Anyways, my oldest card was only from 1965, so it’s good to hear about what Topps cards were like before then. Anyways, since you ended at the time where most of my cards are from…might as well do an addendum.

Topps may have Talkin’ Baseball in 1986, but that was also the year they started doing italics for years when the player led the leagues, a practice that continues today. On the down side, each of the special information they had on the player are milestones. Now I know that Bret Saberhagen earned his 1st major league win on 4-19-84, his 1st major league save in 7-22-84, and his 1st major league shutout on 9-24-84.

In 1987, Topps had an “On This Date” special on certain cards similar to the things they had in 1979, only they tell you what happened rather than make you flip the card over to read it. They also use the opportunity to advertise for older Topps cards, so everything that happened is after 1950. For example, the back of Roger Clemens’s card says, “June 27, 1980: Jerry Reuss pitched no-hitter for Dodgers vs. Giants. Jerry’s 1980 Topps card was #318.”

In 1988, Topps added one more stat below the normal stat line, one that probably infuriated a lot of fans because they took it off a few years later: GW-RBI for the previous year and their career. I was too young to remember the obsession with GW-RBI, but I still hear noxious things about it. They also a detailed description of how the player was acquired.

The GW-RBI experiment continued into 1989, but Topps also included a Monthly Scoreboard, so collectors can find out the monthly breakdown of certain key stats like wins/strikeouts for pitchers and hits/RBI for hitters. I actually liked this addition, but Topps took it away a few years later.

GW-RBI was gone by 1990, although the Monthly scoreboard still remained through 1991. Topps went to the white-bordered card backs in 1992. It looks cleaner, but I suppose it loses some of its charm. If the stat lines on the players are too short, then Topps threw in a picture of the player’s home stadium. Also in 1992, league leading stats were printed in bold red as well as italics to make them more visible.

Topps hadn’t put pictures of players on cards since 1971, but they went back to them for 1993. It was a small picture, but it was a picture nonetheless. Some people probably hated the pictures on the back, but I actually liked it. Actually, I was a big fan of the back design for the 1993 Topps set. Topps also went with a vertical backside for the first time since 1975. No new stats though.

As Justin stated, cards became glossy in 1994, but no new stats. In 1995, Topps included two pictures of the player on the backside, an action shot as well as a portrait done on Diamond Vision. The player facts started becoming longer in 1996, and by 1997 they were practically essays. For example, Mike Mussina’s 1994 facts read, “Through their first 50 starts, Mike had more W’s than Roger Clemens and more SHO’s than Doc Gooden. On 8-31-93, he whiffed 6 straight Angels, 2 short of the AL record.” Pretty long, but this is what they said about Mussina in 1997:

“A top-five finisher in American League Cy Young Award voting in four of the last five years, Mike simply takes the ball and wins. Greg Maddux is the only pitcher with more victories (70 to 68) since 1993. In ‘96, Mussina added a new distinction to his lustrous resume: a Gold Glove. That award was, in part, a recognition of his ability to nullify the running game. In his career, despite never having teamed with a top-throwing catcher, he has permitted only one stolen base every 36 innings!”

Descriptions may never be as long as it was in 1997, but they never went back to the brevity of the 1960s and 1970s. There were nothing special in the 1998 set, although I really liked the design. I hated the 1999 Topps design because of its blandness, but they did have stars from when the years a player won one of the three major awards: Rookie of the Year, Cy Young, and MVP.

There were no new stats in the next few years, but they began shrinking back on the pictures. By 2003, the backside pictures were eliminated altogether. In 2004, Topps added a new stat for the first time since the ill-fated GW-RBI: OPS for hitters and WHIP for pitchers. I suppose it was a concession to the sabermetric revolution.

WHIP and OPS remained in 2005. In addition, Topps put a particular key stat to the side underneath the player’s picture. For example, for Greg Maddux, it said “Career Wins: 305.”

Topps brought back the old-school personalized cartoons from the 60s and 70s in the 2006 set. Some players were too new to merit anything special, so they had some standard facts. For example, Wang Chien-Ming’s Topps 2006 card said, “The Yankees hold the record for most World Series titles with 26.” Fellow countryman Kuo Hong-Chih’s card stated, “Yogi Berra is trhe only player to win 10 World Series.” Sometimes the cartoons and the captions don’t even match. The caption for Maddux read, “Greg recorded his 3000th strikeout in 2005.” However, the picture shows him admiring his four Cy Young awards.

A more inexplicable change for 2006 was the deletion of the Game Started stat for pitchers. I never really understood why they did it, but the stat was back in 2007. By 2008, the stats were G/AB/R/H/2B/3B/HR/RBI/SB/BB/SO/SLG/OPS/AVG for hitters, and G/IP/W/L/R/ER/SO/BB/GS/CG/SHO/SV/WHIP/ERA for hitters. Huzzah.

Then came, FINALLY, my grand comeback. I grabbed my glove and sprinted onto the field for warmups, tossing the ball with the hardest throwing kid on the team, Evan Rutherford. It felt indescribably great to be out there again–the smell of the grass, the feel of the breeze, the POP! of the ball in Evan’s glove, the dull THUD! of the ball breaking three bones just an inch under my left eye.

Oops.

Someone’s mother–none of my relatives were there yet, though my mother and grandmother arrived a few minutes later–drove me to the hospital while I snuck glances at the alien creature in the passenger-side mirror.

Well, it wasn’t THAT bad. The doctors decided surgery wouldn’t be necessary. In fact, I could go back to playing baseball.

After another three, maybe four weeks.

I was pretty sure that was the end of the world. Sure, I reasoned, I’d survived two brushes with death–one very close, one merely a brush–but what was the point in being alive if I couldn’t play baseball?

Then the Team Mother–did you guys have Team Mothers on your Little League team?–showed up at the door with a gift all the mothers had pitched together to buy for me. A fresh box of 36 packs of 1994 Topps baseball cards. And every pack had a ToppsGold card!!!

Weeks of bliss ensued. I carefully organized and catalogued every individual card as I pulled it out of the pack (I think taking note of just how many Luis Lopez cards were in these damned packs helped enhance the joy when I pulled a Barry Bonds.)

And on the third to last pack I pulled the big prize: The special “26 seasons” card Topps put out as their last Nolan Ryan card.

ToppsGold-style.

I still have that card and protect it as though the fate of the world hangs in the balance. Not because it’s valuable or ever will be, but because it’s a cheerful reminder of the strangest summer of my childhood.