Tag Archives: Mike Piazza - Page 2

29 September 2013 – Milwaukee Brewers at New York Mets

Posted by on 1 October 2013 Comments Off on 29 September 2013 – Milwaukee Brewers at New York Mets

Unlikely heroes bunt out a win as the Mets celebrate Mike Piazza

This time last year, R.A. Dickey set out to earn his 20th win in front of an enthusiastic crowd.  This year, the big milestone on the line was Eric Young Jr’s pursuit of the NL stolen base lead as the Mets attempted to equal last year’s record of 74-88.  Backing them up was a sellout crowd that came to see Mike Piazza inducted into the Mets Hall of Fame and stayed to see the Mets close out the season with a 3-2 win.

Mike Piazza evokes memories of home runs, playoff appearances, and black uniforms.  There would be none of those for the Mets from here on out, but it’s fun to look back at better days.  Denied entrance to Cooperstown this year, the Mets made Piazza the newest member of the Mets Hall of Fame surrounded by his family and the family of Mets greats from years past.

And a whole lot of cameras.  Absent were Al Leiter, whose job with MLB Network was keeping him busy as the Indians, Rangers, and Rays fought for the last two playoff spots, and Tom Seaver, who was all but ignored aside from a brief first-name mention from Piazza.

This wasn’t the time to look back at the Mets’ lone representative in Cooperstown as Piazza looks poised to join him whenever the writers get their act together.  Piazza graciously accepted the award, spoke highly of his former teammates, and let the fans know how much their support has meant to him over the years.  It was a true class act from a Mets great who hasn’t had much to do with the team lately, so this could be a changing of the guard.  Next up: Cooperstown and the Citi Field wall of retired numbers.

Terry Collins, not especially beloved by the fans but respected by the players and the front office, entered the game with a two-year contract extension all but finalized.  A progression of injuries and a team straight out of Las Vegas certainly didn’t help his case, but it does give some context to three losing seasons with the Mets.  Collins does know how to work with people, in stark contrast to his previous managerial roles.  In this regard, it makes sense that he made a special trip to the outfield before the game to thank the fans for their support.  It was a simple gesture, but it shows that someone in charge of something understands that the team needs the support of the fans.  Now let’s see what he can do with some better players.

Eric Young Jr. has proven that the Mets’ lack of a leadoff hitter is a significant deficiency.  While I wouldn’t say that he’s proven that he deserves to be a starter in 2014, he should be a safe bet to make the team.  Tied for the NL lead in stolen bases, Young put himself in position to get the top spot for himself with a leadoff single in the bottom of the first.  To the surprise of nobody, he was off in advance of the first pitch and easily took second for his 45th steal of the season.

Would he stop there?  Of course not.  A few pitches later, he took third when Milwaukee catcher Jonathan Lucroy couldn’t get a good grip on the ball and threw far too late to catch Young.  With one out, David Wright popped out to shallow right field, too shallow for a runner to tag up at third and score.

Or so you would think.  This should have been an out.  Even with Young’s speed, the ball got to Lucroy in plenty of time.  Lucroy on the other hand couldn’t get to Young in time to make the tag, catching the ball well into the infield and needing to spin around 180 degrees for any chance at getting Young.  Young did his job as a leadoff hitter and put the Mets on the board first.  That should have been enough, but this wouldn’t be a Mets game if it were that easy.

Jon Niese, who cruised through the first three innings, started the fourth with three singles.  Jeff Bianchi tried to score on the third, but Eric Young Jr. didn’t want anyone else to take away his spotlight, so he fired a throw to Juan Centeno, who made the tag for the inning’s first out.  Niese walked Yuniesky Betancourt to load the bases, but he looked like he would escape the inning without incident when Sean Halton hit an easy double play ball.  Umpire CB Bucknor thought otherwise and a run scored on the blown call, tying the game at 1.

Terry Collins did his part by arguing the call, but nothing he could say would change the call or, apparently, get him ejected.  Logan Schafer followed with a dribbler that nobody could get to, driving in a run to give the Brewers a 2-1 lead.  Scooter Gennett hit the fifth single of the inning, but someone didn’t get the memo about not running on Juan Lagares.  Centeno tagged Halton to end the inning, for real this time.  With the Mets’ bats silent since Young’s leadoff single, that blown call could decide the game.

