Ranking Topps 1980's Baseball Cards: #1 - 1983

Almost eight year after we started this feeble exercise, we finally bring it on home.


To recap, here are the rankings we came up with, after a proprietary and highly quantitatively-oriented, multi-variate analysis: 

#10 - 1986
#9 - 1988
#8 - 1982
#7 - 1980
#6 - 1985
#5 - 1987
#4 - 1981
#3 - 1984
#2 - 1989

Those of you who were Algebra majors may deduce that one year in this decade was excluded. That year is 1983, our winner.

Readers of our series will remember the many factors put into play to measure each set. Who were the biggest rookies? Was it a good year for baseball? What were the card's aesthetic features? And on and on it goes. At least for winners losers like me.

The 1983 set had two big attributes going for it. First, it had a trio of rookie cards from players who had legendary careers, two of whom essentially* played their whole careers with one team (Boggs, Gwynn, Sandberg). Second, it had a great look to it, with one action photo and one portrait-like photo on the front of each card. And given it was 1983, there was some strong MLB stache action, as seen by both Boggs and Gwynn.

*Sandberg had a cup of coffee with the Phillies in 1981 (6 plate appearances), but was added as a throw-in to the infamous Ivan DeJesus - Larry Bowa trade after that season. Oopsy for the Phillies. 

While we're here, let's pay homage to the great Tony Gwynn, who put up some gaudy stats worth repeating here: 3,141 hits, .338 career average, 8 batting titles, 5 seasons with 200 hits, zero seasons with more than 40 Ks. The card below shows us the Oscar Gamble-esque look he sported in the early 80's, and reminds us what he looked like before he got fat.

And last but not least, let's salute Wade Boggs. Not for his opposite-field hitting, but for his prodigious beer drinking. It is the stuff of legend, up there with stories of Andre the Giant's beer drinking. There are lots of stories about it on the internet, which means it's surely true. Read this if you don't believe me.

Ranking Topps 1980's Baseball Cards: #2 - 1989

85  months after we revealed our #3 ranking, we cave to the cacophony from the ones of you out there seeking finality and attempt to finish this project. Or at least plod one step closer to completion.  

So please accept my apologies. With a moment of free time no job, I would like to get this baby back on the tracks. Or better said at this point, get this rusty project over the finish line.

To recap, here are the rankings to date:

#10 - 1986
#9 - 1988
#8 - 1982
#7 - 1980
#6 - 1985
#5 - 1987
#4 - 1981
#3 - 1984

The 1989 season evokes mixed memories. It was the apex of the juiced-up Athletics teams of the late 1980's, with LaRussa's squad coming back from a defeat in the 1988 World Series to sweep their neighbor in the Bay Area the night of Game 1. However, the World Series was a bit of an afterthought to the destructive earthquake that shook the whole area. Surprisingly, Canseco and McGwire combined for only 50 HRs that year. But strong contributions from Dave Parker and Dave Henderson helped (37 combined HRs), and a very deep starting rotation (Stewart, Moore, Welch and Davis each had 17 or more wins) mattered. As did Dennis Eckersley's mustache, which proved too much for hitters to handle.

While only two other teams won 90 games (Cubs, Giants), Bo Jackson had his MLB peak this year, winning All-Star Game MVP. Robin Yount won his second MVP, Kevin Mitchell won his only MVP, Rickey stole 77 bases, Bret Saberhagen took the AL Cy Young and somebody called Mark Davis from the Padres (44 saves) won the NL Cy Young. Name does not ring a bell at all. He had 96 total saves in a 15-yr career. That name was as much as a surprise as Moose Stubing (pictured at the top of this post), who I'm guessing was Merrill's cousin.

As for the cards themselves, they were strong aesthetically, given the Body Glove era of the late 80's set a low bar for style. Script and wavy banners and gold cups all make for a good card. They stood out from prior years as Topps began fighting more intense competition from Donruss, Fleer and upstarts like Upper Deck.

So who will be #1? There is no way for you all to figure it out. You'll have to wait for the next post, which should come before the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. Or after. 

