I am a big fan of this card. Well, the front of the card.
First, I love the Cardinals road uniforms with the blue hats/helmets. The team has abandoned this look in recent years, which is really a shame. It's one of the better road uniforms in baseball when combined with that blue hat. The red hats just don't cut it for me. I am also fairly certain the Cardinals have lightened the gray used on the road uniforms, I like this darker hue better.
The picture on this card was taken during the 1994 season. You should be able to assume that a 1995 Topps card would have a picture from 1994, but we all know how Topps recycles old photographs. The giveaway is the patch on Lankford's right sleeve, which was to commemorate the 125th Anniversary of Major League Baseball.
Here is a closer look at the patch.
Ray was the first batter of the 1994 season. What did he do?
Yard.
Back of the card.
The home run above gets a mention on the back of his 1995 Topps card. The design of the back has always been my lone fault with this card. Topps squished the stats to the left of the card in order to fit the color player pictures on the right side. All of the photos on the cards are the MLB stock photos that teams use for scoreboards and the whatnot. I am sure I saw this on the Busch Stadium scoreboard a few times during the summer of 1994. Not very exciting. I am more interested in the action photo below, but they made it so small.
I vote no photo or only action photo.
Three photos on a Topps flagship card? The effort was there. My eyes can't handle the small stats... but if I was younger and my eyes could handle it... I'd give it a thumbs up.
ReplyDeleteI was motivated to research and find out who hit that home run on Opening Day to kick of the 1986 season and was very surprised to discover it was Dwight Evans. Never really thought of him as a "speed" guy.
The 3 photos does seem odd. It makes me want to go through my Topps base sets and see if they've done that at any other point. I am guessing the 1995 set is it.
DeleteDwight Evans walked all the time. I guess if you didn't have a prototypical leadoff hitter on the roster, he be a good substitute.
I'm not sure if I've ever seen a close-up of that patch before. It's quite fetching! Oh, and I didn't, and still don't, care much for these backs either.
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