Squared Up: Card Games
I snagged a pack of Topps the other day for the hell of it, and something isn’t quite right about it. Maybe it’s a special promotional kind of pack that contains a higher proportion of awesome cards; maybe it said so right on the packaging and I failed to notice it. It definitely isn’t the kind of pack I remember from 25 years ago.
As a kid, the cards felt thicker and more frayable, for one thing, and it seemed like I got about 20 of them. Of course, of that 20, maybe two merited saving, and I almost never got a Met (or if I did, it was a dubious achiever like Terry Leach). Every single pack had a Dave Stieb. By the time I turned 15, I had more pictures of that dude than Mrs. Stieb did. Damnedest thing.
You had to earn the good cards, is my point. You had to keep buying the packs, and you had to keep slogging through the Ron Kittles and crappy “Great Moments: DiMaggio’s Hit Streak” non-card cards hoping to get a Ron Darling or a Roger Clemens.
The pack I bought the other day is seven cards, which is kind of a rip-off, especially since one is an Atlanta Braves team card (nothing against the Braves in particular; it’s the team card in general, which is the shredded cabbage in the baseball-card moo shu) and another is a Dodger “franchise history” card.
The other five, in alpha order: Elvis Andrus; Zack Greinke; Jason Kubel; Leo Nunez; and Albert Pujols. In the what now? First pack of the season and I pull a Pujols? Ain’tcha even gonna make me work for it?
The whole pack is pretty sweet action. A few of the guys haven’t had the best seasons, but Andrus and Pujols alone is better than I sometimes did in whole seasons of collecting. In 1989, the best card I got…well, actually it was probably Dave Stieb, but if I don’t count him, it was Dave Dravecky. …I know, right? Anyway, something about the ratio of good cards to meh cards in the most recent pack feels like cheating. Did Topps decide to weed out the meh cards so kids would stay motivated to buy more? Does Topps understand the purpose of buying them in the first place, the lessons you learn about life from the giant box of Dave Stiebs and the lone mushy-cornered Rick Aguilera fun-tacked to the wall above your desk?
*****
Oy with the All-Star Game. Everybody is dissatisfied with it, and everybody is dissatisfied for a different reason. If you could change only one thing about the All-Star Game, what would you change? The voting? The timing? How subs get chosen and used? How pitchers get used?
I would change about a dozen things, in a perfect world, but if I could only change one thing, I’d go back to having it not count for anything. The team with the best regular-season record should have home-field advantage going into the Series, but if you treat every other aspect of it like an exhibition game, you can’t then make the outcome meaningful (if in fact home-field advantage is meaningful in the Series).
Change one thing about the All-Star Game. See you in the comments.
Tags: Albert Pujols Dave Dravecky Dave Stieb Elvis Andrus Jason Kubel Joe DiMaggio Leo Nunez Mrs. Dave Stieb Rick Aguilera Roger Clemens Ron Kittle Squared Up Terry Leach Zack Greinke
Heh. My Dave Stieb was Claudell Washington.
@fleegan: HA! Claudell was totally my substitute Dave Stieb.
I would make the voting period much shorter. It opens in April(!) which means you have ridiculous nominations like David Freese as last year’s Cardinal 3B when he was out for the season with an injury after the first week — and the write in thing never really works. Since pretty much all the voting is internet based now, I would make voting a three week period from mid-June (maybe in May individual teams could take nominations from their fans for the players they want on the ballot, too). It would be far more exciting to follow the vote totals for only 21 days and a more accurate ballot could lead to more of a season’s breakout players starting in the season in which they actually broke out, instead of having to hope they got picked to be a reserve.
Of course, more breakout players would mean more Joe Buck patronizing the viewing audience with “you may have never heard of this guy, but he’s really good.” So I guess my biggest fix would be taking the All-Star game away from FOX, but that ain’t going to happen.
I don’t know, Dravecky is a pretty remarkable story and can’t imagine there are many of his cards around. (But I’m a Giants fan and therefore required to buy into all of the team lore.)
As for the All Star game, defintiely go back to it not meaning anything. Also, the Home Run Derby would be a pretty cool event to watch if it weren’t for Chris Berman practically wetting himself over every pop fly.
