It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

There's something special about springtime and baseball.  Baseball is back.  Winter's browns and whites gives way to green.  And for lucky Pirate fans, we got to enjoy gorgeous weather while the Bucs were rained out twice in Detroit only for the team to return for today's Home Opener with an inch of snow on the ground.

Guess it can't all be good. 

This time of year always brings out the collecting warm and fuzzies in me too.  It was in the spring that I went from "kid with baseball cards" to "baseball card collector." 

I've written before about how opening packs of Opening Day and Topps in my Easter basket in 2000.  It was the first time I felt absolutely enamored with cards, and kept couldn't get enough of either set.

There was something so cool about Opening Day, with the giant foil stamp.  In the days before Opening Day being overloaded with inserts, the best it had to offer was a preview of some cards in series 2.  I mean, there were autographs.  But your odds of being blasted to the moon were better than hitting an auto.

Today Opening Day is a fairly lazy, kid-friendly set.  We get the same mascot cards year over year.  Two of the insert designs this year are exactly the same as the freaking base cards.  Remember when an insert was called that because it was...different?

 But in 2000 Opening Day had all I could ask for.  The set offered a rundown of the game's top stars.  They even included cards from the Magic Moments subset featured at the top of the post and the three player prospect cards.  It was a nice touch that added a nice touch.  You had all the biggest names in the league, but here are a few players to watch out for as well. 

 And of course what would a set be without some quirks.  Two Astros cards.  But notice anything different?  The 'Stros logo change must have caught the designers at Topps off guard.  Not only to we get to see the same color scheme with two very different logos, Mike Hampton would also make his appearance in the regular 2000 Topps set wearing a Mets jersey.  Griffey also gets the retro uni treatment, appearing as a Mariner in the set.

It's some of those fun subtleties that make it more than just a lower end clone of Topps.  And that's a glorious thing in this collector's eyes.  While Opening Day is getting a little too formulaic for my liking the last two or three years, phoning it in with recycled insert concepts or oddball stuff like ballpark food, nearly 20 years later it's still my first go-round with the set that has given it a special place in my collecting heart.

So happy home opener for those the teams kicking off their season today.  I'll be watching on tv this year, glad I'm not trudging through snow.