Back to Bowman Base

I think this is the final card in the run of Tony's base cards from Bowman to feature on this blog.

Card number 984: Bowman, 1997; #274

Black borders make this a sharp looking card, 25 years after it was printed. Stylistically, the way Tony's head breaks the border is nicely done.

Throughout Tony's career, Bowman was a subsidiary brand of Topps. However, Bowman cards tended to do their stats boxes differently to cards found in Topps sets. On this card, there is a "Team Breakdown" to show how Tony fared against different opponents in 1996. The statistical anomalies are against two teams he faced a handful of times each, the Rockies and the Marlins, racking up ridiculously high batting averages against both teams. 

The team with the best pitching record against Tony in 1996 was the Dodgers. Their pitching staff managed to keep Tony's average more than .100 lower than his season average. Considering Tony won the batting title that season, that was excellent work by the Dodgers.

Total: 984 cards

I am taking a break for a week and will be back blogging the week after next. See you then!

Cereal freebies: Part 1

These"oddball" cards by Post arrived in the post from Gawain last week. 

Post is a massive cereal company - currently the third largest in the world. C.W. Post who founded the company spent time at the sanatorium run by John Harvey Kellogg and was inspired to develop his own breakfast cereal. The first cereal sold by Post was Grape Nuts, one of the few America brands readily available in the UK. I always think it's the most misleading brekfast cereal, as it contains neither grapes nor nuts, and is more like eating shards of concrete rather than food. Still, to each their own. 

For several years in the early 90s, the Post company included baseball cards as giveaways in their cereal. (They'd actually first done this in the early 1960s as well.) I've previously blogged cards of Tony that Post produced in 1990(#413) and in 1991(#46).

Card Number 688: Post Cereal, 1992; #26

These cards were licensed by the Major League Baseball Player's Association (MLBPA) rather than Major League Baseball, so the logos and team names have been rather skillfully erased from the photos of Tony. These cards were printed by Michael Schechter Associates (MSA) who arranged print runs of promotional baseball cards for a lot of companies back in the 1980s and 90s.

The back is a fairly solid design, with a photo of Tony and a decent stats box.

Major League Baseball was less protective of franchise names in the early 90s so even though the Padres name and logo have been removed from the photos, the word 'Padres' appears on the front and back of the card. 

Card Number 689: Post Cereal, 1993; #8

Wonky scan! Sorry.

A bunt photo! 

Tony was quite happy to bunt when necessary. He devotes a section in his book Tony Gwynn's Total Baseball Player to "The Art of Bunting". Tony felt it gave opponents something else to worry about, causing the infield to shift and opening up holes a batter could punch a ball through. Tony went on to list the five type of bunt - can you name all five? Answers at the bottom of the post!

This is a nice looking card, with a black border similar to the Pinnacle cards issued in the same year. The back has dispensed with the big stats box and has added a little write-up, which mentions his option to play in the NBA with the Clippers.

Somehow in this joblot of oddball cards I managed a complete run of the three Post Cereal cards that I didn't have already.

Card Number 690: Post Cereals, 1994; #13

Another slightly wonky scan. My bad!

This design looks like the love-child of a DonRuss card and a Fleer Ultra card. It is very green. The designer has also gone for a fancier logo for the set - this is part of the "Post 94 Collection".

The back really emphasises the write up at the expense of the stats. There's some slightly confusing syntax in the first sentence, though. The Padres were playing the Rockies when Tony recorded his 2000th career hit, but it wasn't his 2000th career hit against the Rockies. (Who were in their debut season in the Major Leagues!)

For two years in a row the cardback write-up predicted Tony's eventual election to the Hall of Fame. 

Come back tomorrow for Cereal freebies: Part 2!

Total:690 cards

Answer: According to Tony, the five types of bunt were: The Sacrifice; The Drag; The Push; The Slug; and The Swinging Bunt. - Tony Gwynn's Total Baseball Player pp 49-53.

Black bordered All Star

Black bordered cards always look classy.

Card Number 671: Fleer (All Star Card), 1992; #2

There were 24 All Star cards to collect as inserts in the main Fleer set in 1992.

There is a long, sober summary of Tony's career to date on the back.

A couple of things stand out from that. One is how close Tony was to winning the batting title in 1991. Also his base-stealing exploits are often overlooked, but two seasons with more that 40 stolen bags, and stealing five in one game are aspects of his career that are worth being reminded about.

Total: 671 cards

Bonus note: I was going to title this post as 'Bordered in Black', but then I remembered there is a creepy short story by Larry Niven called that. Someone has uploaded it onto Scribd.

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