A classic howler

Classic cards were ostensibly part of a trivia game, which always strikes me as a bit of a ruse to get around licensing agreements. Like all cards they evolved quickly in the early 90s, although they never really lost that flimsy card game feel.

Card Number 812: Classic Baseball, 1992; #61

Design note: It's the 90s. Let's stretch the year across the width of the card! This kind of kerning is a mark of a card being designed on a computer. 

I would argue this photo is quintessential early 1990s Tony Gwynn. Helmet and shades, watching the trajectory of a ball he has just belted up into the sunny sky, wearing the grey Padres road uniform that always looks a bit like pyjamas. The bright orange wrist guards match the orange in the San Diego name on his shirt. 

The back is a change for Classic cards. Gone are the old ropey-looking cheap card backs. Note the extended kerning for Tony's name again. Justified text! Plus, five questions for you to test your knowledge.

Over time, I have grown fonder of one line stats boxes. I also think it's incredibly cool that Tony only struck out 19 times in the season - what with that being his shirt number!

Card Number 813: Classic Baseball, 1993; #T41

This card was one of the 99 that came in the actual Classic game.

The photo in 1993 was not as good as the previous year. Tony's bat is occluding a background person's face in almost comical style. 

The back has one line of stats and five more questions to answer. Plus a major howler - instead of the Padres logo there is the Angels logo!

This error hadn't been previously noted on Trading Card Database. I've reported it now!

Total: 813 cards

Sharing the (oddball) Spotlight

I have a few cards that feature another player alongside Tony. Here are a couple of examples of Tony sharing the spotlight on 'oddball' issues.

Card Number 771: French's, 1992; #16

These cards were a giveaway linked to French's Mustard. This condiment debuted at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, and is still sold today. Each card in this set featured two top players. Tony shared his card with Joe Carter, who was playing for the Blue Jays at that time. 

Joe was born in March 1960, almost two months before Tony arrived in the world. He was in the 1981 draft with Tony and was selected by the Cubs. After a spell with the Indians he played alongside Tony at the Padres before being part of the deal with the Blue Jays that brought Fred McGriff and Tony Fernandez to San Diego. Roberto Alomar also moved to Toronto with Joe in that deal.

That move worked out better for Joe and Roberto as both of them won back-to-back World Series titles with the Blue Jays - the first one was the year this card was given away with French's Mustard, 1992.

Depsite being the same age as Tony, Joe retired in 1998. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2003, which was the first year he was eligible for entry. Being a first year inductee is yet another thing he has in common with Tony. 

There is a short write up about each player on the cardback. 

Design-wise, I like this card for several reasons. I like cards that are green. I also like the bat and ball drawings in the background of the cardback. The photos are quite small so the player's features aren't very easy to make out. But this is still a nice card featuring two Hall of Famers.

Card 772: Classic Blue, 1990 (NL Hit Kings); #87 

Are Classic cards really 'oddballs'? I think they kind of are.

There are two versions of this card. This one that says NL Hit Kings on the front, and another version that says Clark / Gwynn on the front. Trading Card Database lists this version as 87b.

That's Will Clark next to Tony. "Will the Thrill" made his major league debut for the Giants in 1986. Before that he was in the USA baseball team at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, part of the squad that included Tony's brother, Chris, and several other players who later had major league careers. In 1994 Will moved to the Rangers, and after five seasons in Arlington, had brief stints with the Orioles and Cardinals before retiring. He is on the Giants Wall of Fame and the Giants have announced plans to retire his shirt number (#22) in 2022.

This photo is slightly awkward because Will is looking at the camera and Tony isn't. Given the logos of other baseball clubs on the wall behind them (the Brewers and Phillies logos are visible) I conclude this was taken at an All Star Game with the players getting papped by multiple photographers (or at least two!) at the same time. 

Classic cards were marketed as board games rather than baseball cards - which seems to have been a clever way of subverting licensing arrangements -  so along with a few stats, there are trivia questions to ask as part of the game on the back of the card.

The stats compare Will and Tony's seasons in 1989. Will was .003 behind Tony in batting average so not far off winning the batting title! He had seven fewer hits than Tony but also had fewer At Bats, possible because he drew more walks. A mathematician could probably work out what the true differential of .003 would be in terms of hits. Maths isn't my strongpoint, but it feels like he was literally just a couple of hits away from taking the title. 

The other thing I noticed from the stats comparison is that Will struck out over three times as often as Tony did - 103 strike outs to Tony's 30. The mind-boggling bit of that is that Tony only struck out 30 times in 158 games. I often bring this up, but on average you would have had to go to six games in 1989 to be guaranteed seeing him strike out. It always astonishes me how rarely he struck out.  

Total: 772 cards

Classic reminders of the baseball card bubble

How do you get a license to produce baseball cards without getting a licence to produce baseball cards? Get a licence to produce a tabletop game... that's composed of baseball cards. That's what Game Time did with their Classic Baseball game during the explosion of interest in baseball cards during the late 80s.