Vic Black is a contender for high leverage relief appearances next year, so it’s good to see how he reacts under pressure.  After an out and a four-pitch walk to Norichika Aoki, Black was determined to undo his mistake via pickoff.  A little too determined.  On the third consecutive pickoff attempt, Josh Satin couldn’t get a glove on the ball and Aoki took second.  With the pressure on (largely due to his own efforts), Black got the next two batters to fly out to end the inning.

Juan Lagares gunned down Sean Halton to end the Brewers’ scoring in the 4th and Lagares came out on top again when their roles were reversed leading off the bottom of the 8th.  On a ground ball to short, Lagares reached first safely when Halton couldn’t keep his foot on the bag and made no attempt at a tag.  Juan Centeno followed with a perfectly dropped bunt that he was able to turn into an infield single.  Milwaukee second baseman Scooter Gennett was caught off guard despite this being Centeno’s second bunt attempt and, after bumping into Bucknor, couldn’t get into a stable position to field the throw.  That opened the door for Lagares to score and tie the game at 2.

Juan Centeno, not David Wright or Daniel Murphy as had been rumored, would be the only Met to lifted for a pinch runner, though it wasn’t to give him an ovation.  Matt den Dekker took over as the runner at second, which apparently Lucroy didn’t pick up on when he fielded Wilfredo Tovar’s bunt and threw to third instead of first.  With the lead run on third and nobody out, most fans would expect a run here.  Between the Brewers’ inept defense and the Mets’ absent offense though, nothing was certain.  Josh Satin popped out for the first successfully recorded out of the inning, bringing the offense full circle to the player who started the day’s scoring and now had a chance to end it.

Eric Young Jr. didn’t need to do much.  A base hit or a deep fly ball would bring den Dekker home.  Instead, he smashed the ball into the ground just in front of home plate for a groundout that the Brewers executed without an error.  As den Dekker slid across home plate.  With the lead secured, Justin Turner and his beard came in to put the Mets’ offense to bed for the year.

Frank Francisco was brought in to be the Mets’ closer, but things didn’t exactly go as planned.  After a disappointing 2012, Francisco missed most of 2013 while rehabbing from injury.  With the Mets up 3-2 going into the 9th, Francisco was handed his first save opportunity of the year and an opportunity to end his Mets career back on track.  His first test would be former Met Carlos Gomez, who popped out to start the inning.  A strikeout brought in Aramis Ramirez as a pinch hitter and Milwaukee’s last chance.  Ramirez watched as Francisco sent strike three over the plate to end the game.  If you picked Frank Francisco to save Game 162 for the Mets, well, you must not follow baseball.  Still, that’s the way it happened as we say goodbye to Citi Field for 2013.

Five Must-Have Mets Cards

Posted by on 19 March 2013 Comments Off on Five Must-Have Mets Cards

Cornerstones of any Mets collection

You know, I’m not doing enough fluff pieces on here.  While I continue to scan cards for some more significant pieces, here’s a quick look at a few nice Mets cards.  If you want to berate me for not including any cards from Tom Seaver, Gary Carter, David Wright, or Victor Zambrano, feel free to leave a comment with your suggestions.  Maybe I’ll even throw another of these together to fill space sometime.

1997 Upper Deck Game Jersey Rey Ordonez GJ3

There are few more significant jersey cards in baseball card history than Ordonez’s 1997 Game Jersey insert.  Actually, there are two, number GJ1 and number GJ2 from this set.  Ordonez is the odd man out in the debut jersey card set behind Ken Griffey Jr. and Tony Gwynn.  Still, this is the first piece of Mets jersey issued in a baseball card and helped to usher in a new era of collecting.

2000 Upper Deck Game Jersey Patch Mike Piazza P-MP

While Rey Ordonez has the distinction of having the first Mets jersey card, Mike Piazza became the first Met with a patch card in 2000 (let’s not talk about 1998 and 1999, at least not until I finish the next Mets Game-Used History segment).  Nearly impossible to pull at the time, this card still commands a decent price despite the multitude of Piazza patch cards on the market.  There’s only one first and this one is it.  Piazza has gone on to have countless patch cards released and more than 60 other Mets players have joined him.

