The Fanatasy '08 TA&G Checklist -- Series II

Chris, what hath thou wrought?

This whole fanatasy TA&G idea is already starting to get out of hand. The Cardboard Junkie has even made prototypes!

My God, we don't have lives!

Baseball

The Racing Sausages of Milwaukee
The Phillie Phanatic
That guy in the Pirate Parrot custome who got busted for selling cocaine to half the National League in the 80s
Billy Beane
Billy Bean (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)
Billy Martin
Keith Hernandez' Mustache (REEE-JECTED!)
John Kruk's Mullet
Oscar Gamble's Afro-Puffs
Honus Wagner (Duh!)
Michael O'Keeffe
Victor Conte
Kimberly Bell
Danny Almonte
Karl "Tuffy" Rhodes
Jay Johnstone
Crash Davis
Lloyd and Paul Waner
That 6' 8" man/child in last year's Little League World Series
Ken Burns (If only for the PBS mini-series that got us all throught he 1994 strike)
Marvin Miller (Speaking of player strikes...)
Frank Pastore (Technically qualifies in all four categories)
Darren Daulton: Astral Traveler
Bobby Wallace

Non-Baseball

Billy Mitchell (Greatest Pac-Man player, ever.)
Marco Materazzi & Zinedine Zidane
The Dudley Boyz with Joel "So big, it's hard to keep from hurtin' her" Gertner
Steven Petrosino
Sachin Tendulkar
Sebastien Chabal
Joe Namath & Suzy Kolber
Grits-'n-Gravy (77 "7s" in a row, bitches!)
Doyle Brunson
Lewis Hamilton
Bam Margera
Allison Stokke
The 1950 US World Cup Team
Tony Alva
Mick Foley
Bobby Jones (The other Bobby Jones)
Mat Hoffman
Rusty Wallace
Rasheed Wallace

Non-Sports

Jonas Salk
Joe Strummer
Walter Winchell
H. L. Mencken
Matt Drudge ("A Piece of the Fedora?")
Wink Martindale
Thom McKee
Ben Stein
James Buchanan (The Nobel Prize winning economist of public choice theory fame, not the lousy president.)
Steven Levitt
Marshall McLuhan
GG Allin
The Channel Four News Team
The 6ABC Action News Team
Carl Monday
Manbearpig (I'm totally serial!)
Towelie
P. J. O'Rourke
Tucker Max
Wesley Willis
Rupert Murdoch
R. Lee Ermey
Aristotle
Morton Downey, Jr.
Barry and Levon ($240 worth of puddin'. Awww yeah!)
Earth, Wind & Fire
Ron Jeremy
Thomas Sowell
"Screaming Jay" Hawkins
John Wayne
John Wayne Gacy
John Mark Carr
Friedrich Nietzsche
Tina Fey
Daft Punk
William F. Buckley, Jr.
The Wu-Tang Clan (If only for ODB)
George Plympton
Kraftwerk
DJ Kool Herc
Johnny Carson & Ed McMahon ("Yew, are correct sir. Hey-yo!")
Ann Coulter
Bob Marley
Gene Rayburn's long skinny microphone
George Orwell
Pope John Paul II
Mike Wallace
Chris Wallace
George Wallace (Both of them)
William Wallace
Wallace & Gromit

Monuments

The World Trade Center
The Freedom Tower
Carhenge
The Liberty Bell
Cave of the Winds
The New Jersey Turnpike
Wembley Stadium (Both the old and the new)
Yankee Stadium (2008 is the last season!)
The "Rocky" Statue
Paul Bunyan & Babe the Blue Ox
The Big Texan Steak Ranch
The CN Tower
The Waffle House (pick one, any one)
South of the Border
Wallace Wade Stadium

Insert

Will Leitch
Matt Ufford
The Mighty MJD
Big Daddy Drew
Dan Shanoff
A.J. Daulerio
The Cardboard Junkie
Joey Abna
Ben Henry
Chris Harris (Dammit, if Topps is going to rip-off this idea, I WANT MY OWN CARD!)

A Fantasy 2008 Allen & Ginter Checklist

If you haven't read Ben Henry's latest, you should. The poor guy finally broke down and ripped a box of 2007 Allen & Ginter.

