On September 30, 2018, Anthony Rizzo hit his 100th RBI of the season. Check out the video below courtesy of NBC Sports Chicago.
Rizzo's jumping, Wrigley's jumping! #Cubs take a 3-2 lead!
Stream: https://t.co/M2MlPTxnmr pic.twitter.com/8MNkUFasrA
— NBC Sports Chicago (@NBCSChicago) September 30, 2018
Look how excited and pumped that Rizzo is on that play! He’s jumping up and down like a little kid. I love it! The Cubs went on to beat the Cardinals that day 10-5. Now being that I really like Anthony Rizzo, I hopped on the Topps Now section of the Blowout Card Forums to voice my enthusiasm. Rumor has it that one of the Topps folks in charge of Topps Now cards monitors their forums. I wanted Rizzo to get a card celebrating his 100th RBI so I posted the following post to the group.
As you can see, I went as far as adding two sources for the card. I was happy, proud and confident I would persuade Topps to include Rizzo in the following day batch of cards. During the afternoon of the next day, I aggressively refreshed the Topps Now page to see if they had included Rizzo. When the new cards appeared, there was Rizzo. I was thrilled! As I looked closer at the description on the front of the card, it said the following:
4th in franchise history with 3 seasons of 30 HRs, 30 2Bs & 100 RBI
Hmm, how odd I thought. I didn’t remember Rizzo getting to 30 HRs. Before I looked at the stats, I got back on the forum. Others had noticed the incorrect stats. But I sourced it directly from MLB’s website! I went back to their website and read the article. I looked at the date of the article and it showed September 2, 2017.
I was in shock and disappointed in myself for posting an outdated article. Not only were folks on the forum frustrated, but I was also seeing people talking about this on Twitter. I felt terrible about this! I had to own it at this point so I went on the offensive. I posted to the forums and to Twitter that I was the one who suggested the card but posted the wrong link. I pleaded with Topps on Twitter that the stats were for the previous year and to use the first link from NBC Sports Chicago that correctly mentioned Rizzo as being the first Cubs lefty to get 100 RBIs in 4 seasons.
The next day I noticed the front of the card on the Topps website had changed to the correct stats. However, the back still mentioned the stats from 2017. I still hoped that it would be fixed once it was printed. I received the card today and the back is exactly the same as it was on the website. Drats!
I’m not sure why the folks at Topps didn’t check this a bit closer, but I still feel partly responsible for it. The folks on the forum seemed like it made for a good story. The Rizzo card turned out to be the second to last Cubs Topps Now card of the season as the Cubs were eliminated in the wild card game against the Rockies. Maybe next year!
