The Stars Are Out: The Rest of 2024

 

Another year where I kept forgetting to find moments to post the Stars Are Out customs. Topps bringing back the First Pitch insert set may have contributed to this as well, since they're documenting first pitches I'm only sort of needed, cause I kinda only do the cool niche ones anyhow. No matter. There was still some left, so before I start rolling out 2025 customs, here they are.

I'm starting with Patrick Willis, not only because he's one of the few sports-related first pitches I documented in this batch, but because I've met the man. Million years ago, back when he was still playing with the 49ers, a mutual friend introduced me. Great guy, soft spoken. Treated me like an equal, despite me being young and decidedly not an All-Pro linebacker. Willis was one of the best of his era, and he deserved his HOF enshrinement. Awesome that he still gets a nice welcome in SF.

The Braves had two different OMG music stars take up the pregame this past year for first pitches. Somehow Usher, the bigger star of the two, had the comparatively humbler approach. Usher's still a really big deal, and his Super Bowl halftime show was very good. There were a ton of photos to choose from of him at Truist Field, this was a pretty good one. Then Ludacris not only did a first pitch, but did so in this insane getup, with massive arms and massive feet. That's the real feet there, trying to throw out the first pitch with massive foam hands. Subtlety isn't exactly Luda's strong suit, but hey, it's certainly an original one.

Advertising mascots. ADVERTISING MASCOTS THROWING OUT FIRST PITCHES. This is where we're at, people. This is the degree of modern capitalism here. I think Jake from State Farm did one last year as well. Wondering who's next. LiMu Emu and Doug? The Aflac duck? The Green M&M? 

Arguably as confusing as an advertising mascot throwing out the first pitch, Jared Leto throwing one out at a Mets game. I'm still not sure what Jared Leto's deal is. If his acting's meant to be like that on purpose or not. He also just shows up places randomly. Last April fool's day he was randomly hosting Wheel of Fortune, and it was never addressed. Why him? Why Wheel of Fortune? Why are we validating the guy that starred in 'Morbius'?? Who knows. I don't even know if he's a Mets fan at all. Chloe Grace Moretz did one at CitiField, and her I can buy as a Mets fan. Jared Leto...does he even know what sports are?

So the Guardians have essentially adopted Machine Gun Kelly, and gave him his own promotion last year. I like that they're giving back to a famous Clevelander who loves the team and wears his Ohio upbringing on his sleeve, but right as the sun is rising on the Guardians as a league threat, the sun is setting on Machine Gun Kelly as a credible musician. Like, what has this man done in the past two years that's in any way worthy of preservation? Hell, the Guardians seem to be alright with the fact that MGK's walkoff win during the Celebrity Softball Game was done under the influence of hallucinogenics, so I don't know if they really can be too choosy right now. He's theirs, and he likes coming to games...and the Kelces are harder to get. 

We'll end on these two, these are much cooler rock music gets. Jerry Cantrell is the driving creative force behind Alice in Chains, he's not only the reason their songs kicked so much ass in the 90s but he's the reason for their underrated 2009-2018 comeback, where he honestly held his own as lead singer. Alice in Chains is a very cool band, and Cantrell, though doing his solo thing right now, is a rock legend. He's not from Ohio, but he rolled through Cleveland and the Guards thought 'what the hell'. 

Tom DeLonge, meanwhile, is from San Diego, and wears his SoCal roots on his sleeve. DeLonge was doing his own thing for a bit, running Angels and Airwaves, searching for UFOs, but he's back with Blink-182 now and they're...at least making successful music. I can't say it's as good as their 2000s stuff, even as someone sort of ambivalent towards it. But he's happy, healthy, thriving, and probably still chasing UFOs. Good to see him throw one out in San Diego. 

It remains to be seen if I'll be doing more of these this year. I might anyway. Topps is gonna go for the big stars and probably not for the fun ones I care about. So I guess there's a niche carved out for me anyhow.

