Tuesday, May 14, 2024

2023 Topps Archives Red Sox Team Set

Archives is usually a fun set.  New guys on old design cards has been a Topps mainstay for years and yeas now.  


I am writing this on 5-9, the Red Sox just played the Braves and Chris Sale's pitches were FILTHY last night!!!!  He looked like the Chris Sale that helped win a World Series in 2018.


Casas has been out for a week with a broken rib and as soon as he went to the IL the Red Sox quit scoring runs.  Maybe it's just luck and the way the ball bounces but the timing sure makes it look like Casas was the difference. 


Has anyone went from most beloved to has been for a club than Nomar.  He was the Red Sox for so many years and then The Sox win the World Series without him and he's all the sudden a footnote.  I keep thinking that I am going to see Nomar cards flooding the market as people finely let go of them but I haven't really seen it yet. 


They shouldn't try colorize these pictures they just look odd.  The card design already looks odd enough squeezed into the modern size card rather than the original oversized.



I'm glad Archives kept the designs in numerical order and didn't just number them all willy-nilly.  I wanted to scan all the 1956s together but five horizontal cards just don't lay out correctly.  


Is it weird to show a pitcher batting or would it be more weird to show Ruth pitching?  With no DHs anymore is this the only 2023 pitcher batting card?


When he's clean shaven, Valdez looks just like my friend I watch Sox games with.  It is uncanny the resemblance.  


I think Devers changed up his plate approach this year.  Less power but getting on base more.  I the really elite have an OBP aver .400 so I don't know if it's sustainable.  


Speaking of OBP the next card happens to be the beer drinking chicken eating OBP machine Wade Boggs. 


The Jays are struggling this year but Turner isn't.  He is like the little engine that could.  Every year people count him out and he just keeps going and going...  


This is the craziest photo of Yaz I have ever seen.  It doesn't look anything like the Yaz I ever saw or have even seen pictures of.  This photo looks like right handed Nomar.  Never in another photo have I thought they looked the same before.  If Topps put this on a Nomar card and said it was a reverse negative I don't think anyone would bat an eye.  


Terrible picture of the Splendid Splinter!  The insert photo reminds me of a goofy commercial. If you can't treat a legend's card right, don't make it.


2003 Topps is an okay set.  It feels to new to use in a throwback way but it has been 20 years.  


I wonder why Topps uses Enrique on Kiki's cards.  No baseball announcer calls him Enrique; at least they didn't in Boston, I haven't seen many Dodger games so I haven't noticed there. 


Bello was only 4 years old when 2003 Topps came out.  


I wanted it to be the long season, the travel, and the new food as the reason that Yoshida wasn't exactly what we thought we were getting from Japan but so far 2024 has been really similar to 2023.


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