Sunday, March 28, 2021

One card only - fielding focus

Wilhelm put a bonus card in with the Topps Chrome card I blogged about yesterday. He also included a note saying he thought I might have it already. But I didn't! So, that became an unexpected addition to the collection.

Card Number 621: Upper Deck Gold Gloves, 2001; #77

Upper Deck went through a phase of producing these small sets, mainly as filler cards around various relic cards. There were 135 base cards in this set to pad out the search for relics. 

It's not the most flattering photo of Tony on the front. The design looks like the spine of a book on the right hand side of the card front.


However, I'm awarding a bonus point for photo congruence because it's a picture of Tony fielding in a set about gold gloves! Also, they include the years Tony won a Gold Glove on the little gold foil glove embellishment.

There's a teeny bit of shade thrown there when the cardback says that "During his prime..." with the implication that Tony was past his prime now. 


This card gets another bonus point for including Tony's fielding stats. I'm not as au fait with fielding stats, but I was surprised to see that he played 10 fewer games as a fielder than as a batter. Baseball Reference have him down as a Designated Hitter for some games in the 2000 season, so he must have been DH in 10 games. 

Thanks again to Wilhelm for this unexpected addition to my collection.

Total: 621 cards

3 comments:

  1. Pretty cool that he won 5 Gold Glove Awards over the course of his career. That's way more than I would have given him credit for. I guess I was focused way too much on his hitting throughout his career.

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  2. Hadn't seen this set before, good stuff. Is that book spine thing supposed to be the edge of a glove?

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    1. I have no idea, Jeff. It doesn't look much like it to me, but it could be.

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