Trading Card Database lists this set as "Pacific Spanish". I don't know if there was a "Pacific English" set.
Jardinero means 'gardener' in Spanish. In the baseball context it means 'outfielder'.
Pacific was one of the companies that came into the packed early 90s card market and managed to bring something a little different with them. In this case, the Spanish language. After reading the same sort of factoids on the backs of so many cards, the description of Tony as "el mejor bateador de contacto" is a welcome break. All in all, it's a decent card too. Nice colours, good photos.
In my opening post I mentioned visiting the USA in 1987 with my family. We changed planes in New York, where I bought a musical badge with a picture of the 1986 Mets team on it, and then flew to Florida for a week. We did Walt Disney World and the Epcot Centre. We then went to Miami, where I remember getting very confused by the addition of sales tax when I tried to buy some baseball cards in a drugstore. Then we flew to Oklahoma where some friends of my parents lived. They had daughters about the same age as me and my brother.
I remember discovering that at school they were learning Spanish. I thought that was the daftest thing I had ever heard. At secondary school in the UK you learned French. You might get the chance to learn German. Nobody learned Spanish. What was the point of that? (Thinking about it, it's weird we didn't get taught Spanish given how popular Spain is as a holiday destination.)
That was my Eurocentrism at work there. French and German were the big languages on the continent. I didn't realise the USA had a large Hispanic population or that Spanish was the second most popular spoken language. (There was a lot I didn't know about the USA. I also had my mind blown when I lost a quiz question about the smallest state in the USA. I was adamant it must be Hawaii. Right up until they showed me an encyclopedia entry about Rhode Island.)
Pacific saw a gap in the market for Spanish cards and jumped into it with this licensed set. Prior to this they had produced a few other baseball collectibles. However, although it was an untapped market, it was also a limited market and the Spanish cards were a short-lived thing.
For the rest of the 90s, Pacific did some pretty jazzy cards. I have a few to show you in future posts.
Total: 51/394
My favorite thing about Pacific was their ability to crop a photo. A lot of their cards in the 90's had way too much gold foil for my taste... but they definitely knew how to center a photo without chopping off limbs or pieces of equipment.
ReplyDeleteI have some lovely gold foil covered cards to come :)
DeleteI took four years of Spanish from 7th-10th grade. I certainly can't speak Spanish but I can somewhat read it.
ReplyDelete"Gwynn, the best contact hitter, is just as dynamic in the field as he is in the batter's box. Tony, with a lifetime batting average of .327, has won a Gold Glove on five occasions."
Something like that, anyway. I'll admit that I had to look up a few words, and initially thought that the batter's box was the "batting cage".
Thank you Adam. "Diolch yn fawr" as we say in Wales. (Languages aren't my strength although I have just taken a course in Welsh.)
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