Baseball Roots (Not a Miniseries Mash-up)

My woeful team was put down like Old Yeller a long while back. I enjoy baseball. For whom should I root, root, root now? Certainly not just the home team each game, right?

I'm in luck. With the Wild Cards done and the Fall Classic in view, it’s time for Gheorghe to tell us supporters of non-playoff teams (and Twins and Rockies) which clubs to pull for. Here’s a table that will show the criteria:

CRITERIA EXPLAINED (SORT OF)
The City Itself: Is it fun? Charming? Boring? Disgusting?
The Fans: I think this gamut runs from those at Busch to those at the Vet (RIH)
Mascot/Logo: Beloved? Asinine? Confusing? Offensive?
Stadium: Cathedral or glorified softball park…
History/Rootability: where the cosmos seeps into sports, where the good guys sometimes prevail, and where decades of wrongs get righted
Underdoggedness: Fate has a fickle finger; favorites don’t always fare favorably
Star Quality: Stars shine in October
Food from the City/Region: Perhaps the most subjective category of all
Bands from the City/Region: Never mind, this is
X-Factor: That little edge could be telling you something


So, whom do we like in 2017?

Boston Red Sox
City: Great town. Wish they could drive. 3
Fans: Increasingly hahd to tawlerate. 1
Mascot/Logo: Uniform timeless. Wally not. 0.5
Stadium: A classic. 1
History/Rootability: Used to be a 5. Now… bleh. 1
Underdoggedness: Slight. 2
Stars: Not relative to the Cowboy Up days. 0
Food: Lobster rolls and Harpoon. 1
Bands: The Cars. Aerosmith once upon a time. Pixies. 1
X-Factor: Belichick. 0
Total: 10.5

Houston Astros
City: Wasn’t much before the floods. 0.5
Fans: Nondescript at best. Texans. 1
Mascot/Logo: Still clinging to NASA? Ok. 1
Stadium: Are you kidding? 0
History/Rootability: Well, given recent events in the region, it’s better. Never won a Series. That helps. 5
Underdoggedness: Many folks have picked them. 1
Stars: I like Altuve. 1
Food: Brisket, maybe? 1
Bands: Beyonce and ZZ Top? 0
X-Factor: Harvey. 1
Total: 10.5

New York Yankees
City: Of course. 3
Fans: Like mosquitoes, they’re everywhere and annoying. GTB Yanks fans only reason for a point. 1
Mascot/Logo: Vintage. Ubiquitous but vintage. 1
Stadium: I preferred the one erected in the 70’s. 0
History/Rootability: Too good for too long. Can’t get behind them. 1
Underdoggedness: Don’t believe the hype. A gift to earn a 1. 1.
Stars: My name is Judge. 1
Food: Like everything in NYC, it’s good on its own but overhyped. 1
Bands: Ramones. Run-DMC. Dave loves Billy Joel. 1
X-Factor: Not feeling it. 0
Total: 10

Cleveland Indians
City: No Bueno. I’m sorry. 0
Fans: Dedicated through all the crap. Even Randy Quaid. 3
Mascot/Logo: Chief Wahoo. Nope. 0
Stadium: One of the original new classics alongside Camden. 1
History/Rootability: Stands to reason. 5
Underdoggedness: Only because they blow this every time. 1
Stars: You met them last fall. 1
Food: Just drink. 0
Bands: Nine Inch Nails and Joe Walsh. 1/2 point for the HoF. 0.5
X-Factor: It’s time. 1
Total: 12.5

Washington Nationals
City: Good town. 2
Fans: Homers drag this one down. 2
Mascot/Logo: Love the presidents. 1
Stadium: Not bad at all. 1
History/Rootability: Les Expos! The curse of the strike of ’81. Jarry Park! 4
Underdoggedness: Marginal. 1
Stars: Like white on Bryce. 1
Food: I lived in DC for 12 years and can’t tell you what DC food is. 0
Bands: Fugazi. emmet swimming?? 0
X-Factor: Un peu. 0.5
Total: 12.5

