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| Cardboard Fenway - #67. 1970 Topps George Scott |
Showing posts with label 1970. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1970. Show all posts
April 20, 2012
Cardboard Fenway: 1970 Topps George Scott
Cardboard Fenway: 1970 Topps Joe Lahoud
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| Cardboard Fenway - #54. 1970 Topps Joe Lahoud |
Cardboard Fenway: 1970 Topps Sparky Lyle
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| Cardboard Fenway - #14. 1970 Topps Sparky Lyle |
April 19, 2012
Cardboard Fenway: 1970 Topps Bill Lee (RC)
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| Cardboard Fenway - #3. 1970 Topps Bill Lee (RC) |
May 01, 2011
August 28, 2008
Make Your Own Yankee Stadium Legacy Set
Overwhelmed by the massive, 1,000+ card Yankee Stadium sets that have come out this year? Me too. That's why I've got a better idea. If you want to celebrate Yankee Stadium in your own way, collect those cards that feature it in the background. The same can apply for those of you sick and tired of all things Yankee, who would rather focus on Shea Stadium and the Mets.
Because Topps calls New York City its home, many of its cards feature the two current New York City ballparks as part of the background. 1970 was a big year that comes to mind immediately, but there are plenty of others. And the best part of these DIY Yankee and Shea Stadium legacy sets is that your sets won't be composed of just Yankees or Mets--your set will include most or all of the other major league clubs as well.
Now I'm not a Yankees fan, but something like this appeals to me as a fan of baseball history, much more than a set full of cards of the same handful of players ad nauseam.
(From sorting through a few thousand cards from the 1970s, a Fenway Park Legacy set could also be put together this way.)
August 19, 2008
Fantastic Card of the Day
Because I'm on a miscut kick, today's card of the day is this version of Ike Brown's 1970 Topps card. A few other great things about the card (besides Brown sharing it 90/10 with Richie Scheinblum of the Cleveland Indians (card #161)):
• Scheinblum didn't make the Indians roster for 1970, but then went on to make the American League All-Star team in 1972 with the Kansas City Royals.
• Ike Brown's card in the Topps Baseball Cards Book is also poorly centered. Does that mean that the Topps file version of the card is also a terrible version?
• I'm beginning to find that I like cards of players where there are other players milling about in the background. Ike Brown's card has another player walking through the frame, making it seem like the Topps photographer either got to the stadium late to photograph Brown or had to squeeze him in. This theory actually makes sense, because Brown was a rookie in 1969.
• Because this version exists, there is at least one sheet of messed-up miscuts out there from the 1970 set.
February 17, 2007
Countdown #41: 1970 Topps
I think this plot has been re-hashed across pop culture countless times: a guy goes home with what he thinks is a beautiful girl only to wake up the next morning to find a hideous Medusa-like hag with no teeth sharing his bed. Right? Okay, now replace ‘beautiful girl’ with ‘Mickey Mantle’ and ‘Medusa-like hag’ with ‘1970 Topps’. It’s less Mad Libs than you’d expect.
Here’s another analogy (and I’ve been thinking about this one for a lot longer): If you study Topps’ baseball sets from 1969 to 1971, there’s a lot going on there; I’d say it’s one of the company’s most turbulent periods, right up there with 1953-56 and 1980-82. Okay, now look at the plot of the film Midnight Cowboy. Here’s a quick recap: Schlesinger’s 1969 masterpiece centers on Joe Buck (Jon Voight), a young Texan who moves to New York City to ‘make it’, only to wind up a male prostitute, befriending the homeless Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), living with him in an abandoned building and learning a string of horribly depressing life lessons before accompanying Ratso on a trip to Florida (only to have Ratso die en route). It’s a classic and those who haven’t seen it should go out and rent it immediately.
But when you watch it, add these ideas to it: Joe Buck is Topps in the Sixties; he’s got it all figured out. When Buck moves to New York, he’s Topps in the Seventies: he finds there’s no more Mantle, his world is rudderless and he’s flailing. I don’t think there’s a subtext you can add to the parts where Joe Buck is a male prostitute, because in 1970 Topps had yet to install anyone to replace Mantle in terms of
Hero-Worship. The closest they get is splitting it up between Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente and Harmon Killebrew, but if you ask me, Topps’ heart was never really in it with Killebrew and it kind of seemed like they were always half-assing it with Clemente. In Topps’ eyes, if anybody really deserved it in the early Seventies it was Mays (he’s #600 in 1970 and 1971), though Aaron supplanted him at the same speed he overtook Ruth.
