I had so much fun listing the best Stadium Club Red Sox cards,
I decided to do it again with another set. Well, two sets actually.
Topps Big League has had some great cards, but it's only been around
since 2018. Prior to that, Topps filled the void of "cards geared to
kids" with a two year run of Bunt, which is still used as the name of
their online app. Even though this year's Big League set hasn't come out
yet (I think the release date is set for the 25th), I'm just going to
go ahead list the best Red Sox card for each year of Topps Bunt/Big
League sets!
Once I get a chance to peruse this year's set, maybe I'll amend this post and add a card. Hopefully, there will be a few gems!
2016
Topps
Bunt had a strong opening act with this simple design featuring a huge
team logo. Ted Williams in black and white provides a great color
contrast.
Honorable Mention: David Ortiz
2017
Bunt
got a lot more colorful the next year, and I personally like the use of
red on the Boston cards. I gave the nod to Hanley because it's got
action and I swear on first glance I thought his dreads were braided
like a little school girl's hair...
Honorable Mention: Andrew Benintendi
2018
So
long Bunt, hello Big League! This set came out to near overwhelming
acclaim, I beleive because Topps had denied us borders for so long that
we got excited to see them again. This set had a lot of fun subsets,
including these delightful Ballpark Landmarks. The Green Monster gets
its due!
Honorable Mention: Mookie Betts
2019
When I did my list of Greatest Red Sox Cards of 2019, Holt took the Bronze. In that post I wrote the following: "The quality of the photos has improved so much that you can see the
details in each droplet. The Brock-Star's smile, along with that tensed
up pose of someone who has just been exposed to something wet and cold,
really brings this card to life!"
Honorable Mention: JD Martinez/Hank Aaron
2020
Of
the top of my head, I can't recall many "close play at first" action
shots on cards. This photo was taken at a beautiful moment when both
players are racing to the bag, and you really can't tell what the call
was.
Honorable Mention: Michael Chavis
* Did you get a sense of deja vu when reading this? If you did, I thank you, because you were one of only 18 views this post got when I originally posted it 2 weeks ago! Two weeks ago was when the big news regarding Fanatics outbidding Topps for the MLB license first hit. This post here was the intended scheduled post for the day, but I wanted to write a post about the "big news" while it was still big news. (As opposed to my usual "talk about the latest set three weeks after it released and everyone else has posted about it and moved on" tendencies). So I whipped up a quick little article and posted it a mere 4 hours after this one went live. Turns out that doing so was a death knell for this article - 18 views, no comments. By contrast the other article had well above average views and comments. I decided to a little experiment and repost this one again, just to see if it would get the normal amount of views. I'm also curious to see if the original post suddenly gets a boost in views, or if just turns out my post wasn't worth the views to begin with. I hope you don't mind..
I know I missed it. Usually I just read the newest post on a blog, not expecting another underneath I hadn't seen.
ReplyDeleteHooray, I was one of the 18? I hit the Ramirez card and thought I've read this already.
ReplyDeleteI think the 2017 Bunt is my favorite set of these (though I never bought any packs/boxes) That said, the Green Monster card is my favorite here.
ReplyDeleteI'm probably not helpful to your pave view test, as I was on a blogging break when you originally posted this.
The 2018 Big League Ballpark Landmarks card of the Green Monster is really cool. I missed this post the first time around... but I've been struggling to keep up with reading everyone's blog posts.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure I missed the original post. I don't think anyone is made to catch 2 blog posts in one day. It's not 2009 anymore.
ReplyDeleteBig League is so much better than Bunt, so glad Topps made the switch. But now they have to stop delaying 2021 Big League already and release it before it's 2022.
I did a little detective work on the Benintendi. I think this is the game on August 14, 2019. In the second inning he hit a single to 1B off Shane Bieber according to Baseball-Reference.com. The previous day he grounded out 1B to P against Mike Clevinger. I think this pitcher looks more like Bieber, and I think the shadows in the stands make it more likely this was the day game on the 14th and not the night game on the 13th.
ReplyDelete