2001 Upper Deck Signed Game Jersey Nolan Ryan Mets H-NRm

Nolan Ryan may be one of the biggest stars to come up through the Mets system, but he didn’t really do much as a Met. That doesn’t stop the card companies from celebrating Ryan’s time on the team though. Pieces of one of Ryan’s Mets jerseys (flannel pinstripes) began showing up in cards as early as 2000, typically depicting him in a Rangers uniform. Upper Deck gave all of Ryan’s teams their proper respect in 2001’s Game Jersey inserts. Between the base jersey, signed jersey, and dual jersey inserts, Ryan was featured in every uniform with pieces from the appropriate jersey. This Mets version includes a large (by today’s standards) swatch of pinstriped jersey with an on-card autograph. Short of an autographed Mets patch card (see 2011 Topps), this is about as good as it gets for Ryan memorabilia.

2010 Upper Deck A Piece of History 500 Club Gary Sheffield 500HR-GS

Gary Sheffield became the first player to hit his 500th home run as a Met in 2009 and Upper Deck commemorated it in 2010 with the final entry (so far) in the A Piece of History 500 Club bat card insert set. As with the other cards in this product, the card features barely cropped and/or obscured logos, which Upper Deck was not allowed to use. The product may have doomed Upper Deck, but this card remains a key piece of Mets history.

2011 Topps Marquee Titanic Threads Jumbo Relics Carlos Beltran TTJR-69

Released after Beltran had been traded to the Giants, this card might seem a bit out of place.  Its significance however cannot be overstated.  The included jersey swatch, big enough to feature three pinstripes on some versions, isn’t notable just because Carlos Beltran wore it.  The Beltran jersey cards in this product are in fact the only cards to feature a piece of Mets pinstripe jersey worn between about 2009 and 2011.  All others are either from before the recessed mesh style Cool Base jerseys were adopted or after the Cool Base formula changed to a more standard weave for the 2012 season.

The Hall of Fame and Al Capone’s Vault

Posted by on 9 January 2013 Comments Off on The Hall of Fame and Al Capone’s Vault

Maybe it’s what we want to be in it that matters more

I was going to do one of those I-don’t-have-a-vote-but-here’s-who-I-would-vote-for articles that are all the rage these days, but I would just end up with a ballot that looks like what Joe Posnanski and Jay Jaffe ended up with (though I’m only starting to warm up to Curt Schilling and I’m not quite sold on Larry Walker).  Since those guys did a better job than I ever could, there’s really no point in that exercise.  Instead, let’s look at the voting itself, which is likely to be all there is to discuss once the results are in.

To have a vote on who gets a plaque in the Baseball Hall of Fame within the first 20 years following their retirement, you need to spend 10 years as a member of the BBWAA.  Put in another 10 and your voting privileges won’t expire until you do.  If you’ve been wondering why some of the voters seem like senile old coots, well, they are.  To be included on the ballot, you need to have appeared in the majors in at least 10 different seasons and get through a rigorous nomination phase that apparently everyone except Edgardo Alfonzo gets through.  Seriously, the list of “Guys on a Hall of Fame ballot who weren’t half the player Edgardo Alfonzo was” has got to be in the hundreds (Tony Womack?  Are you kidding me?).  Any player who receives votes on at least 75% of the submitted ballots gets a Hall of Fame plaque, any player with less than 5% is removed from consideration, and everyone in the middle has 15 years to do one or the other before getting the axe.  This ensures that guys like Darryl Strawberry don’t clutter up the ballot while virtually identical players like Dave Parker remain in the discussion for 15 years.  Or that we spend 12+ years wondering how Alan Trammell can be considered Hall worthy when his superior teammate Lou Whitaker never made it past his first ballot.  Yes, the process that passed on Keith Hernandez and settled for Jim Rice in his final year of eligibility is completely not broken.  Well, at least it isn’t the Veterans Committee.

