Thowing Back To 2019

Right now 2019 baseball is all we've got to hang on to, isn't it folks? I'm digging this talk of bringing all 30 teams down to Arizona to play in Spring Training parks in front of no fans, if only because it's so ridiculous (and because it means baseball on TV). Barring that, I was reading today that the Korean and Taiwanese baseball seasons might actually begin on time or something close to it. ESPN, Fox, MLB Network - start your engines. I'm ready to watch.

So here's a set of 6 cards that I grabbed a couple of months back as part of Topps' "Throwback Thursdays". In fact I'd probably still be buying these sets each week if Topps hadn't been sending me so much goddamn email that I had to unsubscribe. Each Thursday they put out a limited small-run set of something-or-other, and then try and sell it to you. This time they got me.

Believe it or not, it's the only set I own that includes a picture of Mike Trout on the card, unless it's an Angels team card. (I'd collect Trout if only my wallet allowed for it). I dig this six-card set, though. You don't see "WAR Leaders" cards every day, due to the hidebound sabermetrically-challenged overlords who run the hobby, who generally see Avg/HR/RBI as the starting point for evaluating a player. And until I got this set, I didn't know that Troy Tulowitski had actually called it a day. I liked that guy. He used to crush the Giants every now and again.

This Throwback Thursday set is "Set 3". They printed 482 of them. It's based on a 1984 card design. You can learn more about it here.