Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1646: Farewell to 44

Episode Date: January 23, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley reflect on the on-field feats, statistical records, and larger legacy of baseball icon Henry Louis “Hank” Aaron, who died on Friday at age 86. Then (25:47) they talk to Joe Lowry of Prospects Live about the ongoing boom in baseball cards, touching on why 2020 fueled a surge in sports-card […]

As a boy in Mobile, I'd go down the Three Mile Creek Spend my time alone, all day to fish and think And when I took the field, it wasn't to make friends With a bat in my hands, me alone against them And I already knew, I could be the best of all Hello and welcome to episode 1646 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello.

So, sad news on Friday. We've been saying that far too often lately, but in this case, it is particularly true. Hank Aaron, Henry Aaron, as he preferred to be called, died at age 86 and really came as a shock even after the string of losses of Hall of Famers. Nine previous Hall of Famers who had passed away since last April, and we've touched on all or most of them, and they were all great losses to the game. But Henry Aaron is kind of in a class by himself among those greats, even just a great among the greats, just one of those names that it's really hard to imagine baseball being without like yeah you know on some level that one day there will be no henry aaron there will be no willie mays but until it actually happens it's just hard to imagine because it's just such a pillar of the sport just sort of tied up so inextricably with it and when you learn about the game it's just one of the first people you learn about him and his accomplishments. And so to have that taken away, it is just a sad day for him to be gone. Although as always, it's nice that his life and legacy have prompted such an outpouring of appreciation.

Yeah. And I think we'll next week, we'll try to have some guests on to help us do justice to his playing career and his life and his legacy and all the nuance and complexity to that. But there are very few baseball reference pages that are as starkly populated with black ink as Hank Aaron's. There are so few that just stand out in terms of their obvious magnificence. stand out in terms of their obvious magnificence. And so I think what we thought we would do today is just spend a little bit of time on some of his statistical achievements because, yeah, I think that, you know, for any kind of baseball fan, for a fan who comes to it with a historical appreciation for the game, who enjoys the play on the field, who enjoys the stats, he was just, he had something to offer to everyone because his play and his legacy was so spectacular so i don't know ben do you have a favorite henry aaron stat there are so many it's hard to pick one it's hard to pick just one um yeah my colleague zach cram

at the ringer just did a list of aaron fun facts just 44 fun facts long for his number and i'm sure that he could have kept going because he has one of those careers, kind of a Bonzian career where you could slice and dice the numbers. And it's just mind boggling, really. And the numbers are just part of the life. But the numbers alone are so incredible. I mean, we like advanced stats around here, and maybe we'll mention some. But Aaron has the kind of career where you hardly need them. The back of the baseball card stats and the career counting stats tell the tale.

He's at or close to the top of basically every important offensive leaderboard. Second most homers, third most hits, third most plate appearances, most runs batted in, most total bases, most extra base hits. There are more than 700 total bases between Aaron and Stan Musial at number two. That's bigger than the gap between Musial and Carl Yastrzemski, who's in 10th place. He hit more often and he hit better than almost anyone else in history. And he did what he did largely in a pitcher's era and partly in a pitcher's park. So if you look at his neutralized stats and you put them in the context of 2019 in an average park, his 755 home runs turn into 824. And by the way, if you do the same thing to Barry Bonds' 762, they turn into 802. So Aaron is kind

of the context neutral home run king. I think what stood out to me is that it's really hard to tell what his prime was. Usually you could just eyeball a player's baseball reference page, like Don Sutton, whom I was talking about and looking up the other day. When he passed away, he had a great career. Like Aaron, he played forever. He was good for a long time, Hall of Famer. But when you look at Don Sutton's page, not just the black ink but the the blue ink the hyperlinked text on the side where baseball reference tells you you know awards voting and all-star appearances and that sort of thing with Sutton it's all clustered within a six season span essentially the only times that he was getting Cy Young votes or making all-star

teams and so you can say oh well that was, that was his prime. That was the peak. And with Aaron, you just can't do that because there's blue ink for his entire career. I mean, there's no point at which he was not making all-star teams or getting MVP votes. It was just constant. It was 21 all-Star selections, I guess, 25 games because there were years with multiple games. But other than his rookie year when he was 20 or the very end of his career when he was 42, those were the only times he was not an All-Star. It's just incredible. It's unbelievable that he was able to stay at such a high level for so long. Yeah. And I think that obviously much has been made of him breaking Babe Ruth's home run record, both as a baseball achievement and then the social context in which that occurred and the threats he endured and just the fear that followed him all along that chase. But I think that one of the things about him and home runs that is the most striking is just how consistent he is. He did not have, sort of infamously, he did not have a 50 home run season, but he had

eight 40 home run seasons. And he had 15 seasons in which he hit 30 or more home runs, which I think is still tied for the most ever. So it's just, I think that we often make this distinction, mental distinction when we look at players' careers between sort of excellence and consistency and the players who are truly able to marry those things over the course of their careers are very, very rare. And I don't know that anyone sort of lived up to that marriage of talent more than he did just because it is so it is just he played for

such a long time he played for such a long time at such a high level that you know you are sometimes surprised by the things that he didn't manage to do like hit 50 in a season but then you realize that there's just there's no shame in that look at all the other stuff right i know yeah right the the 50 homer fun fact you hear that all the time and it is impressive that he didn't hit 50 in any single season and still got to 755 yeah but a yes it is a compliment because it says something about his consistency and the fact that he was so good for so long but it also places the emphasis on something that he didn't do and maybe if someone were also places the emphasis on something that he didn't do. And maybe if someone were to hear that, they would think that he didn't have truly spectacular

single seasons or that he was some kind of compiler, like he was very good for a long time, but not the greatest in any one year. But of course he was, he was elite. Even if he didn't have 50 homers, he did everything else really well. So he had speed. I mean, people remember him maybe as an older player because he played for so long and a lot of the highlights of him breaking records come when he was an older guy and had slowed down. But when he was younger, he had speed. He was a great base runner, a good base stealer at times. He was a great fielder. He won three gold gloves in a row and probably would have won more if not for Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente. He remained a really excellent fielder he even played some second base and third base, and he actually started out as an infielder. He was the MVP of the Sally League in 1953 as a second baseman.