So, It's Come to This: A Blaster of 2024 Allen and Ginter

I've griped about this in so many words, but it's been a very difficult year for me to keep up as a collector. I've been in between jobs, making what I can, saving mostly, and...not buying a ton of new cardboard. And when I CAN go to Target, there's never any there. These TCDB trades have been scratching that itch, I've been catching up on a lot of more recent stuff, but the other part of getting new cardboard is the chance of getting the rookie in question. Obviously you collect the way you collect, and I collect the players I like, but if there's a chance to get a centerpiece card, that always helps. I remember starting out collecting in the late 2000s, getting a ton of 2008 Updates and Highlights, and that's how I've ended up with 2 Clayton Kershaw rookies, a gold parallel of an Evan Longoria rookie, and that Al Gore gimmick. And all are still integral parts of my collection.

In the last few years, I've missed out on finding big rookies of people like Julio Rodriguez, Luis Robert, Gunnar Henderson and more. Now, I've got enough Ohtani rookies to choke a commissioner, but I worry I'm gonna be missing out on what could be the next windfall. And right now that is Paul Skenes. It's worrying to me that I've been unable to find any Topps Update from 2024, and all the online suppliers have hiked up the price solely because of the Skenes factor. For the first time basically ever, I've resigned myself to just...not being able to find any Topps Update, a set that was once one of my favorites. 

So I was in Target today, at the very least seeing if I could find Archives or Stadium Club or something to at least fulfill that want for newer stuff. The card aisle, as it has been, was bare. Nothing going on. A hanger box of MLS cards. Some packs of stickers. A few 2024 factory sets. Nothing. And the fact that it took me hanging around the backs of the action figure aisles to check for discounts to find a completely different card endcap, with much more options and lines of Allen and Ginter blasters, says a lot. Why wouldn't they put those up in the front? Y'know, with the sports cards??

Nevertheless, I saw the shelf of A&G blasters, amidst the other sports stuff I had no interest in, and resigned myself to it. Sure. Why not? I'm not really an A&G guy, there's too many cards that don't fit in my collection, but I'm a TCDB trader now (at TallestJord, I forgot to point that out last time), and at the very least I can offload the stuff that won't fit in binder pages.

You know the drill. 8 packs, 6 cards per pack. Every pack contains a mini and a subset. SPs are seeded 1:2, so we should get 4. There's also new chrome cards seeded 1 per I think. I don't think A&G needs chrome, but since Topps thought it'd be a good idea to overhaul Stadium Club with parallels, A&G wasn't safe.

Pack 1- Yeah, this is kinda what I expect. The HOFer/legend selection is still great, I'm always down for Roy Campanella sightings. The base design is...an understandable step for A&G. I think those first 3 years were perfectly simple and they had to keep overcomplicating things. 

The Dog show subset is standard, but the 50 States mini, of Nebraska, is seeded 1:21. 

Pack 2- By several metrics, a very good pack. An Elly rookie, an A&G back rookie of Heston Kjerstad, and an SP of Pablo Lopez. Also, Jason Aldean is here for some reason. I wanna know what Topps's criteria for earning a non-sport base card in Ginter is. Didn't Mark Sanford get one right after the sex scandal? If you're gonna do Aldean, I'm kinda shocked it took you this long. Like, after 'Try That In a Small Town'? The window has passed, man. Anyway, my lasting impression of Aldean is the one Mean Tweet he read that was something like 'Jason Aldean looks like his dick got caught in his sister'. Bodied.

Sister Sister is seeded 1:5. Mildly amusing idea.

Pack 3- More non-sport guys I do not care about. A Westburg rookie, that's pretty cool. We got a gold mini, that's 1:11, of the great Edgar Martinez, and a lovely card of a bee that's seeded 1:6. 

Pack 4- A Ted Lasso supporting guy and a schnauzer. Gotta love A&G. Blackburn is an SP. He is also on the wrong team. A sobering reminder of how early the checklist cutoff for this product was. Carter looks awesome though. That Thomas black border is a 1:11 pack card, so that's pretty cool. 

Pack 5- What do these four people have in common? None of them played in an MLB game in 2024. Clemens getting pictured as a Jay is cool and all but man I do not enjoy continuing to pull his cards. I really hope Mauricio turns out to be as good as people have said he will.

