Topps Heritage hasn’t included managers since 2016 (if I remember correctly) and that’s a damn shame. In an effort to rectify this somewhat, I present the managers of all the postseason teams in Shmeritage form, presented with no additional comment… other than “Sorry, no coaches”.
BONUS: A Kevin Cash rookie card I stumbled across while preparing this post:
At some point in the past year I got an idea that if there’s a manager or coach for a Major League team and that person had been in 1974 Topps, then he should get some sort of recognition in 2023 Heritage (which, of course, uses the 1974 Topps design).
There is currently one Major League manager and one Major League coach who fit this criteria. It would be a nice tribute if they were in this year’s Heritage, but they are not, and that’s a damn shame.
The person that most would think of right off the bat is former outfielder and current Astros manager Dusty Baker. Here’s his 1974 Topps card:
…And this is what his card could look like if he were in 2023 Heritage. Sign this man to a Topps contract!
Had this rule been in place from the start of Heritage, Dusty would’ve also had been on Heritage cards since 2020 (His rookie card, which he shared with Tom Paciorek and Don Baylor, was in 1971 Topps).
The coach in question, one which has probably flown under most people’s radar, is Diamondbacks pitching coach Brent Strom. Back in 1974 Strom was 25 years old and pitched in Triple-A for the whole season, but he did have a card in 1974 Topps.
The 74-year-old Strom is in his second season as the Diamondbacks’ pitching coach, but before that he was the pitching coach for the Astros from 2014 to 2021, and before that he filled a number of different positions for the Nationals, Cardinals and Royals.
Strom could have had a tribute in last year’s Heritage as he shared a 1973 Topps rookie card with Steve Lawson (who appeared in 13 games in 1972 and would not have another card) and Bob Reynolds (who would pitch for 6 years and appear on three different multi-player rookie cards).
I believe that Baker and Strom are the only players from 1974 Topps who are in uniform today, but I may have missed someone.
I got to thinking about who else would’ve been on a Heritage card had a rule like this been in place all along. It’s not out of the question that someone like this had already been in a set back when Heritage included managers.
Don Zimmer could’ve been included in 2004 to 2014 Heritage (mirroring 1955 to 1965 Topps) on a technicality. During this period Zimmer was a Senior Advisor for the Rays, but he did suit up for spring training during those years.
Tony LaRussa would’ve qualified two years ago as he was a 1972 Topps high number and came out of retirement to manage the White Sox in 2021 and 2022. He had retired from managing the Cardinals before 2013 Heritage was done in the style of his 1964 rookie card.
Although a candidate would have to be, at the very least, in his late sixties at the time he’s in uniform, I’m confident one of my astute readers will think of someone else who could’ve qualified for a Heritage tribute like this… Let me know who I missed!
As I mentioned in my previous post involving customs, I had grandiose plans for making customs to fill in the gaps left by 2023 Heritage, but the wheels came off just as the season was starting. I still have ideas, however, and here is an assortment of those ideas which have made it to custom form.
I had fully intended to make an “insert set” of the managers of all 30 teams. Obviously that would be 30 customs, but I also had it in mind that someone would have been fired by now and amazingly no manager has been fired this season.
…Yet.
But I got to thinking of managers the other day when I was reading a game recap involving the Texas Rangers and the article’s reference to Bruce Bochy made my brain go “WHUH? ……..Oh, yeah”. In order to help my brain remember that Bruce Bochy is the manager of the Rangers, I present this visual aid:
1974 Topps was my first set so I *am* fully aware that manager cards in that set (with the exception of Detroit’s Ralph Houk) had coaches as well. I’m not including them because there are way more coaches now than there were in 1974 and – I’ll be up-front about it – I just didn’t want to go there. My customs, my rules.
Maybe the most surprising of the “I still have a job” manager is the White Sox Pedro Grifol, whose bosses recently got canned.
He may have been spared because he’s new while the Chisox mediocrity has been ongoing for years, but owner Jerry Reinsdorf could bring in a new front office who decide to bring in their own guy. That’s not likely to happen until the offseason, I would think.
Along with 2023 managers, I also had ideas of filling in the gaps for those teams which didn’t have manager cards in 1974 Topps. If you hadn’t noticed before, those teams are the A’s, the Yankees and the Padres, each for different reasons. First of these is Oakland manager Al Dark, who was hired by Charles O. Finley just before spring training started.
The 1973 A’s won the World Series under manager Dick Williams, but Williams had become fed up with Finley’s ways especially during the World Series and he resigned. He signed on as the new manager of the Yankees, who had fired the previously mentioned Houk, but the A’s rightly complained that he was still under contract. With Williams gone one way or the other, the team turned to Dark, who had managed the A’s in their last two seasons in Kansas City.
I’d also intended to do a series of “2023 Highlights” customs, but I only got to a couple at the very beginning of the season. This is my favorite of the two, as this Orioles fan still regards Manny Machando with a fair amount of disdain.
This custom originally went out on Twitter with another custom that nicely summed up my reaction to Machado being the first to get ejected because of the new rule:
Quick side trip…
There was professional, top level cricket being played in the United States this summer, and I got into it a bit… at least as much as I could without subscribing to a cricket-specific streaming service. Major League Cricket played a roughly-two-week tournament with six teams playing on pitches in Texas and North Carolina. Although I’m not what you’d call a cricket fan, I’ve long been intrigued by the sport and I was hoping to watch some of it. At first it looked like all of the matches would air exclusively behind a pay wall, but at the last minute CBS Sports Network aired three matches and Mrs. Shlabotnik and I watched all three and got a decent understanding of what was going on… Not that the broadcast made it easy. No attempts were made to dumb it down for Americans, but that might have helped with us because Mrs. S and I are both analytical people and viewed it as a challenge to figure out what was going on, why this batter was out, what the numbers on the bottom of the screen meant, what the hell “Snicko” is, and so forth.
