TOPPS NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

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Once again, Topps has decided that gimmicky bullshit is more important than the integrity of the base set that made them what they are today. I'd say more, but I've already done this rant.

I really shouldn't be surprised, they don't want people like me as a customer anymore anyway.

Sigh.

Joe Gordon is in the Hall of Fame.

Ron Santo is not.

I've gone through the feelings of confusion, anger and outrage already. It seems like I go through it every single year, to be honest. You know what? I'm not congratulating Joe Gordon on his election. Joe Gordon has been dead for thirty years. Ron Santo is alive, and is already a great baseball ambassador for his play and his broadcasting work. But apparently in order to get recognized nowadays you have to be dead. So in essence, the Hall of Fame Veterans Committee just told Ron Santo, Dick Allen, Tony Oliva, Joe Torre, Al Oliver, Luis Tiant and Maury Wills to drop dead.

Listen.

No player has been elected by the Veterans Committee since Mazeroski. Just executives and managers.

It now seems as if the whole point of this charade is to torment retired ballplayers by getting their hopes up every two years and then dashing it on the rocks. If that's the case, then just fucking dissolve the Veterans Committee altogether. Preferably with sulfuric acid. You've already changed the process three times and it's not working. At all. Maybe the crony system that put in Maz was the system that ACTUALLY WORKED.

Seriously, just stop this bullshit. You're doing nothing but angering your fan base and losing credibility every day.



The Hall of Fame will not be seeing a check from me in 2009. 2010 looks pretty bad too.

Last Straw

I don't like Topps anymore.

I really, really don't.

UPDATE: A clarification on my position.

1) I am not calling for a boycott on Topps, nor am I boycotting them myself. Boycotting Topps for me means basically getting out of the hobby. I am merely extremely disappointed with the way they are doing business lately. If you decide to pick up some Upper Deck instead of Topps inthe near future, more power to ya.

2) Upper Deck also did a Sarah Palin card. It's pretty goddamn ridiculous as well. The difference between the UD stunt and the Topps stunt is simple. The Upper Deck set is expressly parody so some ridiculousness can be expected. I don't like the UD Palin card either since it has absolutely nothing to do with baseball other than her wearing a uniform and rounding a base (in a dogsled??). It's stupid, but I grew up on Mad Magazine and I can deal with it. This card is just tacky. I know it's a super seecrit short print chase money rip three cases card and sell it on eBay card and I'll likely (thankfully) never see it. It's still just plain tacky.

2a) Upper Deck = Mad Magazine, Topps = The National Enquirer. I know which one I prefer.

3) I don't think it's a hoax, but even if it is it's bad that collectors are so used to shenanigans from Topps and Upper Deck that it even seems plausible.

4) It's just another indication from Topps that they plan to sell their cards through gimmicky crap that people can chase to try flip on eBay for a profit and not though producing good cards that collectors want. Cards should sell themselves, it's not necessary to try to get on Entertainment Tonight or Countdown with Keith Olbermann with some crap like this to try to sell more product. However, this seems to be thr future of the hobby and I'm disappointed.

Oh No, Not Again

Len Pasquarelli is reporting that the Falcons are interested in USC coach Pete Carroll for their head coach opening. Pete's apparently actually interested in the job! Oh Goody! Just what this franchise needs, another Big Splash From Arthur B.! It's the best of both worlds, a failed retread NFL coach and a college coach looking to jump for more money! Plus Pete's willingness to dump a dream college job that he can pretty much have for life for about two and a half years in the trainwreckiest trainwreck of a franchise ever which happens to have a dysfunctional roster at the moment surely indicates great intelligence and mental stability! Sign Pete, draft a wide receiver in the first round and as soon as Vick gets out of rehab WE'LL GO ALL THE WAY, BABY! WOOOOHOOOOO!!!!

I am this close to becoming a Titans fan, I swear to God....

Bobby Cut and Run

What a fucking joke.

Good riddance to worthless garbage. If only the owner could go with him.

I can't stop laughing at this though.

Some highlights:

What a great opportunity Arthur Blank has now. With no coach, no QB, no offensive line, and, after last night, apparently no defense either, this is the perfect time TO DISBAND THIS PERENNIAL LOSER. Fire all these clowns, give them a gift card to Home Depot, turn the Dome into a homeless shelter, and shut this mother down now!!!

The Dogs don’t have Ark on the schedule next year. Too bad, I would like to go to the game and throw #### at him.

Does it ever end? I think not - who do I root for now in Loserville!!!!!!!!!!!!! What god did we p** oof?

Somebody shoot me … a few times just to make sure you hit something vital … please!

Bye bye Bobby, You don’t have the balls to do the Falcon job, and I don’t think you have the Nutts to do the Arkansas job.

I say we get Bobby Cox. He is professional and loyal and more successful than anyone the Falcons have run out there recently. Okay, so he may not know anything about football, but that’s a minor issue. He might get a few 15-yard penalties, but at least they don’t kick football coaches out of games.

How is Blank going to justify his annual ticket price increase this year? And isn’t Chan Gailey available?

Call Spurrier. At least we can get some laughs out of this year when he throws his visor.

I just scored 56 points on the old school hand held Coleco football game. Maybe I should submit a resume.

Why don’t we let Glanville and Reeves do a 100 yard dash to see who gets the job.

Apparently he phoned in his resignation. What a scumbag. I give him 7 games at Arkansas before he bolts to coach the Ottawa Rough Riders.

