Cards for kids

I have read there was some concern about the way the baseball card hobby was going in the early to mid-90s. Cards were becoming more expensive and with inserts, parallels, relics and autographs, kids - the collectors of the future - were being priced out of the hobby. In an attempt to rectify this the major card companies launched sets designed for younger collectors. These never really took off that well, but they have left collectors with some quirky cards to hunt down.

Card Number 740: DonRuss Triple Play, 1994; #187

Yaaarrrrr!

Tony looks almost like he is yelling or laughing in the photo. This card gets a bonus point for including the year in the set logo. I also like the effect of the see through 'cut out' letters.

It's a fairly boring cardback for a range aimed at kids, particularly compared to the Triple Play cards from 1992 and 1993. DonRuss had obviously decided that what kids really wanted was a massive stats box. 

Card Number 741: Upper Deck Fun Pack, 1994; #119

Not to be outdone by their competitors, Upper Deck also had their own range aimed at kids, selling packs of fun cards called Fun Pack!

"Ruh Roh!"

I would love to know what Tony has seen in that photo. A ghost in the outfield, perhaps? Maybe he's just feeling a bit dizzy, which is why he is surrounded by swirls.

Fun Pack cards lived up to their name with the cardback. Instead of a photo there's a little charicature of Tony. At this point he only had four batting titles, although he had come mighty close to five the previous season. He would collect his fifth title the year this set was released. 

Both card companies discontinued these sets after 1994. One theory I have seen is that kids felt these sets were condescending, and preferred to chase after the valuable insert cards in the regular sets. But these sets were also released just before the 90s baseball card bubble popped and the hobby went through a very difficult period of readjustment. Now they are relics of an era of desperate market differentiation when card companies tried as many different angles as possible to sell pictures of baseball stars to as many potential customers as possible.

Total: 741 cards

Double Triple Play!

Triple Play was the range aimed at kids put out by Leaf in the early 90s. (It's had a revival recently in the Panini era with some quite strange cartoon cards.) 

A triple play is a rare piece of fielding skill where three players are put out, usually with a fast sequence of throws between different basemen, although it is possible for one fielder to get three opponents out, unassisted. I rather suspect that Leaf used the term because it had the word 'Play' in it, and they thought that would appeal to kids.

Card Number 334: Leaf Triple Play, 1992; #219

This is probably the oddest in-game photo of Tony on a baseball card that I own. He is a long way from that ball at the wall.

The colour scheme is pure 1992 and on this card it merges into the orange line of padding on the perimeter wall.

I have spent quite a bit of my career writing and editing.  (I know you might not believe that based on my writing on this blog.) I really dislike the sentence construct "not only... but" because it makes the sentence unnecessarily complicated, particularly for people reading English as their second language. I always remove "not only buts" when editing. This sentence would read more clearly as "Tony is a great hitter and a fine defensive player."

Sentence construction aside, this is from the interregnum when Tony hadn't picked up a batting title for a few years. Although he added four more batting titles to his name in the 90s, he never added to his gold gloves.

Card Number 335: Leaf Triple Play 1993; #51

This looks a lot more like a normal baseball card. Black bordered cards always look cool, so it has that going for it as well!

That's a cheeky grin on the back!

The card factoid writer has done a better job on this one, and that's a genuinely intriguing statistic. Whoever was pitching for Montreal and St. Louis were doing a good job!

Total: 335/394