From Topps to Bottoms: Fanatics and the MLB Are Putting Topps Out Of Business

From the commissioner who gave you seven-inning doubleheaders, the ghost runner,  the juiced ball comes and the end of the Minor Leagues comes the next destruction of the tradition of baseball, a sport that survives on tradition, the end of Topps Baseball Cards. Fanatics, an apparel company, will get the exclusive license to produce baseball cards in 2026 when its dead with Topps ends in 2025, ending 75 years of collecting baseball cards that have linked four generations of sports fans. There is no word if there will be physical cards when the deal is complete, as this could take the industry fully into the digital mode, killing an industry that has been on fire. 

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Topps is celebrating 70 years of producing baseball cards in 2021, and the hobby could not be hotter. The National Card and Collectable Show in Chicago was jammed pack with collectors old and young, linking the sport to the past while growing its future. Like a kid getting a 1952 Mickey Mantle Rookie and putting in the spokes of his bicycle, Rob Manfred, who hates anything having to do with baseball traditions, has come up with another winner. 

The sport of baseball is in a bad place; blackout restrictions and lack of knowledge on how to promote the game on the internet seem to be the norm with lords of the game. The league's Collective Bargaining Agreement expires at season's end, and Commissioner Rob Manfraud has within his sight rules that will make the game everyone loves virtually unrecognizable whenever there is a next season. Manfred and the Owners want to make the luxury tax more punitive and add playoff rounds, all but destroying the 162-game marathon that was a part of baseball's traditions. He dangles carrots like the universal designated hitter but makes the players want to give him carte blanche on reshaping the game. The same Rob Manfred referred to the World Series trophy as a "Piece of Tin," as the Houston Astros got away with cheating.  

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The chances of a full season being played in 2022 could be slim, as the Commissioner seems to be laying the groundwork for a protracted work stoppage that could mirror the 2004/05 NHL lockout, as he seeks to end the American and National Leagues like he ruined the minor leagues. With geographical realignment, we can soon see watered-down playoffs, neutral-site World Series, seven-inning games made permanent and more gimmicks like the runner on baseball. 

Topps has been with the game since 1952 when they took the baseball card industry from a niche collectible to a piece of Americana with its first fully produced set. Nobody understood the value of cards as kids flipped them, put them in bike spokes, and traded them all while chewing on the dried-out piece of gum, that somehow tasted better if you landed your favorite player in the pack. The industry exploded in the 1980s as Fleer successfully sued to earn the right to produce baseball cards and Topps. This gave birth to the Junk Wax Era as Donruss, Score, and Upper Deck would enter the market over the next decade, flooding the market and watering down the value. The industry saw the bubble burst in 1994 when the strike canceled the World Series and brought the hobby industry to its knees. Topps regained its monopoly in 2010 when MLB named them the exclusive rights holder to use MLB trademarks and logos. Other companies like Donruss and Upper Deck can produce baseball cards but will have to do so with blank caps and uniforms, making them undesirable to most collectors. 

We have already lost the tradition of ticket stubs, I still have my first ticket stub from 1985, somewhere in my collection. What will this commissioner do next to change the game. It seems more often than not the current leadership in MLB has the same mindset of the people exposing launch angle and the shift, while wondering why everyone can't hit anymore and trying to doctor up the baseball and create offense artificially while ignoring the real problems as Rob Manfred continues to make Roger Goodell look like Pete Rozzell with his sheer mishandling of the sport.