So with such a flawless process already in place, now we get to pass judgment on the Steroids Era for the first time.  Except for when Jeff Bagwell was denied because he had big muscles, and you know what they say about guys with big muscles…  And all the years that Mark McGwire has received minimal support (at least he came clean, though he downplays the impact of his steroids).  But now, for the first time ever, we have legitimate superstars, inner circle guys, who have been connected to performance enhancing drugs.  PEDs.  The greatest evil ever to stain the reputation of Major League Baseball.  This time it counts.

Business as usual

So what did the writers do?  Some, like the ones I most agree with, weighed each player’s performance without giving them major penalties for admitted, suspected, or wildly speculated PED use.  Since knowing for certain who used and who didn’t or who benefitted and who suffered is an absolute impossibility, you can’t really do much to negate the effect of steroids when weighing a Hall of Fame case.  While this is the approach I would choose, it isn’t the only one out there.

Everybody’s dirty

Other writers decided that the entire era is tainted and refused to vote for any of them.  Some even refused to turn in their ballots, which means that they won’t count against anyone when the votes are tallied (the blank ballots however will add to the total ballots cast).  This doesn’t seem like a good long-term solution, but it could send a message that better guidance is needed.  I would argue that saying “Hey, we need better guidance!” would send a clearer message, but I’m not the one getting paid to figure these things out.

Everybody’s dirty (except for my guy)

While I can (kind of) admire taking a stand by using your ballot to vote against the system, I just don’t get the guys who turn a ballot with a single name because everyone else who was worthy was dirty.  Jack Morris is usually the lone name (probably because he had a lot of votes last year) and the assumption is that, because of the years he played in, he is free from PED suspicion.  Everyone else must have been on something, but my guy’s clean!  Never mind that steroids have been a part of baseball at least back into the ’60s or that amphetamines have been used (illegally) as performance enhancers for longer than that (but that’s OK because the teams were giving them out like candy).  Dale Murphy is another name that comes up in this category because he’s just a swell guy.  The best defense of a Murphy-only ballot I’ve seen is that, if the character clause can be used to disqualify some of the best players in history, it should also be used to boost a good guy whose numbers weren’t quite there.  The logic is flawless, but I’m not buying the premise.  In any case, declaring that only one person on this ballot is worthy is highly questionable at best.

I am the law!

We don’t know who did what when, but that doesn’t mean we can’t pass judgment!  The most frustrating ballots are the ones that combine all of the above logic to generate a standard 5 or 6 player ballot with “clean” players.  This gets murky because PEDs not only inflated the stats of the users, but they also reduced the stats of the non-users.  This exercise requires banishing all players with tarnished reputations and lowering the standard for the Hall.  In a perfect world, I could see this working.  In a world where today’s saints are tomorrow’s disgraces and Murray Chass has waged a one-man smear campaign against Mike Piazza for the better part of a decade based only on a bad case of acne, you might as well make your picks by dartboard.  I understand the pressure from readers who rant about how anyone who votes for a “cheater” will burn in hell, but the writers should have learned by now to ignore their less eloquent critics.  And, while I agree that Tim Raines should be in the Hall, how can anyone ever call him “clean?”

Sorry, ran out of room

The 10-player limit on the Hall of Fame Ballot gives writers an interesting out when it comes to controversial cases.  While voters only list 5 or 6 names on average, a few do max it out, especially in years with this many qualified players.  If you want to steer clear of the McGwire/Sosa/Palmeiro controversy or the Bagwell/Piazza witch hunt, just load up your ballot with borderline guys and then lament that you had but ten slots with which to vote.  You can placate their supporters without attracting the ire of their opponents.  Genius!  Bonus points for using a convoluted nonsensical mathematical system for justifying that there were ten players more deserving than Piazza on this year’s ballot.

No first ballot for you!

I understand that people always want a way to distinguish the great great players from the good great players, but maybe the number of times on the ballot isn’t the way to do it.  Some great players fall off the ballot in their first year of eligibility, while some get in quickly and others wait far too long.  Recently, voters have been assigning special meaning to a “first ballot” Hall of Famer, using this honor as an excuse to delay entry for anyone not deemed worthy (and don’t get me started on the ones who just want to make sure nobody gets in unanimously).  Just look at Roberto Alomar, who got 73.7% of the vote in his first year (meh, borderline) and 90% in his second (duh, superstar).  The same logic is coming up in the PED discussion, with many voters putting off a decision until next year.  Stalling isn’t a particularly effective voting strategy, especially with a loaded ballot that won’t be getting any smaller.