And what of Ratso Rizzo, he of ‘I’m walkin’ here!’ fame? He’s the Ghost of Topps Future. He’s what Buck and Topps could be: barely surviving in world that no longer gives a shit. And if you were a collector staring down a whole year of 1970 Topps, that would’ve been a very depressing future indeed.
* * *
In a word: ugly. And not just ugly. I would like to go on record as calling this set fugly. This is one of the ugliest sets of all time: ugly design, ugly checklist, ugly rookie class, ugly everything. If I could find a way to do so, I would manufacture small brown paper bags (like soft sleeves) to display these cards in.
Okay, it’s not all bad, and it does contribute to the historical record in a number of ways, but its negatives far outweigh the positives. Here is a list of its merits and a list of its crimes against cardboard.
Merits
• Championship and World Series subsets
• League Leaders subset
• Individual All-Stars last set to do so until 1982, plus cartoon backs (much better than a gigantic Pete Rose photo puzzle; see 1969)
• Over 700 cards First set to do so in one year
• Seattle Pilots 2nd year of only two years of Pilots (1971 team represented as Milwaukee Brewers) Check out this one of Buzz Stephen, pitcher for the ‘Plots’…just classic
• Fun Photos This set had a few photos of players ‘caught unawares’ while doing random activities in the dugout, like Hank Aaron. Crouching catchers like Dave Ricketts, Clay Dalrymple, plus a Dia de los Muertos Dean Chance, the oddly thrust glove of Gail Hopkins, Lowell Palmer’s shades and Curt Flood’s meaningful grin. Plus all those ill-fitting caps.
• Team rookies subset Yeah Vida Blue! Jam bands unite!
Crimes Against Cardboard
• Shitty gray border I can’t stress this enough: in the nineteen years that Topps had been making cards before the 1970 set, they only did a non-white bordered set twice. And no, I’m not counting 1954, 1958 or 1959, because while those sets used colored backgrounds, they still used a white border. 1962 featured wood grain. 1968 a hi-fi stereo speaker/television thatch. That’s it. So tell me where in the Topps style guide it says gray is good idea? Did they think that the only way to sell a black-bordered set (1971) would be to do a transition year?
• Death by lack of subsets If Topps sets from the Eighties were death by subset inundation, the early Seventies were just the opposite, which was a real bummer, since there’s really nothing to break up the gray-border monotony. You are almost thankful that Topps included numbered checklists—those injections of yellow and red are enough color to keep your interest for another hundred cards. Plus, those subsets they did include were just tired enough to make you wonder why they bothered at all. Apparently Topps felt the same way about the individual All Stars, as 1970 was the last year each All Star got their own card (as a subset, not counting All-Star status denoted on regular card) until 1982.
• Over 700 cards Yup, too many cards and not enough going on.
• Unbelievably boring headshots I just did a count, and out of the 720 cards in this set, 223 of them feature headshot (close up and medium close up) photography. That’s a 31%, which is totally mind-boggling. No wonder Topps introduced the actual in-game action shot onto regular cards in 1971.
• Puke blue and yellow backs C’mon, how many bad decisions can be made in one set? Sure, they’re easy to read, but give me the daring nature of the hard to read dark green and full black and white headshot of 1971 than the sterile yellow of 1970.
Like with anything else, it’s easy to make a ton of mistakes, to perform so badly that you limp to the finish line. It’s easier still to quit before you make the finish line, to simply turn around and walk away, leaving a half-assed job behind you. It’s much harder, though, to compete to win and not win, and not only not win, but be bad enough to be very close to the bottom and still not be the worst. And that’s where 1970 Topps will always find itself.