On his rookie card as a big leaguer, he's fielding a grounder at second base, and based on his performance at second in his brief big league time there, it seems like he could have been a good big league second baseman. So imagine if the guy who broke Babe Ruth's all-time home run record had been a middle infielder. It could have happened. But he moved to the outfield because Milwaukee's left fielder, Bobby Thompson, broke his ankle in spring training. And Aaron could play outfield too. He could do it all.

And he wasn't just a home run hitter. He hit for average. He won a couple batting titles. He took walks. He ended up with more walks than strikeouts in his career, which when you think about the fact that he broke the all-time home run record and was still a guy who was walking more often than he was striking out, boy, it is just really an incredible career. And the fact that he had no off years, really, I mean, relative to his standard, he did, I suppose. But he never

really missed a year. I mean, he never had an injury that cost him most of a season. And so he was able to put up these incredible numbers and just on a rate basis was incredible too. If you look at his WRC Plus in his 20s, it was 155, which is amazing. In his 30s, it was 160. So he had a Hall of Fame career in his 20s, and then another Hall of Fame career after that was an even better hitter after that, if not the all-around player that he had been early in his career. So there are only so many ways you can say how amazing and unbelievable it was, but it's just a career like no other, really. And he was overshadowed somewhat during his career as a celebrity by

Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays. His New York Times obit says Aaron did not enjoy the idolatry accorded the Yankees' Mickey Mantle or match the exuberance and electric presence of the Giants' Willie Mays. His outfield contemporaries and rivals for acclimation as the greatest ballplayer in Major League history. And Aaron acknowledged that. He said if they had a choice of who they wanted to break Babe Ruth's record, it would have been Mickey Mantle first. Mickey was like Marilyn Monroe.

He didn't have to be the greatest ballplayer. He had that charisma. The Yankees had all those penance. And about Mays, he said, it's just not my way to be flashy or flamboyant the way, say, Willie is. I have my own even rhythm, and I guess it just doesn't attract the kind of attention that a more colorful style does. And it's true that Maze and Mantle had better individual seasons than Aaron did, but Mantle

had injuries and didn't take care of himself like Aaron, and Aaron is really right there with Willy and with Bonds as the best post-integration players. Yeah, I was reading Zach's piece in preparation for this and also just to be able to appreciate Aaron's legacy even more. And he hit 362, 431, 647 against Sandy Koufax. Right. What in the world? Yeah.

He hit 342, 39530 against steve carlton he had more home runs off bob gibson than anyone than any other right hander yeah like it's just yeah you can do this for for barry bonds like the fact that sam has sometimes cited about like Barry Bonds against Cy Young winners, and he hit incredibly well against them. But when you're talking about Bonds, it does come with a caveat. It comes with a you know why, right? At least when you're talking about the entirety of his career or the latter part of his career. Right. Whereas with Aaron, there's just nothing to taint it at all.

So it's just nothing detracts from the numbers. They are what they are. Yeah, I think that you'd be hard pressed to find a place in his statistical record where you had anything that you could say that was all that negative. So it's a pretty spectacular thing. And it's funny to have this feeling about a player who I was never lucky enough to get to see play, but I just have a really hard time imagining the baseball world without him.

I think that there are a lot of all-time greats who I wish I could go back in time and buy a ticket and sit in the ballpark, but he has to be at the very top, if not the top of the leaderboard when it comes to that. We'll just never be able to really say enough positive things about his playing career. And that's before we even consider the legacy he left both for future generations of players and off the field. So we'll have much more about Henry Aaron in the week to come. But it is a really sad day for baseball. I wish that we had

fewer of these. You knew he wasn't going to live forever, but I don't know. It was just a couple weeks ago that we saw pictures of him getting his COVID vaccine, and it was clear that he understood the importance of encouraging people to both take the pandemic seriously and to get vaccinated if they have the opportunity. So it's very much a presence in the baseball world and in American culture more generally still. And we're worse off for him not being here anymore. So I'm bummed. It's a bad day. Yeah.

Neil Payne wrote about his consistency at 538 and he put it in terms of war. And I think he was using a blended fan crafts and baseball reference war but it's not too different if you look at either or he had 19 consecutive seasons of four or more war and that's an all-star season essentially and he did that 19 years in a row so no wonder he was an all-star every year no one else has ever done it for that many years in a row. He had 17 consecutive five-plus-war seasons. Again, no one else has ever done that. He had 15 consecutive six-plus-war seasons.

No one else has ever done that. So, I mean, six-plus-war season, that can be an MVP year. Certain years, it certainly makes you an MVP contender. And he did it year in and year out. That's how you get MVP votes in 19 consecutive seasons. That's long enough for the game to change completely, for a whole new generation of players to come in. And even so, he was still one of the best. And it's interesting if you look at the shape of his career and the way that he produced

that value. And this was something that Matt Trueblood wrote about at Baseball Prospectus last year, drawing on Howard Bryant's great biography of Aaron, the last hero. Early in his career, that was when Aaron won a couple of batting titles and he had these springy whip-like wrists that you always hear about and was strong and could just hit for average and hit line drives. And he always hit for average to a certain extent. It's not like he became Adam Dunn or anything. He was hitting 300 at age 39, but he was a really high average hitter earlier in his career. That's why people say you take away all of his homers and he's still in the 3000 hits club, which is impressive when you consider how many home runs he hit. But he sort of changed to an extent like midway through his career and became even more of a

home run hitter after that and probably a better hitter overall, as I mentioned. And it seems to have had multiple causes. One was that the Braves moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta. He's playing suddenly in Fulton County Stadium, which was more of a home run park, especially after 69. I think they changed some dimensions or fences and it was known as the launching pad. And so that helped him in his pursuit of the home run record and turned him into more of a home run hitter. But also it was apparently a conscious thing. And Aaron had noticed that the home run race between Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle in 61, that got a ton of attention and that may have made him more homer conscious and more of an intentional home run hitter and had sort of a home run

oriented stroke and started pulling the ball more and hitting it out in front of the plate more. After Aaron was on the home run derby TV show, he said they never had a show called singles derby. And that's interesting, I think, because that's something you hear about Bonds too, how he was motivated by the home run race between McGuire and Sosa. And those guys got all the attention. And suddenly he was like, hey, I'm Barry Bonds. Pay attention to me. What he did, of course, was start taking stuff that could help him hit more homers. What Aaron did was just change his mechanics and his swing.