And inside the vault…

With the combination of these voters, there’s very little chance of anyone getting in this year.  Maybe Biggio, who seems to be more “clean” than his teammate Bagwell for reasons that defy logic.  Maybe Morris, whose case now seems to rest on his number of opening day starts and the number of innings he pitched, plus the fact that his career ended before everyone was doing steroids (which somehow proves that he’s clean).  Piazza?  Probably not, which is a shame.  Trammell and Raines should be getting more support as the writers shun the more recent players, but that’s not happening.  And Dale Murphy, nice guy, isn’t getting in.  Sorry.

Is there any hope?

There seem to be some problems here with no clear solutions.  However, this would all be a waste of space if I didn’t propose any solutions, so here goes.

1. Expand the ballot to 15 names

Most voters don’t even use up the ten they have, but that limit predates the expansion era.  With more teams and more players, it stands to reason that there should be more players each year who are worthy of the Hall.  The problem is only going to get worse over the next few years, so the time to act is now.  It won’t fix everything, but it is a reasonable measure that should be easy to pass.  At least it would look like someone is trying.

2. Have the Hall take an official position on PEDs

When writers are throwing up their hands in confusion, something needs to be done.  I suppose you could just stop sending them ballots, but the more constructive solution is to put together a press release telling them exactly how to feel about PEDs.  This seems to be what they’re after.  One possible statement is this:

Drugs are bad, mmmkay?  You shouldn’t do drugs, mmmkay?  Steroids are bad, players shouldn’t do steroids, mmmkay?  Doing steroids will get you suspended but doesn’t make you ineligible for the Hall of Fame, unless you get caught three times, mmmkay?

What, don’t think that will fix everything?  If the Hall comes out and says “Steroids happened and we expect that there are players enshrined here who used steroids and other PEDs and that there will be more PED users enshrined in the future,” then the “NO ROIdZ IN TEH HALL EVAR!!!~!” crowd would lose some footing from their untenable position.  Voters are still free to withhold their vote for anyone who ever came into contact with PEDs, but they won’t be able to hide behind the claim that they’re defending the purity of the Hall of Fame.  That cherry was popped long ago.

3. Make all Hall of Fame ballots public

This one probably won’t help anything, but it’s an overdue measure in an age where every scrap of data is overanalyzed.  Public ballot reveals started last year with major award voting and it made it perfectly clear who the idiots are.  Now, some of the senile old coots out there are proud of their idiocy, but the writers shouldn’t be able to hide behind a veil of secrecy when they’re making decisions based on rumors, accusations, and baseless speculation.  If you can’t disclose your vote and the justification behind it, you shouldn’t have a vote in the Hall of Fame.

4. Form a Steroid Era Committee and give the writers 20 years off

Can’t handle the responsibility of judging the players in an era when you kind of dropped the ball on their steroid use?  Why not call in a special committee to take over and take the blame for letting in cheaters and/or the underqualified?  Just like we write off most of the Hall’s lesser inhabitants because of the various flavors of Veterans Committees, a Steroid Committee could shoulder the blame for the entire era.  Because we know that the ones who vote for the PED users are the real villains.

5. Have the writers start the discussion before the ballots are sent out

We’ve been through a month of hand-wringing over the steroid issue, and now it will be forgotten for another 11 months until next year’s ballots come out.  Maybe we could get some more reasonable positions on these issues if people started talking about them before they fill out their ballots.  In fact, the only way any of this will start to make any sense is if the writers can begin to agree on how to approach Hall of Fame voting.  Obviously, every voter approaches their decision differently, but right now they’re so far apart that the entire process is a waste of time.  With that in mind, let’s lay out just what we’re dealing with.  After all, I’m an engineer, not a sanctimonious arbiter of good and evil.

The Saints

Nobody.  Seriously, nobody.  Even if someone performs miracles, PED use will be suspected.

