Completed Set: 1989 Topps Baseball

Quick: Imagine the most generic baseball t-shirt you can.

It probably looks something like that one, right?

Well, I'll tell you something. It's exactly what the 1989 Topps design reminds me of. Just look at the bottom of this next card, for example.

It's so generic that Dallas Green appears to be wincing with disappointment.

And if you want to get the full thrust of it, here are the logos from the t-shirt and the card together, matched for color.

Same thing? 

Yeah. Pretty much.

And listen. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Baseball cards are about fun. And familiarity. And baseball. So if you were a baseball-playing kid back in 1989 and saw that the script team name on your Little League jersey looked very much like the script team names on the new Topps baseball cards that you were pulling from packs, you might have been psyched about it. After all, you can't have too much baseball in your life, right? So again, not a bad thing.

But for the 1989 version of Gregory Ninepockets, the design did seem a bit plain.

He had just started getting into the sport of ice hockey, and Topps hockey cards were much more interesting that year, with the pushpin design in the top corner and the Roy Lichtenstein–style dotted background underneath the player name.

So that didn't help young Gregory's opinion of 1989 Topps baseball cards.

You know what else didn't help?

The Upper Deck company.

They released their inaugural baseball card set that same year. And it was not plain.

I wonder how closely the new company kept everything under wraps back then. Just imagine the team at Topps finishing up production of their 1989 baseball set and feeling pretty good about it. Then imagine them seeing Upper Deck's set for the first time, with its foil pack wrappers, bright white card stock, hologram technology, and full-color images on the card backs.

I can picture a Topps exec opening his first Upper Deck pack that year, and reacting like this as he flipped through each card:

I know many of us kids back then reacted in a similar way when we saw Upper Deck cards for the first time.

In any case, let's look at some 1989 Topps cards, because that's really what we're here for today. And there's some goodness to be had.

Topps was always solid when it came to providing us with some classic batting stance photos.

Same for the pitching poses. The photographers made Goose look 10 feet tall. And Jim Gott looks rather heroic from that angle, don't you think?

Headshots abound in this set, which might seem boring. But oftentimes the players are very happy. I like that in a baseball card. To reiterate: Baseball is fun.

You know what else is fun?

Subsets!

And 1989 Topps gives us a few good ones.

The #1 Draft Pick cards were pretty cool for young collectors, and showed players in their college uniforms. (Or in the case of Steve Avery, high school!) Topps earns a little bit of credit there.

The rookie cup subset featured some big names at the time, too. (See how nice it is when the cup is always tucked in the bottom corner like that?)

The All-star design continued the generic script theme, but fancied things up a little bit.

The Team Leaders subset returned, and for the fourth year in a row, Topps went with the same cloud-like border. But that repetitiveness almost doesn't matter, because these cards tell the story of baseball so well. Bonus points to the Topps photographer who captured the "Bash Brothers" doing their thing on the Oakland A's card.

Topps also brought back some other favorite subsets, like Record Breakers and Turn Back the Clock. As for the checklist, it felt slightly more modern than standard.

Speaking of more modern, the Future Star cards received a new design. Sheffield, Jefferies, and Alomar were all highly sought after back then.

And on the subject of young stars, Topps did get some good rookies into the base set. In addition to Sheffield and Alomar up there, Biggio, Johnson, and Smoltz would all end up having Hall-of-Fame careers. 

The glaring omission, of course, was Ken Griffey Jr. Most of the other major brands did manage to get him into their base sets, so it was disappointing to young collectors that Topps missed the boat there. (The Topps Traded set was where you'd find Griffey Junior, along with other stars like Deion Sanders, Tom Gordon, and Omar Vizquel.)

But let's get back to the good stuff.

There are some nice action shots to be found throughout the base set.

And some cool cards featuring players with their choice of lumber.

Players with glasses were still a thing, too.

In addition, some excellent color matching occurs in this set. I think a binder page filled with 9 players from any of the teams above would look pretty sweet. (Other teams leave something to be desired. For example, the Angels have a magenta-purple-yellow thing going on, while the orange and blue Mets almost had something special until Topps gave them a red border for some reason.)

Anyway, let's look at a card back now.

The good stuff continues here. Not only is the black text fairly easy to read on that light pink background, but Topps added an interesting little table at the bottom of many cards. The "monthly scoreboard" section allowed us to go a little deeper into the stats of our favorite players, showing total home runs and RBI per month. For pitchers, the table displayed wins and strikeouts per month.

So that's 1989 Topps baseball. Fun, and some good qualities, but if I'm completely honest? A little bit underwhelming.

Regardless, I'm happy to have this set completed and checked off the list. 

How about you readers? If you were collecting back in 1989, how did you feel about the Topps baseball release? And how do you feel about it these days?

Share in the comment section, and thanks for reading!