Baseball Cards

I’ve written a few times about baseball cards on this site. Those who know me know that one of my all time single favorite cards is the 1976 Topps Philadelphia Phillies Johnny Oates card. That card has been with me a long time, and even made it to the Oates HOF retirement ceremony a few years ago.

Anwyay, I ran into an article on ESPN tonight I wanted to draw your attention to. It’s about baseball cards, but it’s not the usual angle you run into. It’s about baseball card photographer Gregg Forwerck. Gregg has been taking photos for Topps for the last 19 years.

I was into getting cards when I was a kid, but mostly I just wanted my Phillies cards, the rest meant nothing to me. I’ve chronicled that too, as I would always get Julio Franco cards for some reason. He was my most “repeated” one, to the point that I would get mad when I got them. Even after I stopped, I always checked out a pack or two, and around 1990, I’d still get his Rangers cards. Stupid Julio Franco. I wasn’t a bicycle spoke collector, I would get them and put ’em in a box – doing the trading thing and all that. I got back into it around the time I got married, and have been collecting sets since then. So I’ve seen a lot of pictures. I always wonder who takes them. This article speaks to that.

According to the article, Gregg’s first job was for $100 in 1989 for Topps. The article talks about his rise to be what he is now, and some of the more famous players he’s taken pictures of. One of the more interesting stories is one he tells about Nolan Ryan throwing a ball at the dirt in front of all the card photographers once. The article is written around Gregg’s appearance in Surprise to take pictures of Jarrod Saltamacchia & Josh Hamilton this spring, so there’s a Rangers connection to the piece, although it’s not really about the Rangers as such. If you ever collected baseball cards, this is an article for you. Definitely check it out.

One other thing about baseball cards I thought I should point out. In the last two years, Topps has started a disturbing trend of photoshopping cards. I noticed it last year, but didn’t say something. Since I’ve already started talking cards, I thought I’d bring it up. For the longest time, you’d get Series 1 of a year’s set right around the start of spring training. You’d get Series 2 in the middle of the season, and the update/traded set for that year around the time of the World Series. I guess someone at Topps decided that they didn’t want players with the wrong uniforms in their “Series 1” cards. All the guys who were traded or signed elsewhere during the offseason generally didn’t get picked up in Series 1 as being with their new teams unless it happened early enough before the cards went to print. This started with the Series 1 set for the 2007 year.

Topps started photoshopping them at this time. The problem is that I know there’s NO WAY they could have player pictures with real game action in the uniform they were in on the card. It just strikes me as fake. For the most part, the photoshop jobs aren’t all that bad. But you KNOW they’re fake, so that takes it down a notch in your mind. Sometimes they’re quite obviously fake, like the 2007 Topps Derek Jeter card having Mickey Mantle in the dugout with him, and George W. Bush in the stands – uh WHY? What was the point in that?

As for “why” those two were in there, I can pass it off as a gag, since they’re so obviously out of place. But other stuff is more bothersome to me. Am I just being a baseball card snob and not wanting people to mess with the pictures? I wonder what folks like Gregg Forwerck think about stuff like that? The Topps 2007 Frank Catalanotto card is a fake. His card came out in Series 1, and at that time, he had not yet played for the Rangers in his second go around. If you look at the card, it just looks like a bad photoshop edit. His forehead seems too big for that hat. Couldn’t they have found a better pic to edit? Look at this:

I’ve always felt this Cat card looks bad. First off, I know it couldn’t have existed, since they wouldn’t have used a picture from the last time he played with the Rangers in 2002. Plus the batting helmet just looks really fake there to me. I’ve always thought this, but have never expressed it on my site here before (I think). Am I alone in this? Am I really the only person who thinks this looks like crap?

Another thing that’s bugged me about baseball cards is how they’re picked. I know not every player gets in, and that’s fine, but what’s the selection criteria? You have to include the big names obviously, but how does Topps draw the line as to who doesn’t get a card? With all the rookies and whatnot that we’ll never see beyond their card, one wonders what the guys who DO get to the show feel when they don’t get a card, and all these minor leaguers do. Then you get things like Edgar Gonzalez of the Arizona Diamondbacks and Steve Trachsel of the Orioles. In the 2007 Topps series, they both got two separate cards. Base card number 462, as well as 296 in the update set for Gonzalez and base card 558 & update set card 5. I never quite understood that. Why two cards for the same guy? Aren’t there some other players who didn’t get a card at all that could have taken that slot? Heck, there’s Elizardo Ramirez who is in camp with the Rangers now who got two cards (84 & 554) in the base set. If someone was in base and the update set, and HAD been traded, I’d buy that. It would make sense. But when both cards were on the same team, it doesn’t. If someone from Topps actually reads this, I’d be curious to hear an explanation. The baseball card blog “Stale Gum” has written about this subject a bunch.

But the fake cards bother me more than the multiples in the same year. About this time last year I was going to do an article about the 2007 cards, and had kept all the fake ones out so I could compile a list, but I had forgotten to do it, and now all of the ones I had picked are lost (although the Soriano as a Cub card comes to mind). But this trend has carried on into the 2008 Topps series. I’ve had Series 1 for about a month now, and have noticed them doing this again.

Is it really that bad having Miguel Tejada in an Orioles uniform, or Miguel Cabrera & Dontrelle Willis in Marlins uniforms while the cards say Astros & Tigers respectively? It really can’t be.

The Andruw Jones ones doesn’t look quite as bad as the Catalanotto one above, but it isn’t that great. If you look at the larger version of the picture (you can click on any of the cards below to see a larger version), you can clearly (I believe) see that the outfit has clearly been altered. Not only that, but if you pay attention like I do, that’s Jacobs Field behind him in the picture. The Atlanta Braves played in Jacobs Field in 2007 in interleague play. The Dodgers did not. That means one thing – FAKE CARD!

I wonder what Gregg Forwerck thinks of all this. I think I need to find an unedited version of Billy Ripken’s 1989 Fleer card, however. That made me laugh. :)

I would love to hear from some of you who collect cards about this. What do you think about the “fake/photoshopped” cards? Does this matter to you?