Topps Cards That Should Have Been: 2001 Tim Raines

 

In 2001, Topps managed to make a card of Tim Raines upon his return to Montreal, a team he hadn't played for in over ten years. Unfortunately, it was not a base card. It was a relic card. Raines, like another recent Hall of Famer [who I'll be getting to shortly], has a relic card in 2001 Topps Traded & Rookies but not a base card.

Even more ironically, by the time of this product's release, Raines was already playing for a different team that only Fleer would produce a base card of him with, but thanks to photo scarcity we won't be talking about that today.

Anyway. Tim Raines' return to Montreal, a return voyage that...Topps neglected to mention during the 2001 calendar year.

Raines hadn't played in the majors since 1999, where he suited up for the Athletics in a bench role. The legendary base-stealer was 41, and had missed all of 2000 after not making the majors for the Yankees. Seeing as a return voyage home worked for fellow base-stealer Rickey Henderson, Raines signed a deal with the Expos prior to the 2001 season, and was lucky enough to make the team, perhaps thinking he'd end his career in a full circle way.

In 47 games, Raines batted .308 with 24 hits and 5 RBIs, leading to a 0.5 WAR in that period. Most importantly, Raines stole the final one of his 808 career stolen bases. Unlike Rickey, who stole well into the last legs of his career due to the mythology of it all, Raines started running out of steam in the speed department in his mid-30s, and at the very least strived to keep performing well at the plate.

Though one would suspect Raines' career to end quietly there, he was dealt to the Orioles with a week left to go in the regular season, in order to match the Griffeys with some games played alongside his son Tim Jr., who'd been a Baltimore prospect for a year or so. Even there, Raines managed 3 hits and 5 RBIs in 4 games for the O's, making his son mighty proud.

And you'd think THAT would be the end of his career...but even still, Raines finishes up as a member of the 2002 Miami Marlins, a stint that, somehow, Topps ends up depicting. Here's a fun fact about that 98-game run: Raines has 170 career home runs, and 808 career stolen bases. He hit more homers than he stole bases in 2002. How about that?

Cards on my Mind: 2002 Topps Chrome Tim Raines

Figured I'd start a new series on here in the wake of...there not being anything to write about [at least for another month]. 

So here's a card I received in the mail recently from a CardBarrel order. I didn't do a whole post about the order because it mostly consisted of cards from the past two years of Stadium Club, and I figured there was no way to make that interesting.

But this is...maybe one of the most interesting cards of its time.

First of all, it's a low-number card from 2002 Topps Traded, one of the most maniacally complicated sets in  the company's recent history. For those unaware, it was sold as a dual flagship/chrome set, unlike recent Update sets that have a chrome edition in mega-boxes in retail. The deal was you get 8 base cards and 2 chrome cards per pack. Sounds simple.

Well, the base set, which was 275 cards, has the first 110 cards short-printed. These are your traded cards. They are seeded 1 per pack. So actually pulling cards of the traded players the set was actually made for, people like Bartolo Colon as an Expo, Jeff Weaver as a Yankee, Rookie of the Year Eric Hinske, Juan Gonzalez as a Ranger again, and Johnny Damon as a Red Sock, was painstakingly difficult, while the PROSPECT CARDS were all seeded evenly, 7 to a pack. So you could find 5 Jason  Bay rookies before you found Rickey Henderson's base card.

The Chrome base cards, on the other hand, came 2 in every pack, and had no Short Print separation. All 275 were printed equally. So you had more of a chance to get a chrome base card of Placido Polanco than you did his actual base card. It's genuinely dumbfounding.

However, thanks to CardBarrel, I did manage to finally attain two cards from this set that I'd been looking for since I'd become aware of the set. One was an account of Bartolo Colon's two glorious months in Montreal, and the other...was this one.

There is so much to love about this card.

First of all, it's the...insanely weird combo of 1981 Rookie of the Year runner-up Tim Raines in a 2002 Marlins jersey. He's really one of those players that look odd in a Marlins uniform, much like Charlie Hough, Darren Daulton, Carlos Lee and Ozzie Guillen. 

Second of all, not just the contrast of baseball eras stands out to me, but the contrast of card making eras. Tim Raines was a part of the very first TRADED set Topps ever did in 1981, and 21 years later he finds himself on the checklist for not just the 2002 Traded set, but the 2002 Chrome traded set. Seeing people from the 80s, and not just the 80s but the  EARLY 80s, wind up on chrome or dufex sets is never not gonna be weird to me. Like Socrates stepping into the San Dimas Mall.

But also, 2002 Topps is one  of those sets that looks weird in chrome anyway, because it belongs to a color scheme that contrasts with chrome, like the gold, so the whole design has to be redone for chrome. It's not like 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2003 Topps, whose border color deviations actually fit really  well with chrome. This one sticks out, and even the rectification doesn't completely work.

Look at those sweet career stats for Tim Raines, one of the greats. Look at how happy he looks to still be in a baseball uniform at the age of 42. This card shouldn't fit together, and yet it kind of does, a lot like Rickey Henderson's late-career issues.

I will say that his stats from 1999 to 2002 are all very interesting in itself, as he was used mostly as a bench guy with speed, and these are teams associated with different types of youth movements. The 1999 A's are associated with the grassroots youth movement guys like Jason Giambi, Eric Chavez, Miguel Tejada and Tim Hudson. The 2001 Orioles are associated with veterans crowding around Ripken while the young guys like Mora slowly repopulate the team, and the 2002 Marlins are the prelude to the Championship year, with pieces like Beckett, Lee, Burnett and Lowell being shifted into place. Tim Raines shouldn't fit into any of these teams, and yet he tried to, and did what he could for a lot of them.