Again, no dark side to that, but that seemed to make him an even better hitter with an approach that was possibly better suited to his skills later in his career and maybe catapulted him into the pursuit of the record, which he would have been an all-time great player and hitter regardless. But if he had not made that change, if the ballpark had not changed, it might not be part of his legacy. I don't know. It's an interesting kind of alternate history and he considered retiring when he still had a lot left he hit his 500th homer in the 68 season and then he turned 35 before the following season and he was starting to feel his age a little bit and he said he started considering retirement but there was a baseball writer named lee allen who interviewed him and talked to him about all the milestones that he could achieve. And Aaron said later,

To somebody like me, having come along in a period when black players were only beginning to assume their rightful place in baseball, the chance to make history sounded like something worth pursuing with all of my resources. And so he stuck it out, even though the home run chase was hell for him. And he finished the 73 season sitting on 713 so he had the whole winter to dread the resumption of that chase but it took a while for him to be seen as someone who could be the home run king because before he made that change Mays was seen as the more likely candidate to break Ruth's record and Aaron was seen as a threat to break Ty Cobb's career hits mark so he was almost like two different kinds of incredible all-time hitters.

Two different kinds of Hall of Famers. Yep. Oh, man. Yeah. I mean, we could go on. And as you said, we will want to talk to someone who can give us more insights into his life. But we were talking earlier this week about how hard it is to know from afar or even up close what someone is really like and how you see all these testimonials about how so-and-so is such a great guy or better person than a ball player. And sometimes it's true. Sometimes there's something unsavory under the

surface. And with Aaron, I think you can be as confident as you can with anyone that he was a great person, not just the things he said, but the things he did. He was just the best ambassador for baseball and any group he was a part of. It is telling, I think, that even after all of the rave reviews that we just gave his playing career, that's part of his legacy with anyone else who had those stats. What could possibly eclipse that or equal that? But you see it in his obituaries. It's almost like there's too much to cram into that first sentence.

The first sentence of the obituary is supposed to sum up the person's entire life. And with him, they're like some borderline run-on sentences because it's just like, how do you fit all of this in there? The Washington Post's opening sentence is, Hank you fit all of this in there? Like the Washington Post opening sentence is, Hank Aaron, one of the greatest players in baseball history, who smashed Babe Ruth's all-time home run record in defiance of threats to his life, and who used his Hall of Fame baseball career

as a platform to champion civil rights, died January 22nd at 86. It's like you have to get all of that in there. You can't just say he's the guy who broke the all-time home run record. That would stand alone for just about anyone else. But I can't think of anyone among great athletes, 20th century athletes, whose accomplishments are as great as his, and yet they always go hand in hand or are equipped by his off-the-field accomplishments, who he was as a person, the example he set as sort of a civil rights icon. I guess Muhammad

Ali would be maybe the best comp, and Ali said of Aaron, the only man I idolize more than myself. So that's a pretty good compliment too. Yeah, we would never want to divorce him from the context in which he lived and the time in which he lived. And I think that the obits that we've seen pay tribute to that. I think the best ones are keen to not confuse his endurance with sort of a perseverance through circumstance that has to be applauded on its own. He didn't really have much of a choice and managed it anyhow. And I think that there's a really important conversation to have about that. You know, the first line of Howard Bryant's obit, I think, is a striking one.

Henry Aaron, who rose from the depths of Southern poverty to become one of the towering figures in baseball history, as well as a bittersweet symbol of both American racial intolerance and triumph has died. He was 86. So he can't be wrenched from his time, nor should we want to, but it was a very full life. And I think one that we're all sad to have seen ended, even if 86 is a ripe old age. Yeah. In The Last Hero, Bryant wrote, Henry had never considered himself as important a historical figure as Jackie Robinson, and yet by twice integrating the South, first in the Sally League and later as the first Black star on the first major league team in the South during

the apex of the civil rights movement, no less. His road in many ways was no less lonely and in other ways far more difficult. in many ways was no less lonely and in other ways far more difficult. And that was obviously a part of his entire life and career growing up in the South during segregation, playing in the South as a black player when he did and starting as a professional player in the Negro Leagues. And it's sometimes said that he was the last Negro Leagues player to break into the majors, which is not the case. There were others after him, but he was the last former Negro Leagues player to still be playing in the major leagues because he lasted for so incredibly long that he outlasted everyone else. So yeah, that's something that we'd like to get into more next week. But I think that there's sort of an image of him as this very gracious, stoic person who is just bearing up under all of this hatred.

