The Tribe Whisperer

 Carlos Baerga, 1993 Topps Magazine

Here is a Carlos Baerga baseball card. He's right there, in the middle. Touch his butt, he doesn't care. It doesn't come across well in the scan here, but his name and position at the bottom are in braille. Just in case you couldn't see.

Perhaps you'd like to know more? Let's open up this Topps Magazine card and see what's inside ...

 

Mention of the Cleveland Indians no longer invokes laughter.

LOLZ

Seriously though.

Even last year's whispers that the Tribe might be awakening from its long cellar-dwelling slumber have now turned into out loud predictions that this team is ready to contend in the American League East in 1993.

I have an idea for a cool comic strip. Here it is:

Panel one: Entire 1984 Cleveland Indians roster is sleeping in someone's (their mother's) basement.

Panel two: Cleveland Indians fans - you know, the guy who does the drum and all his friends - are at the upstairs kitchen table. They are not talking because they are sad.

Panel three: The guy on the drums whispers to another guy, "Pssst. Maybe we'll be decent this year?"

Panel four: Other guy is like, "LOL."

Panel five: Passage of time, seasons change, calendars flip.

Panel six: Basement door opens, everybody at the kitchen table looks toward door.

Panel seven: It's Carlos Bearga. He says, "Who made pancakes? I am hungry. For success."

Panel eight: The guy on the drums yells, "I THINK WE CAN CONTEND THIS YEAR MAYBE."

If anyone can draw this I will seriously give them a million dollars. I mean, obviously I won't, but that would still be cool, I think.

Baerga's a powerful switch-hitter, cranking out a career-high 20 homers and 105 RBIs last season, and a talented second sacker.

Panel nine: Bearga says, "I am your talented second sacker."

Panel ten: Everybody is like, "Wtf who says that? Get back downstairs please, you are weird."

True, his 19 errors were second in the league to Steve Sax's 20, but that number should drop as the Indians young infield matures.

We know that errors are a poor judge of overall defense, but this card obviously did not have advanced defensive metrics in mind. Therefore, let's recap:

Carlos Baerga is a talented second sacker.
Oops, actually he is the second worst second sacker in the league.
Maybe he will get better when the guys around him grow pubes because his errors are not his fault.

This has been another fantastic issue of Topps Magazine. Keep a lookout for next month's issue, which includes a feature on talented non sacker, Tony Gwynn! He'll get thinner as he matures, is the thesis.

Cardboard Fenway: 1993 Score Tony Pena

Cardboard Fenway - #77. 1993 Score Tony Pena

A lot of people wanted to see Pena come aboard this past off-season as the new Red Sox manager. Here he's doing something, possibly directing traffic.

1990 – 1994 Countdown: #5. 1993 Topps Finest

Before we get started, just a quick note regarding the nature of these rankings: Comments have been left railing against my choices for top-ten-caliber sets. As a response, I’d like to simply reiterate that I’m not ranking these sets based on my own personal like or dislike. I’m ranking them in terms of their importance to the hobby at the time and taking into account if the hobby (or part of the hobby) adopted an innovation introduced in a given set. One comment expressed a strong dislike for the ‘Bowmanization’ of the rookie card. 1991 Bowman may be reviled by some, but it’s one of the most important sets from the early Nineties simply because it changed the nature of the rookie game. Now let’s get back to the Countdown.




Most of the sets in this Countdown are separated by only the slightest differences. Some had an important rookie, others featured excellent design or an above-average checklist. Very few of these 70-odd sets actually had much hobby (or historical) impact. In their collective defense, at the time of their release sets were made to be competitive with each other, not to have a place in history. That’s what makes it all the more impressive that certain sets were able to attain an instant-classic status.

One such set is 1993 Topps Finest. There’s simply no way to over-estimate its importance within the hobby at the time or the precedent it established for all the sets that have since followed. That’s a bombastic statement to make, especially for the set that is only ranked fifth, so here’s some bombast to back it up.

Let’s start with the short, stars-only, elitist checklist. Now, Finest wasn’t the first set to feature a short base card checklist (OPC Premier was probably the first modern set to do so), just the first to make that fact meaningful. Let me explain.

In 1992, Topps released what would be its last 792-card flagship set, ballooning that figure to 825 cards for 1993. By setting the cap on Finest at 199 cards, Topps cut 626 potential subjects—essentially guys #8 through #25 on each team’s roster. With an entire checklist comprised of only stars, Topps was able to set Finest apart as the company’s home for the game’s elite (or ‘finest’… See what they’re doing there with their name? Ehh?).

The choice of name would end up with multiple meanings: not only did the set feature the finest players in the game, but the cards were among the finest collectors had ever seen. People were blown away. Etched metal, crushed beer can art, whatever you want to call it—Finest innovated card design across the hobby for years to come (whether you personally approved of that or not (I was among those who did not)).

And it did so without straying from the rules of what a baseball card should look like. The player’s name was in a small box next to the Topps logo, and with a large action photo that clearly showed the name of the player’s team and his main function on the field (pitchers were shown pitching), all the design had to accomplish was keeping the player rooted in reality, which it did with the deft sandwiching of metal between player and photo background. As for the backs, they were an afterthought.

As if the base design wasn’t enough, Topps included a hard-to-find parallel set: Refractors. Seeded one in every nine packs, there was a very good chance the average collector (ie the kid who scrimped and saved for weeks on end just to buy a single pack) would never find one. And because the Refractors were a parallel of the base set, there were 199 different ones to collect. Talk about tall orders to fill if you decided to go for the master set.

But who really could afford to do so? Only six cards came per pack, with only 18 packs per box. Let’s say you bought a box: that gave you 106 regular cards and two Refractors (barring doubles). You would still need 93 cards to complete the base set and a whopping 197 Refractors. In the end you were probably looking at buying three to four boxes just to make one base set. Unless you had a barrel of disposable income, the Refractor set was out of your reach. And who ever heard of needing disposable income for new cards? Nowadays that seems like par for the course, but at the time it was an outrageous proposition.

The single most significant innovation that Finest contributed to the hobby was the new audience it was able to draw to collecting. Let’s face it: Finest wasn’t for little kids (unless they were ‘discerning’ little kids), it was for investors, er, I mean collectors ready to spend real money on baseball cards of contemporary stars. And while other brands had set their sights on attracting collectors of this nature, those similar sets from the period (1990 Leaf, 1989 Upper Deck, 1991 Stadium Club and to a certain extent 1992 Bowman) have lost their value. That this edition of Finest hasn’t is simply remarkable.

How does it continue to be relevant? With a checklist comprised of superstars and no real rookies to speak of. With fewer cards per pack and fewer packs per box. And with an innovative design and parallel insert technology gimmick that has set the pace for the fifteen years and counting. Like I said: remarkable.

1990 - 1994 Countdown: #7. 1994 Score

You see, this set is a bad mother--
(Shut your mouth)
But I'm talkin' about 94 Score
(Then we can dig it)

Admit it, you were thinking the same thing… and you’ve seen this set the same way since it came out. 1994 Score is a bad mother: it’s strong in the right places, it makes risky moves and they work, it’s classy and suave and no one understands it but its woman (I guess “its collectors” would be more appropriate). If this were 1994 and you lived in a magical world where baseball cards came alive, you definitely didn’t want to run into Score down a dark alley. Unless your name was Fleer or SP, it would beat your ass every time.

