This cheered Charlie Farquhar, proprietor of Stephen's on the Avenue. Although he dealt on all sports, from pesapallo to j'kulo (although the practitioners of the latter would scoff at being called a 'sport'), baseball was his number one. It's what got him into the hobby. And so the latest baseball cards from OsChar and GoJi were on prominent display alongside the basketball and hockey playoff stars of the moment.
What also helped were the staggered and in-season releases of the subsets. Pioneered by K-Toy's massive and otherwise denounced practice, all the major card manufacturers (OsChar, JoGi, Foster's prominent among them) eventually followed suit. Although K-Toy's move was widely denounced as a needless flooding of the market in the pursuit of completion (plus, their cardboard was flimsy), it spurred a revolution in the industry. Competition, capitalism's firstborn, has a tendency to do that.
Today, Charlie Farquhar received a shipment of hobby boxes of one of the most anticipated sets from OsChar: the 2063 AKA set. Yes, he had received and sold crates of K-Toy's "Alias" set, a brazen but typically bloated knock-off (500 cards? Seriously?). OsChar's AKA set debuted at 100 and remained so for this year. "An imminently curated set that can reasonably be completed," the Cappaletto Guide emphasized.
Base set, at least. The parallels and inserts were another story altogether.
The hobby boxes in the shipment were earmarked at $250 and guaranteed a colored parallel or an autograph. The autos were going to be the killer cards, Farquhar thought. Some of the players had apparently signed the card using only their nickname. He had a chuckle thinking about David Molina signing his card "The Fanning from Banning." But there was warranted speculation in the industry that each player had at least two autos, one with their name and one with their nickname. Whether this was at the whim of the player or part of the deal was anybody's guess.
For his part, Farquhar would love to get a Nakamaro Hori (aka Sundown), Chicago's most steady middle reliever.
He was super excited to see Hori's name on the checklist. Sure, Hori replaced Tony Cochrane (aka Legacy) but Hori actually contributed to the team. Hori, a sidearm reliever who was a Rule 5 draft pick last year, had a surprisingly good 2062. He appeared in 51 games and finished with a 6-4 record, 2 saves, 5 holds, a 3.17 ERA and a 1.22 WHIP and only 5 home runs allowed in 65.1 innings. The 27-year old has continued to improve. So far, he's appeared in 20 games with a sub 3.00 ERA with no home runs in 16.2 innings.
The other Black Sox who were in the set were what you would expect: The Bern (Tony Radtke), Full Pack (Timofei Gadomsky), and Nasty Boy (Adam Hines). Like a few other teams, the Black Sox had four cards. Only the Austin Shredders had more with 6.
He set aside a box for his cousin. Each hobby box contained 24 packs with 10 cards each, and although he almost always opens up packs on the Viz Stream, he could not help himself. He had been waiting for this set for months.
He put on his gloves, opened a pack, and slightly spread the cards. His heart stopped and he immediately saw an edge of a refractor card. It was the 5th card. On top was a Rumproast, then a Jo' Mamma (yes! River Monsters always sell well), some reliever nicknamed Hacksaw, a catcher nicknamed Dinnerplate, and then ... hot damn:
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After the first 9 sims, the Chicago Black Sox are 32-26, 4 games behind Nashville. 32 year old SP Carlos Moya was just awarded the Frick League Pitcher of the Month. Moya went 5-0 with a 1.59 ERA.
But it can be argued that 36 year old Angelo Lucchesi is just as important to Chicago's current success. Signed to a 3-year $32.1m contract in 2062, the no-nicknamed Lucchesi tore a back muscle last year and was lost for 4 months. Although he's lost speed in his bat and in his legs, he remains by far the organization's best centerfielder.