The first Classic cards were produced in 1987. 100 cards were shipped with the game and the company then sold expansion packs containing more cards. Tony had a card in the original set, which I blogged about here.

Classic released two more expansion sets in 1988, and the cards were sequentially numbered on from the original game. 

Card Number 698: Classic Baseball (blue expansion set), 1988; #220

This photo is at a slightly odd angle but features what looks like a batting cage and a prominent advert in the background for Jack in the Box resturants.

The back isn't particularly inspiring. There is a bit of player data, but the majority of the space is saved for the questions that would be used as part of the game. There is also a space for an autograph.

Trying to reverse engineer what the game looked like, I'm guessing it was a bit like Trivial Pursuit and questions were in different categories. That's an interesting factoid about Hall of Fame pitcher Warren Spahn.

Game Time carried on producing expansion sets each year for a few years into the early 90s. Having a limited checklist meant that only a few players from each team featured. However, Tony had a card in the 1990 set as well.

Card Number 699: Classic Baseball, 1990; #17

The three expansion packs released by Game Time in 1990 were different sizes - 150 cards, 99 cards, and 50 cards respectively. This card is from the first set released. Tony's brother, Chris Gwynn, was also in this set of cards.

With it's hot pink scribbles, I don't think the designers could make this card could look more like it was from 1990 if they tried. It's a great bunt photo of Tony, which makes it a bit special. I'm blogging this in quick succession to another bunt photo on an oddball card.

The trivia questions on the back includes a reminder of a time when Montreal had a baseball team. 

The Lou Brock Award is still given out every year. I have to admit, I hadn't heard of it. Vince Coleman won it six times in a row in the 1980s. No wonder he was labelled "the thief" on a baseball card. 

Given the restrictive monopoly on licenses for baseball cards at the moment, I'm surprised nobody has used a similar loophole to produce baseball cards that are ostensibly part of a game. That could be a way for another company to produce baseball cards that aren't really baseball cards.

In terms of this blog, I am tantalisingly close to blogging my 700th Tony Gwynn card. However, I am taking some much-needed time out next week. I'm also planning to watch some more games in the UEFA European Championships (which is another reason my blogging has been erratic of late!) 

I will be back blogging in early July to reveal card number 700 and also the few remaining cards in my yet-to-be-blogged folder. See you next month!

Total: 699 cards

80s week: Classic debut and Pacific confusion

I own some Classic Baseball cards for other players, but didn't have a Tony Gwynn one until the joblot that prompted me to launch 80s week. So this is a debut for a card company that hasn't featured on the blog yet. 

It's also unusual because it actually comes from a board game. According to Baseballcardpedia, the Classic Baseball trivia game was produced by a company in Alabama called Game Time, and the game was sold in toy shops as well as through card dealers. Later Classic sets were released as supplemental sets for the game.

I have blogged about a number of cards that have a game element to them, but this is the first time I have blogged about a card that has been removed from an actual game.

Card Number 491: Classic Baseball, 1987; #26

The cardback includes some trivia questions to ask while playing the game. There's also a box for the card owner to collect the player's autograph.

Someone somewhere must have an autographed version of this card.

And now on to another 'debut', this time a card released by Pacific... or so I thought.

Card Number 492: Pacific Cards & Comics Big League All Stars, 1989; #19

This card confused me. I initially thought it was an early release from the company that would become Pacific, but the Pacific Company was based in Lynnwood near Seattle, and this card says the publisher was in Los Angeles. 

The Trading Card Database lists Pacific Cards & Comics separately to Pacific, who were also issuing sets around this time. The Pacific Legends sets released the same year have a company logo on them, which is another reason why I think this is a different 'Pacific'. 

(There was a comic publishers called Pacific that operated out of San Diego in the early 1980s that had a chain of stores. I doubt this is linked to that company either as 1989 is a few years after the publishers went bust, but one of the shops might have carried on trading.)

Regardless of who produced them, these cards show what could be done without a license back in the day and they get 19 bonus points for giving Tony the 19th card in their 20 card set.

It's a really nice photo. It would have been even better if the photographer had waited a few seconds for the chap in the blue cap in the background to walk past.

The back is basic, with just a tiny reference to the manufacturer.

One of the eternal mysteries of card collecting is wondering how a joblot of cards got grouped together. How did this end up in with a bunch of Topps, Fleer, and DonRuss cards?

I simply have no information about how many of these cards were produced, or how they were distributed. Until I started researching this blog post I thought I would have been writing about the Pacific Trading Card Company (and there are lots of stories to tell, like how they might have accidentally outed Manny Ramirez for using a corked bat when they cut a bat up for some of their relic cards). Instead, I can show you a card that I am none the wiser about!

Total: 492 cards