It would do this in a number of ways, least of all with its silent-but-deadly, take-no-prisoners blue border. It’s almost impossible to believe that the same company responsible for 1992 Score created this set only two years later. Where the former was card design in puberty—an experimentation of ugly gradients and bright colors—’94 was understated and mature. Look no further than ’93 Score for the initial design shift towards sophistication, and though it’s not a popular set with collectors, that set did most of the heavy lifting for the brand’s later editions, ’94 included.

Also, where ’92 was bloated (893 base cards), ’94 was lean (660 base cards). Granted, we probably should give 1992’s set a pass on its massive checklist, as it was produced a year or so before it became industry custom to strip subsets from base sets and upgrade them into inserts, a practice Score started in 1993. By 1994, formerly traditional base set highlights like Dream Team and The Franchise (represented in ’94 as Gold Stars) had been sequestered to life as hard-to-find inserts, cutting down on the number of base set subsets. The strategy worked. In 1992 it was fun to get a Dream Teamer in your pack. By 1994, getting one was the best thing to happen all week (and yes, ladies and gentlemen, that’s how sad my social life was as a 15-year-old).

But this set didn’t just beat you with a flawless base set or good-looking inserts. It beat you with a classy parallel. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right: I do hate parallels. But we’re talking about 1994 here, fool, the year the parallel came of age. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if news came out that 1994 Gold Rush was hand-crafted by dwarves burrowed deep beneath the Misty Mountains. Seriously, I think Heaven is missing a baseball card-related angel: Gold Rush is the most perfect parallel set ever created.

And as if that weren’t enough for you, if by some fluke you were still conscious after this pummeling, Score would send you to the hospital with its version of the right-arm wind-up, left-arm knockout. I’m speaking of course of Rookie/Traded.

Sure, it included the awesome Alex Rodriguez rookie “Call Up” redemption card, but the real scene-stealer here was the R/T base card design. It looked, in a word, terrible (though putrid, ugly, forgettable and shitty also fit the bill). But that wasn’t the point. The point was that the cards didn’t look like the regular set.

Thinking forward once again, Score took the opportunity Rookie/Traded created and not only debuted a new company logo but debuted a new card design, one that would—with a few tweaks here and there—carry over into their 1995 product. It was an ingenious move. The set itself, besides the hard-to-find Rodriguez insert, was weak and forgettable. But the idea that it could be an extension of the regular set and be some kind of live testing ground for future sets, well, that’s pretty powerful.

1990 - 1994 Countdown: #16. 1993 SP

I didn’t know how to approach SP. Not in writing about it and its historical significance for a company like Upper Deck (I happen to believe that it redefined the company and together with Topps Finest pushed The Hobby at large down the deep, dark, foil-stamped, holographic tunnel from which it’s never re-emerged), but when I first saw it on the shelf at my local card shop. Don’t get me wrong; I like this set. It intimidated me to no end when it originally came out, but I’ve warmed to it as card prices in general have inflated over the last fifteen years. It’s just, well… When it comes to owning baseball cards, I have a bit of an inferiority complex.

Let me re-phrase that. When it comes to life, I have a large inferiority complex. I can’t tell you why… but I want to thank all those collectors who’ve loved and destroyed the crap out of their cards. Without you there would be nothing out there for me to buy.

I’m not ashamed to admit it: I love creased, dinged and frayed cards. Cards that show a lot of wear have always been friends of mine. Just this afternoon I re-sorted my vintage notebook and I’d have to say that about 90 percent of the cards in the book have paper loss, noticeably chipped corners, creases and/or sun damage. A personal favorite is my copy of Jim Bouton’s 1966 Topps Venezuela card: it’s covered in scribbles from the previous owner plus I can fold it twice and it doesn’t snap to pieces. And that’s one of the better cards in my collection.

The writing was on the wall for me when Score came out in 1988; that set did a lot of things that Topps, Fleer and Donruss weren’t doing at the time (full-color backs, photos on the backs, printed on a nicer, cleaner card stock, poly-bagging packs), and really it was only a matter of time before there would be a new set with packs that I couldn’t afford. That came sooner rather than later with Upper Deck the next year. After that it was Leaf in 1990, Stadium Club and Ultra in 1991 and so on and so forth until I could barely afford any packs by the time I stopped buying new stuff in 1995. But I digress…

Of the three ultra-premium sets that debuted in 1993, SP was the most subtle and most delicate. Maybe it was the etched copper foil stamp, or the simple two-color block pattern along the left edge —for me reminiscent for some reason of nautical flags and tags of preppy designer clothes. Or maybe it was ikebana design of the thin, circuit-like metallic ink line that traveled up the right side of the front to provide underscore for the team name along the top. (The light bulb filament-like bob and weave shape of the line would also lend visual cue to the die-cut edge of the Platinum Power insert set. See what they were doing there? It’s a nice touch that ties the insert and base sets together without working too hard.)

But most likely, it earned this distinction because instead of using the Upper Deck and individual teams’ logos, the company name and team names were spelled out in the same copper metallic ink. Because of the omission of these graphics, the SP aesthetic wasn’t piecemeal, and the designers had control of the entire layout of the card. (If you need a refresher course in ultra-premium card design in 1993, take a look for flaws in Topps Finest and Fleer Flair: Finest uses the same Topps logo as the company’s other brands, while Flair’s otherwise elegant design is taken down a few notches by the mostly-harmless-but-by-no-means-elegant team logos, positioned in the upper right hand corner on the back.)

With nine players from each team represented and a total checklist just shy of 300 cards, the make-up of SP was strong, and on the strength of design, overall checklist and availability was able to turn a relatively weak rookie class into desirable cards across the board. Derek Jeter and Johnny Damon (on his only rookie from 1993) lead the pack, but am I wrong or did Beckett have the Chad Mottola card somewhere around $5 at one point?

1993 saw Upper Deck grow up. Not only did the company successfully transform its flagship from a fun-loving, cartoony, young-person’s baseball card set to a mature, classy, young-adult’s baseball card set, but it birthed a brand that gave the company a strong foothold in the rapidly expanding ultra-premium market. If I thought I was intimidated by SP when I first saw it, what about Topps and the other Upper Deck competitors?

1990 - 1994 Countdown: #18. 1993 Flair

If anything, it takes guts to recognize and react positively to change. Considering that baseball cards were relatively stable in their manufacture and presentation (two-color back, no gloss, cheap cardboard stock) for the 100 years leading up to 1986, it only took the big three companies at the time (Donruss, Fleer and Topps) between four and five years to change at least one of their products to more along the lines of what we expect from cards today: foil-stamping, bleed photos, full-color backs and varying degrees of coated stock. In the grand scheme, that’s no time at all.

1991 Fleer Ultra deserves all the credit for giving the company a significant presence in the then-new world of ‘premium’ cards. Collectors responded to the classy look and feel of the cards and felt privileged to be able to buy them, like they were making an investment. Ultra laid the groundwork not only for other premiums that followed, but for the maturation of Fleer’s flagship for the rest of the decade.

The only problem was that Ultra, despite its quality (no whiteout scribbles on these!) and marbleized grandeur, was kind of ugly. Sure, the cards briefy had value, and I salivated over them as much as the next kid, but I always felt like something was missing, design-wise.

