In his Prime

In 1998 Upper Deck included an insert series of 60 cards called 'Prime Nine'. This is not to be confused with the ESPN programme 'Prime Nine' that first aired in 2009. There's no link between them as far as I can see, except that the number nine is important in baseball. There are nine batters playing over nine innings.

The Prime Nine cards were foilboard, and I apologise in advance for the low quality of the scans. But first, a bit of a moan. Upper Deck created this insert series for nine players and as they are "Prime Nine" cards, it would make sense for there to be nine cards for each player; a total of 81 cards. That would also make displaying them in a standard nine pocket page easy and the page would look really nice.

However, Upper Deck limited this insert series to 60 cards. 60 isn't divisible by nine. That's the first problem. What Upper Deck decided was that seven players would have seven cards, accounting for 49 cards in the set. That left eleven cards for two players and eleven isn't divisible by two into whole numbers. That's the second problem. They resolved that problem by giving Barry Bonds six cards, and poor old Greg Maddux only got five cards. 

What they could have done is given six players seven cards and three players six cards, if they were really constrained to 60 cards in the insert series. Or they could have given all nine players seven cards by extending the insert series to 63 cards. That's only three extra cards. Upper Deck were no strangers to "set bloat" when we count all the parallels and multiple insert series they liked to include, and their sets generally were huge. There were 751 cards in the base set that year. It's not like they couldn't have given every "Prime Nine" player an equal number of cards.

Anyway, that's enough moaning. Tony was one of the lucky seven to feature on seven cards, but I only have two to include in this post.

Card Number 336: Upper Deck, 1998; #PN-44

I think the idea of the Prime Nine cards was to summarise the player's career in stages up to that point in 1998. So on this card, it discusses Tony's career in 1987-1989. During that time he won three batting titles, but the 'highlights' box shows how he squeaked the 1989 title.

I know I've already grumbled a bit, but the line spacing is really weird on this card back, which might be because of the font they chose. The point size on the font on the "Highlights" box is too small and white lettering on tan is a horrible combination to try and read. There really is little to redeem this card.

Card Number 337: Upper Deck, 1998; #PN-45

As the next card in the series, it makes sense that it's the years chronologically after the write up on the previous card.

I like the hands on knees stance in the little photo. Despite being plopped onto a featureless white box, cut-out Tony is clearly standing just off a bag ready for some baserunning. 

The 'highlights box is about Tony's six-hit game against the Giants in 1993. I marked the occasion on the anniversary.

Total: 337/394