Card Number 1041: Post 50 Years of Topps, 2001; #17
I mean, it's a free card, you don't expect to see the player's face in the photo do you?
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Topps's trademark rubbish photography aside, the other quirk is placing the Padres logo on Tony's foot as if he's balancing a soccer ball there. A small soccer ball, like the "mini Mitres" I remember from school.
(OK, that might need an explanation. When I was in high school in the late 80s to early 90s, the soccer ball company called Mitre brought out smaller versions of their balls that were supposed to be used for training purposes. They were also, probably intentionally, the perfect size for carrying round in a schoolbag which meant my gang of friends could play soccer during the lunchtime break with something resembling a proper soccer ball. I didn't have a mini Mitre myself. The kids who did were the gods of the playground.)
The most interesting thing about this cardback is the ribbon around the baseball and Tony's facsimile signature... which I think I'm right in saying is what he used on his very first contract with Topps when he was a teenager. It also appears on his Bowman cards from 1998 and 1999.
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Total: 1041 cards
The good old days when you could consume calories and collect baseball cards. By 2001 I wasn't really eating the sort of cereals that would have these cool little giveaways in them. When I was but a teen in the early 90s, which was the heyday of sports cards in any product, I loved opening a box of cereal to see who I was going to add to my collection. Unfortunately the days of sportcards being marketed toward the young is all but gone, so the likelihood of sports cards in cereal ever again is likely gone as well.
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