Following up

 

I've been meaning to follow up on a couple of posts and the longer I've waited, the more follow-ups I've added.

I'll write about all of them now, but I'll try to keep it from going on for too long (not that I've cared about that in the past!)

 

Starting with the card show I went to last weekend, I mentioned on that post that I had acquired the 1967 Topps Carl Yastrzemski card, which allowed me to replicate the 1975 Topps '67 MVPs card that shows the Yaz card and the Orlando Cepeda card side by side.

 

 

 Like so.

But I didn't realize at the time that I had picked up another card at that same show that allowed me to complete another MVP card in that same subset. It's the 1969 MVPs card.

 

And here they are:

I had the Killebrew card already and got the McCovey card last week. Not sure how I missed that.

Completing these two MVP card matches made me go through the whole subset run to see what I had finished already. I have all the cards that make up the 1967-74 MVP cards. I also have the cards that complete the 1963 MVP card (Sandy Koufax and Elston Howard).

I also have the cards for this one:

 

That's a lot of fun.

For every other '75 MVP card I'm missing one of the cards or both of them. If I ever decide to complete this project, it will take some dedication -- and cash.

Thanks to the comments on the most recent Define The Design post, I've made some updates and adjustments to the set names, which are now included on the Define The Design page. The 1978 Topps set has been renamed "The Cursive Set" because of course it is.

"Cursive" is kind of an old-school word, but it sure was everywhere when I was a kid and in 1978. It's the perfect description. I had used "cursive" in the Define The Design name for 1990 Donruss and since I don't like repeating names, '90 Donruss is now The Lady Bug set.

 

1984 Donruss is now The Postmark Set, thanks to gcrl. I like names that are not vague and cite something specifically. This works.

 

 

1991 Donruss is now The Fisher-Price Set. In the original post, I had mentioned how this set looks like something that would come with some kids' play set. Then Nick said in the comments that he's termed it The Fisher-Price Set based on how someone described it previously. Well, that someone was me! Of course, Fisher-Price! Perfect. I can see this card in a little display, encased in plastic and tied with a twist-tie to some cardboard in a package also including a tiny plastic bat, glove, ball and cap.

 

There was no real consensus for 1981 or 1992 Donruss and none of the suggested names really spoke to me, but that happens a lot. I'll come back to these sets in a future post and often something clicks then.

 

 

Thanks to another comment, I've decided not to include managers in the One-Card Wonder lists, it will be players only.

George Bamberger has one card as a player, in 1959 Topps, but he appears plenty as a manager, starting in 1974. So, to avoid confusion, I'll keep OCWs to players. I've updated the post I wrote and also updated the team totals.

 

Finally, I got a bunch of needed 2024 Heritage from Sportscards From The Dollar Store recently. Very nice. Included with these cards were two from the insert sets, including the very mid-1970s Tom Seaver Baseball Flashbacks card at the top of the post.

 

Douglas also sent this Baseball Sensations Clayton Kershaw card. This photo is pretty old, like seven years ago -- I remember seeing it on another card and thinking "wow, that's a goofy photo to choose," and now here it is again -- repeated. 

It just doesn't seem that Topps/Fanatics put as much thought into this Heritage set as it's done in the past. One of the reasons I haven't dissected the cartoons on the back for this set is because Heritage gave up on honest replication of the cartoons a few years ago. I knew the '75s would just have repeated cartoon images from '75, reused with whatever fit with the words.

But it's not even that close, with a lot of them. Some examples (if you can read them -- that's another reason why I haven't done this yet).

Here are four examples that make almost no sense. Frank Tanana has a question mark on his uniform for no apparent reason. Another card shows the Tampa Bay Rays' first draft pick sweating it out as he chases a ball. Why? The bottom two cards show the same cartoon, which I'm sure was used with a Babe Ruth question in 1975 (Babe was always shown as overweight in cartoons then). I don't know if Max Scherzer or Orlando Cepeda would appreciate this depiction.

Four more. For a question about a left-handed pitcher, the cartoon shows an infielder fielding a ball on the base and crying. And he's right-handed. The second card has the player looking in the phone book for some reason for information on the Blue Jays' first winning season.

The bottom two cards are the same cartoon again and it shows pitchers Joe Kelly and Pat Hentgen both sporting toothpicks, which neither were known for, as far as I know.

 

That cartoon was originally used on the back of the Dan Spillner card in 1975, and was a reference to Sam "Toothpick" Jones, who definitely was known for using a toothpick.

This is the sad state of Heritage, and baseball cards these days. Nobody is hiring cartoonists to draw original cartoons, so Topps reuses ones from the old set and the matches are pretty poor. Makes you wonder if AI has made its way into baseball card manufacturing. (Also note how much easier the '75 card back is to read compared with the Heritage ones).

I received several other cards from Doug along with the Heritage cards, but I sense myself getting cranky so those can wait for another day.