I'm spotlighting the subsets and minis cause they're both great. X'Ray'd falls 1 per blaster, and this is an extremely cool, CHROME, card of what it looks like when you x-ray a cape porcupine. They even credit the zoo that took the picture, the Oregon Zoo. That's pretty cool.

The big takeaway is the Rookie Design Variation card of Wyatt Langford. These are 1 per blaster, and Langford's one of the better names to pull. Very happy with this. It ain't Skenes, but it ain't, like, nobody.

Pack 6- At the time of pulling this was my favorite pack in the box. A Hall of Famer, a future Hall of Famer, one of my favorite current players, and one of the top rookies in the set. Merrill and Judge help justify the price. Jones is an SP, and a great, and timely, pull at that.

Pack 7- Another dog, an SP mini, a welcome Nolan Ryan, and our one-per-box chrome card of Corey Seager. I'll say this, I was so fixated on finally getting the chrome card that I didn't realize what was directly behind it..

So...I don't rip A&G often, but when I do, I have decent luck. Last time I got a blaster of A&G I pulled a Rafael Devers relic. This is also pretty nice. Austin Riley's a terrific infield bat, and one of the most crucial pieces of these Braves teams. It is a grey swatch, yes, and it is a full size relic, yes, but...it's a relic of a guy I've not only heard of, but is a star. Typically you get an auto or relic of a scrub from a retail blaster. This is not that, this is very good. So I was very happy with this. This is where I mention that a full size pattern B relic falls 1 in every 89 blasters. So that's fantastic. 

Pack 8- A milder finish, but still pretty cool. Pages could be something if he figures it out. There's Riley again. Johnny Bench, in an SP, clearly is picture in a uniform from the late 60s, and my second gold mini is of Daddy Yankee. Not a huge listener of his. Me gusta la gasolina thought.

That did exactly what I wanted it to. Provided me with new cards of people I collect, some decent rookies, some trade bait, and a surprise relic I can get behind. Definitely a success. Hopefully the next time I wander into a well-stocked retail shelf I'll have luck like this as well. 

The Best of the Rest: 2024

There are two types of 'Best of the Rest' posts, the likes of which I make to celebrate the eliminated teams with superlatives upon the end of the regular season. There are the ones which I can handily prep a week before posting due to the settled-in quality of the playoff races, or there are the ones where I have to work in contingencies and backups due to the ongoing playoff matches til literally the final moments of the season.

This is...one of the latter.

It's not that I don't enjoy an exciting finish to the season, as I routinely do. But it makes a post like this so hard to prep because I have to prepare for teams that may at the last second make the leap to suddenly not be in this post. In this case, the NL Wild Card race left essentially three spots up in the air til today. I worked in enough alts to have superlatives if the D-Backs, Braves or somehow the Mets missed it, but it was a lot to prepare for.

Still, these are eighteen teams that fought hard [well...seventeen of them fought hard], and want to walk away with at least something, and I enjoy making these posts because I get to give them little superlatives and awards just for making an amusing, entertaining season for me.

So, let's get on with this year's Best of the Rest post, already in progress:

Most Likely to Succeed [According to the Sportswriters in January]: San Francisco Giants

Team That Peaked Too Early: St. Louis Cardinals

Team That Peaked Too Late: Oakland Athletics

Best Squanderer of Hopes Their Fans Had in 2023: Miami Marlins, no contest

Best Squanderer of Hopes Their Fans Had in June: Minnesota Twins

Best Squanderer of Any Hope That Has Ever Existed: Chicago White Sox

Best Pitching Staff for a Team That Didn't Make the Playoffs: THE SEATTLE MARINERS.

Worst Pitching: Colorado Rockies

Most Willing to Settle: Los Angeles Angels

Worst Trade Deadline Luck: Pittsburgh Pirates

Most Depressing Team to Talk About Every Few Weeks: Tampa Bay Rays, somehow beating the White Sox by just boring the shit out of me. 

