The Baseball Project Trading Cards!

 

Baseball cards featuring a rock band that writes songs about baseball. 

 

If you're reading this and you like rock music, there's a good chance you've at least heard of The Baseball Project. Founded almost two decades ago, the band (a supergroup, if you will) celebrated their fourth album release and tour back in 2023 with a pack of cards available at their merch table which was clearly too fun for me to pass up.

Each card features one of the primary band members, and the info card that leads off the pack gives you some contact info as well as a small glimpse at the album cover of their latest release, Grand Salami Time. The title track is based on the catchphrase of Seattle Mariners legendary broadcaster Dave Niehaus and ties in a bunch of other famous announcer catchphrases.

Each card features a childhood photo of a band member, using the familiar 1987 Topps style and Future Stars logo.

On the back of the card you get each band member's "stats" (i.e. rock band resume) along with a fun fact about that member.

Did I get an all-rookie hot pack? It seems like I did!

One of the big things that put this band on my radar is that I became a huge R.E.M. fan in high school, and the band has included two core members of that group at times as well as a touring member, meaning that I first got to see 60% of this group play live together more than 30 years ago.

Is there anything better than old little league photos? I still have one or two of mine somewhere.

Peter Buck was always my favorite R.E.M. member, and he's only gotten more involved in different projects as he's gotten older, including a run of solo releases not mentioned here.

Scott McCaughey is a Bay Area native, so he may not be as enthused about wearing a Yankees shirt here as he seemed to be in the photo.

McCaughey started touring with R.E.M. in 1995 and eventually moved up here to Portland, so I see him around from time to time when I go to shows locally. The Minus 5 is always a fun time.

Steve Wynn pushes the Yankees thing further here with an actual team logo.

Wynn put out a number of acclaimed records with The Dream Syndicate in the '80s and is married to the band's drummer, Linda Pitmon. He splits lead vocal duties with McCaughey for the most part, with Mike Mills at the mic on a couple of fun tracks about Dale Murphy and doctoring baseballs.

I tend to shy away from most bands that could easily be labeled as a "gimmick band", but the first time I caught these guys live I was really into it. Their collective background in the music game certainly helps here. Check them out at their website, on Bandcamp, or YouTube or wherever you consume music.

An Old Pack of Cards: Yo!

Pro Set used to be cool. 

 

Another old pack of cards has been liberated from the stacks of chaos on my decks. I believe I bought this pack for way too much money at an Austin area record store a number of years ago. While I must have bought at least a box's worth of Pro Set MusiCards back in the day, I never got into their Yo! MTV Raps set from around the same time. This is weird, of course, because the ratio of artists in the rap set that I was familiar with, if not actually a fan of, was much greater than that MusicCards release. Was this because of availability or something? It's hard to say at this point.

56 - M.C. Hammer - Was anyone bigger than Hammer in 1991? Of course the critics were already out in droves by this period, but he was selling a ridiculous amount of records and was simply unavoidable for a period. There was an entire generation of music listeners who probably hadn't been exposed to a hit song based around a sample (Rick James' "Super Freak") prior to M.C. Hammer biggest hit.

37 - Heavy D. and the Boyz - Heavy D (RIP) was best known to me at the time for being behind the theme song (both versions) to FOX's Black-oriented sketchy comedy "In Living Color". And don't forget The Boyz!

64 - Public Enemy - I'm listening to PE's "It Takes a Nation of Millions..." right now as I write this. It holds up! Chuck D is a great social media follow, especially if you like basketball.

15 - Digital Underground - Humpty Hump (RIP) and his crew were sort of a party-rap collective that employed Tupac as a fringe member/dancer at one point.

20 - Doctor Dre and Ed Lover - It's the guys who (mostly) hosted the Yo! MTV Raps tv show! Dre, of course, is of no relationship to that other Dr. Dre, the one who abbreviates his title.

95 - Young Black Teenagers - Have I mentioned how perfectly '90s the design of these cards is? It's wonderful. This is the only card in the pack where I can't specifically recall one of their songs.

4 - Bell Biv DeVoe - Here's what the backs of the cards look like.

82 - Tone Loc - Tone had two huge hits that were collaborations with Young MC (of "Bust a Move" fame) and would appear in various television shows and movies in the '90s and beyond.

28 - Eric B. & Rakim - Ah yes, your favorite rapper's favorite rappers. Only Public Enemy could join them in the A tier from this pack.

35 - Fab Five Freddy - My recollection of Fab Five Freddy, aside from being name-checked in a 1980 Blondie hit due to his status as an early hip hop scene pioneer, was his showing up for lengthy on-the-street interviews during late night Yo! episodes. I bet he has a ton of cool stories to tell.

Of course, it can't be a proper Pro Set pack without one of these sweepstakes card things. Let me get in my time machine and win one of these things...

