The Chief And Church Are Wooden Sort Of

2005 Bowman Heritage 17 Chad Cordero and 97 Ryan Church

Base and Mahogany editions.

Oh I do love me some Heritage. Be it Bowman or Topps. Bowman started the concept, well Topps Mother company actually, but technicalities we'll leave in the basement. Anyway for the Nats inaugural season 2005 both Topps and Bowman had a Heritage set. Topps used their 1956 design, while Bowman used their 1951 design for Heritage. I will only concentrate on the two Bowman cards well four Bowman cards really in this post and the two variants and the two players shown.

First up lets talk about the base about the base no treble. As mentioned above the 2005 Bowman Heritage set reproduces the 1951 Bowman design very faithfully using the modern players. I love when the Heritage sets get things right. First up numerically, but not alphabetically is Chad "The Chief" Cordero. The Nationals first closer who ranks up there as one of their best in their 12 plus year history.

2005 Bowman Heritage 17 Chad Cordero Nationals

Checkout how faithful they were to the 1951 design on this back. They even have 1951 for the copyright date, well for the design copyright date, the actual card copyright date they have in the smaller more detailed copyright info that they do now-days.

Now for Ryan Church  who played outfield for the Nats for a few years and when he was traded away to the Mets with Brian Schneider for Lastings Milledge I was quite upset. At the time November 2007 I didn't have a trading card blog so on my regular blog I made a rant post about the trade. Amazingly it was exactly 10 years ago today I posted that. Ryan had become one of my fave Nats during those early years along with Schneider and Cordero.

2005 Bowman Heritage 97 Ryan Church Nationals

Aright well since this is a quick and dirty end of the month post, and I am working on the draft very late on the next to the last day, well very early on the final day actually. Trying to finish before it is time to get up for work. I need to remind my self to stop this end of the month procrastinating. I tell myself time and again all throughout the month that I need to make some posts, and often I start a draft or two on something. Well right now I do have a bunch of drafts in my posting queue. I had a couple of other posts I started drafting. I intended to post one or two of them in time for November, but I have no cards for them yet. I had recently gotten some of these Heritage cards from Sportlots Stores. I may have duplicates of the base, not sure.  The Next Cordero at one time I had watched on Ebay and COMC but eventually got a better price on a Sportlots Store search. I had even purchased the Cordero Mahogany card from Sportlots about a month prior but the seller couldn't find their copy and gave me a refund. So the one I got was from a completely different seller.

Oops I spoiled the surprise of these next cards in the previous paragraph, as well as at the beginning of this whole post so there Pfffftthhhhpppt. (however you spell the sound of a raspberry.)

I didn't have time to check the spelling. I did have an image of Bill The Cat saved on a USB Thumb drive. Dang it I thought it was one where he was saying "Pfffffffhhhpppttthhtt"

I don't know the why or the reasons they decided on this particular variant, but for some reason when they first came out I liked them and thought the concept was pretty cool. I am talking about the Mahogany edition of these cards. The front image is put directly on the raw surface of the cardboard without a clean whitewashed background as a result these card look a bit darker than the regular base edition.

So here are the Mahogany Editions:

 2005 Bowman Heritage: Mahogany: 17 Chad Cordero Nationals

 2005 Bowman Heritage: Mahogany: 97 Ryan Church Nationals

I'm not sure why, but I noticed both my Mahogany cards have slight creases on them. Maybe it is part of the design. I'll have to look into that and try to find my other Mahogany cards I got. I have the Brian Schneider and possibly one or two others.

Here are some side by side comparisons just for fun. First up the backs of the Chad cards. The regular base is on the left and the Mahogany is on the right. You can see slight surface creasing. Hmm upon further checking (and on the front) the creasing is more like veins especially on the fronts so I think it is intended.

2005 Bowman Heritage: 17 Chad Cordero Nationals

Regular Base Edition on left, Mahogany Edition on right.

2005 Bowman Heritage 17 Chad Cordero Nationals

Base on left, Mahogany on right.

Hmm I didn't make a separate side-by-side for the Ryan Church so here is the opening image repeated.

Half A Six Pack

I was going to show these cards separately as Senators Singles but decided since I got them at the same time and I have a huge backlog of cards to blog about on all my blogs I need to do them together. I got these three cards in a PWE six-pack of cards I got from Jeff at 2x3 Heroes. The first two are some of those retro modern cards and the third one is one of those modern trading card games that nobody can figure out how to play so nobody ever plays the games.

 2007 Bowman Heritage Baseball 106 Felipe Lopez Nationals

(Front and Back)

I love vintage cards and now I love the modern retro cards in the vintage styles. I didn't use to like the retro Heritage styles but after getting some several years back I grew to like them. Some years and designs work much better than others. The 2007 Bowman Heritage is a bow to the Original 1952 Bowman design.

Second Up we have a nice 2011 Topps Heritage card the design which honors the 1962 Topps Design, which in itself is sort of a homage to the days when kids would peek through a knothole in a wooden fence outside the ballpark to see the game.

