Had To, Obviously

 We're now weeks into the regular season folks, you know what that means. It means the Topps Now cards I ordered from the last two games of the WBC tournament finally arrived.

During the early rounds of the WBC I passed on getting the Team Japan cards, mainly because I knew Topps was going to pump out a lot in order to capitalize off of the Japanese collector/flipper market. Which they did. Topps even set up a Japanese branch a while ago for ToppsNow and other orders made specifically for Japan. My understanding is that this site would often have issues and a lot of orders made by Japanese consumers were cancelled and refunded. Oy vey.

But when it came time for the semifinals and the championship game, even I thought it was go time. The earlier games were fun but once the pool winners were decided the stakes just kept building and we got a ton of fantastic March baseball out of it. I got a joke off earlier at ToppsNow's expense but I do admit that it's perfect for moments like that where you just want to seize the moment, preserve it and come back to appreciate it later at your leisure.

I'm not sure entirely why but for some reason Topps sent me the championship game cards from 3/21/2023 first even though I also ordered cards from the semi-final the day before, which is why most of the cards from the last game are being shown first.

I bought the six-card daily lot for the 3/21/2023 cards and also the 12-card Champions quasi-team set, as of now that 12-card set hasn't been made or sent to me but fingers crossed it gets here soon since there's a big Nootbaar sized hole in my collection.

Also I didn't scan it but Trea "Captain America" Turner was also in this lot. I'll probably end up zapping someone with it later.

Now onto the semi-final cards which arrived two days after the championship cards. The championship game between Japan and the US was exciting but mostly because of the way it ended. Shohei Ohtani vs Mike Trout is exactly what everyone wanted to see from the start of the whole tournament. But IMHO the Japan vs Mexico game from the night before was the more entertaining game. Mostly because there was a lot more action evenly spread throughout the game which kept it engaging. Like how with one swing Masataka Yoshida tied things with a three run dinger. Very happy I got that WBC card first rather than him as a Red Sock.

The game ending with a walk-off, which is exciting in general, helps my point methinks. Once Japan learned that they were allowed to hit the ball to the parts of the field that Randy Arozarena wasn't present they finally took advantage of that. Also the video from the official WBC Twitter for this is just magical.

I didn't scan the Luis Urias two-run home run card from this game either but I got it. I have an idea on where to send that one later this year.

Also worth noting that the semi-final is where North America got formally introduced to the best of the best in Japan right now. Namely Roki Sasaki, Yamamoto Yoshinobu and Munetaka Murakami. Baseball weebs on Twitter have heard about these three for a while but this was everyone's first time seeing them go up against MLB level talent in the US. I'm truly jealous of everyone who got to see all three have their moments in this game in person in Miami.

One interesting thing is that Murakami's card is the only one with a picture on the back as well (the rest just have blurbs and brief write-ups). Nootbaar's weird stance makes me laugh but I don't blame him, I'd go nuts too after being a part of a wild game like that.

Here's something that's also very wild, a fun pull! I wasn't expecting it at all but I lucked into a parallel of Murakami. I had no idea it was even possible to get a parallel if you didn't order one of those lots of the same card. But apparently it is! I actually bought a 5-card lot of the walk-off card itself for a chance at a parallel of that, didn't work, but I'm more than happy with this parallel instead for sure.

The Murakami parallel showing up in that mailer made me a lot more giddy and excited than I want to admit. It's honestly kind of perfect how it just added more to the excitement of that moment for me. That walk-off itself got me hyped and excited, and just a few weeks later a card commemorating it did the same thing.

ToppsNow got me good with this one. All of these cards are fantastic and I'm glad I got them.

Saved the best for last.

What a moment.

What a card.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).