Score gets gritty

Card companies seemed to struggle thinking up new names for subsets in the 90s. Today's card is an illustration of that.

Card Number 973: Score, 1997; #535

There's a photo of Tony fielding on the front. The partial beer advert in the background would qualify this for a list of cards featuring alcohol advertising.

"True Grit". There's no explanation what aspect of Tony's game that refers to. 

The subset logo seems a little bit unbalanced to me. It's because Tony's head is leaning, which throws off the symmetry, along with the lopsided alignment of his name and the different number of letters on the crossed bats.

The arrangement is repeated on the back, and still feels slightly wonky.

The way the cardback write up is divided makes it hard to read. The designer would have been better served putting the words into two columns. Otherwise, this reads like a checklist of things to include in a cardback write up in 1997 - a reference to Tony being in the Hall of Fame in the future, a comparison to a legendary player from long ago (in this case Honus Wagner), a comment about setting records (without saying what those records are) - these all make frequent appearances on cardbacks. 

However, this card was also released as fans started to really get interested in players hitting home runs. This peaked at the end of the 90s with several record-chasing power hitters trying to outdo each other in the race to blast as many homers as possible. On this card, Score decided to just list that statistic, which is one of the few batting stats that makes Tony look quite ordinary.

Ironically, 1997 turned out to be the season Tony set his personal best for home runs - 17 - so even he wasn't immune to the late 90s hype around hitting homers!

Total: 973 cards