The Butterfly Effect

I’ll give you three guesses as to what’s on the back of this Felix Hernandez card that I (and by “I” I mean my 5-year-old daughter from whom I hijacked this card to write about it on a blog) received while at Safeco Field during a Mariners game.

Go ahead.

Are you good?

Do you have three guesses?

OK cool. I don’t want to hear about your guesses because they are all wrong.

For real this is the back of the card. It’s a baby who is maybe morphing into a butterfly, or vice versa … I’m not certain of the science behind that process. Or maybe it’s a baby who has butterfly wings because it’s a hybrid butterfly-baby formed in a BASF lab. Who knows. The point is: baseball.

This card also asks the timeless question:

How can you make tomorrow love today?

which, ???????????????????????????????????????????????

Seriously though, how CAN you make tomorrow love today? Let’s ask Mariners pitcher Felix Hernandez.

Me: Hi, King Felix. I was wondering, how can you make tomorrow love today?

Felix Hernandez: I don’t know for sure, papi. Maybe, like … if we channel our hopes and dreams into our current state of consciousness, we can marry anticipation with the present and experience a slice of heaven on earth. Like this … (blows on passing butterfly, which turns into a baby and lands in my lap)

Me: Uh, what am I supposed to do with this?

Felix Hernandez: I don’t know … raise it? Listen, are we done? I have to pitch a baseball game now.

Me: (raise child as my own, grow to love it, it eventually teaches me how to make tomorrow love today)

Child: Welp, looks like my work here is done. (sprouts butterfly wings and flies toward the sky)

Me: wtf

When an All-Star is not an All-Star: NL edition

If you were like me, you blindly accepted the Topps All-Star team subsets as factual representations of real life. In the Topps universe, Shane Rawley and Dwight Gooden were All Stars in 1987, since they were included in its 1988 All-Star subset. And yet, neither of them was an All Star in 1987.

Rawley was an All Star in 1986, and he did have a great 1987 season, posting a career-best 17 wins for the mediocre Phillies. But that's not the point. The point is that Topps unilaterally decided that the voters got it wrong when they put pitchers not named Rawley or Gooden on the team. Or maybe Topps didn't want to make an All-Star card of Sid Fernandez? It's all unclear, but it got me thinking.

Just how many of Topps's 1988 All Stars were actually on the 1987 teams? Let's look at the starting lineups.

1. Eric Davis                   LF       1. Rickey Henderson             CF
2. Ryne Sandberg                2B       2. Don Mattingly                1B
3. Andre Dawson                 CF       3. Wade Boggs                   3B
4. Mike Schmidt                 3B       4. George Bell                  LF
5. Jack Clark                   1B       5. Dave Winfield                RF
6. Darryl Strawberry            RF       6. Cal Ripken                   SS
7. Gary Carter                   C       7. Terry Kennedy                 C
8. Ozzie Smith                  SS       8. Willie Randolph              2B
9. Mike Scott                    P       9. Bret Saberhagen               P

For the National League, Dawson, Smith, Clark, and Steve Bedrosian got Topps All-Star cards, and over in the American League, Randolph, Bell, Winfield, Mattingly, Boggs, and Tom Henke got cards. Tony Gwynn, Juan Samuel, Tim Raines, and Tim Wallach, represented in the Topps All-Star lineup, were NL reserves, and Kirby Puckett, Matt Nokes, and Alan Trammell, all three Topps All Stars, were reserves for the American League. But Benny Santiago? Not an All Star. Roger Clemens? Not an All Star. Jimmy Key? Dwight Gooden? Nope and nope. And no Shane Rawley, either.

The other side of that meant that Eric Davis, Ryne Sandberg, Mike Schmidt, Darryl Strawberry, Gary Carter, Mike Scott, Sid Fernandez, Mark Langston, Rickey Henderson, Cal Ripken, Terry Kennedy, and Bret Saberhagen weren't in the regular Topps All Star subset. (They were included in the Glossy All-Star mail-away set and the glossy All Stars found in rack packs, but so what? Not everybody had the cash to send away for the larger All Star set, and it wasn't a guarantee that your drugstore carried rack packs (which were also more expensive than wax packs).)

One of Topps's "things" would be to include an All-Star right-handed starting pitcher and an All-Star left-handed starting pitcher in their All Star subset. So for the NL, these should have been Mike Scott (RHP) and Sid Fernandez (LHP). And for the AL, Bret Saberhagen (RHP) and Mark Langston (LHP). So, because they should exist, here are your 1988 Topps National League All Stars.