Biggest Anticlimax: Chicago Cubs

Most Likely to Kneecap Their Own Few Successes: Washington Nationals

Most Comically-Timed Injuries: TIE: Texas Rangers & Cincinnati Reds

Best Backfiring of 'Titanic' Will Never Sink Logic: Arizona Diamondbacks

Most Reluctant to Actually Hit: Seattle Mariners

Most Inopportune Time to Completely Run Out of Gas: Minnesota Twins

Most Fun Last Place Team: Miami Marlins

Most Unwilling to Recapture the Lighting in the Bottle: Toronto Blue Jays

Team That Has No Idea What It Wants: St. Louis Cardinals

Best Overall Team That Didn't Make the Playoffs: Boston Red Sox

Most Likely Not to End Up on This List in 2025: Chicago Cubs & Texas Rangers

So, that's everything. Eighteen seasons that didn't amount to anything but laying future groundwork. As for the other twelve? Tomorrow, we're gonna find out how much mileage they've got left this year.

Your 2024 All-Star Game Starting Lineups

 This is a blog-tradition, going back all 15 years pretty much. I just have a soft spot for the All-Star Game, man. I wish that there wasn't this effort to commoditize it and take the fun out of it, because not having everybody in different uniforms sort of takes away from the 'many teams coming together' theme of this one that I enjoy so much. Like, now they don't even let the people in the All-Star Celebrity Softball Game wear their hometown caps. Why make this so homogenized? Does Rob Manfred understand why anyone enjoys anything other than to make money?

Regardless, this ASG wasn't especially tampered with, the two injured starters were people I didn't like and good people replaced them, and there are still a number of great storylines ready to play out tonight. So let's introduce the starting lineups..

First, as we're in an AL park, let's introduce the NATIONAL LEAGUE ALL STAR TEAM:

Leading off for the NL, and starting at 2nd base, from the Arizona Diamondbacks, KETEL MARTE

Batting second for the NL, the designated hitter, from the Los Angeles Dodgers...SHOHEI OHTANI.

[a well-warranted amount of applause]

Batting third, and starting at shortstop, from the Philadelphia Phillies...TREA TURNER

In the cleanup spot for the National League, and making his All-Star debut at first base, from the Philadelphia Phillies, BRYCE...HARPER

In the 5 spot for the NL, starting behind the plate, from the Milwaukee Brewers...WILLIAM CONTRERAS!

Batting sixth, and starting in right field tonight, from the Milwaukee Brewers, CHRISTIAN YELICH!

Seventh in the lineup for the NL, the third baseman, from the Philadelphia Phillies, ALEC BOHM!

Batting eighth, and playing center field tonight, from the Los Angeles Dodgers, TEOSCAR HERNANDEZ!

And in the 9 spot for the NL tonight, the left fielder, from the San Diego Padres, JURICKSON PROFAR!

And starting on the mound tonight for the NL, from the Pittsburgh Pirates, PAUL...SKENES!

Now, for the AMERICAN LEAGUE ALL-STARS!

Leading off for the AL tonight, and starting in left field, from the Cleveland Guardians, STEVEN KWAN!

Second in the lineup for the American League, the shortstop, from the Baltimore Orioles, GUNNAR...HENDERSON!

Batting third tonight, and starting in right field, from the New York Yankees...JUAN...SOTO!

And batting cleanup for the AL tonight, and starting the game in center field, from the New York Yankees...AARON JUDGE!

Fifth in the lineup to start off, the team's Designated Hitter, from the Houston Astros...YORDAN ALVAREZ!

[Raucous applause from some visitors from out East]

Batting sixth tonight, the starting third baseman, from the Cleveland Guardians...JOSE RAMIREZ!

Batting seventh, the American League starting 1st baseman, from the Toronto Blue Jays...VLADIMIR GUERRERO JR.

Eighth in the lineup tonight, starting at catcher, from the Baltimore Orioles...ADLEY RUTSCHMAN!

And batting ninth for the AL tonight, the starting 2nd baseman, from YOUR TEXAS RANGERS...MARCUS...SEMIEN!

And warming up in the bullpen to start this game for the AL, from the Baltimore Orioles...CORBIN BURNES!

Those are some pretty awesome lineups. I think the AL might have the edge, but y'never know what'll happen. Hoping for a fun broadcast tonight.