Someone at Fleer must have agreed, because not two years later Flair debuted as the company’s ultra—no pun intended—premium card set. And ultra it was. Each card was a little piece of art and each pack resembled an Art Deco cigarette case. Buying a pack of Flair for $3 netted you a stack of shrink-wrapped cards, thicker than any kind of card I’d ever seen (even thicker than Sportflics) that were, in a word, beautiful. Delicate gold leaf names on glossy stock and a mix of veterans on a simple checklist. Looming action close-up ghosted in a Field of Dreams, Riders on the Storm kind of way behind a studious action shot. A great first step in building a reliable brand.

Growing up outside Boston, I always thought that when the guy down at my local card shop said 'Fleer Flair' real fast he sounded kind of dumb (Flee-ah Flay-yahh). Despite the regional patois faux pas of name choice by Fleer, Flair seemed more like an actual set than its competitor, Topps Finest. Finest felt more like it was for high rollers, like you needed a key to the Playboy Club before you could buy a pack. It was certainly not for a pimply high school freshman like me.

But Flair… though I didn’t quite see the point of paying so much for a pack of cards, at least I had the money to do it. It was within my reach. In the end, I bought only one pack of this set, no matter how many times that card store guy tried to push it on me.

1990 - 1994 Countdown: #19. 1993 Score

The Baseball Card Blog would like you to welcome our first major hobby advertiser, Dave & Adam's Card World, to the Blog.

Now, back to the 1990 - 1994 Countdown.


If not for the following year's soaring, majestic rhapsody in blue, 1993 Score might be remembered as the brand's most mature design. Instead it was lost in a sea of premiums, The Set That 1993 Forgot.

And though equipped with a strong checklist, gorgeous design and striking inserts, Score shook up its distribution blueprint in 1993 by not doing a factory set. I've always wondered the reason they didn't do factory sets in 1993 and 1994. By paring down the base set and re-purposing many of the most memorable subsets from 1990 through 1992 as harder-to-find inserts--and not releasing factory sets, as they did for those same three years--the company, while trying to reincarnate itself as more sophisticated brand, essentially lowered its profile with collectors.

As was the case with the flagship template in 1992, Score's 1993 design took visual cues from its sister set Pinnacle: a large, unobstructed action shot complemented by a thin frame (Pinnacle, black; Score, white). Following 1992's lead, the backs were vertical, featured a full-color headshot and full career statistics (and looked a helluva lot like the backs of Fleer's flagship from the next year, 1994). Finally, 1993 Score was the last company issue free of any type of gloss coating, UV or otherwise. (And as a sidebar, yave you noticed that those sets with a thin uniform gloss are actually hindered by it, and that because of it the cards block up and stick together? I've noticed that when I'm finally able to pry them apart(usually with the aid of a stick of butter), they feel much cheaper (and more buttery) than I remember. I wonder what kind of half-life the gloss coating has... That's something you always forget about: cards were made out of cardboard not only because it was something sturdy for cigarette and gum packaging, but because it was cheap and disposable. Nothing really changed the overall quality of cards until Kellogg's came along in the Seventies, Sportflics in 1986, Score brought full color to both front and back in 1988, Upper Deck upped the ante with large front and back full color photography in '89 and Topps Stadium Club brought its glossy A-game in 1991...)

I've always liked this set. And while this time period saw just about every brand make a conscious effort to gussy up and cater to a more discerning collector, I could never quite take Score seriously in its pursuit, no matter how many gold foil-encrusted Dream Teamers (like this one of Pudge in his trendy hoodie sweatshirt... is that B.U.M. Equipment? Tres chic, Ivan) I sent away for.

1990 - 1994 Countdown: #25. 1993 Studio

While the countless other brands fought tooth and nail for a foothold in the hobby, GlamorShots, excuse me, Studio was the only set with a truly unique position: showcase the players as well-rounded individuals. And do so on great-looking cards. Instead of re-inventing the wheel each and every year, all they had to do was pull down a different backdrop: 1991 saw the classic charcoal, 1992 had a close up on a craquelure newspaper photo and 1993 gave us jersey detail. All that was missing was the hand-on-chin pose in front of the bookcase and soft-focus lighting on stars in the night sky.

For Studio, baseball was just window-dressing. The real focus was the emotional side of each player. From Curt Schilling: Hobbies are golf, war gaming and military history… Might have been a history teacher if he hadn’t been an athlete. And from Robin Yount: Hobbies are golf, motorcycles, cars and fishing… Might have been in professional racing if he hadn’t been a baseball player.

The key to this set was that players had lives off the field (who knew Curt Schilling liked to play Risk?), and were somewhat normal human beings with normal, everyday dreams. Robin Yount wanted to be the next Richard Petty? Me too. It’s the ‘me too’ aspect that takes down the wall between player and fan and endears them to us (damn you, psychological window dressing!).

1990 - 1994 Countdown: #27. 1993 Upper Deck

I’ve always liked this set. Actually… how I feel towards this set goes a little deeper than just liking it. I like like this set (if you know what I mean). Is that embarrassing? Perhaps. But let’s just say that were I invited to Upper Deck’s house for a party in the basement and we just happened to play spin the bottle, and when I spun it just by chance pointed in 1993’s direction, well, let’s just say that I wouldn’t be against spending five minutes in the laundry room with the set. Alone.

Why? C’mon, do you even have to go there? Okay. Fine, I’ll tell you—but you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone. And don’t expect me to make eye contact with you while I tell you this.

It’s because I’ve never felt ashamed of the fact that I bought the factory set and paid full retail price (at least $40 at the time). It’s because it was probably the best-designed Upper Deck set from their first five years (1989 to 1994). And yes, that includes both 1993 and 1994 SP.

It’s because 1993 saw Upper Deck fall in love with gold metallic ink, resulting in the super-attractive Top Prospects design, as well as the script player name (first use of script since 1990 Donruss) on the base card front. That script on the front was classy, especially when combined with the thick white borders, the warm, vibrant photography and the sheen of the UV gloss. And because it was classy, I was classy for appreciating it, elevating me from pimply, 14-year-old introvert to discerning Man Of The World.

But beyond design, I love the little things: the Peter Gammons ‘Inside the Numbers’ subset, the obvious Score/Pinnacle rip-off inserts like ‘Then & Now’ and the Iooss Collection, not to mention the unparalleled ‘Teammates’ subset, like this one of the Texas Rangers’ ‘Latin Stars.’ (Quite a group, eh? Also, Juan Gonzalez’s hand on Palmeiro’s shoulder kind of creeps me out.) Topps has tried to bring back this kind of subset with their ‘Classic Combos’ incarnation, but no subset since 1993 has outdone ‘Teammates.’ It’s definitely one of Upper Deck’s greatest contributions to the hobby.

Finally, I love this set because it’s Upper Deck like we’ve never seen it before: quietly putting out a great, no-real-frills set, the bombast of previous years replaced by a quality checklist and a great design.

1990 - 1994 Countdown: #30. 1993 Fleer

Honestly, I didn’t think Fleer had it in them to create a well-designed set, but 1993’s offering was pretty great. Actually, I should probably amend that: the front of the card was great. The backs, not so much.

Coming off an unprecedented string of bad card design (1989 to 1992), the 1993 Fleer fronts were like a breath of fresh air: nothing competed with the photo for attention, borders were a dull metallic silver and name, team and position were relegated to the left vertical border. Even the Fleer logo was reserved. And everything was treated with a light gloss. In a word: nice.

1993 wasn’t the first year Fleer’s base set boasted a full-color back, but it was the first year you really noticed. With an action shot of the player silhouetted against a large graphic of their last name, the player’s stats and biographical information were mere afterthoughts. Sure, it was an ordered mess, but it always felt like they could’ve done more with less back there.

