Thousands of parents photograph their children every year playing baseball. But how many players can say one of their parents snapped a photo that ended up on their first professional baseball card?

That scenario is what makes 21-year-old Atlanta Braves prospect Cody Miller’s 1st Bowman card, within Topps’ recently released 2025 Bowman Draft set, one of the unique stories in recent sports card memory. Cody’s father, Brian Miller, took the photo that ended up on the card.

Topps doesn’t make it a habit of tracking down little Johnny’s mother or father to scour through scrapbooks to unearth their son’s best image. It just so happened that Brian served as East Tennessee State’s baseball photographer during the 2025 Southern Conference tournament, as well as ETSU’s journey in the NCAA Tournament.

Brian is no stranger to shooting sports photos. It often trickled into his day job as a college sports information director. He’s worked at such schools as LSU, Tulane, Stony Brook, Auburn and Louisiana Tech and currently works at Coker University, a Division II school in South Carolina. After leaving Stony Brook in 2020, Brian put his passion for photography to work by doing what else: shooting pictures of his boys playing college baseball.

It started when he morphed into the official baseball photographer for Herkimer College, a New York junior college nestled between Syracuse and Albany, where his older son, Trey, played. After honing his skills and upgrading his equipment over the years, Brian’s hobby turned into a dream job as he captured Herkimer’s run to the 2024 NJCAA World Series championship. Brian parlayed that experience into shooting son Cody and the ETSU squad toward the end of the 2025 season, which resulted in the school’s first SoCon baseball tournament title and inclusion in the NCAA Tournament.

So when the Braves selected Cody, ETSU’s standout shortstop, in the third round of the 2025 MLB Draft, this meant a Cody Miller 1st Bowman card would be mass produced to hunt down in the hundreds of thousands of Bowman Draft packs. This also meant Topps would need to track down a photo of Cody.

This resulted in the rare occasion when Topps would have to call the father of a player for the photo. And what’s another advantage to having your father take your college baseball photos.

“I got to basically choose what picture I wanted on the card,” Cody said.

So it’s no wonder the Bowman card photo shot by Brian shows Cody’s home run — the second shot of a back-to-back homer sequence — against Wright State in the NCAA Tournament at the Nashville Regional in what turned out to be Cody’s final college game.

The original photo of Cody Miller (left) and the end product used for Topps’ 1st Bowman card. (Brian Miller, eBay)

Topps latched on to the story, alerting the Millers it would promote the rare father/son 1st Bowman photo connection leading up to the release of 2025 Bowman Draft.

Of course, Brian went hunting for Cody’s cards starting on Bowman Draft release day (Jan. 14). And so did Cody. Both of them hopped into Bowman Draft box break livestreams. Cody said one of the vendors asked if he was the Cody Miller. He obliged and said yes. But Cody failed in his quest for his cards that first day.

“It was still cool to be in there and for them to realize that I was there,” Cody said. “They appreciated it, and they said that was their first player that had ever done a break with him.”

Brian eventually landed a Cody card. He was set, saying, “I just wanted a card, just to have one.” But the exposure of the Millers’ story drew numerous Bowman Draft collectors in, with Cody and Brian being flooded with messages through social media of people wanting to send over Cody Miller cards.

Then came Chris Childs of Buford, Ga.

Childs sat with his son Gavin in his truck, waiting for the gym to open for a youth basketball practice Jan. 14. Childs started watching YouTube videos in the truck about the 2025 Bowman Draft set to pass the time. Gavin, a baseball card collector like his dad, asked Childs about 1st Bowman cards — specifically the “1st Bowman auto” card — and why they were special.

Every prospect inks the inscription “My 1st Bowman auto” along with his signature on the No. 1 serial-numbered card within the blue parallel. There are 150 serial-numbered blue parallel cards for each player within the set. So even though it’s not numbered as a one-of-one card, technically the player’s rarest card, the “001/150” card is also one of a kind given it’s the only card with that inscription.

Childs then told Gavin, “You know, if I ever got one, I think I’d just give it to the family.” Gavin asked why. Childs told his son he thought it would be special for the parents of a prospect to own the card as a keepsake to represent the hard work many parents face in transporting their child for so many years to practices and games. Basically a reminder of the parents’ job well done in helping their son live his dreams.

The next day, Childs bought into a “pick your team” break through WeTheHobby during the vendor’s online stream on the card-selling platform Fanatics Live. Childs bought only one team in the break: the Braves, which meant he would get all the cards of that team’s players that came out of the packs in the break.

It didn’t take long for Childs, under the username “CobraKhan0035,” to speak his generosity into reality. WeTheHobby’s Drew Weber slowly revealed Miller’s “My 1st Bowman auto” card and followed up with, “Bang! There we go baby!” Then “CobraKhan0035” typed into the accompanying live chat, “And I said if I got one I’d give it to his parents” followed by “I need to see if his parents want it for free.”

What makes this even more heartfelt was that Childs had “no idea” about the backstory of the Millers. Not until after pulling the card and proclaiming he’d give it to Miller’s parents did he learn how Topps promoted Brian Miller’s hunt for his son’s cards in part because of the shared father-son connection.

“Just me and my son having a conversation in the truck waiting for the gym to open and then it just happens,” Childs said. “Then (Gavin) got home from school that day. I was like, ‘Hey, guess what happened?’ I showed him the picture. He was like, ‘No way! Can we give it to the parents?’”

Childs originally reached out to Cody Miller, who made a quick double play-like transfer to the thrilled Brian Miller.

“My wife says, ‘You know, it’s because you talked about it, it just kind of happened.’ She’s a big believer in the manifestation of stuff like that,” Childs said.

Brian Miller (center) with the Childs family. (Courtesy of Brian Miller)

The Millers both said they couldn’t thank Childs enough for his selfless offer. Brian Miller met up with Chris, Gavin and Jensen (Chris’ younger son) Childs on Thursday outside of Truist Park, the Braves’ home stadium, to exchange the card for some of Cody’s memorabilia as a thank you.

“I really had hoped that I would be able to get that card,” Brian Miller said. ”I never imagined that it would have been pulled right away. And then … to have somebody who’s not selfish and doesn’t want it for the money. … There’s a lot of selfless people that I’ve come across in my short time back in (the hobby). It’s kind of surreal for me to be in the middle of it, but it’s truly a feel-good story.”

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