One Card Only - Called to the hall

Day 2 of Treble-F, the Fabulous Fleer Fortnight. After yesterday's mega-post, there's just the one card today.

Card Number 925: Fleer Ultra Call to the Hall insert, 1996; #3

All ten cards in this insert series feature portraits painted by "J. Forman". According to BaseballCardPedia, Fleer gave away the original pieces of artwork as prizes in a competition.

I can't track down any reference to who J. Forman is. I am certain he is neither of the artists I found called J. Forman as one was active in the 19th century, and the other died in 1969. On an entertaining blog post by the Junior Junkie, I found a lot of detail about the Fleer Ultra set from 1996 but no details of the artist. The Junior Junkie singles out Tony's card from this insert set and issues a dire warning:

"...if you ever come across the Tony Gwynn from this set, do not look directly at it. Promise me!!"

Is it really that bad? Well, maybe.

On the back, Fleer give their reasons why they think Tony should be admitted to the Hall of Fame. There is an unusal name dropped into their write-up - Joe Medwick. That wasn't a name I was familiar with even though he is in the Hall of Fame. Apparently, one of his nicknames was 'Ducky'. 

Joe is yet another record-setter from baseball's past that Tony got compared with. These comparisons happened a lot because Tony matched or broke records that were established before World War II. Often you have to go back to the 1930s to find players with better records than he achieved. 

Total: 925 cards