Card vs. Card - May 8th

The Champ: 1992 Topps Craig Wilson
The Challenger: 1992 Donruss Roger Clemens Diamond King

Craig Wilson makes quick work of Clemens, 18 - 5. Make sure to come back tomorrow to vote in the next Card versus Card poll!

Cardboard Fenway: 1986 Fleer Roger Clemens

Cardboard Fenway - #58. 1986 Fleer Roger Clemens

Here's the Rocket pitching during a game in 1985. Notice the rangy infielder behind him kind of looks like Marty Barrett.

Cardboard Fenway: 1992 Fleer Roger Clemens and Incredible Hulk Highlights

Cardboard Fenway - #63. 1992 Fleer Roger Clemens / Incredible Hulk Career Highlights

I know what you're thinking: Performance-enhancing drugs! Har har har! These cards were created for an old year-end report back when Marvel owned Fleer (or something like that). I like that Hulk is also pictured in front of the center-field bleachers and dugout wall, though he's not shown sitting. Which can only mean that Hulk is very, very short.

Cardboard Fenway: 1987 Topps Roger Clemens Record Breaker

Cardboard Fenway - #22. 1987 Topps Roger Clemens Record Breaker

It's hard to believe that for all their suffering at the hands of curses and fate, the Red Sox have employed some of the game's finest pitchers. Guys like Cy Young, Joe Wood, Lefty Grove, Luis Tiant, Mel Parnell, Roger Clemens, and Pedro Martinez. And however you feel about a guy like Roger Clemens, he was amazing in 1986.

The Doctor and the Superhero

Dwight Gooden and Roger Clemens, 1987 Fleer "Superstar Specials"

Does anybody recall, in their lives, Roger Clemens being referred to as “Super K?” Did anyone ever say when they were growing up, “Did you see what Super K did last night? He K’d 13! Super, indeed!” and when they said this, they were referring to Roger Clemens? I personally do not recall such a thing. Just to be sure I did not somehow miss something, I Googled “Super K,” and discovered that Wikipedia acknowledges Super K as a neutrino observatory which is under Mount Kamioka near the city of Hida, Gifu Prefecture, Japan. The observatory was designed to search for proton decay, study solar and atmospheric neutrinos, and keep watch for supernovas in the Milky Way Galaxy. Legend has it, one time the Super K observed a supernova in the Milky Way known as Roger Clemens, and his neutrinos were so powerful that it exploded the Super K. Maybe that is where he got the nickname that he doesn’t have.

Anyhoo, with regards to the above picture—can you spot the more humble one? Also interesting to note the irony of a doctor going on to face drug problems and a superhero requiring performance enhancement. Nevertheless … to the back of the card!



There is only letter that counts whenever Roger Clemens of the Red Sox and Dwight Gooden of the New York Mets are pitching.

J? N? I have absolutely no idea. Can I have a clue?

It is K

Ohhhhhhh. Makes sense. Because of the strikeouts.

… make that Super K.

That is six letters. To recap: “There is only letter that counts whenever Roger Clemens of the Red Sox and Dwight Gooden of the New York Mets are pitching. That letter is S U P E R K. Six letters. Of those letters, the most important one is K. Make that … Super K. The “K” itself is super, is what I’m trying to say.”

Also, pointing out that this card bestows upon Roger Clemens the false nickname of Super K, this sentiment kind of ignores Gooden, does it not? To recap yet again:

“There is only thing that counts whenever Roger Clemens of the Red Sox and Dwight Gooden of the New York Mets are pitching.

Strikeouts. Make that … Roger Clemens.”

I would accept either of the previous two examples as “Lede of the Year: 1987.”

Fans have come to adopt both pitchers at their respective parks.

“Strangely—and this warrants mentioning—fans have taken to cheering for these pitchers, especially when they pitch at home, when the fans are there, because of the great things these pitchers do for the very teams these fans root for in a more general sense.”

Fans are currently rooting for Clemens in court and Gooden on Celebrity Rehab. In Clemens' case, it's probably less "rooting for" than it is "not really caring either way," or, maybe, "rooting against." In Gooden's case, fans are rooting for him so adamantly than one fan in particular named Lenny Dykstra tried to break him out of rehab.

Tune in next week to see who will try and break our superhero out of prison! (Note: It will probably be Lenny Dykstra.) Man, 1987 seems like a long time ago.

Muppets... Post that disappeared

Blogger has been having some... issues. The post that I did yesterday seems to have vanished. So here is the card I did by request of William Noetling.

TBCB Muppets - #16 Pepe the King Prawn

Design based on: 1991 Topps Desert Shield #530 - Roger Clemens

Little known facts: Pepe's full name is Pepino Rodrigo Serrano Gonzales. He has lead the Muppet League in shrimp outs 10 of the last 12 years. Pepe's team, The Prawn Stars sued the History Channel and the producers of the network's Pawn Stars show for trademark infringement.

Roger, Keep the Dream Alive

It's almost too good to be true: before-and-after cards of Roger Clemens from the early Nineties.

Do you think that when it's all said and done, Roger will build a secret lab in his basement and pump himself silly with growth hormone? I like to think that he will skip the steroids and have retractable alloy adamantium Wolverine claws installed in his arms, so that when he has reason to be angry he can really go ballistic.

And maybe someone could slip Mike Piazza a pill that would make super-powerful, red optic blasts come out of his eyes. That way, when Old Man Wolverine Clemens comes to pick a fight, Piazza-clops will be there to meet the challenge... at least before Wolverine Clemens rips Piazza-clops' arms out of their sockets.

I might pay to watch that on pay-per-view.