Chicago Cubs
City: Good but cold. 2.5
Fans: Trending Beantownish? 1
Mascot/Logo: Timeless. 1
Stadium: Same. 1
History/Rootability: Last year a 5. This year… eh. 1.5
Underdoggedness: Solid. 2.5
Stars: You met them last fall. 1
Food: Brats and Old Style. Yes. 1
Bands: Peter Cetera. Smashing Pumpkins. But EWF. Muddy Waters. Wilco. 1
X-Factor: Not this year. 0
Total: 12.5


Los Angeles Dodgers
City: Fun but not my bag. 1
Fans: LA people. Meh. 1
Mascot/Logo: Only missing the BROOKLYN embroidery. 1
Stadium: Chavez Ravine! Good enough. 1
History/Rootability: Debatable. Been since ’88, spent too much $, Boehly. 2
Underdoggedness: Was a -3 earlier in the season. 0
Stars: Yeah, yeah. 1
Food: Dodger Dogs and avocado. 1
Bands: RHCP, GN’R, Doors, etc. Strong. 1
X-Factor: No love here.0
Total: 9

Arizona Diamondbacks
City: Not my climate. 1
Fans: No idea. 1.5
Mascot/Logo: I hate snakes. 0
Stadium: Pool. 0
History/Rootability: They won in 2001 in an all-timer. Other history? 3
Underdoggedness: Significant. 3
Stars: Maybe this postseason will make them brighter. 0
Food: Tex-Mex. Okay. 1
Bands: Stevie Nicks and Meat Puppets. 0
X-Factor: The ghost of Luis Gonzalez (RIA) 1
Total: 10.5


Tribe vs. Nats!  Not bloody likely but there you have it.


**if you use this for betting purposes, you are dumber than Dumb Donald.  Or even Dumb Donald.

Ranking Topps 1980's Baseball Card Sets: #3 - 1984

With the snow finally melting in the Northeast and the Grapefruit and Cactus League action heating up in the Southeast and Southwest US, I thought it would be a good time to dust off the Top 10 1980's Topps Baseball Card Sets Rankings. While plowing through slightly more than 69% of the list last Fall, I shamefully kept you in suspense all winter in the biggest cliffhanger since Dallas. Or Cliffhanger.

So please accept my apologies. With a moment of free time from three miles high on a Delta plane, I would like to get this baby back on the tracks. To recap, here are the rankings to date:

#10 - 1986
#9 - 1988
#8 - 1982
#7 - 1980
#6 - 1985
#5 - 1987
#4 - 1981

The 1984 season brings up some bad memories. Not only did our AL East rival Detroit Tigers run away with the division, their goofy closer Willie Hernandez won the Cy Young and MVP, robbing Don Mattingly, who put up a gaudy .343/23/110 with 44 doubles and 207 hits.

But the Mattingly rookie is not the only bright spot in this year's set. We also get the Dwight Gooden rookie. These two guys lit up New York and the baseball card community for much of the 80's. Almost as much as Gooden lit himself up with coke. The Mattingly card is also notable for referencing his position as 1B-OF and showing a picture of him in the field without his stache. At least the 1980's Yankees got one thing right by using Donnie Baseball at first instead of Steve Balboni.

We'll keep this one short, as my battery indicator suggests I am running out of juice and I am being distracted by picturesque view of Nebraska below. Good to know I paid $12.95 for wi-fi with a laptop that was half-charged. Strong. We hope to push out the remaining two sets in one uber-spectacular smorgasbord of nerdness later this March. Stay gold, readers.

Ranking Topps 1980's Baseball Card Sets: #4 - 1981

1981. What better way to seduce youngsters than to include mini hats on the baseball cards. The hats always reminded me of the overpriced cups of ice cream I used to get in Yankee stadium that were served in little plastic cups shaped like Yankee helmets. I used to eat a ton of those cups of ice cream. To quote a classic 1981 movie, when I was younger, I swallowed a lot of aggression...along with a lot of pizzas.

