At the Zenith

I thought I'd discovered two different companies using the same name for a card set until I delved a bit into the murky world of baseball cards companies and found out that actually what I had got was a brand resurfacing under new ownership.

Zenith is the brand. In 1997, it was a set produced by Pinnacle.

Card Number 341: Pinnacle Zenith, 1997; #2

OK, this goes against everything Fuji likes in a photo. Only half the player is in the shot, and a good  portion of the bat is cropped off. In fact, it also ticks the boxes for my chief gripe about Topps cards - it doesn't show Tony's face or his name on the shirt. But if someone is going to produce a card that upsets both my and Fuji's aesthetic principles, what a card to do it! 

That is a ball flying towards him! You can see the muscles in his arm tensing ready to hit it.

Also, I can't think of another card in my collection that shows the little #19 on the back of Tony's helmet. That's just cool!

Then flip it over, and what have we here?

That's a hit location chart. Want to know where to sit to catch a Tony Gwynn home run? The answer is out behind right field. 66% of his home runs landed there. That sounds like good odds, but you'd have to be lucky, because he only hit three home runs all season!

I'm feeling a bit tired of stats boxes. This is a nifty graphic, although it's not so joyously colourful as the one on the Zenith card in 1995. It conveys data in a fun, different way. Twenty bonus points!

Pinnacle went bust the season after this set came out and their assets were bought by the Playoff company, owners of DonRuss. So when a Zenith set appeared in 2005, it was a DonRuss product.

Card Number 342: DonRuss Zenith, 2005; #234

This came out 3 years after Tony retired. The last 20 cards in the set were notable retired players, including the late Tom Seaver as a Cincinatti Reds player. 

It's an attractive card, and meets the Fuji aesthetic as none of Tony has been cropped off by the picture editor.

The back is mainly a summary and a one line stats box. Sadly there are no nifty graphics. 

Overall, it's a nice looking card. The cards produced by DonRuss while they were operated by Playoff and before they were absorbed into the Panini conglomerate are underrated in my opinion. In terms of quality and design they more than hold their own. To date the Zenith brand hasn't reappeared since 2005. If it does, I hope they adopt the data representation approach of the original Pinnacle Zenith cardbacks.

Total: 342/394