So that people don't get the wrong idea, I will list my artistic resume first.
I am a closet artist. That means, I've drawn stuff for years but hardly anyone sees it. There is but one thing that I have drawn currently on display. It is a sketch of myself and my wife at our college graduation. It's not the greatest likeness, but it's pretty good if I'm going to be accurate. It sits in a frame on a shelf.
Artistry runs in our family. Both my brother and I can draw. When we were kids, we would spend hours, for two or three years straight, drawing our own comic strips. My brother took drawing classes and toyed with the idea of being a comic strip artist. I never went that far, preferring to keep my talent hidden. But one day, as a teenager, I got the idea to draw Deborah Harry and Blondie on a piece of poster board. I hung it on our bedroom wall and friends and relatives were stunned for weeks that I drew it.
And it's continued like that -- a drawing here and there -- done in solitude and produced unexpectedly. I'm in a particularly quiet period right now. I can't remember the last thing I drew.
But the point is, I like to draw, and I like drawings, and the first time I can remember saying what I wanted to be when I grew up, it was "an artist." That was until fifth grade, when I figured out that I probably couldn't make a living carrying a color palette with a French beret on my head.
But even with all that, I remember pulling this Dick Perez card out of a pack of 1982 Donruss and practically throwing the card to the pavement in disgust.
I was incredulous. It was the first time I had ever seen someone not in a baseball uniform in my pack of baseball cards. A manager I could take. Coaches, sure. But a guy who DRAWS? Is that a dude in a collared shirt? I want my money back.
My brother was/is the mocking type, so we had lots of fun with this card, even though it's evident that Perez is drawing a portrait of Carl Yastrzemski, one of my brother's favorites.
We had a difficult enough time with Perez's paintings. I've mentioned before that Diamond Kings were not favorites of ours. We preferred photographs, thank you. And this is when the Diamond Kings actually resembled the players, not some of those later '80s /early '90s monstrosities.
And now I had a card with a picture of someone with a paint brush in his hand. What was I supposed to do with this?
Some may be wondering whether we were just jealous of Dick Perez. Two young artists watching someone paint ballplayers for a living. Nope, I don't think that ever crossed our minds or our subconscious. Actually, I wouldn't want the pressure of drawing a high-profile likeness of a high-profile player.
That's probably why I draw when no one's around and do it so infrequently.
Pushing aside the drawing theme, Dick Perez was the non-first baseball team member I ever pulled from a pack of cards. With Allen & Ginter and Goodwin and American Pie and many, many others, the novelty is long gone. And I don't mind pulling non-ballplayers that much now, depending on the situation.
Perez and the Diamond Kings were one-of-a-kind. Trend-setters, even if it wasn't exactly my style. (I've used the word "cringe" and "wince" when describing Perez paintings in past posts).
I've still got the card, for some reason.
Today, my daughter's No. 1 hobby is drawing, and she's pretty good.
Maybe one day she'll get on a baseball card.
She would probably shrug it off. But I'd think it was very cool.
We're all pretty used to pulling non-baseball players out of packs now.
1 comments:
Until I started reading blogs, I never heard a bad word about Dick Perez, and I really don't understand all the hate. My friends and I all loved the Diamond Kings, at least through 1990. 1991 kind of jumped the shark in my opinion. But 1982-1990...those were THE cards to have.
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