The Suspected PED Users

Everyone who played prior to the institution of testing.  That includes Bagwell and Piazza plus Morris and Murphy.  Everyone.  You can’t prove that someone didn’t use PEDs, so I’ll raise your wild unfounded speculation about player X with wild unfounded speculation about player Y.  It seems like people only want to put home run hitters in this category, but that’s absurd.  How about the guy who threw a 10-inning shutout in game 7 of the World Series and pitched 240 or more innings in 10 seasons?  Sounds suspicious to me.

The Assumed PED Users

Here’s your Bonds and Clemens tier.  They’ve been linked to PEDs so strongly that they’ve been taken to court.  Not necessarily successfully, but we’ve declared them guilty in the court of public opinion based on something more than big muscles or acne.

The Admitted PED Users

Mark McGwire on this year’s ballot, with honorable mentions to Jose Canseco, Ken Caminiti, and future conundrums Andy Pettitte and Alex Rodriguez.  At least they came clean, right?  Or maybe they only admitted to what they were accused of to save face.  How do we know that they’re telling the whole story?

The Exposed PED Users

These guys failed tests of some sort, so this is where Sosa, Palmeiro, and eventually Melky Cabrera and Ryan Braun will go.  Maybe it was just a one-time mistake, maybe they were just good at hiding it.  We know they were taking something though, at that one specific point in time.  For the rest of their careers though, see above.

The Repeat Offenders

Manny Ramirez, founding member.

The Permanently Ineligible

Three strikes and you’re out.  That’s MLB’s position at least, some of the writers stopped reading at the top of the list.  At least we can all agree on this one.

So how do we treat these guys?  Are they all the same?  Are some worse than others?  Do we need different standards for players in different categories?  (Hint: Bonds and Clemens probably still get in even if you raise the Hall of Fame standard to the ceiling.)  Should we pull a Tour de France and wipe the entirety of the Steroid Era from the history books?  Who do we really want to see get a plaque on a wall in the most boring room of the Baseball Hall of Fame?  Because that’s really what this comes down to.  It’s not about integrity or honor or the message it sends.  It’s not about the sport’s history, righting wrongs, or deciding the fate of the world.  This is about who gets a plaque and who has to settle for a cardboard cutout and some memorabilia.  Or whatever the heck they have for displays in there these days, it’s been almost 20 years since I’ve been there.  It would be nice to see it again, but I think I’ll wait until there’s a Mike Piazza plaque on the wall.  Until then, the vault is empty for me.

March Mystery Montage: Day 30

Posted by on 30 March 2012 Comments Off on March Mystery Montage: Day 30

After 30 daily updates, this is what we have:

Day 30

So what is it?  The full story goes up tomorrow, but for now here are the basics:

  • 30 game-used patch cards
  • One for each MLB franchise
  • All from Mets players
  • All patches match the team that the player is shown in
  • As many stars and Hall of Famers as I could manage
  • Enough players at each position to make a workable roster

 

The Side Panel: Visual guide to spotting jersey variants in the wild

Posted by on 10 March 2012 Comments Off on The Side Panel: Visual guide to spotting jersey variants in the wild

As I start accumulating posts, they will inevitably sort themselves out into various categories based on content.  For everything else, there’s The Side Panel, a collection of random rants and ruminations and musings and mutterings on minutiae.

For this first official appearance of The Side Panel (not to be confused with my earlier piece on The Number 18, which is unofficially the first, perhaps the zeroth), I’ll be looking at this feature’s namesake, the often overlooked side panels in modern high-tech jerseys.  If talk about armpits is your thing, um, welcome.  Or not.  Anyway…

Baseball uniforms have come a long way from the heavy flannel uniforms of the sport’s early years.  As competition got tougher with more fans and more revenue, teams looked for every possible advantage the rulebook allowed (and a few it didn’t).  In the days of synthetic material, changing the uniform has provided a way to both improve performance on the field and attract the attention of fans, now more likely to watch on television (either the physical box or the feed streamed over the internet) than in person.  The modern baseball uniform is made as much to appeal to fans as it is to the player who wears it, so the ideal uniform is colorful, stylish, comfortable, and able to handle dirt, sweat, and the occasional fastball.