 2011 Topps Heritage Baseball 186 Rick Ankiel Nationals

(Front and Back)

Now this next card is technically a game card. How you play the dang thing I'll never know and as a card collector and not a card player I don't really care that much. I don't even think any official rules have been printed for this silliness, if there are then I'm wrong. Anyway I'm not even sure how well these things sold originally, and now they mainly just sell to the player or team collectors. There might be some set collectors but since the cards are not numbered who knows how many cards there are exactly. Oh OK there might be a checklist or two on the interwebs somewhere. Anyway here is one of the cards of the kind that I never really wanted to get but I guess I'll get the Nationals and Orioles and my PC players from this set sometime.

2009 Topps Attax Baseball Card Game NoNumber Lastings Milledge Nationals

(Front and Back)

Oh the toppstown website. I guess the game was something that used codes from the website to play. Which means the website probably explained how to play, but since this is now over five years old the website is probably closed and abandoned.

The Amazing Schneider-Man: Brian Schneider

BRIAN SCHNEIDER - (39) 23

Expos to Nationals transition catcher
Expos 2000 - 2004 / Nationals 2005 - 2007

photo by Getty Images - 29 April 2004 Expos in San Diego.

I'm trying to get this semi-regular player scheme going again. The biggest problem I've had with it is deciding which 5 (or 6 maybe) cards of an individual SeNator to feature, make sure I have the backs scanned (I didn't use to scan card backs for the longest time) and to hunt for photos to decide which if any to show along with the cards, and then to plan who will be featured next. The basic criteria for me to feature a player is for me to hopefully have more than just one or two of a player's cards; the player must have been on one of the DC Club incarnations so guys like Gary Carter and Vladimir Guerrero will not be mentioned in this series. I may blog about them from time to time since they were Expos, but neither actually played in DC on the home team. The closest Vlad got was playing in Baltimore for the Orioles.

OK so onto this post's Curly W Player Brian "Schneider-man" Schneider. Brian was the Expos main catcher when the team moved over to DC to become The Nationals. He caught the inaugural first pitch President Bush tossed in 2005. At the time he was my fave currently playing catcher. During his tenure as a National, Brian was an Amazing catcher (at least to me) and had a pretty decent arm for catching base stealers. He was one of the "take the lead" team mentors for younger players and worked well with the pitchers as their "quarterback".

Photo by Getty Images?

During the off season in the winter of 2007 News of him being traded to the New York Mets along with Outfielder Ryan Church (another fave Nat) for Lastings Milledge really ticked me. Probably because it was the first trade I recall that involved some of my faves that I heard about when it happened. I blogged my Gut Reaction to it on my regular blog in a post titled Nats + Mets Trade = UH OH. At the time I didn't have a card blog yet so all my card posts and sports-news posts were made there. It took me a couple of years to get over the trade, by that time Lastings Milledge was traded to the Pirates and Brian was still with the Mets about to move to the Phillies. Brian's last playing season was 2012 with the Phillies he announced his retirement on 29 January 2013 a day after, fellow Expo to National, Nick Johnson (last with the Orioles) announced his retirement.

Lookie what I found. "Final?" Play at the Plate between Ex-Teammates.

Photo via Associated Press from 09 June 2012 Game Phillies at Baltimore

Baseball Historian fans may recall that Brian was the Catcher at the plate in the 2007 "Chasing the Record" Circus game vs. The Giants in San Fran. where Barry Bonds hit homer number 756 off of Mike Bacsik -  freezing the game for an hour or two.

photo via Getty Images - 7 August 2007 Bonds his #756 at home vs. Nationals.

OK it was only about 35-45 minutes but it seemed about an hour too long. Yes I know it was baseball history and it was a big thing at the time, but halting the game for more than 10 minutes was uncalled for. 15 minutes tops would be acceptable for anything of this nature. 

Now lets get on with the Card Show:

 2002 Fleer Baseball 84 Brian Schneider Expos

 2004 MLB Showdown Card Game 014 Brian Schneider Expos

(Front and Back)

 

 2005 Topps Total Baseball 17 (WAS7) Brian Schneider Nationals

(Front and Back)

 2006 Topps Heritage Baseball 357 Brian Schneider Nationals

(Front and Back)

 2007 Topps Heritage Baseball 114 Brian Schneider Nationals

(Front and Back)

 2008 Topps Heritage Baseball 616 Brian Schneider Mets

(Front and Back)

Oddly Brian sort of bears a slight resemblance to this 1960s Senators Catcher. I noticed the resemblance when I first got this card from sportlots (I think).

1963 Topps Baseball 94 Bob Schmidt Senators

Senators/Nationals mentioned in this post:
Mike Bacsik
Ryan Church
Nick Johnson
Lastings Milledge
Bob Schmidt
Brian Schneider

Other Noteable "Franchise" players mentioned in this post:
Gary Carter
Vladimir Guerrero

Brian Schneider Baseball Reference

On Deck: Ed Brinkman - (2, 38) 11

In The Hole: Ryan Church - (38), 19