A couple of weeks ago, I showed off the San Diego Padres. One of the noteworthy things about the Padres is that they had the most different players of all teams between the years 1993-2013. A little further back, I showed the Cleveland Indians team set and in their trivia I pointed out that the Indians had the smallest percentage of their players appear on cards as Indians. I wasn't finished with the data, but I assumed those two teams would finish either at the top or bottom depending on your perspective. I now have to change that because the Red Sox beat both of those numbers. I am not really surprised that the Red Sox had a large number of players because they have had a lot of turnover. What shocked me was the lack of card appearances for Red Sox players. It wasn't even close either, Cleveland was the lowest team that had cards in every year from 1993-2013 at 68.8% of players appearing on cardboard. Only Tampa at 67.8% and Colorado at 69.5% were even below 70%. Boston came in at only 65.8% which shocked me. I figured Boston would be at least 75% if not higher just due to the number of Sox collectors over the past twenty years. I guess not. I do think data supports the theory that Topps especially caters to Yankees fans. Who else would Yankee fans want at the bottom? While you think of other conspiracies, let's take a look at the second half of the 2013 Boston Red Sox.
My Top 5 Red Sox Cards
1. Will Middlebrooks
2. Daniel Bard
3. John McDonald
4. Jackie Bradley
5. Clayton Mortensen
I love dugout shots just for all the background noise and the Middlebrooks does not fail here. I have forgotten when I got this pic, but I can be sure it was when Boston played in Detroit. The Daniel Bard is another dugout shot, but it seems just a bit darker. It has kind of a leering quality to it which keep it from being #1. I couldn't have 4 John McDonald cards in this set without having 1 of them in a team's top 5. This is probably his best card with a nice diving stop. There isn't much else for Boston here so I picked 2 that I sort of liked as #'s 4 and 5. With the Bradley I really like the patriotic bunting while I enjoyed the high leg kick on the Mortensen.
Coming tomorrow - #28 Arizona Diamondbacks
Thanx for reading.
2 comments:
It looks like your Daniel Nava card is actually Dustin Pedroia.
And to add to your mention of the turnover in Boston, out of the forty-eight cards you made, seventeen of the players are no longer on the roster.
I fixed the Pedroia card, but I am not going to show the "corrected" version until the set wrap up in a couple of weeks. So now Red Sox fans can look forward to one more card.
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