Just For Fun: 2014 Topps Stadium Club - Best Card Competition (Cards #1 - 36)

 This week marks my first full week back teaching and I have to say that after having five months of not being at the college I'm tired!  My tiredness, however, shouldn't mean that my blog suffers...or stops altogether and yet I needed to find something that I could do fairly easily and without a lot of extra research.  

Enter:  Just for Fun!  

My newest series is going to be all about having fun - nothing serious at all here!  And, to kick things off I figured we should look at the 2014 Topps Stadium Club set and through it determine the best card(s) in the set.

For starters, I'm going to go one nine-pocket page at a time and choose the best card from that page.  From there, I plan to pit those winners against each other until eventually we have our "best card" from the set determined!  I'm also doing this in real time as I write the posts...it's probably been at least five years since I last looked through my binder of 2014 Stadium Club so this should be an interesting trip down memory lane for all of us!

Page 1 - Cards 1 - 9:

We start off with a doozy of a page beginning right out of the gate with card #1:  Ken Griffey, Jr.  Other highlights on this page include the Curtis Granderson play at the plate card and the Shane Victorino celebration card but the winner is easy:  #3 Babe Ruth.

I love the photo used here, it so perfectly captures the "superstar" in Ruth.  I honestly have no idea how the rest of the set will shake out but the Ruth here has a legitimate shot at being the best card of the set in my mind!  Heckuva start.

Page 2 - Cards 10 - 18:

The second page of the set features another quality Yankees' card (Derek Jeter with the "big four") but I have to give the nod to a different legend of the game:  #13.  Stan Musial.

It's already becoming apparent that retired legends are a force to be reckoned with in this particular set!  

Page 3 - Cards 19 - 27:

Moving along, our next page once again features a number of nice looking cards.  For example, there are plenty of entire sets out there where that Ivan Rodriguez, should it be in one of those sets, would be the best image overall.  But in Stadium Club, it doesn't even make the top two images on the page!  One could easily argue a third Yankee card into the page winners but I'm going to leave the Gehrig behind here and instead choose our first modern player:  Anthony Rizzo.

Now that I'm a father, I'm much more of a sucker for cards depicting happy children.  I can't wait to take my son to his first baseball game and I can only hope that some nice ballplayer will sign a card, hat, or ball for him much like Rizzo is doing for the kids in his photograph.  It takes a lot for me to award "best card" on a page to a Cub but even this Reds' fan can admit that the Rizzo is a nice piece of cardboard.

Page 4 - Cards 28 - 36:

We finally find our first Reds card of the set but I can't get too excited about Cingrani, a guy who didn't stick around with Cincinnati for all that long.  I was happy to see Randy Johnson in this set but I can't say that his card image is an overly inspired shot.  For me, the best of this page boils down to Helton, Banks, or Reyes with the nod going to the rather unique (and full of dirt in the photo) Jose Reyes card.

Sometimes a unique perspective is all it takes for a cool baseball card.  I wouldn't want an entire set full of cards like this but have one or two sprinkled in adds a nice bit of variety.

And with that we have our first four cards to make it to the next round.  Two legends, two current (at the time) players.  Three of the four cards are horizontal cards which was interesting to me and so far at least, zero Reds (so I can't be accused of being a homer)!

I'd love to hear your picks for the best card on each of the first four pages of the set.  Did I screw up my picks royally?  Let me know!