Mookie Mania

Mookie Betts had an excellent spring and looks like a future star. I'm excited to follow his big-league career after seeing him in Greenville in 2013. He's flown through the minor league ranks since then and started off the year as the starting center-fielder and leadoff man for the Red Sox.

The other day against the Nationals Betts robbed Bryce Harper of a home-run with a nice catch at the wall, and then homered himself. Boston loves this guy and I couldn't be happier for him.

I recently picked up some cards to add to my small Betts collection.

I could be wrong on this, but I'd imagine it's not often that a player has his first Bowman card and major league rookie cards in the same year. That's the case with Mookie Betts, though. The card on the left is his first, from Bowman Prospects. Next up is his Stadium Club rookie. Pretty close to having all the base cards I want from that set. The rest of these are from 2015. I'm a fan of the new Topps design. Great post-swing shot here.

While this isn't my favorite Gypsy Queen design, it still ranks as one of my top five base sets in a given year. I was pleased to see Mookie show up in the Glove Stories insert set. Just from seeing him play a few times this year I would expect to see him win some Gold Glove awards. The last is probably my favorite, which should surprise no one since it's from Heritage. Looks like Betts is glad to be in Boston.

Help me out, am I the only one following this guy outside of Red Sox fans? Where is he in the hype-scale, compared to a Bryce Harper in his first season, or Abreu or Puig. Probably below all of those, I'd expect, but how far below?