While that in and of itself may not seem all that special, what he wrote at the tail-end got me thinking.

"I’d like to do the next checklist of special cards for A&G 2008, precisely because I think Topps dropped the ball in not including David Beckham in this set, but also because Ernest Hemingway, Keith Richards and the Lusitania need their own cards."

So if you were Topps, what do you do for (another) encore? I came up with this list of athletes and celebrities I'd like to see in next year's TA&G -- assuming that there is one.

And if you don't know who any of these people are, look 'em up on wikipedia.

Old Time Baseballers

Albert Spalding
Ed Delahanty
Bill James (Alright, so he never actually played. But c'mon, he's Bill James!)
Bill "Spaceman" Lee
Dock Ellis
Buck O'Neil
Tommy Lasorda
Ban Johnson
"Shoeless" Joe Jackson
Fred Merkle (2008's the 100th anniversary of "The Boner!")
Vin Scully, Harry Caray, Mel Allen and Harry Kalas (Why don't they made announcer cards?)

Non-Baseball Athletes

Cristiano Ronaldo
Jozy Altidore
Sir Donald Bradman
Willie Mosconi
Amanda Beard
Shaun White
"El Wingador" (and yes, I consider competitive eating to be a "sport")
Bernard "The Executioner" Hopkins
That guy who fell off the 40-foot vert ramp at the X-Games
Maria Sharapova
Michael Phelps
Secretariat
Kelly Slater
Ronaldinho
Chris Harris -- New Zealand cricketer
Chris Harris -- Carolina Panthers defensive back
Chris Harris -- English motorcycle rider
"Wildcat" Chris Harris -- Professional Wrestler

Non-Athletes and Historical Figures

Robert Peary
Henry Ford
Booker T. Washington
Sarah Silverman
Hunter S. Thompson
George Washington Carver
Milton Friedman
Edward Teller
Penn & Teller
Trey Parker & Matt Stone
Sid Vicious & Nancy Spungen
Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
Michael Larson
Kevin Mitnick
Ayn Rand
Frank Lloyd Wright
Edward R. Murrow
Keith Olbermann & Bill O'Reilly (An Olbermann/O'Reilly double autographed box loader. Hmmm...)
Charles Nelson Reilly

Monuments

The Grand Canyon
Big Ben
The Sphinx
The Panama Canal
The Golden Gate Bridge
Machu Picchu

Got any suggestions of your own?

If You Ruled The Hobby

Friends, Readers, and Fellow Collectors:

You have been selected "God of the Baseball Card Hobby." With these powers, you have been given the power to dictate to Topps and Upper Deck what 17 products they will be allowed to release in 2008.

Post your suggestions in the comments area. I'm not asking for specific product details (at least not yet). Just what specific products should return, what products should go away, and what products would you like to see return.

Choose wisely, the long-term fate of The Hobby is in your hands.

If I were given such a title, here are the 34 products that I would allow:

(Sorry for the long gap)

Category	Topps	Upper Deck
Flagship Series 1	Topps 1	Upper Deck 1
Flagship Series 2	Topps 2	Upper Deck 2
Flagship Update	Topps Updates and Highlights	Upper Deck Update
$0.99/pack Contractual Obligation Set	Opening Day	First Pitch
"Second" Flagship	Bowman	Fleer
"Second" Update	Bowman DP&P	Fleer Update
Premium #1	Stadium Club 1	Ultra
Premium #2	Stadium Club 2	Upper Deck Ovation
Super Premium #1	Finest	SP
Super Premium #2	Bowman's Best	Fleer Flair
Retro #1	Topps Heritage	Greats of the Game
Retro #2	Pre-War Tribute Set (i.e. TA&G)	Goudey
$20 Product	Topps Co-Signers	SPx
$50 Product	Bowman Sterling	Upper Deck Epic
$100 Product	Topps Triple Threads	Ultimate Collection
Rookie-Themed	Bowman Chrome	Upper Deck Future Stars
Wild Card	Third Retro Product not named Bowman Heritage	Upper Deck Premier

How to Fix Topps Baseball.

