 Apex is a colorful set that is easy to build, and with a reasonable price tag (in the $40 range, depending on the retailer), it also offers some nice hits.
A hobby box of Topps Apex consists of two mini-boxes, with 32 cards to a box. Topps is promising one autograph per mini-box and a total of three hits per hobby box— two autographs and a memorabilia card. The packs in each mini-box are 32-card bricks.

The base set contains 100 cards, with several stars from the U.S. national soccer team and international favorites like Kaka, Steven Gerrard, David Villa and Didier Drogba. In the hobby box supplied to me by Topps, I pulled 48 base cards.

There are also parallels to the base set, in blue (numbered to 99), green (50), hobby exclusive red (5) and 1/1 purple and printing plates.

The two autograph cards I pulled had signatures on sticker cards, and true to Topps’ promise, there was one in each mini-box. These cards look very similar in design to the base set.
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The first one I pulled was of San Jose Quakes midfielder Tommy Thompson, while the second one was an autograph of Sporting Kansas City midfielder Paulo Nagamura. Some collectors will pull parallel autographs in blue, numbered to 99; green (50), hobby exclusive red (5) and purple (1/1).

Other signature possibilities included one of the 10-card Dual Autographs, or the 14-card All-Star Autographs. The latter subset comes from the July 28 MLS All-Star Game between the best of the MLS and Arsenal of the Premier League. Arsenal won 2-1 in a match played at Avaya Stadium in San Jose, California.
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The memorabilia card I pulled was a Crest Jumbo relic card of New York City FC midfielder Mix Diskerud. The card is dominated by a shield, with the MLS logo in the top half and a nice blue watch in the bottom half. The Crest Jumbo relic is a hobby exclusive and is printed on thick stock. Plus, some collectors will find some parallels such as Red Patch and Red Collar (both numbered to 5) and 1/1 cards of Purple Shields, Purple Team, Purple Adidas and printing plates.

There were two different types of inserts in the box I opened. The 29-card Global Influence subset pays tribute to the sport’s top international players, while the 15-card Golazo insert shows celebrations after a goal. Both inserts also have parallels, with blue numbered to 99, green (50), hobby exclusive red (5) and 1/1 purple and printing plates.

I pulled six Global Influence cards, plus one green parallel numbered to 50. I also found two Golazo cards; the expressions of the players are fun to look at, showing the sheer joy when a player scores.
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The 2016 Topps Apex soccer is a nice follow-up to the debut set. It’s affordable, there is some star power, and the hot cards are attractive. It’s a good combination. Topps has really excelled in its soccer products, and this year’s effort is no exception.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the 1961 Topps football set:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/1961-topps-football-cards-included-stars-from-both-leagues/

Some things have changed with Bowman Chrome baseball, but fans of the shiny cards will note that the main thrust of the 2016 set hasn’t been altered much. Prospects are plentiful, and there are enough base cards to keep some name recognition in the set.

This year’s configuration for a hobby box: Two mini boxes, with six packs per mini-box and five cards per pack. Topps is promising a chrome autograph in each Bowman Chrome mini-box.

The base set contains 100 cards, and so does the prospects base set. In the hobby box I opened I received an even split, with 24 base and 24 prospect. There was even a split on parallels, as I pulled a pair of cards numbered to 499 of Eric Hosmer (base) and Helmis Rodriguez (prospect). There also was one purple refractor of Yankees pitcher Masahiro Tanaka, numbered to 250.

The design is slightly different for the base and prospect cards. On the base cards, the player’s name is situated along the left edge of the card, while the prospect’s name is at the bottom. For both types of cards, the team logos are situated in the lower left-hand corner of the card. The card backs include a bullet points under the heading of “Bowman Briefing” and include lines of statistics.

As promised, there were two autograph cards. The first one was an on-card signature of Dodgers minor-league second baseman Willie Calhoun, who played Double-A ball for Tulsa in 2016. Second auto was an on-card signature and refractor White Sox pitcher Jordan Stephens, numbered to 499. Fun fact about Stephens — he went to high school in Alvin, Texas, which is the hometown of Nolan Ryan.

There are several inserts in Bowman Chrome. Bowman Scouts’ Top 100 Updates is a 25-card set, which highlights the up-and-coming prospects in baseball. I pulled four of those inserts in the hobby box I opened. Another insert concentrates on the AFL Fall Stars Game, a hobby exclusive subset that contains 22 cards. I pulled two of these inserts — one from each mini-box.
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Out of the Gate is a 10-card set that features rookies who made a big splash when they made it to the major leagues. The card I pulled was of Rays rookie pitcher Blake Snell.
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The format may have changed a bit, but Bowman Chrome continues to deliver what prospect collectors and lovers of shiny cards want to see.

Arnold Palmer’s death Sunday afternoon at age 87 robs the game of golf of its greatest ambassador.

