2013 Quarry Unlimited - The Postseason

Blogger finally figured out that I have been posting for the past two days so hopefully someone will be able to see this before Monday.  Since Blogger seems to be acting up I should go ahead and point out that if you miss a day of the 2013 Quarry Unlimited set, you can catch up by clicking on the link on the left sidebar or just to simplify things click here.

I have always viewed the flagship set as a type of yearbook for documenting the history of a baseball season.  The postseason has always been the most important part of the history of any baseball season, but it is not always reflected on a card set.  Luckily, 1977 Topps was one of those sets that recognized the importance of the postseason.  Therefore, 2013 Quarry Unlimited will also have some postseason cards.  The 77 set only had cards for the ALCS, the NLCS, and 3 for the World Series.  For the 2013 Quarry Unlimited set, I had to get a little creative for the added postseason rounds, but I think I kept the overall tone of the rest of the subset.  Even though it took place only a short time ago, join me while we relive the 2013 postseason.

With the Wild Card game, I combined the look of the World Series cards with the League Leaders cards and came up with this design.  I think it works because the Wild Card games should not be important enough for separate cards, but they do matter enough to be noted.  The photo for the AL game had to be Alex Cobb, but I considered using a crowd shot for the NL game.  The crowd chanting Johnny Cueto's name was one of the more memorable happenings of this postseason, but Russell Martin hit two homers and deserved to be the face of the game.

The Division Series was another round that I needed to be a little creative with.  Once again I decided that each series didn't need a card of its own, but still needed to be recorded.  The photo I chose was who I considered the most important player in the final game of the series.  For the record, I was rooting for 4 teams in these 4 series and the team I was rooting for lost each series.

The Championship Series is where we finally get to a direct remake of the 77 set.  With these I wanted to make sure I got a celebration shot while still focusing on the MVP of each of the Championship Series.  I went 1 for 2 in these two series with the Cardinals at least giving me someone to root for in the Series.

The original World Series cards had each photo dedicated to each game of the series.  I decided to continue that tradition.  Game 1 features Mike Napoli's 3 run double in the first inning that broke the game open early.  Game 2 is the only photo which features the losing team of the game, but without the pictured error of catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia the Cardinals probably do not win Game #2.

I'm sure all of you remember the controversial Game #3 photo.  It is the only time a World Series game ended in obstruction, but what no one has mentioned is that if obstruction wasn't called we could have had a double play with both runners being thrown out at home.  I think that could have been an even cooler ending.  With Game #4 I could have chosen the game-ending pick off of Kolten Wong, but it didn't decide the game and quite frankly I think it was overblown.  Instead I went with Jonny Gomes rounding the bases following his 3 run home run.

Game #5 was a relatively mundane game, by that I mean there was no game-defining moment from which to capture an image.  I went with a random Jon Lester pitching photo, because he probably was the star of Game #5.  The image on Game #6 makes me want to throw up, because I can't stand Shane Victorino (or the Hawaiian Elf as I like to call him).  However, it does qualify at the most memorable image from the game winning play so here it is. 

The final card of the postseason subset is a celebration shot for the winners of the World Series.  Boston topped St. Louis in 6 games and have given Sawx fans (and ESPN) another reason to be obnoxious.  The only thing that disappointed me about this image was that I didn't get World Series MVP in the shot.  But I figured the last out celebration shot fit a lot better than a random shot of David Ortiz.



That completes both the look back at the 2013 postseason and the final subset of the 2013 Quarry Unlimited set.  I hope you have enjoyed the ride so far and I will start with he first team on Monday.

Thanx for reading.