Happy Birthday Mr Padre - 2023 edition

It has been a long few months since I last posted, way back in September 2022. But as it's Tony's birthday (and this blog's anniversary), I thought it would be nice to add a new post. 

My collecting has slowed down somewhat. I tend to collect in fits and starts - I get really into things and then my enthusiasm wavers. To be honest, the longevity of this blog project has surprised me. Circumstances have changed quite a lot since I started Point 394 a couple of months into the pandemic lockdown. I have changed jobs and am about to change jobs again. The world has reopened up and I have been going to a lot of soccer matches. Generally, things have just been busy.

I have acquired one "new" card so far in 2023. It's 30 years old this year so it's new to me but not newly printed!

Card Number 1045: Kraft Singles Superstars '93; #23

I'm not sure which one of these counts as the front! Pulling the little tab would make Tony pop out and stand up, but that would ruin the card. In other design notes, I  like the way the card includes a batting and a fielding pose. This also fits into a collection subset of 'green cards'.

This came in a set of the Kraft Singles cards within a much bigger box of 'junk wax' that someone was offering on the UK Facebook Group for postage only. There were several other cards of Tony in the box that have gone in with the other doubles.

I presume these cards were included in packets of cheese. From an historical point of view this was about the era when the companies producing oddball cards started airbrushing out team logos but still used the team names on 'unlicensed' cards.

Even though I have not been buying many cards lately, I have got a little stack to blog so hope to get back into the blogging groove soon. 

(I'd like to say thanks to Richard (YoRicha) who noticed I hadn't been blogging and got in touch to ask if everything was OK a few months back. Thanks Richard, it meant a lot to me.)

Total: 1,045 cards

80s Wednesday - a couple of 80s oddballs

Here's a trip back almost four decades to when baseball cards started to proliferate in '88...

Card Number 966: Nestle, 1988; #40

I seriously doubt Nestle needs any introduction. They are one of the biggest food conglomerates in the world. The company has also been the target of a decades-long boycott due to the way it markets baby milk formula in the developing world. (I'm relieved to say that my acquisition of this card was not linked to the purchase of any Nestle products - although originally it would have been.)

The card itself is semi-licensed with a strange airbrushing job removing the Padres logo from Tony's cap. Unlike modern cards in the twilight zone of player licensing, this card includes the franchise name.

This card was produced by oddball card producer Michael Schechter Associates (also known as MSA) and printed in Canada. It has a comprehensive write up on the cardback compared to most oddballs. 

Card Number 967: KayBee Superstars of Baseball, 1988; #13

I've done a brief explanation of the KayBee Toys company on the blog before. I still love their little soldier in the logo. 

These cards were produced by Topps. When I came to wite this post I had a moment of deja vu. A quick look through my Topps folder and I realised why.

Topps re-used this photo in 2009 in their Legends of the Game insert series. The print is darker, but that is clearly the same photo.

A couple of years later, Topps used a cropped version of the photo for the Golden Greats insert card in 2012. (In fact, if you click on that link, you can see it was also used on a card from 2010 as well!)

It's unusual for the photo on an oddball card to reappear several years later, but I suppose this was in the Topps photo archive. It hadn't been used in an official Topps set and I doubt anyone at the company thought a random blogger would ever notice this.

Anyway, back to the card sold in Kay-Bee Toys and here's the back of the card sold in Kay-Bee Toys.

Although it has a photo on it, this doesn't have the impact of the Nestle card. June 1987 was a very hot month for Tony with an incredible average nearer to .500 than .400!

Total 967 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

Mother Lode

Freshly unpacked from the parcel from France, here is a trio of oddball cards from the 1990s, which were given out at ballgames or inserted into Mother's Cookies bakery products.

Mother's Cookies was a company founded in Oakland in 1914 where it had it's main bakery until it went bankrupt in 2008. The brand was subsequently bought by Kellogg's and is now owned by Ferrero. They released their first baseball cards in the 1950s for a few years, then resumed printing cards during the 'overproduction era', which is the polite term for the 80s and 90s.