He never liked to be called “The King,” but my favorite story about Palmer took place at the Monarch Country Club west of Stuart, Florida, in 1987. The Monarch symbol was actually a butterfly and not a crown, but Palmer designed the golf course for the Martin Downs community and visited to play an inaugural round.

On the back nine, Palmer was preparing to hit in the fairway when a small plane buzzed the course. Palmer stopped, stepped away from the ball, peered into the sky, grinned and then turned to the gallery.

“Must be Nicklaus,” he said, drawing laughs from the crowd.

Jack Nicklaus was a rival and friend to Arnie and lived one hour south of the course Palmer was christening. But Palmer had many friends, in the game of golf and beyond. He was genuine, humble, courteous and a credit to the game. He was patient and answered all questions, and signed autographs for any fan who wanted one. And not a scribble, either. His penmanship was almost as good as his game.

Normally I don’t jump the gun on books. Palmer’s upcoming book,  A Life Well Played: My Stories (St. Martin’s Press) is due to be released October 25. But because of his death Sunday, it’s worth an early review.

Palmer put together 76 different short stories in A Life Well Played — observations, if you will — about golf and life.

He drew on the lessons taught to him by his father, Deacon Palmer (Arnie always called him Pap): “He taught me to be a sportsman, to show good sportsmanship,” he writes. “But he didn’t just teach me to play golf. He taught me a discipline that things should be done a certain way — as well and as hard as you can.”

The results have been more than satisfactory, with 62 PGA Tour titles and seven majors — four Masters, two British Open crowns and a U.S. Open championship.

Palmer talks about his greatest victories — the 1960 U.S. Open is one of them, when he rallied from a seven-shot deficit to win at Cherry Hills. And his most painful losses, particularly the 1966 U.S. Open, when he blew a seven-shot lead on the back nine at San Francisco’s Olympic Club during the final round to allow Billy Casper to win — “one of the most baffling (rounds) I have ever encountered.”

He reminisces about Augusta National and the Masters and gives advice about fame — “if they want the perks of stardom, they have to accept the responsibilities, too.”

He also writes about “Arnie’s Army,” his go-for-broke style that endeared him to golf galleries, and signing autographs through the mail — in recent years, he routinely spent $250,000 annually on postage.

Palmer notes the satisfaction and joy of opening a children’s hospital in Orlando,  the famous people he has met and the love of his wives and children. Plus, the adulation of so many golf fans who now are mourning his passing.
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“If I’ve enhanced the game and people’s enjoyment of the game, I would feel like I accomplished something,” he writes.

You did, Arnie. You did.

A postscript. When Palmer was done playing the Monarch course in 1987, I asked him if he had a few minutes to chat for a story. He said sure, after he took a bathroom break. There was only one toilet in the trailer — the place was new and the clubhouse was under construction — and whoever was in the restroom was taking forever. So there's Arnie, shifting from side to side, having to use the restroom. He looks at me and winks. “Don't worry, you're not gonna get a scoop.”

 I almost fell over.

Here is a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about The Cup hockey from Upper Deck, which has an October 26 release date.

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/uds-the-cup-will-showcase-high-end-autographs-relics/
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Here's a storu I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about Panini America's 2016 Impeccable football set:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/paninis-impeccable-football-offers-high-end-hits/​

Here's a piece I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily commemorating what would have been the 90th birthday of Dodgers Hall of Famer Duke Snider. I look at 10 different cards of the Duke, from 1949 to 1964.

​www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/10-duke-snider-baseball-cards/

Bowman sets remain heavily involved in introducing rookies and prospects to collectors. The latest offering by Topps — 2016 Bowman Platinum baseball — remains true to form, with a nice cross-section of established stars and rising talent.

Platinum returns after a one-year hiatus. A collector’s box includes 20 cards, with five cards to a pack. The price range should hover between $85 and $95, depending on the retailer. Topps is promising two autographs per hobby box. The cards are also Walmart exclusive, and collectors who shop retail will have a chance to find some nice rookies and up-and-coming prospects.
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In addition to the collector’s box (that’s a hobby box in retail-speak, I guess), there is a value box (seven packs per box, four cards per pack and a bonus pack of ice parallels), and a fat pack, which includes 12 cards per pack.

​The base set consists of 100 veterans and 110 prospects, and 10 of the prospect cards are short prints.

There were 48 base cards and 40 Top Prospects in the collector’s box I opened. I also pulled two purple parallels, numbered to 250. One was a base parallel and the other was a Top Prospects parallel. Other parallels collectors might find are ice foil; green, numbered to 99; orange (25); and 1/1 black and printing plate cards.

In the Top Prospects set, Willson Contreras has two card fronts.  One shows him in catcher’s equipment, while the short-printed version shows the Cubs’ prospect batting.