Life Sucks for Topps PR

What's funnier: the fact that Clemens needed help injecting himself with steroids, or that Clemens is the face of Topps Series 3? As much fun as a Saturday night spent shooting a washed-up Roger Clemens full of steroids sounds, I'm going to have to go with the fact that Topps is now connected with the two most high-profile users in the Mitchell Report.

Compound that with the fact that the level of bad luck handed down to Topps spokesmen has to rank up there with the Sports Illustrated and Madden cover curses. First David Wright's Mets put together a collapse that puts the 1964 Phillies to shame. Then Father Time, excuse me, Greg Oden, shuffles into the operating room and misses the entire season. Follow that by golden boy Alex Rodriguez bitch-slapping the Red Sox on the eve of their World Series sweep with news that he'd burn a stack of $100 dollar bills in front of a group of needy children––I'm sorry, I can't read my own handwriting––I mean opt out of his already mammoth contract for one even more mammoth-er. Now Roger Clemens, Topps' cover boy for Series 3, is about to enter panic mode (if he wasn't already there). Oh, and I totally forgot about Dwyane Wade and his Magic Shoulder. And I guess you could add Barry Bonds to this list, since technically he is still under contract with Topps, though what's the point? In case you haven't noticed, that guy's a ticking time bomb.

Seriously, it must suck for Topps PR right now.

User Friendly

In less than 24 hours, the entire American media will be consumed with Roid Rage. Columnists and bloggers will never have had it so easy, with myriad angles to cover, so-called big names to out and moralizing to be done. But the question that probably won't be raised (because it doesn't sell papers) is: Does anybody actually care? Seriously. Do you really want to know if your favorite sports star has injected himself with more hormones than a Perdue chicken?

I mean, read any anecdotal baseball book and you'll see that ballplayers have been popping greenies since the Seventies. It's one of the things that ballplayers are all about: getting an edge, acting batshit crazy on the road, and winning the World Series. But you still like those players from the Good Ol' Days, right? You still collect their cards. Even if they were users.

And what about the Pittsburgh Drug Trials? Players were buying cocaine from the Pittsburgh Parrot, for chrissakes. Sure, it may have ruined Tim Raines's and Dave Parker's chances at making the Hall of Fame, but Keith Hernandez figured into that stuff as well, and well, he's still a well-liked baseball celebrity.

Baseball has probably weathered more vice charges than any other sport in America, and may rank second to soccer on the world stage in terms of public relations nightmare scandals and fuck ups.

Here's a handful of other good times: Hal Chase gambling on games while still on the field playing in them, Tris Speaker and Ty Cobb fixing a game in 1927, legends Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays banned for life for appearing at a casino, and who could forget Sammy Sosa losing his grasp on English before the Senate Committee? Yes, it's easy to make it through a whole post on baseball's storied scandals without even mentioning Pete Rose or the Black Sox. (Well, almost.)

So let's face facts. There will be hundreds if not thousands of articles written on the Mitchell Report. ESPN will launch special coverage and Pedro Gomez will go without sleep for six weeks as Barry Bonds will most certainly be named in the report.

Will card prices suffer? Cards of The Asterisk have had plenty o'time to have the bottom fall out, and if anything, it's been a slow decline. But what about others? I just don't see it happening. Well, unless Clemens is named...

eTopps Cards That Never Were

The real title of this post is Ben Sells Out, Part 2.

Back in January, Topps got in touch with me about helping them checklist a set for eTopps. Needless to say, I was torn. Working for and/or with Topps has been a lifelong dream, and yet here I was, routinely poking fun at their sets and being critical of their products. Lucky for me, they had no stipulations that I had to follow for participating (like no bad-mouthing the company). I think I've kept up my part of the deal over the past seven months; I've not held back with criticism of the situation surrounding Topps, nor about any of their products I've found fault with.

It's probably no big deal, but just so everything is out in the open, I wasn't paid. Actually, that's not true. They paid me in baseball cards, which may sound dumb to most people (my girlfriend thought it did), but I found kind of fun. But enough about my involvement.

If you read SCD, you've probably seen the ads for the all-encompassing VIP tickets offered at The National in Cleveland. Part of that package are a handful of cards from this eTopps set, dubbed the Cards That Never Were. I think the ones at The Nat are going to specially stamped or something. The ones available through eTopps are like other eTopps cards. I think the biggest difference is that these cards will be in that year's original design and (hopefully) won't be plastered with the gaudy eTopps logo.

Here's the official line on the product (I didn't write this):


Introducing eTopps "Cards That Never Were"!

eTopps has gone back in history and created a classic collection of cards that never were! Each card has a unique story and all together the collection will be an instant classic. The collection will include:

* The ultimate tribute card: a 1952 Topps Joe DiMaggio!
* A stunning 1952 Topps Ted Williams and 1954 Topps Stan Musial card! Both players had exclusives with Bowman in the early 50's and as a result did not have Topps cards. Now you can own them!
* Whitey Ford left baseball to serve his country in the Korean War; as a result Whitey never had a '52 Topps card. Now you can...
* Nolan Ryan broke into the Big Leagues in '66 with the Mets, but it wasn't until '68 that Nolan got his rookie card. Now you can get his '67!

All cards will be sequentially numbered and delivered on beautiful eTopps technology. We will offer autographs on many of these cards, which will make them even more special!

The Cards That Never Were will be offered starting Monday August 6th at 1pm EST. The collection will be offered weekly and over time so please be sure to visit eTopps often!


And while Topps didn't end up going with all the guys and issues I had proposed (I still think a 1951 Bowman DiMaggio would be cool, and a 1966 card of Masanori Murakami would go over huge right about now, what with the renewed interest in all things Japanese baseball), the checklist they did decide on is pretty strong, plus there will be autographed versions available. There are 12 subjects in the set, including the ones pictured in this post.

The set doesn't officially debut until August 6th, offered through the eTopps site.