And he did have that quiet dignity and reserve and gentlemanliness and kindness. But he was very outspoken and very frank at times, too. Some of the quotes you read from him, it's not as if he was just suffering through this in silence. He was not at all reluctant to speak out. He did not mince words when it came to calling out racism and the prejudice he faced. So I don't know if it's just that everyone remembers the image of him

rounding the bases when he hit 715 and he's been facing death threats and then suddenly fans are storming the field you know white fans accompanying him around the bases and they were doing it out of celebration and you know slapping him on the back but he didn't necessarily know that that was the case given the ugliness and all the letters that had been sent to him and so he just rounded the bases. He didn't deck them or anything. And so maybe that is why people think of him as just this figure who was just kind of plodding forward bravely, but stoically under the weight of all of this. But he was very active and outspoken as someone in that realm also. And also just like as a charitable figure, as a philanthropist,

wasn't given an opportunity to manage, was snubbed in that respect, like a lot of his contemporaries, but became a trailblazing executive as a black man in baseball. Just kind of an icon in every possible respect. In his Hall of Fame speech, he said, it was always this player and that player

and then Henry Aaron, but now I think I'm appreciated. I never wanted them to forget Babe Ruth. I just wanted them to remember Henry Aaron, and I think it's safe to say that they will. Yeah. All right. So we will talk more about Aaron next week. For now, we have an interview that we had been planning about baseball cards. Baseball cards are back somewhat to my surprise. Baseball cards are more popular than ever. There is another baseball card boom going on that has been prompted in part by the pandemic, but really had begun already. And we wanted to get into

why this is happening and how the hobby of baseball card collecting is different from how it was back in the 80s or 90s. So to do that, we are going to talk to Joe Lowry, who covers baseball cards for Prospects Live, and we'll be back in just a moment with him. Train team now rested in peace. A play-by-play on top of these beats. I take a ride to that ballpark in the sky. A field of dreams can't forget Charlotte Pride. So I'm going way back in my mind till I'm gone, gone, gone. It's so hard to see my baseball cards move on. It's so hard to see my baseball cards move on. Well, a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card sold for a record $5.2 million earlier this month.

That's the most spent on any single baseball card yet. But that is just one sign, one symptom, perhaps, of a larger surge that is happening in the card collecting world. Not just baseball cards, but this is a baseball podcast, so that's what we'll be focusing on mostly today. And because it has been a while since we have collected cards actively, we are bringing on someone who is very much plugged into this world and can tell us about all of the latest trends and why 2020 was such a big year for the popularity of baseball cards. And his name is Joe Lowry. He covers baseball cards for ProspectsLive.com. Joe, welcome.

Hey, thanks for having me. So what is your origin story as a card collector and card expert? Is this something that you got into as a kid and have been doing continuously ever since? Or did you go away for a while and come back? What got you into it? Or did you go away for a while and come back? What got you into it? What keeps you into it? Yeah, you know, it's a pretty standard story that you hear nowadays, which is I was a kid during the 80s. And so I was collecting in what we call the junk wax era, where I don't think the card manufacturers ever stopped the printing presses for all I know

they're still printing 1990 tops baseball cards right now so you know I kind of you know got towards my teen years and my attentions drifted in many different directions you know girls school sports and all that stuff. That along with just the sports card world kind of imploding on itself in the early 90s, I kind of walked away. Not until roughly the 2017 timeframe, which saw a huge surge of interest in the card, baseball card industry specifically, did it really drag me back in. And that was kind of happening because of Aaron Judge.

And that was Aaron Judge, it was his rookie card year. And so the interest and the influx of money and just the, you supersized personality of Aaron Judge it just really brought a lot of people back in and it roped me in as well and so I've kind of been back in to getting my feet wet and learning about the card industry as it stands today since about 2017. And just my nature, I really kind of had a laser focus on learning all the stuff that I could learn about it and go into all the resources and really digging in. And over the last year or so, I've just gotten the opportunity to kind of spread that knowledge and kind of pay it forward towards what the collectors who were helping me along when I got back into it a few years ago. You got into it a couple of years ago, and you said that it was

picking up last year. And I imagine, as you've written, that COVID disrupted the card collecting market, just like it disrupted everything else. So what are some of the trends that have emerged over the last year as people have responded to COVID? I know that I've had friends in my sort of extended circle who have dusted off old boxes full of cards as they've run out of things to watch on Netflix. So what is the market as it currently stands? Is there a lot of demand? Is there a lot of supply? Where are we in terms of card collecting? Yeah, it's 2020 and it keeps going into 21 is like nothing we've ever seen in the hobby. As you were saying, folks were dusting off their old collections as they're kind of quarantined at home and saying, oh, I wonder if these cards

are worth any money. And then they start looking up on the major marketplaces, mostly eBay and go, wow, this is worth a lot of money. And I wonder what other things are out there that are going on now. There was a definite supply issue earlier in 2020. And that, along with people coming back to the hobby, along with some stimulus money pumped in back in the spring and early summer drove the demand to levels we've never seen. So lack of supply, injection of money, injection of new collectors, injection of old collectors coming back to the hobby. And then there's other folks as well that have some popularity in various areas that are also bringing people into

the collection baseball card collecting hobby we've got Gary Vaynerchuk who's got a pretty big presence we've got ex-MLBers like Phil Hughes who has started up his own YouTube channel and he opens cards and talks about cards on his channel. He posts videos almost on a daily basis, and he gets a huge amount of Yankees, Jason Dominguez really drove, you know, he's a Yankee. He's got all the hype. There's a lot of mystery because we just haven't seen him play, which again, COVID impacted. Typically, you don't get to see what these prospects do. And then some kind of fall on their face and the kind of demand for their cards goes down well if you don't see how they're doing then the mystery remains and people are still kind of doing that speculating thing when it comes to prospects and so you had

just a whole confluence of factors that led to the spring really driving the demand crazy, crazy, crazy. And it just really hasn't let up. Now, baseball is a bit of a cyclical market in that in the offseason, it tends to die down for two, three months. But it really only lasted about four weeks this time around late november early december and it's the demand is is again going pretty high and there's it's typically a down time for the manufacturers as well they don't put out a lot of product and so again you have compounding factors where there's not a lot of product on the market, new product coming out. So again, people, anything that comes out, people are just buying up and, you know, the resellers are making money hand over fist. I mean,

it is, like I said, something we've never seen in the hobby. Yeah. Dominguez is actually kind of what spurred Ben and I to wonder what the state of the card collecting market was, because I imagine that, as you said, guys who haven't debuted stateside would have been sort of priority targets for card collectors if there had been something like a normal minor league season. But we just didn't have a real opportunity to see that. And obviously, travel was difficult for some of the international guys. But just generally, I'm curious on the prospect side in particular, what tends to drive