The big trend in uniforms over the past decade has been the introduction of Cool Base materials.  The Cool Base jersey uses multiple different types of fabric to presumably perform different functions appropriate to the location of the material.  Look, I’m no fashion expert, I’m just guessing here.  It can’t be a coincidence though that the areas most likely to see lots of moisture are made of a different material than the rest of the jersey.  And having panels of different materials makes it easy to mix different colors on a jersey, resulting in the common color patterns that have been seen on countless batting practice and special event uniforms.

Futures Game and All-Star Jersey Variants

When you add in the inclusion of jersey swatches in baseball cards, these side panels, sometimes differently colored, sometimes not, introduce possible variants among the boring sameness that plagues today’s game-used offerings.  These variants were first sighted in quantity in the 2005 All-Star workout jersey swatches featured in 2005 Topps Updates and Highlights (the 2003 All-Star and Futures Game jerseys featured a smaller secondary material section around the sleeves, but pieces of this are hard to come by).  While the main colors of orange for the NL team and blue for the AL team were common, blue NL and white AL jersey swatches were occasionally seen.  These were pieces from the jersey’s side panels and this was the start of a trend that would continue through All-Star, Futures Game, WBC, and regular MLB jerseys in years to come.

So does anyone care about these “rare” variants?  Not really.  I’m pretty sure it’s just me.  Looking at the prices I’ve paid for the variants vs. the normal versions, there’s really no premium based on material type/color (though the same is true for most serial-numbered parallels, so it could just be that the market is generally indifferent towards things that aren’t sufficiently different).  I like some variety in my collection though, so I set out to get as many of these variants as I can find.  And so can you!  Here are some helpful hints to get you started.

Know the Game

Pedro Martinez WBC jersey ariants and Blake Forsythe Team USA jersey variants

Baseball uniforms today come from a variety of sources.  In addition to regular season MLB games, spring training games, the annual All-Star event (with its associated Futures Game), minor league games, the World Baseball Classic, Team USA, and various other random events produce jerseys that could make it into cards.  Identifying the sources is the first step toward finding variants.

Know the Uniforms

2010 Futures Game jersey photos with all three colors visible

The colors of the uniforms themselves will often provide clues about the source of the materials in cards.  Knowing the colors of the uniforms in question will help to determine whether variants are commonly available and will let you know when to stop looking for more.  It can take years to find some of these variants, so knowing what you’re looking for is essential.

Know the Materials

Not all variants are conveniently color-coded.  For the Mets blue Cool Base jerseys (I’m guessing these are batting practice and/or spring training jerseys), the side panels are the same color as the main body of the jersey.  How are you supposed to spot them from the tiny out-of-focus pictures people post on eBay?  The simple way is to look for white or otherwise lighter colored spots in a regular pattern in the jersey swatch.  Mesh side panels have holes in them, so the card’s backing will show through from certain angles.

Know the Products

The most obvious products to search for jersey variants are the annual Topps Update and whatever Bowman product gets Futures Game jerseys.  Other fall releases are also good places to look, primarily Topps Triple Threads.  It is common to find Triple Threads triple jersey cards with two or three of the different color variants from a special event jersey.

One-off products like 2009 Topps Unique and 2009 Topps Ticket to Stardom are also a common landing spot for whatever extra material Topps finds laying around from the last decade or so.  Above are pieces from a Jose Reyes 2002 Futures Game jersey, a David Wright 2004 Futures Game jersey, and a side panel from a Johan Santana 2007 All-Star workout jersey.

Know the Players

Sometimes, interesting pieces can show up in strange places.  When Topps took over distribution of All-Star workout jersey material in 2004 (starting with pieces from the 2003 All-Star event), their All-Star Stitches insert set became the default home for everything All-Star.  Swatches from various 2003 All-Star workout jerseys appeared elsewhere in 2004, but Topps has since managed to corral at least the first use of just about every jersey into what is now the premier game-used insert set in the annual update product.  There are exceptions though, so it pays to know who was at the All-Star event but didn’t make it into All-Star Stitches, as was the case for Paul Lo Duca in 2005.  Instead of showing up where you would expect, his 2005 All-Star workout jersey appeared in 2006 Topps Turkey Red.