An Old Pack of Cards: Footy

English footballers of yesterday. 

 

Welcome back to another in an occasionally series of packs that have been left laying around on my desk for a number of years, waiting for a rainy day to be discussed. Of course, the weather is very nice (and mild for August) right now as I write this, and my desk was completely cleaned off (and disposed of) in my move last October. However, apparently I let a couple of these stale old packs make the trip with me and they ended up on my new desk for some reason.

230 - Pat Van Den Hauwe (Tottenham Hotspur) - If I recall correctly, Erin was sent this pack along with some sort of online order from an apparel store years ago. This set features players from recognizable clubs that most likely all competed in the top level of English football at the time. It was a couple of years before the Premier League officially became a thing, so most likely they would have been competing in what was known at the time as Football League First Division,

224 - Colin Pascoe (Sunderland) - I'm glad they print the team names on the back, because I wouldn't recognize most of these kits.

150 - Mark Robins (Manchester United) - Remember when Sharp was a big player in home electronics?

209 - Glenn Cockerill (Southampton) - There were a lot of striped shirts in this league. It's funny to look back at the early days of the MLS here stateside and see how many teams tried to go with stripes at first.

257 - Rob Newman (Bristol City) - In-action soccer poses can be pretty entertaining.

223 - Marco Gabbiadini (Sunderland) - This is about the point in most packs where I start running out of things to say.

180 - David Bardsley (Queens Park Rangers) - By and large these players are a generation behind most people I would have heard of, and maybe a generation and a half away from today's young stars.

17 - Chris Price (Aston Villa) - Price kind of looks like one of my co-workers. You know, like the guy you duck behind a corner to avoid when you see him coming?

302 - Steve Davis (Burnley) - We end things here with your typical cool '90s guy.

An Old Pack of Cards: Repacked

 

Assorted cards, vintage? 

 

From the Clearing off the Desk Dept. comes this pack of cards I purchased at a card show last summer. There was a table with a box of these "Repacked Wax" cards along with some stacks of sample cards that were supposedly pulled. The samples produced better results than my packs did. I bought two packs, and you can find the other one that I posted here.

The first card out of the pack is decided not vintage. It's from the 2019 Topps GQ set.

Lonnie Smith, former Cardinals champion, makes an appearance on the familiar 1991 Upper Deck design.

I don't know that anyone would say that the 2023 Topps set draws a lot of inspiration from 1983, but it doesn't have the headshot in the lower left thing going on.

This is quite a lousy photo. I'm curious to know why Lamar Johnson is wearing a helmet and a jacket, or why it appears that he's standing in front of a huge fog on this 1980 Topps card. He did do a bit of DH'ing in his career, so maybe he was trying to keep warm in between at-bats but was also trying to stay mentally prepared with the helmet... or something? It's a bit of a reach, I know.

Ehh... 2020 Topps.

This is a 1974 Topps card, as you might have guessed. It's what the 2023 Heritage set will be based on. I'm not sure I'm all that excited about this. It's a quality design, don't get me wrong, but this might be the breaking point where I feel like Heritage has caught up with Archives and isn't anything special anymore.

Mike Armstrong brings the '80s glasses (and beard) to this 1984 Fleer card. Mid-'80s Fleer cards are my jam.

I don't remember this player, but the photo (from 1993 Topps) looks pretty familiar.

I liked the 1982 and 1983 (the one with the glove instead of the ball) Donruss sets quite a bit when I was younger as well. I think it's because their packs were, for a time at least, more affordable a lot of other older sets.

I'm sure I must have owned this card at one point, because I think I had an opened 1990 Fleer Update set for no apparent reason. Nevertheless, I don't remember this card or Wally Backman as a Pirate at all.

I remember there being a bit of hype locally about Erik Hanson, or at least this card. Maybe because it's an '89 Upper Deck card, or maybe it was just people propping up any young Mariner that displayed some level of competence on the field. He was no Griffey, of course.

We advance forward slightly to the 1992 Topps set. Nice shades.

Card companies in 1986 were seemingly afraid to use Utility (or UT) as a position on their cards. What else would an OF/IF type be, though?

The only set hyped as much (or more?) than 1989 Upper Deck when I was in my young collecting years was 1987 Fleer. And if you pulled a star player like Kirby Puckett in one of those Fleer packs? That was money.

Last one out of the pack is this Mets pitcher from 1985 Topps. I could never afford packs of this because of the McGwire card and other "key rookies", but a friend of mine happened to gift me the whole set... minus those key rookies, of course. Pouring through the bulk of the set made me never really that interested in buying the packs.

Each pack has a sticker or two at the end to take the bullet and keep the real cards wax-free.

I'm not sure I'll seek these out again considering how underwhelming my packs were, but it's not going to keep me completely off repacks.