Hall of Fame Set* Review

My lovely wife gave me the new Hall of Fame set from APBA for Christmas and I had a chance to look them over today.

First and foremost, the name needs a bit of a tweak or asterisk, as not every player carded is in the HOF.  For example, Pete Rose and Joe Jackson are carded.

Some of the Internet chatter was not giving much credit to the company for having 14 envelopes.  It seems easy for me to figure out, 8 position players (8), DH (9), Starting Pitching (10 ,11 and 12), Relief pitching (13), and Managers (14). Yes, managers as "players" like Bobby Cox and Branch Rickey have cards.  It takes three envelopes to hold all the starting pitching, so that is how I organized my set.  I don't think there is a right and wrong way to organize them, others have done it by birth month.

354 total cards and 14 envelopes imprinted "Hall of Fame". $40.00 plus shipping. By not sticking to the actual Hall of Fame list APBA opened themselves up to criticism, but that is nothing new and I applaud them for making choices.  For one, I am rather upset and question the exclusion of Kent Hrbek and Chris Sabo in the set, but I am sure the list will be long if we start down that road.

The cards are printed on standard stock with the usual opposite side.  No stats are included, but the master symbols are, as well as the years the player was in The Show, and when (if at all) he was elected to the HOF.  No currently rostered players are in the set, thus no Ichiro or Pujols, etc.

Each outfielder is rated for a specific position, and I like that.  For example: Puckett is a center fielder, Kaline is a right fielder, and Yastrzemski is a left fielder.

Other observations are the pitching cards are normalized down quite a bit; the best cards I see in the starting pitching group are:

Nolan Ryan Akyw
Bob Feller Akyw
Pedro Martinez Akz
Greg Maddux Axz

Some other starting pitchng cards of note:

Gibson Bxy
Koufax Bk
Clemens Bxy
Big Train Johnson Bkz
Big Unit Johnson Bk


However, the pitching grades make the set highly playable as inter-squad games and that is a huge plus.  If you run these guys out against other sets they will not fare as well as they are normalized.  It appears to me, that this set is designed to play against each other.

The bullpen is on the thin side, just 12 arms.

Rivera is the ace with a A&C* k
and Quisenberry is the least effective as a C*zz

There are so many ways to mix these teams and play them, by team they had the most innings for, by birth month, by era, by region, alphabetically, random pull by position, or one could run a draft with other managers.  I like the idea of a mini-tournament with a draft using this set.

The hitting seems to be either a high-range average or career, I am sure if you look around you can find a stats-person that has the analysis.

Here are some card examples:

Standard Infielders card:

Standard Outfielders card:

Player in the set but not in the HOF:

Shoeless Joe's card:

Managers Card:

Overall a great addition to the APBA selection from the company.  I am a sucker for odd sets so my view should be read through that lens.