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Topps Lineage Week: The Reds Team Set

The Topps Lineage base set contains 200 cards, of those, 11 are players featured as Reds players.  Given that Lineage celebrates baseball's past as much as it celebrates its present, I believe Topps made some interesting choices for the Reds that ended up included.

Here's the full Reds checklist for 2011 Topps Lineage:

21.  Edinson Volquez
33.  Tony Perez
44.  Jay Bruce
64.  Joe Morgan
103.  Joey Votto
112.  Johnny Cueto
137.  Johnny Bench
148.  Aroldis Chapman
159.  Yonder Alonso
170.  Tom Seaver
191.  Johnny Bench

From the list, you'll notice that Johnny Bench is featured twice, once on a regular base card and once as part of the Rookie Cup subset.  Although I love me some Johnny Bench, especially in newer sets, I do question the point of having a ten card subset feature players with rookie cups that were already featured in the base set.  Wouldn't it have been better to either do Rookie Cup subsets with different players or scrap the Rookie Cup cards altogether?

As far as the player selection for the Reds goes, here's the breakdown:
Current players:  Volquez, Bruce, Votto, Cueto, Chapman, Alonso
Retired players:   Perez, Morgan, Bench (x2), Seaver

The Alonso card is the only card marked as a rookie card, but all the featured Reds are the young "stars" of the team.  (I say "stars" because they are sub .500 team, how many stars can they really have?)  I don't have any particular problem with the selection of current players, though I think exchanging Alonso for someone like Scott Rolen or Brandon Phillips would have been preferred.

As for the retired players, you'd think that only the Big Red Machine was worth remembering!  I really liked having a card of Tom Seaver as a Red, but if I'm being honest, I think I would have preferred to see someone from either the Reds more distant past (Ted Kluszewski) or from the Reds most recent World Series (preferablyBarry  Larkin but even someone like Jose Rijo or Chris Sabo would be nice).

 All told, I've enjoyed the Heritage set - and while the backs of the base cards leave a bit to be desired, I don't mind them nearly as much as other people do (more on that another day most likely).

If anyone is interested in full team sets (including the Reds team set featured above), let me know.  I think I have a full team set ready for trade for every team except the Dodgers and maybe one other team, I'll be happy to check if anyone is interested.

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