The card design is slightly different for base and prospects. The base cards show the player inside a circle, in sharp relief to a soft focus background. The player’s name is centered at the bottom of the card, and the team logo is in the upper left-hand corner. The player’s position is above and to the right of his name. 

The card backs contain a paragraph that lists either a Platinum Batting Moment or a Platinum Pitching Moment. The player’s name is centered at the top of the card back, with the team logo beneath the name. The statistics reflect overall totals, results from 2015 and a line for “career bests.” The player’s WAR numbers (wins above replacement) are provided by Baseball-Reference.com.

The design for the prospect cards places the team logo in the upper right-hand corner, and the player’s name is flush right at the bottom of the card. The type for the player’s name is easier to see than the base cards, owing to the gold-like filling for the letters in the surname.

On the card back, the team logo is in the upper left-hand corner and the player’s name is on the right-hand side at the top. The player’ biographical paragraph is printed in white type on top of a gray background, and this actually is a nicer look than the base card backs.

The two autograph cards I pulled were signatures on stickers.

The first autograph was a sticker signed by Rangers pitching prospect Ariel Jurado, a 20-year-old right-hander who went 12-1 last year in the South Atlantic League and is 8-6 this season, moving from high Class A to Double-A at midseason.

The second signature, also on a sticker, was of Astros first-base prospect A.J. Reed, a 6-foot-4, 275-pounder who was called up to the majors in June. He’s struggling this year in the majors, but last year in the minors he hit 34 homers, knocked in 127 runs and had an OPS of 1.044.
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Some collectors might pull die-cut autographs, numbered to 25. There are also orange parallels, numbered to 25; and a 1/1 black parallel.

Bowman Platinum offers three 30-card insert sets. Two are very similar — Next Generation and Next Generation Prospects are self-explanatory. I pulled three of each from the collector’s box I sampled.

The final insert is called Platinum Presence, and I found two of those cards.

Topps also has an online promotion for this product. There were two cards inserted into the collector’s box touting “the scouting experience of a lifetime.” Held in conjunction with the Arizona Fall League, the grand prize winner will receive a four-day trip to Arizona. The winner will sit with a major-league scout and soak in their expertise, and will observe batting practice from the scout’s seats.

Sounds like fun. If you’re a baseball nut who loves to analyze prospect, it’s the perfect avenue. Go to Topps.com/promotions; it’s not just a click and register; Topps wants an essay from you, wanting to know why you want to be a scout. So, sharpen your writing skills and keep your answer under 2,000 words; deadline is October 2.
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Usually, buying cards at retail outlets is not fruitful, but a collector’s box of Bowman Platinum at Walmart definitely has some value. The two autographs alone could make it worth the investment.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the 1955 Bowman football set: ​
www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/1955-bowman-football-cards/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the 1963 Topps football set:
www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/1963-was-a-watershed-year-for-topps-football/

Baseball autobiographies have had a variety of faces in the past 60 years. In the 1960s and ’70s, readers could choose from the diary-based works of Jim Brosnan (The Long Season) or Jim Bouton (Ball Four). One of the better autobiographies of that era was 1976’s Nice Guys Finish Last by Leo Durocher and Ed Linn.

And for the past 25 years, sports lovers have been bombarded by baseball autobiographies from stars, managers, Hall of Famers and even umpires. Many were simply cashing in on their current fame; others had long careers and were trying to nail down their legacies in print.

Meanwhile, R.A. Dickey wrote a harrowing autobiography in 2012 (Wherever I Wind Up) and Dirk Hayhurst’s candid and funny Out of My League was released the same year.

The point to this ramble is that good baseball biographies are hard to find. When one appears, it’s an occasion to savor.

That’s the case with John D’Acquisto’s memoir.

Fastball John (Instream Books; paperback; $20.99, $9.98 Kindle; 542 pages), co-written with Dave Jordan, takes the reader into the locker room and presents a view from a journeyman’s eyes. And D’Acquisto had quite a journey, rising from the minors and pitching for six major-league teams over 10 seasons.

He managed a 34-51 record with a 4.56 ERA, but numbers don’t tell D’Acquisto’s story. He was a 6-foot-2, 205-pound right-hander with an eye-popping fastball that could top 100 mph. But elbow woes and Tommy John surgery derailed a career that seemed so bright.

D’Acquisto had been a No. 1 pick of the San Francisco Giants (and 17th overall) in 1970. As a minor-leaguer, he had back-to-back seasons (1971-72) where he struck out more than 240 batters in a season. D’Acquisto takes the reader through his growing pains in the minors, his relationship with future major-leaguers like Goose Gossage and Gorman Thomas, and his eventual promotion to the majors to pitch for his mentor, Giants manager Charlie Fox.