The Hall of Fame has Jumped the Shark

The Veterans Commitee finally elected new members to the Hall of Fame this morning, the first since Mazeroski.

First of all, congratulations to managers Dick Williams and Billy Southworth. They are championship skippers who both deserve the honor they are getting. I'm sorry they have to be involved in this mess. Also congratulations are in order to Barney Dreyfuss, who was the owner of the Pirates from 1900 to 1932 and helped create the World Series. Barney is already a member of the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

Now to the dicey choices.

Walter O'Malley was also elected to the Hall of Fame. I don't like it, but I can't complain about it. He is one of the most famous baseball team owners of all time and he did radically change the game. So what if he was instrumental in ripping the heart (and the entire National League) out of one of the best baseball cities in America. He made some money and that's what counts. So congratulations, Walter O'Malley, I and the entire city of Brooklyn hope your money and Hall of Fame Plaque are useful to you as you burn in the depths of Hell for all eternity.

Now to the guy I really have a problem with.

Former Commissioner Bowie Kuhn was also elected to the Hall of Fame. Kuhn was a complete idiot as commissioner who bungled an attempt to rid the game of drugs, banned players from baseball right and left including Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle for life just for working as greeters at a casino, snubbed Hank Aaron when he became the all time home run king, tried to get Negro League Hall of Fame inductees segregated to a different wing to the building, and in his most lasting and relevant act as commissioner, watched ineffectually as the long standing reserve clause came crashing down due to the efforts of Curt Flood and Marvin Miller. Now Bowie was a complete buffoon as commissioner, but then again, most of them were. Kenesaw Mountain Landis kept the league segregated as long as he lived, and he's in the Hall of Fame. Bud Selig canceled a freakin' World Series and he's going to be in the Hall of Fame. Idiot commissioners in the Hall of Fame is nothing new. It's just how things are done.

Now about Marvin Miller, that guy who utterly pwned Bowie and completely changed the economics of baseball, if not every professional sport in the entire world. What of him? Where is he now? NOT ELECTED TO THE HALL OF FAME. AGAIN. Miller is 90 years old. He should have been elected unanimously by the Veteran's committee the last time they met. And the time before that. Now he has to wait two more years until the next ballot.There is absolutely no logical reason why the person who arguably had had the most influence in professional sports in the past half-century should be out of the Hall of Fame while the man he ran circles around should get voted in. The committee that votes to elect executives is made up of 12 members: two former players (Monte Irvin and Harmon Killebrew), three media members and 7 current and former MLB executives. I'm sorry, but you can't tell me that Marvin's exclusion is not out of spite by these MLB executives because he screwed up their license to print money while not having to share with the players. I thought I could never be madder about a Hall of Fame injustice after Buck O'Neil was inexplicably left out, but I think I'm just as mad now. This is a terrible, terrible decision, and I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Pitbullshit

Topps pulled all Michael Vick cards from their upcoming releases last month once Vick was indicted. So obviously, a handful of Vick Chrome cards have wandered out into the hobby. Topps is pleading innocent, but I find it very convenient that four times in two years insanely collectible cards that were not meant for release just happened to slip through quality control and make it out to the hobby. That either means the person in charge of making sure cards that aren't supposed to hit the market don't hit the market needs to be fired ASAP, or that Topps is bullshitting us.

I'm sure some people will rush out and buy all the Chrome packs on the shelves looking for a jackpot. Auctions will continue to sell for outrageous amounts. and Topps will make a lot of money, again. As for me, I'm pretty much done with this year's football cards. Watching my favorite team completely implode sort of put a damper on my interest for football cards, and this nonsense certainly doesn't make me want to go out and buy any more. I know a hobby shop with old boxes of Fleer and Pro Set cards for 8 bucks a pop if I really need a football fix. You know what I do if I'm Michael Eisner for a day? This:

Any of you kids out there know what this is? Here's the scoop. Basically the US Postal Service goofed and printed some commemorative stamps of Dag Hammarskjold with an inverted yellow background. Some dude in New Jersey found a sheet of them and the USPS screwed him out of a fortune by printing 40 million more of the error. That's what Topps needs to do if they're serious about shunning Michael Vick. Print up truckloads of this card (refractors too, since they got out) and insert it into every pack released for a year. Football, Baseball, Basketball, Star Wars, Wacky Packages, all of them. Insert a hand written note from Arthur Shorin apologizing for the foul up if you're afraid of offending people. Make a big-ass donation to the Humane society for good measure. Make this card a dirt common instead of "the next Honus Wagner" as the douchebag investor who is buying up all the ones that hit eBay is calling it.

It's not just the obvious that's bugging me about this. The whole incident and how it was handled very badly irks me. If the cards are already printed, just put them in the set. there's no way none will get out if you pull them so don't bother. Just don't print any new ones for the upcoming sets. No sane collector would mind if Vick cards stayed in the Chrome set because it was too late to make sure all of them would be pulled. Also, after pulling card #111 they didn't provide a replacement. Topps did the same crap with the Alex Gordon card, and having a random hole in a set for no reason is just lazy. Put someone else's card in to complete the set. If you don't have time to insert them into packs, offer it as a free redemption. Give them to hobby shops so people can pick them up. Topps already ships out boxes of those retro rookie card giveaways, send out a box of Vick Chrome with them. Send them out in the mail to anyone who wants it. It worked for Napoleon LaJoie, it will work here. But no, pulling this crap generates publicity and sales, so fuck the collector. Sorry Topps, I love your cards, but you went to the well one too many times.