the value there? Is it where a guy is ranked on some of the major sites? Is it, you know, existing minor league statistics, sort of general perception within the industry? I know you mentioned Dominguez being a Yankee, having a significant impact there and giving him a bump, but what drives the value in that part of the market in particular? Yeah, prospecting is quite an interesting place. And we typically refer to the collectors who focus on prospects as prospectors, right? And doing the activity prospecting. And there's so many factors, right? Team is one. For the J2 signees, right? The international signees, right? Team is one. For the J2 signees, right, the international signees, it's definitely the guys who get the most money are on everyone's radar. Dominguez was that guy. Another one is Robert Pawson. This time around, for these J2 signees, they usually don't have cards for us

to purchase for the most part until a year or two after their signings. So right, Dominguez was a signing I believe in the 19 period and so didn't really get an opportunity to get any of his cards until this spring. And then when it comes to the domestic side, it's the draft. So your hottest card on the marketplace right now because he just came out with his first official card, officially licensed card with Spencer Torkelson, right? The number one overall pick. And his cards are the hottest commodity on the market right now. And then again, like you said, people doing their research, going to look at the prospect list, the top 100 list, the team boards of places like where I write for Prospects Live, where you guys are at

with Eric Longenhagen and Fangraphs, Baseball America, all those types of places and getting kind of, everyone loves to look at comps. As much as that's not easy or realistic, you look at a guy and say, well, is this guy the next Mike Trout? And then you go, well, how much are Mike Trout cards selling for? And then I think that guy is going to be worth somewhere in that neighborhood. And that's kind of where they try and find values based off of who they comp these players to. It's a lot of that. Those are a lot of the driving factors when it comes to prospects specifically.

Those are a lot of the driving factors when it comes to prospects specifically. We want to ask you a little bit about how card collecting has changed and how it has entered the internet age. Before we get to that, for anyone who, like you, like me, was away for a while, remembers cards as they were in the 80s or the 90s, can you talk a little bit about just how the cards have changed physically? How do they look different card boom going on, whether the people behind that will be able to resist that temptation to try to cash in and then lead to another bust to follow the boom. So if people have been away from card collecting for a while, how are baseball cards the actual

physical products? And I know some of them may be digital and virtual products as well, but how have the cards themselves evolved? Yeah, it's quite interesting. And the manufacturers tend to say that they've learned their lessons from the junk wax era. And at times you kind of believe them, but other actions they take, it makes it more difficult to believe that. And every year you'll see, they don't really tell you what the print runs are on each of these products that they produce, but you can do the math based off of the odds that they state on their products. And you see year to year over the last five years or

so, you're seeing anywhere from 10 to 20%, if not more, increase in the product run per product. So it is a bit scary there. And back in the 80s and prior to that, you had essentially one set of baseball cards per manufacturer. You had Topps Baseball, you had Score Baseball, Donruss baseball and up until the late 2000s or early 2010s it was kind of a free-for-all as far as who got to have licensed products and what they could make and essentially around that time these sports the MLB NFL NBA all of them they went to exclusive licenses with these companies and they laid down some laws in these contracts. Now, none of them are public, but it's been inferred and talked about that essentially they can only make X amount of products per year. So you can

only have, say, 20 different types of, Topps can only make 20 different types of tops can only make 20 different types of tops baseball products such as they'll make a product called gypsy queen they'll make a product called and something that you may remember from the early 90s if you were still collecting back then stadium club so there's a wide variety of these products that are targeting kind of specific markets, whether it's people who are into the stars, people who are into the rookies, people who are into the prospects. So they kind of focus on those areas. And then within those, they'll do varying types of card stock. So typically what we were used to back then was just the paper cardstock. Now they've gone and used some newer technologies where they'll have a chrome finish on the cards,

which is by far the most popular type of products out there are the chrome products. They'll also have ones that use kind of an acetate style, which is more of a clear, plasticky type of card. And then I'd say in baseball, specifically, player signed cards, the autograph cards that come from the manufacturer are the rage. That's what everyone's chasing. And up until I think 1990 or 91 with Upper Deck, that didn't exist. And then that was kind of a marketing ploy that they used back in, I think it was 90 or 91, that really was something new, but it wasn't everywhere. And now it's everywhere in every product. You're not going to find a baseball product that doesn't have somebody on the checklist that has

signed the card before it gets packed in the product and sent out for sale. And that's, you know, one of the things that they say is preventing kind of the junk wax era style crash, because that point, those cards were all pretty much became, there was no value left in them because there were so many of them. But they say, there's only X amount of autographs in each product. So that in theory will protect the value of these cards in the future where they're not all worthless. And is there any value in cards that end up getting signed on the back end, right? That don't, that are just plain cards that come out of the pack and, you know, folks line up at the backfields at spring training or along the foul lines in a major league

park and get a player to sign it live. Is there any process by which those can be authenticated and then resold? Or should people just relax and enjoy spring training? I would say they should relax and enjoy spring training. But the reality is, is that there are plenty of people out there that are doing this, not just for their own personal enjoyment and personal collection to get somebody to sign a card or a ball or whatnot. And they're trying to increase the value of the card. And so it is done and it does increase the value of the card. And so it is done, and it does increase the value of the card. In most circles, it does not approach the value of an assigned card

that comes from the product itself. Now, there are services out there grading companies, authenticating companies that will authenticate a player signature. They'll also grade the quality of the card on a number scale about if there's bent corners, off-centered cards, miscut cards, all number of things that they're looking at. Is there surface scratches, et cetera? So these companies tend to offer various services.