1981 was an interesting year for baseball and a fun year for the cards. The baseball season was ripped apart by a two-month strike from June 11th to August 9th that cost teams about 55 games from the regular season. The playoffs featured four teams in each league, a move deemed necessary to offset the curtailed regular season. Based on the legitimate enthusiasm generated by the three rounds of playoff action, it is sadly apt that it took the league fourteen years to formally expand the playoffs. Due to the strike, the playoffs were oddly set up that year. The season was broken down into a first half and a second half. The first half leaders from each of the four divisions played the second half leaders from each division. Conveniently for the sport, each division had different leaders in each half. Inconveniently for consistent NL teams, the team with the best overall records in the NL East and West for the entire year (Philadelphia and Cincinnati, respectively) failed to make the postseason because they finished in second place in each half. The takeaway? Strikes suck.

Most of us remember the salient details of the season and playoffs. In the NL, Rick Monday, Fernando Valenzuela and Fernando's weird eyeball trick led the Dodgers over Tim Raines and the coke snorting Expos. In the AL, the Yanks got past Billy Martin's A's. In the World Series, the Dodgers avenged their weak 1978 showing (when they won Games 1 and 2 but lost the Series) by losing Games 1 and 2 and then winning the Series.

So with that backdrop, let's look into the cards. To recap, here are the rankings to date:

#10 - 1986
#9 - 1988
#8 - 1982
#7 - 1980
#6 - 1985
#5 - 1987
#4 - 1981

Back to the mini helmets on the cards. I can't stress how much they rocked when I was a kid. They were a brilliant move by Topps to catch the eyes of bored youngsters at supermarket checkout lines and compel them to nag incessantly to their moms to buy them these cards. Sometimes your mom would buckle. And sometimes she would hit you, call you a loser and say she never loved you. But I digress. 1981 was the inaugural year for the Topps Traded sets, the Fall issuance that featured traded players and promising rookies. The traded set was possibly included to lessen the blow from the abominable decision to stuff three rookies onto one card, a move that premiered this year and hung around for far too long in the 1980's. Fernando got his own card in the traded set, as did Raines, Hubie Brooks, Ron "The Felon" LeFlore, Jeff Reardon and...wait for it...Danny Ainge. They were presented alongside newly relocated veterans like Rollie Fingers, Dave Winfield, Carlton Fisk and Gaylord Perry. And, last, and probably least, Mario Mendoza, who moved from Seattle to Texas in 1981.

As for the rookies, Fernando made the biggest splash in the league that year, albeit a splash that, with the use of hindsight, proved to be more like a fat man's cannonball than a future Hall of Famer's dive into stardom. He was the biggest import from Mexico since Corona. A man with throngs of Mexican American fans, a man whose cultural impact inspired numerous pieces of fine art. Like this. But there were other fine players with rookie cards that year. Like Raines, whose brilliance as the second greatest leadoff hitter of all time was overshadowed by coming to the big leagues at the same time as Rickey Henderson, the greatest leadoff hitter of all time. And Rick Dempsey, Mookie Wilson, Mike Boddicker, Pascual Perez, Tony Pena and Bruce Hurst. But not the tragically named Rusty Kuntz.

On a different note, 1981 was a tremendous year for mustaches and/or bad glasses in the majors. Don't believe me? Check out Rich Gale, Joe Pettini and Mario Mendoza below.

Let's talk about Mr. Mendoza for a minute, seen in his regular 1981 card above. And I don't mean his low batting average, his hair or his resemblance to Harold Ramis with Down's Syndrome. I mean the player who signifies the cultural divide between the old school "purists" and contemporary fans with that tired story. Yes, THAT one. Every year, every city's baseball broadcasting team re-tells the tired old Mendoza line story. It usually happens in mid-May, when one of the local team's star players remains stuck in a season-starting slump. Retired color commentators like Jerry Remy or Ken Singleton will tell the play-by-play man of players in their era checking their batting averages to see how they stacked up against Mendoza. The story usually ended with forced chuckles and a comment that "the shortstop position isn't just for defense any more." It's one of those old fables that people over 50 like to present when they wax poetic about the idyllic glory of our national pastime, when boys were boys, and players were boozing pill-poppers who chased coke and tail, not PEDs.