This is a card that shouldn't exist  for a year that's only being commemorated because it's Tim Raines, and it's likely his sunset issue [it was], and yet it works so well despite that because it represents the sort of late-career push that you don't get many cards of lately. Last year you had late career pushes from Hanley Ramirez in Cleveland, Carlos Gonzalez in Chicago and Cleveland, and Carlos Gomez in Queens, and none of them got Topps cards! Omar Vizquel had a fun final season in 2012 with the Blue Jays, and nobody knew about that. Same with Jim Thome's farewell in Baltimore. The sort of thing where a Hall-of-Famer gets a final sendoff in an unlikely place on a Topps card doesn't happen anymore, and cards like the 2002 Tim Raines one aren't ideas that Topps still has. And that saddens me.

I'm happy this card exists, and I'm even happier it exists in my collection.

The Stars Are Out: Baseball Legends Edition II

In our continuing series of First Pitch showcases, we've accumulated a lot of shots of former MLB legends throwing out the first pitch. I like doing these ones because the original Topps First Pitch insert series' never had ex-MLB guys in there, and I wanted this to be an excuse not only to showcase Hall of Famers like Hawk over here, but some fringe guys that don't get enough credit. And there are a ton of those here:

For instance, here's another Cubs guy that doesn't get as much respect as Dawson: Kerry Wood. In the 90s, he was that guy that threw 20 strikeouts in a game in his rookie year. In the 2000s, he was the pitcher that was supposed to bring the Cubs to the World Series. In the 2010s, he was a loyal member of the struggling Cubs teams as their closer.

Now? He gets love from Cubs fans, but perhaps not the rest of the league. I doubt he'll get very many Hall of Fame votes, but he was a great player that respected the game. I'm glad he's still loved in Wrigley.

Moving now to the other side of Chicago...

This guy is a legend in two places: Chicago, where he came up, was a rookie sensation, and hit a ton of home runs; and Detroit, where he hit even more home runs, helped his team get to a World Series, and transitioned the team from the I-Rod/Da Meat Hook teams of the late 2000s into the Miggy/V-Mart/Scherzer teams of the early 2010s. He's a crucial piece in both teams, and threw out the first pitch in arguably the lesser of his two teams. At least they still love him there, after he jumped ship and played for a division rival.

Keeping with the trend of team heroes, Andy Van Slyke was a member of that playoff-bound 1992 Pirates squad, with Bobby Bonilla and Barry Bonds, and was a hit with the Bucs before the team dissolved. He didn't really have a career outside of Pittsburgh, and I'm sure he doesn't get cheers like he does in Pittsburgh, so at least he gets a warm welcome back here.

Onto a more well-known team hero, Gaylord Perry, who played everywhere but most specifically San Francisco, still gets applause for his HOF-caliber work in the Bay area, even if he's getting up there in age.

Some of these are no brainers: Rickey Henderson became an Oakland legend basically his first year in the bigs, and even if he didn't come back to the Bay area a few times, they'd still have worshipped him. He just shows up in a suit, soaks up the love from fans, who've basically named the stadium after him at this point, and throws the first pitch like the legend he is.

This one is a little frustrating: if the Montreal Expos still existed, Tim Raines would have a definitive place to throw out the first pitch every few years, but this one was done in Toronto, where Raines never played. Yes, there's the occasional carry-over of Montreal fans in Rogers Centre, but most of them just want their team back. And seeing Tim Raines wearing an Expos uniform...and getting cheers from a TORONTO crowd, might be a little infuriating for Expos fans. Still, at least he looks happy to be there.

...and then there's Spaceman.

Bill Lee, the single oddest baseball player of all time, played for Boston and Montreal, lives in Vermont, and threw out the first pitch in Tampa, wearing a throwback uniform for a team that didn't exist at the time they're throwing back to. Never change, Bill.

In all seriousness, Bill Lee is part of a campaign to help Cuban ballplayers play in the States, and Florida, and Tampa, have a nice Cuban population, so it sort of makes sense why he's throwing one out for Tampa. Plus...it's just great to see he's still alive, and happy.

That's enough Stars are Out miscellany for today. Next time I do one of these, expect some guys who've been in the movies.

Hall of Fame Postmortem: Hooray for Montreal and the 90's

Going into this HOF Results day, I had absolutely no idea which way the votes would fall. Unlike last year with Griffey, there wasn't a surefire first-ballot runaway this year, or so I thought. I worried we'd get another zero year of induction, or maybe just one guy getting in.

However, I was wrong, thankfully. We have three new Hall of Famers, and all three of them deserve the honor, at least in my opinion.

Ivan Rodriguez had the best chances of any of the newbies, and I'm guessing a great deal of the new additions aren't going to last long on the ballot anyway (poor Pat Burrell). I-Rod was a consistent catcher, a great hitter, a great centerpiece for a lineup (especially in Florida and Detroit), and an all-around great player. Plus, now my cousin Dylan can say that a Hall of Famer told him to go screw himself at a Spring Training game.

Tim Raines was the guy that I was pulling for, and have been for the past few seasons, since I began collecting him. He's a base-stealing legend, he was a versatile athlete, and managed to make the Expos relevant in the 80's, after Dawson and Carter had left. The guy was stealing bases well into his career, played into his forties, and retired as a legend. It's very nice he's finally getting into the Hall, as he deserved it.

Jeff Bagwell's induction is probably the biggest takeaway, as this is a guy that should have been inducted a few years ago, and finally got in. Along with Craig Biggio, he helped make the Houston Astros one of the more important squads of the 90's, hitting like hell and being a gold standard for the NL.

Trevor Hoffman and Vladimir Guerrero should have gotten in, but they'll get there next year I think.
 Steroid guys advanced, but...ach, I dunno...

Still, this was a good HOF day all-around, and will keep me plenty satisfied until Thome and Chipper get here next year.