“Gee, I hope he gets back before all this dry ice melts…” (A virtual fist bump to anyone who gets this reference).
So this season has been a bust (to put it mildly) for my Mets and Orioles. We’re not even halfway through August and the Orioles have already been mathematically eliminated from winning the division. That, my friend, makes for a long season.
Oh, and before I forget… Congratulations to Brian Roberts who was inducted into the Orioles Hall of Fame last night! This custom is from my 2013 TSR set:
Getting back to the tire fire that is this season… I started to think that maybe I should focus some of my custom card attention on some of the prospects coming down the road for both teams.
While I was thinking about this, the Astros and Mariners had a game on Friday night where both teams wore 1979 throwbacks, so I knew I had to do something with *that*. It was at that point I decided to put the future and the past in the same post.
When the Orioles traded Manny Machado to the Dodgers, they got five prospects in return. Of the players the O’s got, the biggest potential belongs to Yusniel Diaz who is one of the top 100 prospects in baseball and who hit 2 homers in the 2018 Futures Game.
Diaz is a 21-year-old Cuban who looks to be a center fielder with power. He’s currently playing with the AA Bowie Baysox.
On the Mets side, their top prospect is 19-year-old shortstop Andres Gimenez who is among the youngest players at the AA level.
Gimenez is talented with a bat and a glove, but is probably a couple of years away from the Majors… but he can always force his name into the conversation.
Another prospect who got traded as the deadline approached was Francisco Mejia, who the Indians sent to San Diego in exchange for relievers Brad Hand and Adam Cimber.
Mejia has been selected for three straight Futures Games, and during this past season he was regarded as the Indians’ top prospect and the top catching prospect in baseball.
Finally, to get some bloodlines in here, Bo Bichette is the son of former MLB outfielder Dante Bichette.
Bichette was a consensus Top 20 prospect going into this season and was selected to the USA team in the 2018 Futures Game.
Moving on to the “Past” part of this post… As I mentioned, this past Friday night the Astros and Mariners had a game which threw back to 1979. Me, I quite literally had this game marked down on my calendar, and I was not disappointed in the sartorial splendor of the throwbacks.
I forgot which team it was that did this, but to promote this game one of the teams had a little promotional video which used the word “Groovy”. As someone who was in high school at the time, I feel pretty confident in saying that the word “Groovy” was no longer in common use by 1979… not unless somebody was being sarcastic or was quoting a line from “The Brady Bunch”. Thank you for enduring my little rant.
Anyway, I honestly wasn’t “feeling” the 1979 Topps design for this post, but I figured that photos from 1979 were used in 1980 Topps, so that’s how I approached it. I’m just going to run through these customs without any bothersome text.
And finally, if I’m going to feature a manager from each team before the World Series is over, I can’t be skipping a week… so here’s the manager card from this special vitual pack:
The Indians are the only AL Central team with a winning record and they have an 11-game lead over the second place Twins.
Bear with me while I do another quick rant. Francona wearing his #77 on his sleeve reminds me of the argument people have over whether managers and coaches should wear uniforms like the players do. I personally don’t care if they dress the same way as the players, but part of the reason they’ve traditionally worn uniforms is because, unlike other sports, the manager and coaches are out on the field, and when I’m in the stands and somebody walks out of the dugout and talks to the pitcher, I greatly appreciate it when that somebody is wearing a number on his back so I know whether that’s the manager or the pitching coach.
End of my second rant, end of my post.