So you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have a piss-poor 1980's theme song and the 1981 Topps set. Optically fantastic yet tragically flawed by a strike. A great postseason (where three divisional series and one championship series went to a deciding fifth game) after a shortened season that distorted statistics. In a sport that is definitively based on numbers, who wanted Eddie Murray to lead the AL with 22 HRs and 78 RBIs? Not me, that's who. So 1981 gets parked at #4.

Coming down the stretch, we are left with the top three years. In chronological order, they are 1983, 1984 and 1989. Stay tuned next week.

Ranking Topps 1980's Baseball Card Sets: #5 - 1987

Mike Greenwell. Mike Fucking Greenwell. No player is as synonymous with the late 80's baseball card bubble like Mike Greenwell. He is to baseball cards what Global Crossing or Pets.com was to the stock market at the end of the last millennium. All sizzle and no steak. And a fucking Red Sox player to boot. Sure, he had a modestly successful career, and he managed to hoodwink Boston into paying him $21 million from 1990 to 1996. But his 1987 rookie card was among the most overpriced of the decade, topping out at $6. I vividly remember this because I purchased six rookie cards at a bargain basement price of $4.50 each that year. I probably felt just like the same suckers who bought Yahoo! for $100/share in early 2000.The Greenwell story is 1987 in a nutshell. The baseball card market exploded faster than Jose Canseco's biceps. Everybody hopped in and young, foolish collectors like myself started calculating paper gains in their pubescent heads. The crooked pricing catalogs I naively trusted were just leading me down the primrose path.


But we shouldn't let a schlub with a porn stache overshadow what was a pretty entertaining season. In the alleged "juiced ball" year, the upstart Twins, led by a short, fat man, a tall, fat man, an old man who owned the coolest shirt ever (see below), a Johnny Wad impostor and Steve Carlton's corpse, once again made losers of the speedy St. Louis Cardinals in a thrilling seven-game World Series.

(Is this the best shirt ever? Seriously, look at it. And remember that it came a generation before the ironic T-shirts that faux hipsters annoyingly wear all over town these days. The best part is that you can tell by looking at the neck that it's well-worn and beat up. Clearly, this was in the rotation for Bert for quite some time. If this isn't enough to get him into the Hall, I don't know what is.)

And let's not forget those who reaped the rewards of the juiced ball season. Juan Samuel and Wade Boggs each belted over 30 HRs, and the AL home run leaders included neer-do-wells like Mike Pagliarulo, Larry Parrish, Wally Joyner and Matt Nokes. Andre Dawson put up monster stats and George Bell and Jesse Barfield, along with Dawson, propelled the sales of jheri curl in Chicago and Canada.

To recap, here are the rankings to date:

#10 - 1986
#9 - 1988
#8 - 1982
#7 - 1980
#6 - 1985

The cards themselves were pretty cool in 1987. The faux wood design looked as cool on the cards as they did on my dad's 1986 maroon Dodge Caravan. The color schemes matched the team uniforms, the logo was cool and there was nothing else to get in the way. Simple stuff. We had a strange crop of rookies this year. Topps was kind of enough to designate the top rookies with a gold chalice, so we knew we were supposed to be excited when we got one of those cards (Danny Tartabull! Sweet!). They made things more confusing by also including a set of "Future Stars" players, and they nailed those players (looking at you, Dave Magadan). Unfortunately, there were manager cards in this set. And manager cards suck.

Surprisingly, this set, which many have called iconic for being the set that lured them into collecting, barely cracks the top half of our ranking for the decade. But too much sizzle and too few quality rookies doom the set. Stay tuned for the top 4 sets, coming at you (hopefully) before the end of the World Series. This year's World Series. Honest. In chronological order, the years left are 1981, 1983, 1984 and 1989. Thrilling stuff, I know.

