Topps Trivia Question of the Week, February 16, 2009

It’s time I post on a more frequent basis, and what better way to kick off the new week with a new Topps Trivia Question of the Week. This week’s question involves one of the lesser known, but tremendously impossible-to-find-in-complete-set-form inserts from 1998 Topps called Clout Nine.

1998 Topps Clout Nine was a nine-card set found at a rate of 1:72 packs of 1998 Topps Series 2 featuring the top hitters by position (your usual eight plus the designated hitter). The design was very interesting (as was many of the insert sets Topps included that year). The background picture of ominous blue-grey clouds looks like a storm is about to hit, with a color picture of the player positioned in the middle of two columns consisting of eight (four per side) small trapezoidal black (or blue, or gray) and white pictures of the other players in the set. Today’s question involves the small pictures on either side of the player on the cards.

As many of you probably know, during one of those awards shows (like the Academy Awards or the Emmy’s), the producers hire people to fill the seats lower part of the theatre. A “seat-filler” if you will. So that if someone has to run to the bathroom, present an award, or perform on stage, someone can sit in that seat to make it appear that there is a capacity crowd and that no seat was left empty. It’s kind of like musical chairs with no missing seats. Can you imagine what that would be like? “Okay, Brad Pitt just left his seat, go and sit next to Angelina while he’s presenting an award…”

Okay, WAKE UP!!!

Let’s get back to the point, shall we? All but one player in this set was assigned a specific square on each card, leaving the last person as the “seat-filler.” On each card in the set, the “seat-filler’s” picture got to appear where the player normally would be among the eight squares. And the only card that showed all eight players in their assigned square was on the “seat-filler’s” card itself. Hopefully, you get what I’m talking about.

I do not want to show scans of the cards themselves because then the answer would be obvious. I’ll save the scans until I post the answer later this week. The question is:

Who is the Clout Nine “seat-filler?”

Your choices are:

• C1 Edgar Martinez, DH
• C2 Mike Piazza, C
• C3 Frank Thomas, 1B
• C4 Craig Biggio, 2B
• C5 Vinny Castilla, 3B
• C6 Jeff Blauser, SS
• C7 Barry Bonds, LF
• C8 Ken Griffey, Jr., CF
• C9 Larry Walker, RF

The answer will be posted later on this week. Please feel free to answer the question in the comments. The first person who gets it right will get a prize this time. I spent the weekend (the reason why I didn’t post anything substantial) reorganizing the chaos called “my extra cards.’ I didn’t realize this, but I have a good number of relics and autographed cards from the last few years that were in amongst the mess. Whoever gets the answer correct will win their choice of a list of relics and autographed cards that I found (relics include Tony Gwynn, Chase Utley, Mike Piazza, Ichiro, Alex Gordon; autos include Tom Gorzelanny, Steve Holm, Mike Neu, Bert Campaneris, Curtis Granderson). You only get one answer, and you can only leave a comment once. Even if you don’t have the cards (or for that matter have no idea what I was talking about above), you can still leave your response in the comments. Good luck.

Sincerely,

JayBee Anama