Like 1993 Donruss and 1991 Topps, 1993 Fleer can best be described as a transition set. 1993 was the first year Fleer applied any sort of gloss to the base set, and the last year the base set was free of any sort of foil stamping. Also, it wasn’t the first year the company included inserts (you’ll have to go back to 1986 for that), but it was the year Fleer took a moderate step towards their soon-to-be unchallenged position in the hobby as the House of 1,000 Inserts (128 to be exact, up from 100 in 1992). To be fair, 1994 was really the year Fleer went batshit crazy for inserts; ’94’s master set included—are you sitting down?—236 different insert cards.

And you know what? The various 1993 inserts were attractive additions to the brand. Hey, I don’t mean to imply that a lot of inserts automatically kill a set’s overall attractiveness. They can make a set better if they pull their own weight. And I think that’s the case here, with the possible exception of the Tom Glavine Hero Worship set, but even that one contributes a nifty autographed card.

No, what really sinks Fleer’s ship is the fact that there are so many cards on the checklist with very little going on (720 in the base set plus 310 in Final Edition, that’s 1,030 total base cards, plus 128 inserts… making it 1,158 cards for the 1993 Fleer master set. That’s a gigantic set with very little payoff. I say ‘very little payoff’ because of those 1,158 cards, none of them featured Derek Jeter. Or Chipper Jones. And out of the two rookie-centric insert sets, only a handful of the 56 players included were any good (even at the time). It boils down to a lot of nothing. Nice to look at, sure, but nothing nonetheless.

1990 - 1994 Countdown: #32 - 31

32. 1990 Upper Deck
If you were Upper Deck, how would you have followed the seminal 1989 set? With an equally revered set in terms of design, availability and checklist, or by capitalizing on the hype surrounding your somewhat limited 1989 production run with a flood of product?

I haven’t looked at Card Sharks since reading it last summer, so forgive me if I paraphrase. The gist of the situation was that because the 1989 set took almost the whole hobby by surprise, everybody and his brother wanted to get in on the ground floor for Upper Deck’s 1990 release. Upper Deck, understanding the situation, was smart because they required dealers to buy in way in advance, guaranteeing a wide distribution. Then, as dealers realized en masse that the 1990 product was kind of a dud—and that the hobby was flooded with massive amounts of the product—Upper Deck was already laughing its way to the bank.

Why was it a dud? A couple of reasons. First, it wasn’t 1989 Upper Deck. The inaugural set was impossible to follow; any set in its wake was going to suffer. Second, the player that 1990 UD should have put on card #1 (Frank Thomas) wasn’t even included in the set (he wouldn’t find his way onto an Upper Deck card until 1991). Third, the stock was flimsy and the design seemed weak in comparison to 1989. I say that it ‘seemed’ weak because it actually wasn’t, it was just minimal to a fault. Fourth, there were so many of these cards that the special-ness of the Upper Deck brand seemed to evaporate.

But even though it was a dud at the time, the cards survive well. Sure, the stock is flimsy, some of the rookies have fallen by the wayside, and the design is a little boring, but it’s not a bad follow-up, especially when you take the situation into account. It bears repeating: any set would have had a hard time playing successor to 1989 Upper Deck.


31. 1993 Donruss
After creating birdcage-lining sets with ballooned checklists in 1991 and 1992, Donruss did something peculiar in 1993: they released a nice set that was worthwhile to collect. (They also did something interesting that didn’t seem so at the time: they released a set of 792 cards, the number of cards Topps practically trademarked in the Eighties. Why 792? It broke down nicely to two 396-card series. Ironically, though it didn’t feel that way, it was Donruss’ largest base set ever.)

It’s almost as if they frantically yelled ‘Wait! Wait!’ in vain as the trucks left the printing plant in 1992. Lesser companies would’ve turned to drink and vice, and probably closed up shop. Donruss just went back to the drawing board and came up with a somewhat attractive design, a balanced checklist worth buying into for both series, and inserts that felt more like true inserts rather than glorified subsets.

They also breathed new life into the by-then stale Rated Rookie subset by spreading the cards out over the entire set, and paring down the amount of them to 34 (from 40 in 1991 and 44 in 1992). By doing this, Donruss no longer felt naked without the Diamond Kings as a base set subset. It also allowed the Rated Rookie to become more of an event card (see the David Nied RR on #792, the last card of the set).

In addition to all the improvements on the base set, 1993 Donruss should be characterized as the brand’s transition set. It was the first Donruss set since 1981 without a puzzle. And even though they had separated the Diamond Kings into their own insert set in 1992, 1993 saw the brand put a greater emphasis on inserts (seven sets in all). The rest of the Donruss Nineties would follow suit.

1990 - 1994 Countdown: #35 - 33

35. 1993 Leaf
I’m sorry, but even white boys have to shout: Even though this marked Leaf’s first foray into full-bleed photography, foil stamping and shiny hologram printing, the night skylines on the back outshined whatever bells and whistles they could throw in. It should have been the front design. With all apologies to Sir Mix-a-Lot, 1993 Leaf is the ‘Baby-Got-Back’ set of the early Nineties.

The checklist? A snooze, with no major rookies to speak of (unless you count Curtis Leskanic as a major rookie), and Ben McDonald slated on card #1. Also: 106 inserts seeded over three series, including possibly the first cross-brand cards: Frank Thomas Hero Worship. I remember these cards in 1993 Studio; they were in Leaf as well.


34. 1992 Stadium Club
It is for this set (and 1991 Leaf) that ‘sophomore slump’ applies the best. Oh sure, I’ve thrown the term around quite freely over the course of this Countdown, but it is the very definition of 1992 Stadium Club.

Coming on the heels of one of the most iconic sets of the early decade, Topps tried to make this edition even better than the previous one. Because we’re talking about 1992, that meant adding inserts and send-away offers, not to mention opening up the checklist to seemingly include every major leaguer, and everyone they went to high school with–a whopping 900 cards in all (up from 600 in 1991). And yet even with all these base cards, and in one of the best rookie crop years to boot, there are few (if any) major rookies in the whole base checklist.

Instead, they were lumped into the special ‘SkyDome’ box set, along with the other subsets that Topps should have included in the base set: All Stars, Draft Picks and World Series Highlights. Maybe these cards weren’t included in the regular set because of timing. I don’t know. What I do know is that this special 200-card set is more exciting than the 900-card behemoth it followed, and had Topps cut out 200 cards from the base to include these SkyDome cards, 1992 Stadium Club would have been a more logical follow-up to 1991.


33. 1994 Studio
It was hard not to like Donruss’ Studio brand: the photography was amazingly sharp, the checklist wasn’t bloated, the overall base design was attractive and for the most part, it seemed like the set had little if anything to do with baseball. Of course, it had everything to do with the game, but since its inception in 1991 with those hideous charcoal-background portraits, Studio was all about infusing the stars of the game and the game itself with an artistic sensibility, like Diamond Kings come to life.

And like every other brand in the early Nineties, Studio was not immune to the insert craze. But because the base design was so classy, naturally it rubbed off on the inserts (actually, I shouldn’t say ‘naturally,’ because even some sets with the best base designs had some terribly-designed inserts; 1993 and 1994 Donruss come to mind). Studio debuted the tiered Silver and Gold Stars sets, as well as the filmstrip ‘Editor’s Choice’ (the film strip design motif seemed to be a big deal in the early Nineties, probably because of the heightened emphasis on quality photography). 1994 also saw the continuation of the ‘Heritage’ insert (contemporary stars dressed in historic uniforms), a personal favorite.