P.S - Bonus card inclusion to remind Mets fans what a shit-show their franchise has been the last couple years. Sorry I couldn't find a picture of him shirtless, taunting 19 year-old Dominicans.

Ranking Topps 1980's Baseball Card Sets: #6 - 1985

Let's celebrate the 25th anniversary of the 1985 season, an exciting one for several reasons. New York fans were able to enjoy a pair of young players cementing their status as superstars. Dwight Gooden won the Cy Young and put up the most dominating pitching season I ever saw (24-4, 1.53 ERA, 268 Ks). And Don Mattingly locked down the AL MVP with a ridiculous .324/35/145 season (an award he should have won three years in a row - look at his 1984-86 stats here and try to make the case for Willie Hernandez in '84 and Clemens in '86. I dare you.). Fans across the country were able to enjoy Whitey Herzog's St. Louis Cardinals, who had an incredibly exciting team. As a Yankee fan in New Jersey, I thoroughly enjoyed watching them play against the Mets on the black and white TV I got from my folks that year (Note to self: add "black and white TVs" to the list of things I'll explain to my kids that will make them look at me like I grew up a million years ago.). The Cardinals team was just awesome - Vince Coleman stole 110 bases, four others stole over 30, only one player hit over 13 HRs and Tommy Herr had one of my favorite stat lines from the whole decade, with 8 HRs and 110 RBIs. And don't forget Willie McGee. And his face. The Cards lost a tough World Series to the underdog Royals that year, who had a Brett (George) and a Bret (Saberhagen) leading them.

I'm gonna dwell on the season a bit more, because it was really a tough one for New York baseball fans. The Mets got to celebrate Gooden's monster year and see Strawberry continue to develop, but they failed to keep pace with the mighty Cardinals in a brutal NL East race. The Mets won 98 games that year, 3rd best in all of baseball, but failed to make the post-season. Brutal juice for Mets fans. And things weren't much better in the Bronx. A solid Yankee team, on the back of Ron Guidry's second-best season ever, won 97 games and almost edged out the Blue Jays for the division title. I vividly remember this race for two reasons. First, the Yankees ended the season with a three-game series against the Blue Jays in Toronto. They were two games down heading in and needed a sweep to win the series. They won the first game, but lost the second to end their season. Also, this series would decide the AL batting champ, as Mattingly and everybody's favorite alleged VD-carrying right-fielder, Dave Winfield, went down to the wire. Mattingly ended up winning, possibly due to racist Yankee fans who turned on Winfield and threw out racist comments to him while rooting for Mattingly. You stay classy, Bronx. My Yankees narrowly missed the post-season, my favorite Yankee narrowly missed the batting title and the team's best pitcher narrowly missed the Cy Young, as Bret Saberhagen edged out Guidry. Bad times all the way around.

Back to the cards. To recap, here are the rankings to date:

#10 - 1986
#9 - 1988
#8 - 1982
#7 - 1980
#6 - 1985

Pros & Cons
I know you are all asking yourselves - why are the pros and cons together!? They've always been separate!? Well, sports fans, the items that make this year's set so intriguing are what make them so tragic. I'll just list some rookies and you can wince on your own: Roger Clemens, Eric Davis and Kirby Puckett. Orel Hershiser was also in this set. But he was so damn boring and inconsistent, that we'll ignore him. I'm not sure why he couldn't pull it together over his career. Maybe he had a Garvey-esque dark side. And, last but not least, Mark McGwire, the biggest rookie card of them all, appeared that year. He showed up courtesy of his presence on the 1984 Olympic Baseball Team. An interesting brain fart by Topps that year was to only include the 16 US Olympians who had been drafted in that year's card set. Players who made the cut with McGwire included luminaries such as Cory Snyder, Odibie McDowell, John Marzano and Scott Bankhead. Omitted from the set were Randy Johnson, Will Clark, BJ Surhoff and Bobby Witt. Inconvenience for you, I'm sorry. Wrong set of Olympians altogether. (first to source this borrowed movie quote gets a french kiss from our bashful The Teej)