The big ones in the industry is a company called PSA. Another one is Beckett. If you remember way back in the day, we used to use the Beckett guides to find the prices of our cards. I mean, that was the only way to do it really back then. Whereas today, you know, with the internet age, right, and the major marketplace being eBay, the Beckett guides have kind of lost their immediacy and the accuracy around pricing of cards. So yeah, people still get it signed. People still resell them either prior to without having these companies authenticate them, which brings less money, less of a return, or having them authenticated, and it will increase the value. But like I said, it doesn't, at least as far as the marketplace is concerned,

reach the value of the pre-signed and then sent in the product to the marketplace. And one more factor behind the present popularity of cards is that cards collecting is maybe more of an engaging spectator activity than it used to be thanks to the internet. And friend of the show, Emma Batchelori, wrote a great article about breaking baseball cards and baseball card sets for Sports Illustrated last year. We will link to that, but you have written about that too. Tell us about breaking. Yeah, breaking's been around for quite a while, actually, but it feels like over the last five years, it's gotten really popular. And then as this boom happened, I have personally had fellow collectors start their own breaking groups just because of the amount of demand for it. And essentially, the idea is that as more and more of these products come out,

and they're harder and harder to get a hold of, you find various price points. And one box has, say, one autograph in it. But if somebody buys a case, you've got 10 boxes, you've got 10 autographs, and a box is a hundred bucks a case of ten boxes is a thousand bucks well I'm not going to have that thousand bucks to buy a case but I might have a hundred dollars and I like those cards but I don't want to kind of buy my box and get an auto for a picture for the

Dodgers because I'm a Giants fan, right? I don't want Tony Gonsolin autograph. I'd much prefer to get, well, the Giants don't have good pictures right now, but I'd rather have like a Buster Posey autograph or a Mikey Stremski autograph or something like that, right? So what that allows me to do is if I participate in a break where somebody's breaking 10 boxes of cards is to then target the teams that I'm interested in that product and hopefully get all of the Giants cards and perhaps a few other teams for my $100

and hopefully a Giants autographed card, the Mike Yastrzemski autographed card in that product. And so I didn't have to make that $1,000 investment. And what happens nowadays is they not only have just a regular card signed by Mike Yastrzemski, they have different parallels of it. So they'll have a card that's a platinum card. That's one out of one. They'll have a red card. That's you got only five numbered versions so that you get your rarity and you get much more value if

you're looking to, at the end of the day, sell those cards at some point. So, you know, it definitely is a form of gambling, but it's also a way to get into the products that you might not have a shot at because of their cost, or just focus on the teams that you really want to get out of a product rather than ending up with, you know, 500 cards and you really only wanted, you know, 25 of them because that's how many Giants cards are in there. I know that you've noted in some of your writing on the issues that are specific to the 2020 and I guess still 2021 card sets that there were some quality control issues. So there were cards that were, you know, a set that would be packaged as promising an autograph card that wouldn't have one, some that were off center or miscut. you know, a set that would be packaged as promising an autograph card that wouldn't have

one, some that were off-center or miscut. I know that a lack of an autograph isn't going to increase a card's value, but I'm curious if there have been other instances in the past where manufacturing errors like that, which I imagine are irritating to the hobbyist, end up making the cards valuable because they denote a particular time and a rarity that might otherwise, you know, be sort of unremarkable for a run-of-the-mill card? Yeah, it really depends. And that's kind of a cop-out answer, I know. But the manufacturers nowadays, because of the situation, because how much they're printing, how much they're making, that there's very little situations where we have like the you know back in 89 fleer with with the billy ripken situation where he had some off-color words on the end of his bat and fleer

released three or four different versions of that card we're trying to fix it so nowadays the manufacturers just they're not interested in correcting those errors. Typically, the value in an error card is when it's being corrected because the original error card itself in the past had a smaller print run and made it rarer. Nowadays, it doesn't happen. Now, occasionally there'll be scenarios where, you know, as I was saying earlier, there's parallel cards, right? And so just in this most recent release of Bowman Draft, there's a parallel called the Sky Blue Parallel, and it's out of $4.99. And so they'll print on the card itself, this is card one out of $4.99, 10 out of $4.99. Well, there's a specific

number and I don't think anyone's figured it out yet where instead of printing the actual number, whether it was a glitch in the software or the printing press or whatever, instead of saying a hundred out of 499, it says bad out of 499. So that specific parallel out of $4.99 for you get one per player of that that one actually sells for you know normally it would probably sell for a buck or two for the run-of-the-mill players maybe five to ten bucks for the Spencer Torkelsons and the Zach Veens and those types of guys it's selling for you know five to fifteen bucks for the run-of-the-mill guys and $25 and up for the highly desirable guys. That's why I say it depends.

For the most part, it really doesn't increase the value, but you'll have those exceptions. You talked about breaking. Can you tell us about the subset of breaking that is known as the box war? Yeah. set of breaking that is known as the box war? Yeah, box wars are the highest stakes form of breaking out there right now, where the stakes are, you either typically win all the cards, or you lose all the cards. And the idea is that you usually want to find a box that has an autograph or a specific parallel that you're going after you don't want a product that's just all base cards it makes a lot more difficult the idea is that I'll buy a box or pay for a box and

then then you'll pay for a box they were again the same example I'll put up a hundred bucks for that box and you'll put up a hundred bucks for a second box and then the breaker will open them up and the important card has been decided beforehand is that one autograph in each of those boxes and so we'll what we'll do is whoever that autograph is say I get the Mike Yastrzemski auto and you get a Mike Trout Auto. And then we'll go to eBay as the kind of de facto marketplace and see what the previous sales of that card is. Essentially trying to look for the most recent, trying to judge the current market and say, was the Mike Yastrzemski autograph card worth more than the Mike Trout or vice versa? And it's going to be the Mike Trout

card. And so once that's decided, the person who has the more valuable card essentially wins all the cards and the person who doesn't lost their hundred bucks and goes home empty handed. Interesting. So one thing I'm curious about is that card collecting got a lot of us into baseball or helped get us into baseball. It helped make us fans, the sorts of things that you're talking about that are closer to gambling i am assuming that that tends to be mostly adults or people who are already into card collecting or baseball or maybe are getting back into it after a certain time although not necessarily or entirely i'm sure is there still potential for this latest boom in baseball cards to create new fans? Do you

see that happening? Or does it seem to be established fans who are gravitating to this? Yeah, it's a tough question. I think for the most part, the folks that are getting into it now that are attracted to the gambling aspect of it, the breaking aspect of it, the speculation aspect of it, where they can buy a card for $5 and it's worth $100 in three months, or get into a break for $100 and end up with a card that's worth $1,000. I think a lot of those people that are there for that type of a rush aren't going to be there when the bull market goes whichever way it goes on this downtrend. It's never going to be a linear suddenly or a complete Black Friday style drop off. I don't know if we're at the peak, but it kind of feels like it.

