Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Upper Deck: The Real April Fools

On January 14, 2008, the Cardinals sent a declining Scott Rolen to the Blue Jays in exchange for Troy Glaus. Glaus, who is unfortunately injured now and out until at least June, played Gold Glove caliber defense and was one of the main contributors from the plate in a pretty potent Cardinal lineup last season. The card above is my first 2009 Spectrum card - featuring Troy Glaus in a Blue Jays uniform. That's right - a full season and more than a calendar year after being traded, Glaus is back in a Jays uniform in a 2009 product. This is one of the first cards that met my eyes in a stack sent over to me recently from Covered in Wrappers of A Cardboard Problem. The design of the set is also fairly ridiculous and the photo is downright awful (look, in particular, at the expression on Troy's face.) I would like to submit this card in place of, or alongside, the Manny Ramirez Spectrum card that Night Owl nominated for Worst Card of '09.

This is not to say I'm not appreciative of the cards in general. In fact, I probably have an even greater appreciation for receiving crud like this because it means I don't have to buy it. Now, because this appears to be one of those sets where every card has a million parallels and jersey versions, Upper Deck would probably try to tell you that they kept Troy in a Jays uniform because the little jersey chunks are from his Blue Jays years. You know, the ones that they probably have a huge box full of in some storage location. I'm still not having it, though. And was it really necessary to also have the "correct" team pictured in the photo on the back? Oh, I see, it's because it's just a cropped tiny version of his head from the front photo. I appreciate Upper Deck's stance on PhotoShopping, unlike some other companies whose names begin with T, but this is just plain wrong.

I also got a Rick Ankiel card. He couldn't be pictured with the wrong team, of course, because he hasn't switched teams before. I'm kind of surprised he doesn't have a photo from, say, '06 spring training or something though. Should I say something positive? Okay, at least all I need is Albert now and I'll never have to look at this product again.
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2 comments :

  1. Isn't this a fairly premium product too? Shame on them and this is in a sport where they actually don't have a monopoly. I thought that competition was supposed to keep you on your toes.

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  2. Wow, you're right. That's awful.

    Isn't it nice that there are people out there that will actually buy Spectrum so we can do posts like this?

    And, no, there is nothing good to say about Spectrum. So, I guess we should have listened to our moms and not posted at all.

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