As I’m sure you’ve heard, the MLB owners ended their lockout yesterday after reaching agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement with the MLBPA. Even though the league and owners are still set to make a disproportionately large fortune compared to the players (you know, the guys that are actually responsible for what compels people to spend their money and attention on), it’s still nice to have the 2022 season no longer in a coma. After working myself into a teeth-gnashing fury multiple times on Twitter reading the immature, narrow-minded, or greed-worshipping “fans” railing against the players for not taking a shitty deal, I’m ready to turn towards sunnier thoughts.

Before I move on to the “official” 2022 season designs, I decided to put a cap on the 2021 season with my very first printed set. I searched all around online to find a vendor that makes trading cards but kept running into the same limitation: they’ll print you a bunch cheap, but only a bunch of copies of the same card. In other words, you can get like 100 cards cheap, but only 100 of the same card, not a 100-card set. Major bummer. The only place I found an option of printing multiple images on an order was with Moo, but they don’t do the standard 2.5” x 3.5” trading card. I decided to compromise and come up with a 50-card set to print on their square business cards. They’re 2.56” square, so almost the same size as regular cards. Close enough in my book.

So, 50 cards. That sounds like a good number for a “best of” set. Say hi to the 2021 Spirit Stars of Baseball.

Like the all-star squads, every team is represented here. Unfortunately, that means some of the guys who had top-50 performance last year didn’t make the cut. I don’t think there are any glaring omissions other than maybe Acuña and Luis Robert, but their injuries had to be taken into consideration. Because I sure as heck wasn’t going to do 100 of these. The design was labor-intensive with every card requiring me to cut the player out, color-correct the photos, create a halftone background image and then color-theming them each. It’s a colorful set while some teams’ palettes didn’t lend themselves to a really great overprint effect (Padres, Pirates, Rays).

Here are a few photos of the finished product. The paper stock is about the thickness of Heritage and the finish is a smooth matte on both sides. I’m pretty pleased with how they turned out. Unfortunately, the 12-pocket pages I got are just a little too tight to page these up, but they fit into standard penny sleeves and toploaders. I’d try my hand at making more of these if there’s a market for such a thing. There’s still some cost involved that would prohibit me from just printing a bunch and try to push them. But if enough interest was shown, I might ponder another set in this format.

Anyway, welcome back, baseball. Loving you isn’t always easy but I can’t help myself. Play ball!

In honor of the first Spring Training games of the (pre)season, I figured today would be a good day to share the Spirit 2021 designs. I’ve decided to scale back from last year and just make a card for each team here instead of making one for every single card on the checklist. This means I’ll have more time to tackle other designs like inserts for this set as well as some of the other releases I’ve done in the past (Clubhouse, Pennant, Deluxe). I also tackled just a couple of the backs — one pitcher, one batter — since those may get a little boring looking at 30 in a row.

As I try to do with the Spirit line, the base design features full-bleed photos with team colors and team logos as well as the player name prominently featured (and easy to read). The home plate shape for the logo took me in the direction of these diagonal elements for the team colors and name plates. The idea is for the design to add some visually interest and give the info room to live without getting in the way or overpowering the photo. Ryan Mountcastle and Dylan Carlson have the standard RC logo I’ve been using on Spirit cards for years, tucked into the top corners to balance the design as a whole and not crowding the bottoms.

The backs are full-color with the same colorful diagonals from the front. I pared down the bio information so it could fit in the secondary bar and leave room for a fuller career stat record. I also reintroduced a feature from previous years where a player’s accomplishment from the previous season can be easily highlighted (Maeda’s All-MLB 2nd Team honor, Solano’s Silver Slugger award). Obviously every player won’t have such a notation but the space will still work if empty.

As 2020 taught us, plans are futile and we’re all living in a nonsensical simulation, but my intention is to have a good number of card design posts in this space throughout the upcoming season. Even as the hobby and world have made some huge shifts in the very recent past, making and sharing these cards is something that brings me joy, so hopefully there’s plenty more to come.