I’m in for the 2024 season, hopefully it will be more accessible to casual fans than this season was.
I had an idea of making customs of a few players who had caught my attention, but it turned out that usable images were hard to come by. Despite the involvement of a number of cricketers who play at the international level, MLC got pretty much NO media coverage from outside the cricket community, and I could only find a few images on Twitter, like this one of Quinton de Kock of the Seattle Orcas:
BTW there’s no truth to the rumor that Quinton de Kock is related to Dick Pole (cue the snickers)
This last custom has nothing to do with 1974 Topps or 2023 Heritage, but I figured I’d share it anyway since it came out pretty well…
A couple of us on another platform were discussing Immaculate Grid and how Ron Darling once had a two-week, three-start stint with the Montreal Expos, one which never got represented on a baseball card. Darling went to the Expos on July 15 of 1991, and I guess the Expos were unimpressed by the 0-2 record and 7.41 ERA he put up while wearing the bleu, blanc et rouge, because they flipped him to the A’s on the 31st.
Since there are a few photos of Darling with the Expos out there, and since I had already made a 1991 Topps template from a custom set a few years ago, I went ahead and made this one-off. The biggest struggle was updating the icon in the top left; on the 1991 Topps cards it said “40 YEARS OF BASEBALL” and my original custom set said “5 YEARS OF CUSTOMS”, but I had to do some quick math and update the custom to reflect my 12 years of making customs.
OK, truth be told it’s the 12th year of my making customs which I was willing to share with other people.
For a number of reasons I’ve been on a custom card hiatus for much of the current season. I had plans to do all sorts of customs related to 1974 Topps / 2023 Heritage, but soon after I finished my World Baseball Classic customs I lost my customs muse.
BUT I’m finding my mojo again, and I’m going to feature a few ideas I had, starting with a faux insert set featuring current Major Leaguers who wear glasses, something I’d definitely collect if it were an insert in pretty much any current set. I don’t love the name “Specs Squad” but it’s the best I could think of.
As someone who has worn glasses for decades – I’ve never had much interest in LASIK or contacts – I tend to be drawn to people who also wear glasses, so a faux insert set featuring Major Leaguers who wear glasses was a natural for me.
Before we get started, I will point out that I’m limiting this to players who have appeared in at least one MLB game in 2023, otherwise Sean Doolittle and Randy Dobnak would be included (and *will* be included should they appear in a game).
While I did a fair amount of research on this, I may have missed some. Feel free to clue me in via the comments.
I’ll work from the most well-known glasses wearers to the one-game-this-season guys…
Dodgers pitcher Julio Urias is maybe the best-known wearer of glasses during games. He lead the NL last year with a 2.16 ERA, had 20 wins in 2021… and has never been an All-Star?!? Huh.
Zac Gallen lead the NL with a 0.913 WHIP last year and he’s leading in WHIP again (as this post is written). He’s twice gotten Cy Young votes and was an All-Star this year.
Danny Jansen shares Blue Jays catching duties with Alejandro Kirk, and it was kind of hard to find a decent photo of him where you could see that he’s wearing glasses. He’s also somewhat in the minority among glasses wearers in that he’s a position player.
Joe Kelly went from the White Sox to the Dodgers a few days before the trade deadline.
Davis Schneider is a particular favorite of mine and a recent addition to this list. A 28th round pick out of Voorhees, NJ, the 5’9″ Schneider came out of nowhere to hit a homer in his first plate appearance and got nine hits and a second home run in his first three games, the first Major Leaguer to accomplish that.
Dane Dunning has been involved in trades for Lucas Giolito and Lance Lynn. He seems to have found himself this year, putting up a 9-4 record with a 3.10 ERA and a 1.144 WHIP. He gets bonus points from me in that he apparently wears glasses full time, not just when on the field… I don’t think the glasses in this image are his “gamers”.
Blake Sabol is a rookie catcher/left fielder/DH who has appeared in 89 games for the Giants.
Astros pitcher J.P. France is a 28-year-old rookie who has a 9-4 record an a 2.75 ERA over 17 starts and one relief appearance.
Andruw Monasterio, the second Major Leaguer named Andruw, has made a number of appearances as a supersub rookie for the Brewers.
Trent Thornton has split 10 relief appearances between the Blue Jays and the Mariners, who picked him up in a deal leading up to the deadline.
Josh Fleming is in his fourth season with the Rays and has put up a 2-0 record over 12 appearances.
Mexican pitcher Javier Assad has started and finished games for the Cubs. In this photo he kind of reminds me of James Austin Johnson, the Saturday Night Live cast member best known for his uncanny impression of Donald Trump. “We all love the Cubs, don’t we folks?”
Anthony Banda has pitched for 7 teams over seven seasons and he’s been on my radar for a while, having appeared on a bunch of 2018 rookie cards. He’s put in a few appearances for the Nats this years, but his numbers haven’t been great.
Alec Mills has pitched one inning for the Reds earlier this year, but hey, it counts! He’s made 70 appearances over 7 seasons, mostly with the Cubs.
Richie Palacios is so new to the Cardinals that I had to digitally fake a Cardinals cap on this image. He has appeared in three games, all against the Mets… I was watching one game and said “Hey, who’s this?” when he came to bat. He gets a thumbs-up for me for wearing his glasses during a spring training photo shoot.
Again, these are the players I’ve been able to find. If you know of anyone else who has appeared in a Major League game this season while wearing glasses, let me know! Maybe we can pad this insert set so it fits nicely in two 9-pocket sheets (not that I have any plans to print them or anything…)
The Shlabotnik Report 