Pujols Parade - 2002 Donruss Studio

Flags and baseball cards generally make a really good combination. For example, Topps used city flags on an insert set in 2022 Topps, which look really sharp.  This Arenado is easily one of my favorite Cardinals cards that I have picked up this year.  

Great looking card.  

My Pujols card for this week uses the American flag as part of its design.

You are probably expecting to see something classy, but think again. These cards were likely inspired by the pants of the Tae Kwon Do instructor from Napoleon Dynamite.  

It's not a very good card.  

Here is the front. 

Large American Flag. 

School film strip of the Gateway Arch, sorry no play-along cassette tape. 

Donruss Studio ended up using city skylines in 2004, but with no American flag.  

 

Back to the 2002.  

Where is the effort? 

Where is the love? 

The Blue Jays and Expos players also have American flags, so do non-American players.  

This is the type of set that would slap an American flag on a card of Joey Votto.  

Personally, if I was designing the 2002 Donruss Studio cards, I would have gone Jasper Johns American flag.  

Something a little classier.  

Back of the card. 

What is going on with the filmstrip?  

What an odd choice.  

The write-up about Pujols is decent.  

Flags and baseball cards are just generally a slam dunk. I feel let down, so I am going to share a few cards that did a better job with flags, outside of the one I did in 2 minutes.  

First, we have Trevor Rosenthal and Missouri.  

Trevor is from Lee's Summitt, so we are going to pronounce that "Missour-ee", not "uh". 

Next up is Ryan Zimmerman with a North Carolina flag.   

Ryan is from Washington, North Carolina.  

Last up, we've got Shelby Miller and a giant Texas flag.  

See, flags and baseball cards make a good combination, unless we are talking about the 2002 Donruss Studio set. I did not even post any 1997 Bowman cards. I should have just made a post about flags and baseball cards.