And I don't think that a lot of those people that have gone into it for like i said that rush are going to be there after the fact and unfortunately i think it's also driven away some of the long-time collectors just because they're basically priced out of the hobby um or and or just don't want to deal with trying to get new cards because they're so hard to get. So I think there is the small percentage that will say, hey, I've got this Pete Crow Armstrong card now and I didn't know who he was and now I'm going to follow him and now I'm a fan for life of Pete Crow Armstrong because I love this card and I love his story or something like that. But in the larger sense, I don't think it's going to significantly create new baseball fans, unfortunately.

Is there anything – I suppose that from the manufacturer's perspective, once the card has been sold, it's hard for them to necessarily know if it's being sold to one individual or if it's someone who's trying to act like an investor and sort of use bots to buy up inventory or what have you. But has there been anything done on the part of card manufacturers to try to sort of short circuit that aspect of the market so that they might make it a little more accessible to true hobbyists? market so that they might make it a little more accessible to true hobbyists? I'd like to say yes. But I don't think I've really seen anything more than token efforts in that way. The best thing that they can do typically is to offer a wide variety of products and a cheap enough level of products that doesn't attract the speculators, the investors, the flippers. And there is some of that, but these are pretty much companies, unfortunately, more focused on their bottom line than they're focused on

the health of the hobby. Like I said, there's some lip service there. I just feel like it's lip service and not true efforts being made. And I know that you focus on baseball cards, but how much of what you've told us applies to other kinds of card collecting? I mean, I've seen some record numbers that have gone to Pokemon card sales, for instance, recently. And I assume that other sports cards are enjoying some sort of boost from all of this. Of course, baseball cards have always sort of occupied a special place in the landscape. And I assume that continues to be true. Is this a broader thing that applies to many kinds of card collecting or does baseball card collecting still reign supreme?

I think in general, baseball card collecting is in the, you know, it's kind of like baseball is, you know, America's sport, right? It's like apple pie, right? So it definitely still kind of holds that place in the US marketplace. When it comes to the international marketplace, it's a kind of holds that place in the U.S. marketplace. When it comes to the international marketplace, it's a kind of a different story, right? You'll still have the, you know, the Asian markets, especially Japan and Korea, baseball cards are still strong there as well. But China is basketball cards up and down. You know, it's just unbelievable how hot they are. And in general, basketball cards have gone kind of on the stratospheric rise. Football cards are definitely in the conscious at the forefront of everyone's mind during the football season. Right now, they've been pretty

strong. Quarterbacks drive the marketplace. And when these young, fresh, new quarterbacks succeed, you know, Justin Herbert had one of the best seasons ever for a rookie quarterback. The football cards do really well. And then when the quarterbacks don't do well, football cards don't do so well. And Pokemon has been an eye-opener. It is really kind of mirrored the basketball rise where it wasn't much in the consciousness of the general public. And then all of a sudden, you know, it's gone crazy. And it was a bit past my time. I know my brother who's eight years younger than I am, he collected them. And I was telling him about it. And he's just like, I can't, I can't believe that. He's like, I played

with these cards. So they're all beat up and they're probably worth nothing i'm like no they're actually still probably worth something and and you know they i think part of that is is that that age group that was playing with it uh you know the late 20s to mid 30s kind of group is in positions where where they're actually you know no longer working the minimum wage jobs where they have spending cash. And as this boom started, they said, well, I wasn't into baseball cards because there wasn't even hardly any baseball cards to collect in the mid to late 90s. There were barely any product and no one was talking about them. But all my friends and I were playing Pokemon. And so now they've got money and they're like, man, I really wish I had some of those Pokemon cards that I had when I was a kid and not just the ones that I have still, they're all beat up. I'd like really nice ones. And suddenly it is, like I said, quite eyeopening how popular they are and the value that

they're currently at. Man, I wonder what the price graph on a Dwayne Haskins football card looks like after this year. Not good. Not good. So Slate published an article in November that was titled, Why Would Anyone Bother Collecting Digital Baseball Cards? And then the subhead answers the headline's question. It's a heady blend of nostalgia, the thrill of opening a new pack, and a cryptocurrency investment opportunity.

So there you go. But I'm still going to ask you to answer that question. So this is something that has kind of come to the fore in the last decade, digital cards, app-based cards. And I'm sure that a lot of people who remember sorting through cards or putting them in the spokes of their bicycle wheel or whatever are taken aback by the idea of digital baseball cards. Card collecting has been such a tactile thing for a lot of people, the look of them, the

feel of them, the smell of them. But of course, this mirrors a lot of the ways that we consume things in this day and age. And maybe you don't buy an album anymore. You just stream it and we own less of the things that we watch and enjoy in sort of and age. And maybe you don't buy an album anymore. You just stream it and we own less of the things that we watch and enjoy in sort of physical form than we used to. And maybe that's not bad. Maybe it's just different, but nostalgia is a strong force. So for anyone who thinks, oh, I can't imagine having digital baseball cards and not being able to put them in a binder or whatever and look at them on a page.