Being a California-based company and mainly supplying stores on the west coast of the USA, Mother's Cookies focused on teams that side of the country with commercial tie-ins to produce franchise-specific, and even player-specific, sets and co-ordinating in-stadium giveaways. They produced team sets of Padres players in 1984 and 1985 and from 1992 to 1998. 

Obviously, I knew these cards existed. I've seen them on other blogs and I had them on my 'maybe one day' list. So when they appeared on the checklist of cards that Greg had for sale, I was delighted.

Card Number 719: Mother's Cookies, 1993; #3

The cards have rounded edges with full bleed photos. This is a lovely portrait of Tony looking relaxed. 

The back is quite plain, with space for an autograph. As these were often ballpark giveaways, there was a chance, maybe, of getting a player to sign the back of his card. 

Card Number 720: Mother's Cookies, 1994; #2

Another full-bleed photo portrait. This time it's slightly more posed and less natural.

Whoever was working on these for Mother's Cookies didn't go to a lot of effort with the cardback. It is virtually identical to the previous year's apart from the card number and the copyright notice. 

Card Number 721: Mother's Cookies, 1995; #2

We round out this trio with another really nice posed photo. Tony's number is visible on his batting glove and I think that is one of his signature bats he is posing with. There are other people lurking in the background of this card, which makes it a bit different to the other two.

The back doesn't deviate from the established template.

Oddball cards are sometimes a lot more odd than these. The quality of photos used on these cards elevates them above most other commercial tie-ins. Although the backs are a bit plain and repetitive, that doesn't really matter. Only the most committed fans are going to bother looking at the backs!

Total: 721 cards

Cereal freebies: Part 2

A sequel to yesterday's blog post about Post Cereal cards. Today we look at cards produced a few years earlier by a rival company - Quaker Oats. (I realise I have done these in the wrong chronological order. Oh well.)

I was surprised to learn that the Quaker Oats Company was not founded by Quakers. The founders just adopted the name because the Quaker sect had a good reputation for honesty and purity. The Quaker in their logo isn't based on a particular Quaker in the current design, but originally he was sort of based on William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania. 

Like Post, Quaker gave baseball cards away in their cereal. Unlike, Post, they got Topps to print the cards.

Card Number 691: Quaker Chewy Granola Bars, 1986; #7

Wait, is a granola bar a breakfast cereal... ah, close enough.

Tony looks a bit downbeat in this photo. At least the Quaker mascot looks cheerful. Because this card was produced by Topps it was fully licensed, so the SD logo on Tony's had didn't need to be airbrushed off. 

On the back these were proclaimed as the 1st Annual Collectors' Edition. It was actually a one and done because a second series was not released.

You can almost tell this card is produced by Topps just by looking at the factoids. This card was in packs of chewy granola bars in 1986, but the factoids only run up to 1984 and the first two are from 1981! (And why lead with those when Tony had played in a World Series in 1984! Topps's approach to factoids in the 1980s was downright bizarre.)

Card Number 692: Cap'n Crunch, 1989; #5

Yes, the Quaker company also make Cap'n Crunch.

Cap'n Crunch's Wikipedia entry has a very entertaining section about the product's marketing, including the complex naval world of the Cap'n and his crew, which I think is mainly one dog. We never had this cereal in the UK, so it's not something that's part of my cultural landscape seascape. 

I'm disappointed that the Cap'n didn't appear on the front of this card with Tony. Or anywhere on this card. I'm also disappointed that the prominent #19 on the front is not actually the card number. (Booo, Capn'n Crunch! Booooooo!)

The factoids on the back are more up-to-date than the Granola Bars card, but that list looks like a cut, paste and change the numbers job. (Were people able to do cut'n'paste in 1989?)

A batting average of .313 is quite low to win a batting title (1988) and is 25 points lower than Tony's career average. He certainly scored a lot higher in other seasons and didn't win the title. 

I've put these cards in the same binder page as my five cards issued by the Post company as a mini set of cereal cards. There are also some more 'food issue' cards to share with you in future posts. But for now, I hope you had a good breakfast and have a great day.

Total: 692 cards