Shiny and new was handled by hot shot draftees like David Nied and stars-in-waiting (or in-transition) like Andres Galarraga, Vinny Castilla, and Dante Bichette.

And purple uniforms that no one had ever seen before.

And a Major League team in Colorado.

And, believe it or not, real baseball cards featuring real images of real Rockies players in their real Rockies uniforms before the season was even over.

Like 1993 Topps card #591, featuring speedster Alex Cole.

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Now, by 1993, Cole wasn’t new in any sort of way since he’d been in the Majors since 1990 and would turn 28 in August. He was sorta shiny, though. I mean, just look at those shades on his Topps card — dude’s face is half high-shellac polymer.

And he was kinda flashy, too, as evidenced by his 40 stolen bases as a rookie with the Cleveland Indians.

But how would all that work in the mix with his new teammates? And how about the Rockies as a team — how would their concoction of newness and shininess and purpleness and thin air shape their fortunes?

Would they hit? Would they pitch? Would they field? Would they run? Would they win?

Well, yes, they’d do all of that, though not much of the winning. Their 67-95 record did leave them six games ahead of the non-expansion San Diego Padres, though, so the Rox didn’t finish last in the National League West.

Score!

And, well, they scored. And scored and scored. They’re still scoring.

We know now that offense plays well in the thin air. Pitching not so much.

Not all offense, though.

Not 1993 Alex Cole offense, for example.

On a team that finished fourth in the NL in runs scored and third in batting average, Cole hit a soft .256 and scored just 50 runs in 126 games.  His OPS+ was 64, not much to write home about as a starting center fielder for a new, exciting team.

(He did steal 30 bases, and that must have been exciting.)

It was good enough for a -0.5 WAR and a ticket out of town, as Cole signed with the Minnesota Twins for 1994.

As it turns out, Alex Cole could have probably played for the 2018 Colorado Rockies, too. At least at the end.

We didn’t really know what to expect from this year’s Rox, just like 25 years ago.

Sure, Colorado won 87 games in 2017 and appeared to be on the upswing, but they still play in the NL West. That’s where the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers roam, where the Arizona Diamondbacks are trying to build something, where the San Francisco Giants still think they’re entitled to a World Series title in even-numbered years.

These Rockies were plucky, though, and they pushed their win total to 91, good enough for a one-game playoff with LA for the division title. Colorado lost that one but still landed a Wild Card berth and a showdown with the upstart Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Division Series.

It promised to be a grab-your-popcorn-and-sit-back-to-watch-the-fireworks series.

And it was, for the Brewers. After a 3-2, 10-inning nail-biter in Game 1, Milwaukee completed the sweep with 4-0 and 6-0 victories, that last coming in Colorado.

On the series, Colorado slashed .146/.210/.188 as a team.

So … how does that shiny 1993 Topps Alex Cole card look now?

(Check out the rest of our 2018 playoffs posts here.)

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The 1989 Topps baseball card set offered up a few things to distinguish it from its competitors.

First, as always, Topps “treated” collectors to mushy brown cardstock rather than the upgraded white stuff the other manufacturers were using by that point.

Next, we knew right out of the gate that Topps cards would be common as dirt. With the other sets, there was some hope for scarcity, but we knew where we stood with Topps.

Maybe most significantly, Topps was the only company — except for Score — to not include a rookie card of Ken Griffey, Jr., in their base set. No matter how much advance press Junior got, it seemed, he would have to wait for Topps Traded to make his debut with The Old Gum Company.

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Now, I realize all of those distinctions sound negative for Topps, but they did do some things right.

For one thing, the 1989 Topps design was pretty solid. Nothing earth-shattering, but a clean, simple layout that kind of hinted at 1965 Topps in a whispering sort of way.

The pinkish card backs were distinctive, too, and definitely had that Topps-y feel we all know and love.

And, while they missed out on Griffey, Topps did manage to nab plenty of solid rookies for their 1989 base set.

Among those first-year players who generated excitement, either in 1989 or later on, were Bill Bene, Darryl Hamilton, Monty Fariss, Ramon Martinez, Rob Dibble, Jack Armstrong, Gary Sheffield, Ricky Jordan, Andy Benes, Chris Sabo, Jim Abbott, Willie Ansley, Randy Johnson, Brady Anderson, Dante Bichette, Robin Ventura, and Steve Avery.

