Well...we do now.
You see, someone on FB posted their complaint about the card backs. Especially because (you're not going to believe this), he said that the stats on the back, which for a very long time showed complete statistics for the players, sometimes even more than 15 years worth of statistics, was no longer on the back of the cards.
His words:
"I bought 2 packs of 2017 topps baseball series 1 at my local target and when I open the first pack on the back of the cards there wasn't the traditional full career stats on the back of the players card! Why didn't topps do this? could someone let me know about this?"
After many on FB doubted his claim, he showed pictures:
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| Photo from J. DeLand on Facebook |
Okay, so let's look at the details:
The cross-diagonal line design element continues on the back. There is a card number, the series (1, 2, or Update) that has appeared in the last three base sets. Team logo. A bio.
Oh, and look. You can follow the Coco Crisp on Twitter and Instagram as both social media profiles are included.
There's the stat box. Five years of lines. The usual stat headers are listed. But at the bottom?
MLB Totals (15 Years)
While the guy was kind of right by saying that not all of his totals are listed on there. There is a totals line.
So this is the first time since 1971, Topps is not going to display a player's full career statistics. Could this be a one-year thing? Will Topps continue the social media links in future sets? I guess in this day and age it makes sense. But at the cost of less stat lines?
What do you think? If you'd like (and are still reading this blog...or waiting to see if I'm still relevant), feel free to leave comments and let me know what you think.
I can't wait to see what these look like up close.
Sincerely,
JayBee Anama
15 comments:
Not a fan of the front or back designs whatsoever -- will still likely to buy some packs and maybe a blaster just for the feeling that ST is around the corner. Last design that I liked remotely was 2013.
It seems to be the trend these days to not include stats. I don't like it.
I do kind of like the listings of how to find them on the social media sites. I don't really like Twitter although I do use it, I don't use the other one...Instragram I think you said. (can't see from the comment form). Considering that's a way to see stuff from the actual athlete, that's kind of cool. It's a little big on the card, it takes up a little too much space in my opinion.
I don't like it, but, to be fair, the stats people have baseball-reference and other internet sources these days. In the old days, all you really had were the cards, and you'd memorize every stat on those cards (if you were a little older, you might buy a copy of "Who's Who In Baseball" or something).
Me, I'm a traditionalist and I haven't much cared for Topps designs since the early 90s. I grew up in the 60s, so, naturally, I consider those designs the "Golden Age". So I buy a little flagship and a lot of Heritage, usually. Sadly, I can't stand the '68 design, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do this year. Maybe focus on vintage.
But Topps could make any design a winner if they'd just bring back the cartoons for the flagship. Every baseball card is better with a cartoon (player specific, of course).
This is awful for someone who grew up learning the game through box scores and baseball cards, seeing how each player progressed over the course of his career by flipping the cards over.
The card backs were posted on Twitter about a week ago. I almost lost it when I saw them, but will reserve full comment until the cards are in my hands.
In short, nobody really "needs" full stats on the back, but there better be a damn good excuse to scrap them. I don't think this is it.
I knew they had to incorporate the front design on the back and knew it wouldn't work too well but never imagined that it would wasted space at the top, wasted spaced they made with the logo, and wasted space (in my opinion) where the Twitter and Instagram handles are. It just feels like they are going away from what made the company great and trying to be hip with the Twitter crap, which is good I guess to keep the younger generation interested, but shouldn't they be making quality product to do that?
I remember seeing this thread on Facebook.. Never saw the resulting picture though.
The first thing I looked at was the card number, and I got excited because - hot DAMN! - it's legible! No tiny little number challenging my outdated eyeglasses prescription (I'm overdue for an appointment, but even so).
I'm OK with the truncated stats, I don't do more than glance at them anyway. If I *really* want to look at a player's stats, I'll look him up on bbref.com anyway. I'm with Stubby in that I'd like to see cartoons, and but I also appreciate a decent write-up more than the stats.
I'll kinda miss the full stats.
At least when Dinruss used to do this, it specified "Recent Major League Performance?"
I like full career stats on the flagship. I've come to expect the other products not having them - like Bowman usually only has a year, and Stadium Club usually does something a bit wacky (like back in the 90s with stats like home/away grass/turf and other splits). But I'd love to keep full career on the flagship.
I like seeing a veteran who has been around for a long time's stats (take Beltre for example) but it isn't the end of the world. I collate a set when I bust my jumbo boxes, stop on a few players to see what milestones they are near, but usually just focus on the photography. It's probably going to go down as a quirk from this year's set, then we will move on when 2018 comes out.
The backs look "modern". I haven't bought many Flagship the last number of years so I'm not concerned one way or the other. My first impression is that they look good design-wise. I agree that stats were much more important when I was growing up. But if you go in that direction you could also say that cards were a bigger source of photos of ballplayers than they are now. I can search for Mike Trout on Google and find hundreds of great photos.
I collect "final" cards for Hall-of-Famers and noteworthy pitchers, and now I won't have that last card with the full career. It's a sad day: Topps for so long held out and listed the stats for every year (with the exception of one of Jamie Moyer's later cards, which is certainly understandable). Too bad.
I gave my 10-year old son his first 2017 Series 1 cards yesterday night. He immediately noticed the social media line, which didn't really move him one way or another. This morning he came to me pointing out it was just 5 lines of data (if a player was on multiple teams, each gets its own line - Oswaldo Arcia shows '15 Twins, and 4 clubs for '16 -- but nothing from '13 or '14) plus totals. He was very disappointed. So, Topps managed to turned off (at least one) of its future audience.
The same in 2018 ! I am VERY disapointed.
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