Can you explain the appeal? I ask myself that question regularly. It's interesting. I'm actually, my day job is kind of in the tech industry. And so I look at that and I understand it. But at the end of the day, I see behind the scenes and basically it's looking at, well, you're just getting a personalized piece of code, right? And I can sit here and write code for you all day. But it seems a little opposite the actual mindset of owning these pieces of code that are customized with, you know, this piece of code I've written is called, you know, Mark McGuire,

this one's called Mike Trout, this one's called Ken Griffey Jr. And so I've struggled with seeing the appeal of that marketplace. But on the other hand, you know, I think there's a place for it. I would just be cautious about it because I don't think people completely understand what it means to be in that space. If you're doing it for fun, all more power to you. I know I've played video games and I've been like, oh, I want this, you know, like in Fortnite, I want this cool, you know, hang glider that looks like a, you know, spaceship, right? And I'm going to pay a dollar for that to increase my enjoyment of playing this game but on the other hand you know when in three

years when maybe no one's playing fortnight that dollar i spent is worth nothing now right and so because we have such long history and kind of tradition to go off of with the cards that are physical and we know what that's going to be like and we know there's going to be ups and downs but we still understand it just the same with cryptocurrency the same with these digital cards it's just such a new marketplace that has so many unknowns that I would caution people to if they're using it from an investment standpoint to speculate, to be really careful, really do your homework, really understand what you're getting into. And it's something we rarely if ever do, but read the terms and conditions because I've read some

of the terms and conditions for some of these things and they're quite laughable. So a lot of what you've laid out probably sounds intriguing to people. It might also sound daunting to them if they have been away from this hobby for a while. So as someone who was away for it and got very much back into it yourself not too long ago, what would your advice be on anyone who is looking to explore this either for the first time or the first time in a while? Yeah, you know, my advice 18 months ago was just run down to your local Target or Walmart and, you know, see what they have and pick them up a box or two, a pack or two of cards and see if you like it, see what you like it see what you

find see if it intrigues you you like this specific card you don't like that specific card try something else it's it's a you know maybe a 20 30 investment just see if this stuff is cool to you anymore right because we weren't thinking in the terms of every card we were looking at, I wonder how much this is worth. I was thinking about, hey, I want to collect for myself. I want to collect my personal collection of Giants cards, of the players I like, even the Giants card, the non-Giants cards for the players I like to write. I want Mike Trout, the best player in the game I want some of these cards right so now my advice is do your homework go to the places where they're kind of giving you as much information as possible so that you're not going out there and getting

into a break for $200 and then walking away from it empty-handed and going I don't want to do this ever again, right? You want to go to places like Beckett, right? Places like, check out my articles on Prospects Live. Check out some of the baseball card forums out there. The biggest forum out there is Blowout Forums. Just read up, really see, hey, do I like the look of these cards? You know, one of the things that I think you can focus on if you're not new, but coming back is to say, what card did you want when you were collecting that you don't have, right? Maybe it's that Ken Griffey Jr. Upper Deck Rookie. Maybe it's the Mark McGuire 1985 Tops USA card and take a look at them on eBay, right? And the McGuire USA card

will probably run you, you know, 10 bucks or something. And, you know, instead of spending that 20 to 30 bucks that you used to be able to spend at Target and Walmart to get exposed to it, go get the cards that you wanted as a kid that speak to you get them in your hand and look at them and just have that nostalgia and see if you have any of that enjoyment with this and say you know what i'd like to try this for a hobby for a little while don't spend a lot of money out the gate you know dip your toe in it you know something that many collectors will say right is that to start with you should focus on collecting what you love right going after the teams you cheer for the players you cheered for and for things like myself right i'm a giants fan but my dad grew up you know his

favorite player was sandy kofax so i go out of my way whenever I come across Kofax cards to pick them up, you know, for my wife and my daughter. They're Dodger fans. Don't ask how I married got into this situation. I do have a small collection of Dodger cards for them. And when my daughter grows up, you know, they're all going to her. So, again, it's a tough question to answer. It's a tough place to kind of point somebody and say, this is, you know, one, two, three, do these three things. And you'll see if you're going to find that enjoyment in this hobby nowadays, because it's

become a lot tougher, unfortunately. So looking back at the 2020 cards across all their various iterations, I'm curious, what ones were your favorite, either because they were aesthetically pleasing to you or featured players who you were intrigued by? What jumped out at you in the 2020 sets? Yeah, there's so many to choose from to start with. But one of the classic brands that came in the early 90s was stadium club and stadium club over the years has really evolved into the best photography the best pictures on baseball cards and it's not even close and absent any new product coming out that really kind of blows me away, Stadium Club is almost always in my top ten, if not my top five, and this year they just had just amazing, amazing cards that really spoke to me.

And for me myself, as a Giants fan, they had a Mike Yastrzemski card with him next to his grandfather, Carl Yastrzemski. And it just, you know, spoke to so much of my nostalgia for baseball and passing it down from father to son, grandfather to son being, you know, that I grew up going to baseball games with my dad and his brothers and my uncles. So it really hit home, one one for my personal collection of just giants and two just for that connection to family and baseball and three just being great a great picture and across the set great pictures and i hate to admit it but the clayton kershaw card in in that set is beautiful just you know dodger Stadium with in the background with the

palm trees going up to the sky and him with his as he's going into his wind up. It's just very, very aesthetically pleasing. And so at the end of the day, I love prospects. I love vintage cards and I love rookie cards. And that's not what you find in Stadium Club. Stadium Club, for me, was all about the aesthetics. And I just kept coming back to how beautiful those cards were. on Twitter at jh00k, and they can find him writing about baseball cards regularly at prospectslive.com. We will link to a bunch of his posts from this past year that touch on topics that we discussed today. Joe, thank you very much for coming on. Much appreciated. Thanks for having me. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks, as always, for listening. I've linked, as always, on the show page at Fangraphs to a lot of stories related to what we talked about today,

both Hank Aaron and baseball cards. So please do go check out that great writing. You can do that at Fangraphs.com or you can do it by clicking the links in your podcast player. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount

to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Ben Slimmer, Flip Coleman, Addie Heller, Tyler Bradley, and Bill Batterman. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild

on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you early next week. First a former civilized Evolving from the charismatic sea

There's a ten-year-old in an alley Throws a hardball off the wall That is the truth He knows you're either Just a newspaper boy Or you're either Babe Ruth Or Home Run King