25 years ago there weren’t very many sets put out by the companies each year. I didn’t collect cards as a kid, but got madly into it about ten years ago, mainly collecting Derek Jeter and Yankees. Somewhere in the 90’s, I think, the companies started releasing multiple sets every year. The basic sets still existed, of course. The more expensive the pack or box, the better the chances you’d get a special card, called an “insert”. These insert sets looked fancier and featured one of 10-15 stars on them. I’ll admit it — I like the basic cards (standard baseball picture of the player on the front, career stats on the back), but also liked collecting insert sets.
Dave Stieb was locked in a battle with Doug Drabek for the most wicked pornstache of the late 80s and early 90s. That’s what I primarily remember about him.
I think that by the end of my baseball card collecting days, I had 792 Ivan DeJesus cards.
This was fun to read.
I agree with Sars about returning it to an exhibition game, and I’d also make it nine innings max. That way, the managers could manage it like an exhibition game and not have to worry about saving pitchers. It would also get more players into the game, which would end up being mostly the rising young players.
Absolutely a shorter voting season. It just emphasizes the popularity contest feel when you’re voting on the best players of a season that has just started. The voting process is another issue I have, including the number of votes and the fact that you’re letting fans vote. People vote for players on their team and the names they know. Yes, I’m sure a few people put in an effort and vote for the most worthly players, but not enough to matter. All-Star voting is like the American Idol of baseball and it makes me crazy.
This is self-serving, but the one thing I’d change is to have the Rangers not melt into a huge pile of suck immediately after the break.
I think Bob Walk was my Steib…which, unfortunate name for a pitcher, no? I guess the Pirates weren’t quite as irrelevant when I was collecting in the late 80s, but still. I’m pretty sure I never would have heard of him otherwise…which is actually one of the benefits of collecting baseball cards, I guess.
I think the first fight I had with my boyfriend, who had been in the process of selling his baseball cards, was when I tried to show him my collection of Topps/Donruss/Score cards from late elementary/early middle school (87-92). He said something to the tune of, “Anything between 85 and 2000 is worthless.” So (putting aside the asshattery of hisremark) I guess even at that point, the market was in the process of cheapening itself. What changed around 2000, I dunno, but I agree: It’s not fun getting cards of 10 people I’m hearing about on SportsCenter every morning, anyway.
I remember, back in the late ’80s or early ’90s, staying up ’til the wee hours with my sister, sorting cards and putting them in plastic sleeves, and pulling up a card of a guy I’d never, ever heard of, even though I was an obsessive, box-score-reading fan. “Who the hell is Wally Whitehurst?” I demanded aloud. For some reason, this seemed hilarious at the time. It’s still a favored non-sequitur guaranteed to crack us up: “Who the hell is Wally Whitehurst??!”
Yes, there’s something to sorting through card after card of people you’ve practically never heard of to score one good card.
Aww…I grew up in suburban Toronto and Dave Stieb was the man. My two favourite moments involving him (both endearing and likely a bit embarrassing for Dave)? The tears after his no hitter, and him running out to celebrate when they won in Atlanta in ’92 while wearing sneakers and nearly racking himself skidding on the mound. Good times.
I collected Upper Deck cards for a few years as the picture quality was a freaking miracle compared to all the others. I could not stop getting Tino Martinez. Or Jose Offerman.
Shorter voting season for the All-Star, for sure. And I think it’d be sweet to move it to AFTER the Series, which will take away the meaning it has. It shouldn’t be meaningful! It’s like Top Chef: Masters, where you don’t CARE who wins, you’re there for the crazy-amazing food they make. No one watches the All-Star game with bated breath, waiting to see how it turns out. We want to watch some of the best(?) current players in the game do what they do.
/rant
@ Meredith: It’ll also help get rid of the ‘return from break’ slump that some teams fall in – they can practice and rest up, instead of working their best for a game that shouldn’t frigging matter. I’m a Cub’s fan, you see, and while they’re stinking it up this season, they usually hold on to hope for me until mid-August…or until the All-Star break.
@Cassie: I can see having the game post-Series. You might have to always have it in the South, though. The season’s gotten so long that it’d be too cold otherwise. The NFL does that with the Pro Bowl, though, so there’s a precedent.
I feel your pain as a Cubs fan. The Rangers have all of the not winning and none of the history! Still — we picked up Cliff Lee! I’m pretty excited to see what happens! (hope, she springs eternal…)