There were a lot of fun times in pro ball. There was drinking, plenty of music — D’Acquisto peppers his prose with plenty of iconic songs from the 1970s (“throughout my life, the music playing in the car set the tone for my day”) — and a good deal of women he met on the road. D’Acquisto goes into enough detail to let the reader know what happened, but is sensitive enough to change the names of his partners.

D’Acquisto really excels as a storyteller in Fastball John. His blow-by-blow account of his first pitching duel against Hall of Famer Bob Gibson in 1974 is riveting, and the aftermath might be surprising to some — but not to those who knew what kind of competitor Gibson was. Whether watching Sam McDowell chugging half a bottle of vodka or throwing a no-hitter for Triple-A Phoenix in early 1973, D’Acquisto is engaging with vivid detail.

And he uses music to convey his emotions. When he was called up to the Giants in 1973 and was flying to San Francisco from Phoenix, D’Acquisto was “floating in a tin can, far above the world” — a nice nod to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.”

After waking from his Tommy John surgery, he observes that “for an instant you’re relieved that this was the ugliest, most vivid dream you’ve ever experienced.” But that was OK because soon he’d be driving to the ballpark, “rocking the Led Zeppelin.”  It didn’t happen, because D’Acquisto suddenly found himself on the disabled list.

He talks about the time he refused to come out of a ballgame, telling Cardinals manager Vern Rapp to get off the mound. D’Acquisto was throwing a no-hitter at the time.

“This was the only time, the only time, in my professional life, where I didn’t do what I was told,” he writes.

Didn’t matter. He knew he was being showcased for a trade, and it happened within 72 hours as he was shipped to his hometown team, the San Diego Padres.

Some of D’Acquisto’s adventures away from the ballpark were just as intriguing. There was Italian restaurant he helped bankroll, frequented by a famous mobster. There was his work as a player rep during the talks that led to the 1981 baseball strike, which essentially ended his major-league career.
Life after baseball wasn’t especially kind to D’Acquisto, who was convicted of securities fraud and served time in prison. Through it all, D’Acquisto kept his sanity, maintained his innocence and finally re-emerged with a new outlook on life.

It’s very interesting reading, and not a typical baseball autobiography. There is plenty of humor and D’Acquisto pulls no punches. Ask his opinion of former manager Bill Rigney, and then duck. Longtime friend John “The Count” Montefusco also plays an intriguing role in D’Acquisto’s post-baseball career.

Since songs set the tone for him, D’Acquisto probably can take solace in the 1998 song “The Way” by — of all things — a group named Fastball:

               Anyone can see the road that they walk on is paved in gold.
                         And it’s always summer, they’ll never get cold.
                  They’ll never get hungry, they’ll never get old and gray.

It never really happens that way. More realistically, D’Acquisto sums up his life simply: “One good run, great hits, couple errors and an unearned walk.”

It’s a linescore that makes Fastball John an excellent memoir. One to savor.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the 2015-16 Immaculate Basketball set, which will be released on Wednesday.

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/2015-16-immaculate-basketball-preview/

The Topps Archive Signature Series All-Star baseball set returns for its second year in 2016, and for approximately $45, a collector can buy a hobby box that promises one encased buyback autograph.

This product went over well last year, and with 102 subjects in this year’s product provides an interesting blend of former All-Stars — some famous, others kind of obscure.

There are some Hall of Famers, like Bob Feller, Carl Yastrzemski, Johnny Bench, Carlton Fisk, Ted Williams, Willie Stargell, Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs and Warren Spahn. There are some fair players who had decent careers, like Andy Pafko, Bo Jackson, Bobby Bonds, Harold Baines and Gil McDougald. And then there are cards of guys who you wonder, “were they really All-Stars?” Yes, they were.

The on-card signatures come on an original Topps card from the company’s 65-year history. The one I received was an Edgar Martinez autograph on a 1993 Stadium Club card, No. 331. Given the era that this particular card was produced, the only thing that could make it valuable would be an autograph. The card is also numbered to 11. It is kind of off-kilter in its case, but I am not going to open it in order to fix it.

There are some new options this year, with Legends Autographs, Dual Autographs and Autograph Relics.

It’s not a bad deal, particularly if you pull a guy like Hank Aaron, Sandy Koufax or Nolan Ryan—or even a guy like Edgar Martinez. Those names are in the mix, and the Topps Archives Signature Series All-Star Edition presents an intriguing challenge for collectors.
 

Here 's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about Upper Deck's Premier Hockey, which will be released in November.
​
www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/big-hits-will-be-plentiful-in-2015-16-ud-premier-hockey/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about a lawsuit brought by Paul Lesko. Paul is suing Topps over an error card he thought he was buying -- but he got the corrected version instead.

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/lesko-playing-hardball-with-topps-in-lawsuit/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about Panini America's Immaculate football, which will be released in November.

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/paninis-immaculate-football-offering-big-hits-per-box/