But back to the rookies. We had the B-12 Rocket, Captain Andro and little Kirby Puckett, who was so well loved that he undeservedly made the Hall of Fame even though he was a tremendous dirtbag. If you're too lazy to click through on the Puckett story, read these quotes from Frank Deford's riveting article several years ago: "Over the years, (his) ex-wife told SI, Puckett had also tried to strangle her with an electrical cord, locked her in the basement and used a power saw to cut through a door after she had locked herself in a room. Once, she said, he even put a cocked gun to her head while she was holding their young daughter. Puckett’s upcoming trial stems from charges that he pulled a woman into the men’s room of a restaurant in Eden Prairie, Minn., on Sept. 5, 2002, and fondled her."

But even the late Mr. Puckett is not the most tragic figure in this rambling post. The most tragic figure is Eric Davis. Of all the promising rookies to start their baseball careers in the 80's, I'm not sure if there was one who made fans salivate with anticipation about a player's potential more than Eric Davis (Pedro Guerrero may have made some female fans salivate, but that is a story unfit for this family blog). A Gold Glove defender with prodigious power and blazing speed, he was touted as a legitimate 50-50 Club candidate. In 1986, he hit 27 HRs and stole 80 bases in 132 games. The next year, he hit 37 HRs and stole 50 bases in only 129 games. Sadly, injuries decimated his career. And, most tragically, they decimated the worth of his 1985 rookie card, which I owned.

Unfortunately, the degenerate and ill-fated rookies and the mistakes involving the Olympians overshadowed most of the good things about this set, namely the great season and some good looking cards. Topps finally realized that the colors in the cards should pertain to the team's colors. Although the colors wasn't perfect, they were better. But sometimes good colors, or 98 wins, just ain't enough.

Ranking Topps 1980's Baseball Card Sets: #7 - 1980

Gotta admit that I remember almost nothing about the 1980 baseball season. I remember owning an SI with Reggie Jackson on the cover, but that was about it. Not surprising, since I was only five years old at the time. However, several of the elder statesmen among the editorial staff were married by this time and threw in their thoughts on this year, which helped me decide that 7th place was fitting. All in all, the year wasn't terribly memorable for non-Phillies fans, save for tremendous years by Mike Schmidt and the .400 average-chasing George Brett.

In that year's World Series, the power of the Schmidtstache pushed Philly over the top. That team was pretty stacked, with Rose, Bowa, Carlton, Maddox, McGraw, etc., although it never developed into a dynasty in the mold of the A's, Reds and Yankees squads that dominated the 1970's.

To recap, here are the rankings released to date:

#10 - 1986
#9 - 1988
#8 - 1982
#7 - 1980

Pros
Rickey Rickey Rickey. The rookie card of the greatest base stealer of all-time is the year's crown jewel. I remember getting this card as a gift in 1986, when it was worth $20. I think its value ballooned to $200 at one point, only to come back down to $20. It appears to be hovering a bit south of $69 at the moment. Check here if you don't believe me. Another plus was that this set was only 726 cards. The expansion to 792 didn't happen until1982. So we didn't have All-Star cards. Like we need a Rick Honeycutt card AND a separate Rick Honeycutt all-star card. Sometimes less is more. Unless we're talking about cup sizes. Unfortunately, having less cards in a set meant deluding young saps like myself into thinking they could compile an entire set by buying packs. I always wanted to do this and never came close. I would end up with mangled cards in half-ass stacks all over my bedroom, and then give up.

A cool design feature of the cards was the waving pennants format that showed the position and team of a player, although the colors were often garishly juxtaposed with the team's uniform colors. Or with Pete Rose's hair.


Cons
Again, we have the three-player rookie cards. It's always funny when the three players turn out to be nobodies. Overall, 1980 featured a general dearth of quality rookies.

And we still had to deal with those stinking checklists. I hated checklists like the Hanson Brothers hated root beer. And despite the lack of All-Star cards (mostly a good thing), the cards put a boring black band across the top of the picture on the card to show the player was an All-Star. It looks like a tribute to somebody who died the year before. And no, I don't think the Munson family saw it as a heartfelt gesture by Topps.