So if this set is so great, why does it rank somewhere in the middle of the pack? Simply put: it’s fluff. 220 base cards hardly constituted a major issue, and if it was real statistics you were after, Studio was not the place to look. But if it was senior superlative, yearbook-type body copy and old-timey boardwalk dress-up you wanted, Studio was your set.

1990 - 1994 Countdown: #36. 1993 Pinnacle

Black borders and a single white hairline surround crisp photography. Player name along the bottom, team name along the top. Thinly glossed. And a full-color back (de rigueur by 1993), featuring a simple, elegant headshot on what looks like a sponge-painted, GlamorShots backdrop. The only faults may be the choice of body copy font, the little dots that separate the information on front and back, and the Pinnacle logo itself. Otherwise, it’s one of the most striking designs of the early Nineties, and possibly one of the simplest.

You could characterize 1993 Pinnacle as a ‘sophomore slump’ set. The brand’s 1992 debut was a hard act to follow, and the by-then classic Score mindset took over for 1993’s checklist: choke ’em to death with subsets. Of the 620 cards in the base set, only 437 had no extraneous logos, and weren’t part of a subset. But it wasn’t only subsets that killed this checklist—it was an overkill of inserts. Though some of them were good, even great, and all of them of flawless design, there were just so many of them: 195 in all. That’s practically enough for a third series of cards!

Collectors harp on sets with a glut of inserts, not because we don’t like getting them in packs (we do). It’s because it’s a daunting proposition, as if the manufacturer understands neither the collector nor the climate of the hobby. A collector may like your product, even so much so that he or she decides to collect your set. But inevitably they will like other sets as well, so if you overwhelm them with inserts, you will most likely end up with a number of beleaguered collectors turned off by your product. This same thing happened to Topps recently with the Generation Now and Home Run History inserts. There were so many (seemingly) different inserts that collectors (or at least this one) were turned off to the product. But I digress.

Like 1992, this set was released in two series. Like 1992, the black borders and backs set off the clear, somewhat washed-out colors of the photos. The highlight of the set is without a doubt the “Now & Then” subset, horizontal cards featuring a slew of veterans shown in two photos: one taken in 1992, the other in their respective rookie years (like this one of Robin Yount doing his best early Larry Bird impression). It makes for a classy card, and I don’t think I’m too far off base by naming it one of the early decade’s best subsets.

I want to like this set more, but I just can’t. The rookie class is weak beyond Jeter, the Expansion Draft subset has a chokehold on much of the checklist, and the inserts, despite their overall quality, outweigh the base set. It’s really the Now & Then subset that keeps me coming back, and really only–you guessed it–now and then.

The 1990 – 1994 Countdown Returneth

This is my fourth stab at a re-introduction to the Nineties Countdown. I was going to characterize the Nineties as the baseball card hobby going through puberty, but it seemed a little over the top. Then again… voices cracking, overnight acne explosions, hair in weird places… all of these things happened in their own special way within the hobby, seemingly overnight.

Where did I leave off? More importantly, does it even matter? The early Nineties were a gluttonous, sweaty free-for-all, with so many sets that there seemed to be one for every type of collector. You like shiny things? No problem. Maybe you’re more interested in re-hashing the glory days of nostalgia? We got those. Don’t like grubbing with the kiddies? Might I interest you in a Superkalifrajilactor of Nolan Ryan? How about some bulk rookie lots of promising summer campers?

I know that I left off back in July at set #50 (1993 Stadium Club), but I just did another tally of the sets and I think I should’ve numbered that one #48. So, for those of you who haven’t read the first half of the Countdown, and the rest of you who’d like a reminder, here’s what’s come before:

The Early Nineties Countdown (So Far)

75. 1994 OPC
74. 1993 OPC Premier
73. 1993 OPC
72. 1994 Sportflics
71. 1994 Triple Play

Sets 75 through 71 were considered so bad that they weren’t worthy of analysis.

70. 1991 Leaf
69. 1990 Fleer
68. 1990 Bowman
67. 1994 Select
66. 1992 Donruss
65. 1991 Donruss
64. 1993 Select
63. 1990 Topps
62. 1992 OPC Premier
61. 1994 Pacific
60. 1994 Topps
59. 1992 Triple Play
58. 1993 Triple Play
57. 1992 Fleer
56. 1992 Fleer Ultra
55. 1994 Leaf
54. 1993 Fleer Ultra
53. 1994 Fleer Ultra
52. 1991 Fleer
51. 1991 Upper Deck
50. 1994 Stadium Club
49. 1993 Topps
48. 1993 Stadium Club

Whew. What a pile of garbage. And aren’t we all sort of to blame? I mean, we hyped them to each other and saved for them and bought them by the boatload. Well, at least we don’t have to think about them unless we want to. I mean, if you’re still wistfully pining over 1993 Triple Play, well, jeez…


47. & 46. 1993 & 1994 Upper Deck Fun Pack
Fun to the mutha-effin’ Pack, homeboy! Yeah, I can’t imagine any sort of respectable gangsta rapper saying that, either. But you have to admit it, the Fun Pack sets were pretty awesome, and for those all too brief ‘Kids Kards’ years (1992 through 1994), Upper Deck showed the world it knew how to really overstuff a set, especially a set with less than 250 cards in the checklist.

The subsets were so over the top that it was almost like Upper Deck was using the Fun Pack brand as a testing ground for the unbelievable decade they were quietly assembling. The more you look at Upper Deck in the early Nineties, the more you see that it wasn’t just creating sets, it was establishing itself as Master of the Subsets.

When you think about the Nineties, what do you think of? I think of inserts. And while all the card companies were in on the act, it felt like Fleer won the race for sheer quantity produced, and Upper Deck led the way in originality. And because printing plants had evolved from the Topps Sixties, inserts were no longer rinky-dink cardboard, but mind-blowing holograms, diecuts, cards with protective layers, refractors (you know, I’m not really sure what a refractor is made of, exactly, besides crystallized sugar, fun thoughts, and LSD-soaked blotter paper), cards in 3-D, and other glossy, see-through, heat-sensitive, fold-out, sequentially-numbered guilty pleasures that immediately went from pack to top loader. I still salivate thinking about some of those cards.

And just one more word about the ‘Kids Kards’ movement. 1992’s Topps Kids was a great set, but whereas Topps created it by removing the bells and whistles from their other sets from that year, the great thing about the Fun Pack sets was that all that extraneous bullshit that made inserts great was included within the base set. Maybe that’s why these sets seemed to do better than the noble Topps Kids experiment: kids like shiny things. They like interactive, over-the-top bullshit with bells and whistles.

I mean, who doesn’t?


More Countdown Coming Soon! This time, I mean it.

Goudey Trade-away #52: Liriano and Pujols for 5 Awesome Cards

This trade comes in from Mike in Bethel, Connecticut.

Giving: Albert Pujols, #6; Francisco Liriano, #167 (red back)
Getting: Bo Jackson, 1991 Topps Traded; David Ortiz, 1999 Upper Deck MVP; Kirby Puckett, 2002 UD World Series Heroes; Cool Papa Bell, 2001 UD Cooperstown Collection; Latin Stars, 1993 Upper Deck

I'm calling this trade 'Latin Stars and Shades of Bo.'

