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Saturday, September 11, 2021

Expansion?

 Expansion in the sports world has always caught my attention. When I was first introduced to baseball there were twenty-six teams in MLB. The Rockies and Marlins were added 1993 and the whole process was just so fascinating to me. I read everything I could about the player draft, mascot selection, uniforms, team colors, and anything else that I could find in print. None of the luster wore off when the Diamondbacks and Devil Rays were added five years later. 

There have been rumblings about expansion the last couple of years in MLB. I for one would love to see four divisions of four teams each in the AL & NL. Add in a two wild card teams in each league and give the top two teams first round byes and I'd be elated. I Nashville and Las Vegas would make good additions. No?

I'm thinking about expanding also. Recently I was sent a pair of PWEs from Jeff, the author of Wax Pack Wonders, which got my wheels turning. 

Above are a bunch of Cubs cards numbered 672 or higher. Jeff thought he would give me a head start on expanding my Cubs FrankenSet past 671.

You might be wondering why I stopped at 671. Well, there's two main reasons:

  1. I originally was going to stop at 650, but I used some page markers for ever 50 cards in the binder. Doing so pushed me to 653 to fill a full page. Argh. I had a bunch of cards pulled that were numbered higher than 653 so I decided to add another 18 cards, which landed me at 671. For what it's worth, I am not a fan of empty pockets. 
  2. The higher the numbers the more I thought my set would be dominated by Topps. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I was going for variety in players and card designs. 
Jeff sent 14 cards from Topps and the other card manufacturers were only represented by the four cards below. 


Here's a snapshot of what the backend of the FrankenSet checklist currently looks like: 

As you can see, Topps is king when it homes to the "high" numbers.

I'm not sure if I'm going to run with Jeff's expansion idea, but I'm not going to immediately sort these cards into my collection either. I'm going to think on it. It could be fun to chase down another 100+ cards until I get 792, which would be another hat-tip to Topps. We'll see!

Thanks for cards, Jeff! 

What do you think? Should I expand my Cubs FrankenSet

What about MLB expansion? Maybe MLB should focus on settling the new CBA this off season and work on "fixing" baseball before diluting the talent pool?

10 comments:

  1. Sure, expand the Frankenset. You can always choose a different stopping point.

    If it were up to me, yes, I'd add 2 more teams to MLB. An NL team in the eastern part of the country, and an AL team in the West. That would nicely give four divisions of four teams in each league:

    NL East

    Mets
    Phillies
    Pirates
    Nationals

    NL South

    Marlins
    Braves
    Reds
    expansion team

    (If the expansion team is somewhere north, such as Buffalo or Montreal, put them in the North and move the Nats to the South.)

    NL Central

    Cubs
    Cardinals
    Rockies
    Brewers

    NL West

    Dodgers
    Giants
    Padres
    Diamondbacks

    AL East

    Red Sox
    Blue Jays
    Yankees
    Orioles

    AL South

    Rays
    Royals
    Astros
    Rangers

    AL Central

    Guardians
    Tigers
    White Sox
    Twins

    AL West

    A's
    Angels
    Mariners
    expansion team

    They do need for the Rays and A's to make decisions as to whether they're going to move first. If they do, the divisions may need some adjustment.

    As far as I'm concerned, get rid of the wild card. Win your division or go home. This setup keeps most of the key rivalries intact, and it would allow the leagues to go back to interleague games only during midseason.

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    1. Two things:
      1) I can tell you have previously put some thought into this!
      2) Guardians. It's going to take me awhile to get used to that.

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  2. I've been tempted to expand my frankenset, but I like the symmetry of it too much to mess with it (ends on a full 9-pocket page). I'd be all for an expansion of the Cubs frankenset, though!

    I still think MLB needs to put another team in Canada (namely Montreal). Would love to see another team in a city/state that doesn't get a ton of baseball/sports publicity either - maybe Portland?

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  3. Not a fan of four-team divisions. Too few and too NFL-ish. Also, I can't imagine what the base-running would look like with two additional teams. It's already pretty bad.

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  4. Well you definitely know my opinion on the Frankenset expansion! But no pressure. The rationale you have makes a lot of sense.

    I'm not crazy about MLB expansion. But I wouldn't mind seeing Miami move to Montreal.

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  5. Go for it! Didn't some sets back in the 90s and 00s go to 800 or more? Surely they could mix it up a bit. Good luck if you do. It sounds like a fun project to begin with, and seeing how high you can go might be interesting.

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  6. I would vote no on expansion when there are already so many teams who can't draw fans and owners who have no desire to compete.

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  7. I think if I ever do a frankenset for the A's I'd go with 792. I've also messed around with a multi-team/multi-sport frankenset involving all of my favorite teams. If I did that I'd probably stick to only 396 or 540.

    Mixed emotions on expansion. If they ever did... I like the idea of the Montreal Expos coming back. And maybe a west coast Canadian team, like Vancouver.

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  8. I think going for 792 would make for a fun quest for you.

    As far as expansion, I'd love to get a team here in Portland, OR.

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  9. Yes, expand to 792! As for expansion, I'm not against it, but I think there are other issues to address first.

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