We're now 40% of the way done with the list. Stay tuned for the top six years, which will be coming back at you after Labor Day.

Ranking Topps 1980's Baseball Card Sets: #8 - 1982

I'm not gonna lie. 1982 was a fantastic baseball season. There were lots of up and coming stars like Valenzuela, Raines and Henderson, several Hall of Famers at/near their peak (Brett, Schmidt, Ryan, Ozzie, Murray and Carew) and several Hall of Famers winding down their careers (Carlton, Bench, Yaz, Seaver). Just a lot of fun all the way around after a bitter 1981 season.

The Braves started the season with a 13-game win streak and were 40-4 through 44 games. I vividly remember this run because I spent 10 days in Florida in April, where I got turned onto the wonders of TBS on cable TV. God bless Ted Turner for letting me watch the Atlanta Braves from Delray Beach, FL. Other memories of that trip include watching a big screen TV for the first time (bad-ass), playing Intellivision for the first time on that big screen (very bad-ass) and playing Intellivision baseball on that big screen (very bad-ass until I got thrown out by a left-fielder at first base when I thought I hit a single; not bad-ass at all). And Rickey Henderson was as exciting as a baseball player got for a 7 year old like me. I remember watching sports programs that would cut away to A's games to show Rickey when he got on base, because you KNEW he was going to run. He ended up stealing 130 that year (and was caught 42 times). I don't see that being surpassed any time soon. I think the talking heads at ESPN would get an aneurysm with the Moneyball-esque debates about a player trying to steal 172 times in a year.

These memories are some of the best I have of baseball as a kid. But I have to say that they pale in comparison to the undying heterosexual affection I had for the 1982 Brewers. I have no idea what it was about this team, but I loved the hell out of them. And they came closer to the World Series than most people remember. They were up 3-1 in the sixth inning of Game 7 of the World Series against the Cardinals before blowing the lead. I remember the epic seasons that Yount, Gorman Thomas and Cecil Cooper had. I don't think I can ever forget the names - Vuckovich, Cecil, Gorman, Ogilvie. The team had 4 players with at least 29 HRs and 102 RBIs. Not too shabby in that era.So with this great build-up, let's recap the rankings to date and examine why 1982 didn't make it higher than #8 on our list.

#10 - 1986
#9 - 1988
#8 - 1982

Pros

We've talked about what a great regular- and post-season it was. And the cards themselves had some (but not many) redeeming features. Most importantly, the cards featured an onslaught of porntastic mustaches. Like this one:


And this one:

We also got a slew of good-but-not-great rookies this year. Guys you fondly remember watching for 10-15 years. Names such as Kent Hrbek, Chili Davis, Dave Stewart, Lee Smith, Brett Butler, Steve Sax and Jesse Barfield. We also had a Danny Ainge card (he had 665 MLB at-bats over three years with the Blue Jays). But the big gun in this year's rookie set was the Bonner/Ripken/Schneider rookie. Yes, you read that right. Which is a good reason to segue into the cons for this year.


Cons

Topps made a tactical error over a few years with its "Future Stars" series designed to put three rookies on the same card. And we see with the Ripken card how goofy it is in retrospect. Cal Ripken is flanked by Bob Bonner and Jeff Schneider. Who wants to see their mugs on a Ripken rookie? Not me, that's who. Topps addressed the issue by giving Ripken his own card in the 1982 Topps Traded Set, but it ain't the same.

And while we're nitpicking, let's ask ourselves why Topps chose such a cheesy logo for the cards that year. It looks like a pair of hockey sticks. And the colors often had nothing to do with the color of the team's uniform. Maybe I'm overly concerned with aesthetics when looking at the Bonner/Ripken/Schneider card, but having green, blue purple and light blue surrounding the black and orange uniforms of the Orioles rookies is a mess. We also take points away for including the dreaded checklist in the traded series. It is a weak way to pad the set to get to 132 cards.