First I want to focus on the Latin Stars combo card from the vastly underrated 1993 Upper Deck set. The copy on the back is all about the massive amounts of home runs each hit in 1992, and how they'd keep poundin them out forever. What's also of note is that Pudge, Juan Gone and Raffy all look like relatively normal big leaguers, while Canseco looks like a wall of bulk. ... and two quick notes on Canseco: First a theoretical question. Let's say Canseco played out his days without taking steroids. Would he still have been remembered as the more productive identical Canseco twin? Second, do you think the roids did anything to Jose's hair? Seriously, how come his hairstyle never seemed to change over his entire career? Also, can we re-name the sports flat-top/mullet 'The Canseco'? Or has Jaromir Jagr already laid claim?... what was I saying? Oh yeah, the mid-Nineties Rangers. I guess there's not much more to add.

There's plenty to say about this card of Bo Jackson. So much, in fact, that I'm going to give it its own post as the Fantastic Card of the Day.

Early Nineties Countdown: #53 to 50

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
The Pyramids of Egypt.
The Great Wall of China.
The Astrodome.

When you think of the great wonders of man, these items usually float to the surface. Well, I’d like to add one more to the list: The Jeff Bagwell Rookie Card.

Why should the Bagwell be on the list? I’m glad you asked. When Bagwell is inducted into the Hall of Fame, he may be the first Hall of Famer whose rookie card is worth less than ten dollars. Tell me: how do you explain that?

I’m sure the first thing you’ll mention is that Bagwell came on the scene at the height of card production in 1991, so his cards are worthless because there were so many of them. Maybe you’ll add that because there were so many of them, everybody had one so no one would pay that much for something they already had. Or maybe you’ll say that Bagwell wasn’t that big of a deal when he broke in, so there’s really no point in getting worked up over nothing. Also, didn’t he hit a boatload of home runs during the steroid era?

It’s true, all of these things are going against him, but the facts are like this: Bagwell was National League Rookie of the Year in 1991, he consistently excelled for over ten years, he was a perennial All-Star and all of his home runs were clean. Plus, he played for one major league team for his entire career—not too many guys of his generation can say that (I’m looking at a checklist of 1991 rookies right now and only Tim Salmon and Chipper Jones fit that category).

#53. 1991 Upper Deck
Including Bagwell in the regular set was a smart move for Upper Deck, as it provided added oomph to the high series and allowed the Final Edition to stand on its own as a look-ahead to 1992, featuring rookies Thome, Lofton, Klesko, Rondell White, Pudge Rodriguez, Dmitri “I Collect Only 10s” Young and of course Pedro J. Martinez (his only card from 1991).

In fact, the checklist for this set is incredibly well balanced in terms of debuting rookies. The Low Series had cards of Phil Plantier, Eric Karros, Mike Mussina and Chipper Jones, plus first cards (not rookies) of Mo Vaughn, Chuck Knoblauch and Frank Thomas giving everybody the finger. The High Series had Jeff Bagwell and Final Edition had everyone mentioned earlier.

But rookies alone can’t save this set from mediocrity. Enter the Heroes of Baseball insert series. Upper Deck really went hog wild with the inserts in 1991, with 45 different cards, plus five autographed cards (Hank Aaron, hobby workhorse Nolan Ryan, plus Harmon Killebrew, Fergie Jenkins and Gaylord Perry), up from ten inserts and one autograph in 1990.

And yet, even with the Bagwell Rookie, the Chipper card and the Pedro Final Edition card, plus the extra-curricular help from the Heroes, this set is still lousy. Who’s to blame? Maybe it was the cheap card stock that made the cards stick together. Maybe it was the crappy design that seemed to take up more front of card space than in years past. Or maybe it was that the hobby was catching on that Upper Deck, though expensive looking, autograph-loaded and hologram-encrusted, was a one-trick pony (insert autographs and they will come). And they were tired of that one trick.


#52. 1994 Stadium Club
Remember Stadium Club? Remember how it used to be three series? Jesus, they made a lot of cards in this set. And don’t forget that they made two parallel sets this year: First Day Issue and Golden Rainbow. And the funny thing about all of this was that I never knew a single person who cared. You know what I mean? Seriously, did anybody know someone who put together an entire Golden Rainbow set from 1994? And what kind of name is ‘Golden Rainbow’ anyway?

In 1991, when Topps debuted Stadium Club, no other set ever made had featured full-bleed color photography on every card. And yet by 1994, just three short years later, the full-bleed photo had become a sports card cliché. What had made Stadium Club the shit to rock in 1991 was keeping it down by 1994. Add a tired post-Grunge zine-style American Typewriter freeware font and faux cool ripped look on the front and ugly graphics, utterly ridiculous text treatments and nonsensical statistics on the back and you’ve got yourself a truly forgettable design.

I never could figure out what was worse: the prospect that because there were so many of these cards I could never ever complete even the most basic set, or the fact that I was repeatedly suckered into purchasing $1.25 packs even though I knew the first part was true.


#51. 1993 Topps
Topps ’93, in one word or less: disappointing. I had a lot riding on 1993 being a good year for The Flagship, but it was just, well… boring. And it had so much going for it: two-headed All-Star cards, four-headed rookies, a Draft Picks subset with Jeter and a Coming Attractions subset with Jim Edmonds, plus full-color headshot/mini-action shots on the back (Topps’ first set since 1971 with a back-of-card headshot and the first time ever in color). And who can forget the hologram explosion disco that was Topps Black Gold?

1992 Topps, with its clean, modern Craftsman-style lines and thin uncoated stock, is one of my favorite sets of all time, so I guess you can chalk up my lackadaisical attitude to the fact that Topps made a change for 1993 and printed the cards on a sort of thick, smooth coated cardboard stock. On the new cardboard, the whites seemed really white, almost teeth-gleaming white, while the other colors sort of all blended together, which made the white borders seem all the thicker. I also could never get the corners to bend and fray. That might seem like a godsend to most collectors, but as a purist it almost feels like Topps was cheating the system. I wonder how many graded 1993 Topps Jeters there are out there at 9 or better. I would bet quite a few, simply because those corners were made of steel. Coated white cardboard steel.


#50. 1993 Stadium Club
Topps Writer 1: There must be some mistake.
Topps Writer 2: I’m telling you, there isn’t.
Topps Writer 1: But…we just did one of these sets last year. Wasn’t that enough?
Topps Writer 2: Man, how long you been playing this game? It’s never enough. Just when you finish one they’re on you about the next one and the next one and the next. It never ends.
Topps Writer 1: Jeez… Do you think people really buy all this stuff?
Topps Writer 2: Who knows…
Topps Writer 1: Hey, I’m being serious here. Does anybody really even want another one of these sets?
Topps Writer 2: Hey man, I only work here…
[BEAT]
Topps Writer 1: …Do you ever feel like you’re wasting your life?

The funniest thing about Stadium Club circa 1993 was that their best set of the year wasn’t even produced for general hobbyist consumption, but in a specially boxed set distributed solely at Toys ‘R’ Us. The cards, despite sporting the trademark Stadium Club full-bleed photo, were flimsy, cheap, had beginner’s guide to graphic design front and back graphics and featured end-of-the-roll type photos, like this great one of Sheff striking out with a guy in a skirt in the background straddling part of the dugout, or whatever it is he’s doing back there. Plus, the cards were stamped with just enough gold foil to make them feel legit. It was a great set. I wish I could remember who was in it.




Baseball Funnies

What do you call Jose Canseco without the juice?


Ozzie Canseco


More Countdown Coming Soon!

