Let's have a look at a brace of cards from the middle of the 90s to end the week. This was the season the Padres won the National League West with a winner-takes-all showdown against the Dodgers. Tony was the batting champion that year - his seventh title.
Card Number 504: Topps Laser, 1996; #43
The Topps Company is rarely an innovator. It's a follower not a leader, which is why when other companies started using laser die-cutting to slice bits out of cards, they soon followed suit with a set revolving around that gimmick. This is one of the 128 base cards. There were 48 laser-cut inserts as well.
Card Number 505: Topps (Classic Confrontations insert), 1996; #CC-9
This was from a 15-card insert series in the Topps flagship set from 1996.
I would like to see more of this kind of statistical breakdown on baseball cards, although with the way pitching has changed I doubt current players would be able to rack up as many at bats against individual pitchers.
Total: 505 cards
As a fan of Gwynn and Maddux... I've written about how Mr. Padre dominated The Professor. I used to love looking at specific batters versus specific pitchers on Baseball Reference, but these days you need to pay for that information.
ReplyDeleteIt should definitely feature on more cardbacks
DeleteThe first time I saw these (many years after their release), I was blown away. I especially like how you can see the color of the card stock is different on the border and within the cut area. The laser cutting process chars it a bit.
ReplyDeleteOoh, I hadn't really noticed that.
Delete