Highs and Lows

You've heard it before - baseball season is a roller coaster because it's full of highs and lows.  Over the course of an arduous and grueling 162-game schedule, not even the greatest team of all-time (obviously, the 2016 Cubs) can always be at the peak of their performance.  Come the end of the year, you can only hope that the good outweighs the bad when the leaves begin to change colors.

Lately, the 2018 edition of the Cubs have been mired in a deep, dark low while the surging Brewers have been riding a high wave of success.  Going into the month of September, the Northsiders were leading second-place Milwaukee by five games.  Since then, the Cubs packed up their bats a month early and limped to a .500 record while the Brew Crew has taken on all-comers and cut that seemingly safe lead to a scant half game.  In short, panic has set in at Wrigleyville and the club is in danger of their worst collapse since the infamous 1969 season.  In short, the gloom and doom has engulfed our fan-base, now spoiled by a World Series win and four consecutive 90-win seasons.

It's been tough to watch and I too am guilty of this worry, letting the low trample my mindset like a cursed black cat trotting through Shea Stadium.  So, what's the best way to pull oneself out of such a rut?  To get High, of course!

via GIPHY

No, no, no - that's not what I meant, Towelie.  Although, that probably wouldn't hurt either....

Anyway, the high that I'm talking about experiencing involves the latest cardboard release from the Topps bubblegum company and has nothing to do with the devil's lettuce.  A couple of night's ago, while on a regular Target run with my wife, I decided that a pack of baseball cards might just cheer me up.  So, I grabbed the latest and the greatest product to hit store shelves:

Heritage HIGH Number would hopefully provide the natural lift that I was looking for, sans any sort of skunky smell.  I sought out a jumbo pack of this update to Topps' annual Heritage release because the checklist contains three cards that I need for my Cubs All-Time Roster Collection.  Both the rubber-armed reliever, Steve Cishek, and the sequel to Rick Ankiel, Tyler Chatwood, make their cardboard Cubs uniform debuts in this product - thus, they're both needed Cubgrades for my marquee binder.  Furthermore, a certain hot freshman infielder gets his first pack-pullable rookie card (he's got a few cards in the various "instant" card products) in HHN.  While I already have secured a minor league card of this rookie cup contender, a Major League card would make a much better fit in my CATRC tome.

Hitting any one of these three cards in my impulse pack purchase would certainly improve my mood and lift me out of the depths of Cubbie despair, if only for a little while.  Would I have any luck?  Or would the cardboard gods smite me like the Milwaukee Brewers have been smiting National League opponents during the stretch run?

Well, here's the first card that I pulled out of the wrapper:

WEEEEEEEEE!!!  That rated rookie just so happened to top the stack, instantly making this purchase worthwhile.  While he's cooled off some since his hot start, his cards had been demanding a certain premium on the open market, especially here in the Windy City.  Plus, his walk-off heroics have thoroughly cemented his place in Chicago baseball lore, no matter what happens during the rest of his career on the diamond.

It doesn't really get more epic that a bottom of the ninth inning, down to the last strike, walk-off grand slam, does it?  "Bote McBoatFace" filled in memorably for Kris Bryant at third base and looks to be a useful piece off of the bench for years to come, filling a Ben Zobrist-type role.

As I alluded to earlier, David was already represented in my Cubs All-Time Roster Collection binder, courtesy of a generous gifting by Jason from Hoarding Cardboard.  Jason graciously forwarded me the full 2014 Kane County Cougars team set, a team for which Bote played before they changed major league affiliates.  Overall, as we determined in this post, which reviews the entirety of the set, Bote is already the best player to come from this roster and hopefully he continues to make his case.

While the HHN rookie in full Cubs colors definitely displaces this pre-rookie, Jason's kindness wasn't for naught.  Instead, I will now be shifting this oddball into one of my favorite side projects, my "Nothing Major" binder - a book made up entirely of minor league cards of Major League Cubs.  It's a perfect transition!

Anyway, I should probably get back to talking about the subject at hand - my mind-altering, jumbo pack of 2018 Topps Heritage High Numbers:

Also included among the 20 pasteboards was this pair of old friends.  Luis Valbuena was one of the few productive and entertaining players employed during the darkest depths of the Cubs' rebuild.  Unfortunately, injuries have taken their toll on Luis lately and his batting average has hovered around the Mendoza-line during his time in Los Angeles. 

Meanwhile, Christian Villanueva's post-Cubs tenure has gone quite well, as this "Now & Then" insert shows.  Blocked by Kris Bryant, the third baseman was allowed to walk over to San Diego, with whom he got off to a blistering start.  On April 3rd, the second game of the 2018 season, the rook blasted three home runs, kicking off a breakout campaign with the rebuilding Padres.  As of now, Christian has 20 big flies on the season and may just be a building block for his forward-looking club.

So far, the theme of this pack has been hot rookies, with Bote and Villanueva making up two-thirds of my highlights.  Well, this next card is only going to strengthen that overarching flavor:

When it comes to 2018 rookie cards, it doesn't get much hotter than this guy... especially lately.  I may not be a Braves fan, but I sure can appreciate a good rookie pull, even if he was murder on the Cubs earlier this season.

As far as the rest of the pack goes, the majority of the other contents were much more pedestrian.  Here's a quick overview:

Nothing exceptionally interesting, for my personal tastes, except for maybe one card.

Tony Cingrani may be your standard, fungible reliever, but he's long been on my list of favorite non-Cubs players; for many years, I've kind of been hoping that he'd eventually blow into the Windy City.  While he has a reputation for being a durable and useful bullpen arm, that's not the crux of interest.  Rather, Cingrani hails from New Lennox, IL, a community that is only a hop, skip, and a jump from my hometown - I always have to root for the local boys!

Plus, it's nice to see that Topps is digging into the bullpens for checklist fodder - they should do that more often.

With that, we've covered the entirety of my mood-boosting, impulse pack purchase.  While I didn't net either Cishek or Chatwood, landing the coveted Bote rookie card as the first piece in the pack was quite the thrill.  Overall, I'm batting one-for-three when it comes to landing all of my needs from 2018 Topps Heritage High Numbers, which ain't so bad.  In fact, that's a better batting average than anyone on the Cubs has posted since fall began... or. at least it feels like that's the case anyway.

In the end, I definitely felt a lot better about baseball after opening that pack of HHN and I didn't even have to worry about setting off the smoke alarm!

With my anxiety momentarily suppressed, I realized that the Cubs are still leading the NL Central; though the margin is razor slim, they haven't blown it yet.  Not to mention, only four short years ago, I and any other rabid Cubs fan would have gladly sold their soul to be in the thick of the pennant race in the season's last week.  No matter how this race plays out, this is still the golden era of Cubs fandom and we Chicago faithful should not take this for granted.

That said, please get it together, Cubbies - I'd still prefer that you not blow the division.  Otherwise, I might have to take to another sort of "hobby" to heighten my mood.