From all the talk among collectors, from all the e-mails I receive, from all the posts on the website, the verdict is in: 2007 Topps Baseball sucks. This anonymous poster sums it all up:

"I hate this year's Topps base set... I hate the airbrushing. I hate the design. I hate the mirror cards. I hate the 'Generation Now' idiocy. I hate the Mickey Mantle 'hero worship' cards. I hate that Topps repeatedly recycles the 1952 baseball design everywhere ... I really hate the red letter variations. I hate the fake short-print variations. ... I wish they would keep their base set sacrosanct. Put in autographed cards as chase cards. Maybe do one or two small (10-card) insert sets. But that's it! ... Don't ruin the stinkin' base set!"

So as a service to Upper Deck, Michael Eisner, Bazooka Joe, the infamous, deplorable, Keith Olbermann, or whomever winds up running Topps, may I make a couple of suggestions for the 2008 Topps Baseball set.

1. Expand the base set.


Call it "The 792 Mystique." Topps Baseball and the number 792 go together like peanut butter and jelly. But Topps hasn't made a base set that large since 1994 -- even though the number of MLB teams (and the number of MLB players) have expanded.

660 cards is just too small. Then again, 792 isn't big enough anymore either. Topps should expand their base set from 660 cards to (at least) 880. 880 cards is more than enough to include each team's entire 25-man roster, all 30 managers, 30 team cards, a handful of multi-player cards, and a couple dozen "Rookies."

The Updates and Highlights set -- which, since it's gone to its current format, I consider to be a third series -- is fine at 330 cards. The structure of traded players, "Rookies," All-Stars, league leaders, et al should remain unchanged.


2. Addition by subtraction.


With the PA's decision to cut the number of 2008 card releases by three, Topps series one and two should be combined into a single series, to be released in late-March. Updates and Highlights would remain in it's current late-October/early-November slot.


3. Please, step away from the airbrush.


Did we really have to have a card of Alfonso Soriano as a Chicago Cub, before he's even played a game for them? What exactly was the point of doing that? And doesn't airbrushing undermine the purpose of a second series or update set? If you absolutely, have to use the airbrush, save it for the Update set.

And while I'm on the subject of airbrushing, if the MLBPA can mandate to the trading card manufacturers who can appear in a set (i.e. the "Rookie Card" rules), they should decree that licensees should refrain from airbrushing until after the September 1 "call-up" date.


4. Cut back on the number of parallels and manufactured variations.


Personally, I could never understand the attraction of parallels. But many collectors like them, so I'm not advocating they be totally eliminated. But five different parallel sets? (Not to mention the contrived variations?) Golds, one-of-ones, Press Plates, and HTA-only Coppers are more than enough. Get rid of the Red Letter "stealth" parallels and the variations.


5. Ditch the "Mirrors."


The "mirror" insert is one of the dumbest concepts The Hobby's seen in the post-Pinnacle Brands era. It's right up there with Fractal Matrix, "Dare-to-Tear," and cards packaged in soup cans on the stupidity meter. The whole concept is an insult to the intelligence of baseball card collectors everywhere. Besides, its not like anybody's actually collecting any of these things.

For 2008, Topps should finish up the Bonds, Mantle, and A-Rod mirrors, and put this gimmick to bed. Permanently.


6. Streamline the other inserts.


OK, so Topps paid a shit-pot of money to get Mickey Mantle. But does that justify a new "hero-worship" insert of him, every year? Here's a suggestion, with all the other card companies ripping off Topps' designs and ideas, how about ripping-off an idea from the competition?

I don't know about you, but I loved the "Baseball Heroes" anthology inserts Upper Deck had in the early-90s. Why not try the same idea in Topps? Put out a new ten-card hero-worship set for a different player, in each series. Start with Mantle and Bonds sets for 2008, but continue the series in '09 with different players.

I'd keep the other inserts: Own the Game, Hobby Masters, and Topps Stars in the combined "regular" set; Trading Places and Rookie Debuts in Updates and Highlights. I'd also throw in a "historical figures" insert along the lines of the Distinguished Service and The Constitution Signers.


7. We "get" pack-specific inserts, but this is a little ridiculous.


As collector's, we're used to the idea of separate inserts for Hobby packs, retail packs, HTA jumbos, and racks. But inserts exclusively for K-Mart, Wal-Mart, and Target? That's a little excessive, wouldn't you say?

So those are my ideas for '08 Topps. What to you all think? Care to make any suggestions?