Draft Years: 1973

 

With the first pick (21st overall) in the 1973 MLB draft, the White Sox chose catcher Steve Swisher out of Ohio University. The Sox felt they needed to draft a catcher to eventually replace Ed Herrmann. Steve was so well thought of that the Sox packaged him along with Steve Stone, Ken Frailing and eventually Jim Kremmel to the Chicago Cubs in December 1973 for aging third baseman Ron Santo.

 Swisher would make his MLB debut in 1974 for the Cubs and would become an All-Star for them. He would finish up his nine season career playing for the Cardinals and the Padres. Not a bad career, but certainly not Hall of Fame worthy. Steve's most damning contribution to the game is still fathering White Sox clubhouse cancer Nick Swisher. 

There are many notable players that would have been a better choice than Steve Swisher. Fred Lynn would have been a solid choice. Jack Clark or Jeff Reardon would have made great selections too. Floyd Bannister or LaMarr Hoyt would have been great selections too.

Let's just say that the White Sox were stuck on drafting a catcher. There is a catcher/first baseman that was undrafted until the third round (63rd overall). He played twenty-one seasons in the MLB and was selected to the Hall of Fame in 2003.

 Eddie Murray.

Yes, of course hindsight is 20/20. The draft was certainly not as well researched and planned as they are today. The fact that Steve Swisher was traded before the year's end for a washed up veteran, makes him a wasted pick, in my opinion. Any one of those players that I mentioned would have made a better choice than Swisher. Steve Swisher was an alright choice here, but there are so many other notable picks after he was chosen, that it seems that the Sox jumped the gun a bit.

Could you imagine Eddie Murray as part of the South Side Hitmen? Eddie hit 27 home runs as a rookie in 1977, on his way to becoming American League Rookie of the Year. Can you imagine if he played first base instead of Jim Spencer? You would miss the Gold Glove at first, but I believe the plate numbers would more than make up for that. Besides, Eddie would get three Gold Gloves starting just a few years later.

Of course, this is all just fantasy thinking, but it's always fun to imagine... what if?

2020 Absolute

 

2020 brought the return of Absolute to the shelves, after fifteen years. This was brought out by Panini, which only has the players license. The previous set was introduced by Donruss.

The design is right in line with the previous Absolute sets. This feels like it could have been brought out in the early to mid-2000s. It's faithful to the feel of  the original sets, almost to a fault. The parallels are there. So are the short print cards. It's everything that was loved and hated about this release in one package.

If you throw in a few tiny elements from Leaf releases of the same time period, I think you found the inspiration for the 2020 set. What I really did not like about this year's Absolute was the distribution. $100 for twenty hobby cards. It breaks down to five bucks a card, which includes eight base cards, two parallels, four inserts, two memorabilia cards and four autographs. It sounds like a great deal on the surface, but most of those haven't held much resale value. Let's face it, that's what most people are looking for nowadays.

The set is broken down into a regular set of one hundred cards and a short print autograph set of sixty-six cards. A lot of these short print cards can be found for a steal on reselling sites.

Out of 166 total cards, the White Sox have five cards in the regular set and four cards in the short print set.

24 - Tim Anderson
50 - Jose Abreu
62 - Yasmani Grandal
79 - Yoan Moncada
84 - Eloy Jimenez
110 - Danny Mendick (auto) (/149)
113 - Luis Robert Jr. (auto) (/149)
145 - Dylan Cease (auto) (/149)
149 - Zack Collins (auto) (/149)

The main drawback with Panini product is the lack of MLB logos. Hopefully, someday that will be able to change. Until then, it will be their Achilles heel. No matter how nice their cards are, Panini will always lose a fraction of value because of that fact. These cards are nice looking and a bit nostalgic. In the short print cards, you can see why they went with the bigger autograph. It hides the majority of the player behind the cutout for the auto. The logo problem takes care of itself in most cases.

Overall, I like this set. It would have been much better with an MLB license.