That’s a solid bunch of players, regardless of how many of each card Topps produced — some of them shone early in their careers, some late, and some pretty much all the way through.

You might even recognize a couple of award-winners among the group, as well as one oversized Hall of Famer.

To that list, you can also add Gregg Jefferies, who wasn’t a rookie but made his base-set Topps debut with a “Future Star” card.

That’s a really solid pasteboard and something of an icon for a set that never gained a huge collector following, but there is at least one card that’s even better overall.

That would be card #648 of Sandy Alomar, Jr.

Like the Jefferies and Sheffield cards, the Alomar rookie is dubbed a “Future Star.”

And, unlike the Jefferies, the Alomar rookie card is just that — a rookie card.

That is, it’s Alomar’s first base Topps issue, and it’s a really nifty one.

There is young Sandy in his chocolate San Diego Padres uniform with his catcher’s mitt extended, ball just lodging itself into his palm. Alomar appears to be jawing with whoever threw the horsehide, a slight smile on his face lending a light air to the whole scene.

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Overall, this card is a striking visual of a guy who would win the American League Rookie of the Year award with the Cleveland Indians in 1990 en route to a 20-year Major League career.

Will Sandy Alomar ever pick up a Hall of Fame plaque?

Nah, not as a player, anyway.

But he’s already picked up the honor of appearing on the best 1989 Topps baseball card.

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(This is the 29th in our series of posts about the best baseball cards from the 1980s. Check out the rest of those posts here.)

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If you’ve followed either Major League Baseball or college football over the last couple of decades, then you know that the Unversity of Tennessee football program regularly churns out stellar athletes.

How stellar?

Even putting aside the obvious NFL standouts like Peyton Manning and Jamal Lewis, a player who was once one of the Vols’ budding stars in football turned out to be one of the best hitters in Major League Baseball over the last twenty years of so.

Todd Helton was installed as Tennessee’s starting quarterback as a senior to start the 1994 season … only to lose that job to a young Manning before the end of the season.

It all worked out for Helton, though, as he was drafted in the first round the next spring by the Colorado Rockies and was in the Majors by 1997. Over a Big League career that spanned all the way to 2013 and was spent entirely with the Rox, Helton hit .316 with more than 2500 hits and 369 home runs. He also picked up three Gold Gloves for his work at first base.

As you might expect, Helton has appeared on a fair number of baseball cards over the years — but did you know he wasn’t the first Volunteers football player to have his own MLB baseball card?

He only missed that mark by, oh, about 90 years.

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Sammy Knows 2-Sport Splendor

Samual Strang Nicklin was born on December 16, 1876, in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The Nicklins were a wealthy and well-respected local family, and young Sammy grew to be a scholar and an athlete. He received a short tryout in with the Louisville Colonels in 1896 and attended the University of North Carolina in 1895-96 before coming home to the University of Tennessee in 1896-97. He played football at both schools and was the captain of the team at Tennessee, where he also injured his knee.

That mishap sidelined — temporarily — his athletic career, and then he served in the US Army during the Spanish-American War in 1898. When he returned home in 1899, Nicklin decided to pursue baseball as his career.

According to SABR researcher Stephen V. Rice, the Nicklins viewed baseball as a less than respectable vocation, so he headed into the minors as “Clyde Strang” in order to protect the family’s status in upper-crust society.

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By the time he broke into the Major Leagues for good in 1900 with the Chicago Orphans, Nicklin was Sammy Strang.

And that’s who he’d be all through a 10-year Big League career that would include stops with five different teams … and at least two early baseball cards.

Strang first appeared in the 1903 Breisch Williams E107 set in a Chicago uniform but was listed as a member of the Brooklyn Superbas, for whom he served as the starting third baseman that season.

Then, in 1909, Strang made it into the T206 set with “BALTIMORE” across his chest, a reflection of his time with the minor league Orioles.

Strang finished his Big League career after spending the 1908 season with the New York Giants, with lifetime achievements that included 790 hits and 216 runs.

And, of course, the first baseball card of a Tennesee football player!