Rod Beck played for 13 seasons in the Major Leagues. He made his debut in 1991 with the Giants, and stayed with them through the end of the 1997 season. He played with the Chicago Cubs in 1998 and 1999, but was traded to the Red Sox midway through the '99 season. He was with the Sox until the end of the 2001 season. He had Tommy John surgery at the end of the 2001 season, and spent 2002 in the minors at Iowa with the Chicago Cubs organization. During the season, he lived in a mobile home behind the stadium, letting fans come over while he would sign autographs and offer free beer. In 2003, he made it back to the Majors with the Padres, and finished his career with them in 2004. Unfortunately, Beck passed away in 2007. I was fortunate enough to have got Beck's autograph through the mail in 2006 on a '93 Topps Gold and '98 Bowman Chrome card.
Rod never got a 1992 Topps card in the main set, but he did get in the '92 set (sort of). 1992 was the first year that parallel sets came inserted in packs, and Topps made a parallel ToppsGold set, where the box with the player and team names were highlighted in gold foil. Every card in the '92 set had the ToppsGold parallel card, but the set had 6 checklists in it. Instead of making ToppsGold checklist cards, Topps decided to give 6 players that weren't in the regular Topps set a ToppsGold card. Those players were Brian Williams, Terry Mathews, John Ramos, Terry McDaniel, Tony Perezchica, and Rod Beck. I chose to add these players to my custom 1992 set, since they didn't have regular Topps cards in 1992. I did this as well to players who appeared in the 1992 O-Pee-Chee set as All-Star replacement cards.
Rod appeared on a decent amount of Topps sets during his career. 1993 was the first set he appeared in, and he was in every Topps set from then until 1999. He was skipped from the 2000 and 2001 sets, and appeared on a 2002 Topps card, which was his final Topps card. He presumably wouldn't have got a card in the 2003 set since he didn't play in the Majors in '02. The '04 and '05 sets are missing Beck cards, which would've been his final 2 Topps issues. This custom gives him cards from the '92-'99 sets, leaving him with cards from the '00-'01 sets, and '04-'05 sets to give him a career Topps run.
I am making some headway on the checklist of the 2001 Topps set on my other blog. All of the NL teams are done, and I have all of the templates for the NL clubs done as well. I will probably start on the AL team checklists and templates sometime in October once we are moved into the new house and time warrants it. I hope to have them all done by the end of the year, but I don't know what's going to happen once our baby arrives in November. If you enjoy seeing these cards, check out my other blog. I basically am doing customs from the 1989-present Topps sets, and I am attempting to complete the 2001 set right now, followed by the 1989 set, 1990 set, 1991 set, and so on. I have been getting some help making the customs by a reader or two, so if that sounds like something you are into, please let me know. Thanks for checking out my latest custom.
-Jeremy
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