Here’s another analogy (and I’ve been thinking about this one for a lot longer): If you study Topps’ baseball sets from 1969 to 1971, there’s a lot going on there; I’d say it’s one of the company’s most turbulent periods, right up there with 1953-56 and 1980-82. Okay, now look at the plot of the film Midnight Cowboy. Here’s a quick recap: Schlesinger’s 1969 masterpiece centers on Joe Buck (Jon Voight), a young Texan who moves to New York City to ‘make it’, only to wind up a male prostitute, befriending the homeless Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), living with him in an abandoned building and learning a string of horribly depressing life lessons before accompanying Ratso on a trip to Florida (only to have Ratso die en route). It’s a classic and those who haven’t seen it should go out and rent it immediately. But when you watch it, add these ideas to it: Joe Buck is Topps in the Sixties; he’s got it all figured out. When Buck moves to New York, he’s Topps in the Seventies: he finds there’s no more Mantle, his world is rudderless and he’s flailing. I don’t think there’s a subtext you can add to the parts where Joe Buck is a male prostitute, because in 1970 Topps had yet to install anyone to replace Mantle in terms of
Hero-Worship. The closest they get is splitting it up between Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente and Harmon Killebrew, but if you ask me, Topps’ heart was never really in it with Killebrew and it kind of seemed like they were always half-assing it with Clemente. In Topps’ eyes, if anybody really deserved it in the early Seventies it was Mays (he’s #600 in 1970 and 1971), though Aaron supplanted him at the same speed he overtook Ruth. And what of Ratso Rizzo, he of ‘I’m walkin’ here!’ fame? He’s the Ghost of Topps Future. He’s what Buck and Topps could be: barely surviving in world that no longer gives a shit. And if you were a collector staring down a whole year of 1970 Topps, that would’ve been a very depressing future indeed.
* * *
In a word: ugly. And not just ugly. I would like to go on record as calling this set fugly. This is one of the ugliest sets of all time: ugly design, ugly checklist, ugly rookie class, ugly everything. If I could find a way to do so, I would manufacture small brown paper bags (like soft sleeves) to display these cards in.
Okay, it’s not all bad, and it does contribute to the historical record in a number of ways, but its negatives far outweigh the positives. Here is a list of its merits and a list of its crimes against cardboard.
Merits
• Championship and World Series subsets
• League Leaders subset
• Individual All-Stars last set to do so until 1982, plus cartoon backs (much better than a gigantic Pete Rose photo puzzle; see 1969)
• Over 700 cards First set to do so in one year
• Seattle Pilots 2nd year of only two years of Pilots (1971 team represented as Milwaukee Brewers) Check out this one of Buzz Stephen, pitcher for the ‘Plots’…just classic
• Fun Photos This set had a few photos of players ‘caught unawares’ while doing random activities in the dugout, like Hank Aaron. Crouching catchers like Dave Ricketts, Clay Dalrymple, plus a Dia de los Muertos Dean Chance, the oddly thrust glove of Gail Hopkins, Lowell Palmer’s shades and Curt Flood’s meaningful grin. Plus all those ill-fitting caps.
• Team rookies subset Yeah Vida Blue! Jam bands unite!
Crimes Against Cardboard
• Shitty gray border I can’t stress this enough: in the nineteen years that Topps had been making cards before the 1970 set, they only did a non-white bordered set twice. And no, I’m not counting 1954, 1958 or 1959, because while those sets used colored backgrounds, they still used a white border. 1962 featured wood grain. 1968 a hi-fi stereo speaker/television thatch. That’s it. So tell me where in the Topps style guide it says gray is good idea? Did they think that the only way to sell a black-bordered set (1971) would be to do a transition year?
• Death by lack of subsets If Topps sets from the Eighties were death by subset inundation, the early Seventies were just the opposite, which was a real bummer, since there’s really nothing to break up the gray-border monotony. You are almost thankful that Topps included numbered checklists—those injections of yellow and red are enough color to keep your interest for another hundred cards. Plus, those subsets they did include were just tired enough to make you wonder why they bothered at all. Apparently Topps felt the same way about the individual All Stars, as 1970 was the last year each All Star got their own card (as a subset, not counting All-Star status denoted on regular card) until 1982.
• Over 700 cards Yup, too many cards and not enough going on.
• Unbelievably boring headshots I just did a count, and out of the 720 cards in this set, 223 of them feature headshot (close up and medium close up) photography. That’s a 31%, which is totally mind-boggling. No wonder Topps introduced the actual in-game action shot onto regular cards in 1971.
• Puke blue and yellow backs C’mon, how many bad decisions can be made in one set? Sure, they’re easy to read, but give me the daring nature of the hard to read dark green and full black and white headshot of 1971 than the sterile yellow of 1970.
Like with anything else, it’s easy to make a ton of mistakes, to perform so badly that you limp to the finish line. It’s easier still to quit before you make the finish line, to simply turn around and walk away, leaving a half-assed job behind you. It’s much harder, though, to compete to win and not win, and not only not win, but be bad enough to be very close to the bottom and still not be the worst. And that’s where 1970 Topps will always find itself.
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