Countdown #57 to #54

57. 1994 Leaf
Oh man, it’s been a long day. And here I am, staring down 1994 Leaf and I can’t even remember the damn thing. Nothing—and I’m scanning that old Beckett I told you about before, and yet still nothing. According to my mid-Nineties price guide, there were eight insert sets and it looks like Ken Griffey Jr. and Frank Thomas dominated just about all of them. That brings up a funny point: remember when you’d scan the latest Beckett or Tuff Stuff and notice that they’d list every single insert card from a set except for one and then also note what a common from that insert set went for? I hated that. It’s obvious that they had the page space to list every card (plus I collected Fred McGriff, and more often than not he’d be the one they’d leave out).

So coming back to this Leaf set for a minute, I feel like a dunce for ranking it towards the middle of the pack (granted, the high end of the middle) and then not remembering one thing about it that may have made it special, or horrendous. So let’s try to forget this ever came up.


#56. 1993 Fleer Ultra & #55. 1994 Fleer Ultra
1991 is generally recognized as the Year of the Boom in the hobby, though perhaps a more apt name would be the Year of the Great Crescendo, as it was not so much the beginning of the present day landscape—1993 was. No, 1991 was truly the last year of the Topps Dynasty. (Yes, I know I’m on record as having said that 1989 was truly the last year of the Topps Dynasty, but generally unwritten history’s designed to be a little fuzzy, so cut me some slack). So with three important products coming on the scene in 1993 (Fleer’s Flair, Topps Finest and Upper Deck’s SP), not to mention that scallywag Score Select, it became more important than ever that the premium products already out there were strong enough to deflect the new competition.

1993 Fleer Ultra survived the influx, but not without boring us all to tears in the process. Ultra’s marbleized design ruled across all four major sports (baseball, basketball, football and hockey) in 1992, and instead of mixing it up and trying on something new, the Fleer execs pulled a Donruss on us and gave Ultra the subtlest of facelifts for ’93. Granted, the cards were good looking and the inserts somewhat desirable, so no big deal, right? Well, I would argue that precisely because they didn’t even try to raise the bar for 1993, Ultra put the onus on 1994’s product to perform in an ever-expanding marketplace. And while 1994 Ultra at least had a major design overhaul, a boatload of inserts, autographs of Daulton and Kruk and draft picks, it was no prize pig.


54. 1991 Fleer
I have been moved to tears over matters of the baseball card encrusted heart only twice: upon seeing the beautiful T206 Wagner framed, matted and on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the first time I ripped open a pack of 1991 Fleer.

From the moment my hands touched yellow cardboard, I knew that this was the worst set ever made. If all the card companies had attended the same high school, 1991 Fleer’s face would’ve been plastered all over the senior superlatives pages: ugliest, most worthless, most useless. Not even pimple-faced, greasy-haired Donruss would’ve been seen hanging out with this one.

So then why the hell is it ranked here and not at the bottom of the pile? Because. That’s why. Back in the day I would have characterized this set as Ugly with a capital ‘U’. But I’ve mellowed out, and some may even say I’ve matured just a little bit. I’ve grown to appreciate the inner beauty in ugly things, so now it’s only ugly with a regular lowercase ‘u’.

To be fair, there are positives (they’re just few and far between). Take the Pro-Visions and All Stars insert sets. Those PV’s really knocked my socks off, mostly because it was completely obvious to me that if Fleer had only made the whole regular set with kick-ass black borders, I would’ve collected this set by choice, instead of by necessity, as it was still one of the only sets I could afford.

The checklist on this set was pretty drab. Granted, Fleer had all the big names, and even a great card of Bonds and Griffey billed as ‘Second Generation Stars’, but what it had in stars it lacked in rookies. To illustrate this point, let’s briefly compare Fleer’s 1991 (meaningful) rookie class with that from 1991 Score.

1991 Score
Phil Plantier
Brian McRae
Mike Mussina
Carl Everett
Jeff Conine
Todd Van Poppel
Rondell White
Chipper Jones
Ivan Rodriguez RT
Luis Gonzalez RT
Jeff Bagwell RT
Pete Schourek RT

1991 Fleer
Phil Plantier
Luis Gonzalez
Jeff Conine
Brian McRae
Ivan Rodriguez U
Jeff Bagwell U
Pete Schourek U
Mo Vaughn U
Chuck Knoblauch U

Fleer loses this one easily, for two reasons. First, Fleer did not include cards of draft picks so therefore didn’t have rookies of Mussina, Everett, Jones, White and Van Poppel. Because they didn’t include draft picks in the 1990 set either, they had to wait on Vaughn and Knoblauch for almost two full years later; both debuted in 1991’s Update set.

Granted, both the Fleer and Score rookie crops pale when compared with Bowman. In addition to everyone named above, Bowman had perennial Blue Jay Pat Hentgen, Jim Thome, Tim Salmon, Bret Boone, Roberto Hernandez, Wil Cordero, Kenny Lofton, Javy Lopez, Ryan ‘The Forgotten Superstar’ Klesko, Eric Karros and that unforgettable hobby monster, Raul Mondesi. Bowman was all about the long-term, the rookie that would mature into the superstar. Score was all about having close to a thousand cards in the base set. And Fleer, sadly, was all about neither of the two. For Fleer to have had an impact, it needed immediate rookie sensations to carry the set (the company even acknowledged as much the next year with their ‘Rookie Sensations’ insert set).

When I approach this set today, I save my tears. Sure, I still feel bad about this set; upon close inspection it represents the idea of ‘wasted opportunity’ surprisingly well. It had the potential to contribute more than it ultimately did. But 1991 Fleer does not break my heart anymore. Today my heart is tired from much bigger things than a pile of lousy yellow cardboard.

Countdown: #61 to #58

#61 & #60. 1992 & 1993 Triple Play
When we sit by the fireside, maybe in a few years, with a blanket wrapped around our legs, one hand poking at the fire with a long stick, the other matting down the last few strands of our hair with the spittle collecting at the corners of our mouth, what will we be thinking about?

Please, please please—let it not be these godforsaken sets, with their hideous renditions of orange and black. Let it not be silver lettered surnames, writ large and wide like proclamations, like billboards worthy of our time and energy. Nor let it be the emotionless action photos of crashes at the plate, or the scratch-off game cards that subliminally spawned the deep-seated-yet-hard-to-pinpoint-quite-
how-it-started-so-very-long-ago love for instant win lottery cards.

No no no—no more Roger McDowell in funny getups, doing funny things in funny situations. No more Phillie Phanatic rain dances on the dugout roof. No more cards from Paul Molitor’s gap-toothed grade school glory.

Let’s not think about these lame little brothers to Topps Kids and Upper Deck Fun Packs. Let’s remember that these set names shorten to TP for a reason. Let’s try to forget that we spent $15.00 at one point for a box of the 1993 version.

Yes, let’s hope that we’re watching TV. And not thinking about any of this.

#59. 1992 Fleer
Here’s another set I’d rather not have to think about ever again. And yet every so often, I find myself looking through that old Beckett from 1995 and I can’t help but search out my shoebox of cards from 1992, just to make sure for the thousandth time if I had any of those insert cards. And I don’t, though I did buy a Frank Thomas Rookie Sensation for fifty cents at a card show a few months ago. (Oh, how the mighty have fallen.)

Because that’s what this set had going for it: insert cards. You could argue that if Upper Deck brought inserts and autographs into the spotlight, the guys at Fleer kicked in the footlights, the fills and maybe even the houselights in the insert bonanza. Think about this. From 1986 to 1989, Fleer produced four straight years of 660-card sets, 132-card updates and 18 total insert cards. In 1990 they kept things cool at 660/132 and upped the insert total to 30. In 1991 they bumped the regular set to 720, kept the update set at 132, and took the insert total down to 22. But 1992? That year saw the regular and update sets stay at 720/132 and the number of inserts climb to 97. 97! That’s an unbelievable 441% increase from the year before.

And yet as ridiculous as that jump is, 97 individual insert cards is on par with almost every other product line for the year: Donruss had 67; Leaf had 24; Pinnacle had 135; Score had 124; Stadium Club had 3; Studio had 14; Ultra had 65; Upper Deck had 98 and Leaf and Topps had parallel sets.

The other thing that Fleer had was its Update set, one of the few sets in 1992 to have a card of Mike Piazza, the 1992 National League Rookie of the Year and a sure bet for the Hall of Fame. It also had first cards of mid-Nineties hobby superstar Kenny Lofton, Tim Salmon, Tim Wakefield and the immortal David Nied, the original member of the Colorado Rockies. (And for ten points: name the first Florida Marlin.)


#58. 1992 Fleer Ultra
1992 Fleer Ultra had to exist, so right away it’s set itself apart from many of those ranked before it. Why did it have to exist? For a number of reasons, the first being that the hobby had to find out if 1991’s Ultra was a one-trick pony or if it had legs.

And not only did Ultra have legs for the long haul—it’s still going strong today, sixteen years later—but it had four legs, as the marbleized 1992 design hoofed its way across baseball, basketball, football and hockey. Not only that, but it cemented the Fleer mothership in the somewhat uncharted waters of random autographed insert cards and cribbed a page from the Topps playbook on Hero Worship before Topps had a chance to capitalize on the idea. Case in point: by the time Topps got around to worshipping their forever-sober/strong-kneed version of Mickey Mantle in 1996, the idea seemed a little warmed over to the early Nineties generation of collectors, as Fleer and Fleer Ultra had, by that time, been playing the Hero Worship card for going on five years.

Why else did this set have to exist? Because it completely elevated 1991’s Ultra. More so that Upper Deck and Leaf, and with the exception of Pinnacle and Stadium Club, 1992 Fleer Ultra had some heft. It felt like what a premium card should’ve felt like: glossed up, with matrix-y computer graphics on the back. Plus that polished marble on the front and those little gold rookie flags around the fireball logo. And cards that Tony Gwynn autographed (and probably didn’t exist anywhere except as words on the box)

Yeah, it’s not worth jack now. Yeah, the graphics haven’t aged well. Yeah, it feels tired in the grand scheme of things. But to put it plainly, 1992 Fleer Ultra was the shit.


More Countdown coming soon…
By the way, if you answered ‘Nigel Wilson’—ten points to you!

1990s Countdown #69 to #66

#69. 1991 Donruss
1991 Donruss is one of those sets that don’t deserve your time or your energy in analysis. Here’s my review of this set, in ten words or less. Blue. Green. Two series. Cheesy Donruss Elite Inserts You’ll Never Find In A Pack. OK, so that’s fourteen words, but that’s about it. Also, there were something like two hundred Rated Rookies, probably to better compete with Bowman and Score.

#68. 1994 Select
When I got my hands on sample preview cards from this set back in early 1994, I couldn’t help but ask what the point of issuing this set might be. The fronts had two photos separated by a thick gold foil band with the player’s surname stamped out, so that the photo behind it showed through. It was just way too busy a design for anything to register. It was almost like having an epileptic fit, even though nothing was moving.

In essence, Score had to release this set: with Select they effectively had a product for every price range—Score for the cheapies and the kids, Select for the middle-of-the-road and Pinnacle for those deep-pocketed, discerning collectors. The only problem was, 1994 Select was garbage, so middle-of-the-road collectors took their money to other brands.

#67. 1992 Donruss
This is one ugly set, in both design and checklist. The only card you’d be happy to get in a pack of 1992 Donruss was the randomly-inserted Ripken autographed chase card, and the chance of finding one of those was so astronomically small that opening pack after pack of this crappy set was like some kind of baseball card purgatory.

And it’s too bad, because this set had certain makings of a great (if not at least good) set. It was the first Donruss set that not only had a headshot on the back, but more than one color back there. It was just the second Donruss set that came in two series, and one of the only flagship sets to be issued in two series, giving rise to the possibility of multiple special subsets (in order to drive sales throughout the season). Instead, 1992 was the first year Donruss pulled the Diamond Kings from the regular set, putting them instead into an insert set.


Without Diamond Kings to infuse a little Dick Perez into the set, the checklist was a perfect example of monotony. This set became top and bottom blue bar hell. Granted, it was the first set without the trademark Donruss Tron-inspired borders, but without any hint of dark colors to separate the photo from the background, Donruss actually hurt their standing in the hobby. They had spent almost ten years building up an image in terms of design (very masculine, with straight lines and sparse use of color) and transitioned away from it without even the faintest whiff of pause or regret, stranding those collectors that appreciated a geek-inspired design to help them through the summer. Too bad Donruss didn’t see it that way.

#66. 1993 Select
I wanted to like this set. Hell, I did like it. It's just that, well, this set was bad. And there were a lot of bad sets in the early Nineties. A needless set that may have been decent, with decent design, but had only come about because hobby had become a virtual free for all in the early Nineties. Most were unnecessary, but some of those sets had historical significance. 1993 Select is one of those sets that I liked, were bad, and had balls enough to make a difference for sets that followed.

It’s important for its design, as it was the first Score/Pinnacle product to feature a slightly off-kilter graphical border; going all the way back to Score’s 1988 debut, all previous front-of-card design had plopped the photo in a traditional rectangle (only the two-toned infield of 1989 Score deviated, and then not even very much, as that element was layered over the photo). 1993 Select was also one of the first sets regardless of manufacturer to bleed the photos all the way to the edge (but only on two sides, and then not all the way on either side). Only the premium brands Fleer Ultra and Topps Stadium Club beat Select to the punch, and for the record, photos bleeding to the edge as a design advancement was very 1993, as Select, SP, Flair, Studio and Leaf all made the jump. By 1994, borderless fronts were par for the course.

It’s also important because it was one of the first sets promoted across two different product lines. In 1992, Donruss inserted a packet of 1992 Leaf preview cards in each of its 1992 Donruss factory sets. On paper, that’s a pretty good move: I know I was underwhelmed by the freezer-burn blue of 1992 Donruss and no way did I find myself wanting to purchase packs, let alone the factory set, but the incentive of Leaf preview cards was intriguing.

With the launch of Select in 1993, Score took this idea a step farther. Score inserted Select Stat Leaders, a mammoth though rather pedestrian set (much like 2007 Topps’ Generation NOW), one per pack of 1993 Score (an incredibly underrated set). Granted, there were a ton of cards in Stat Leaders (90), almost more cards than actual statistical categories, but odds were you’d never get the same card twice, and, if you liked the design and the gloss (oh yeah, Select had a glossy front), you might try a pack of Select.

So then it’s a shame that this set came entered the market as another needless premium set debuting the same year as SP, Finest and Flair, three vastly superior sets against which Select could only compete in vain.

I guess that's why they called it 'Select'--only a select few of us chose to collect it.




1990s Countdown Sets #65 to #62 Coming Soon