Airbrushed Fridays: 1990 Topps Traded #52T

After Topps reached big success with their two most recent Traded sets, marked by the Olympians and strong rookie crop of the 1988 set and Ken Griffey Jr. himself in the 1989 set, the 1990 effort could have been filed somewhere between piss and poor. One notable addition, however, was the advent of Traded set wax packs. The entire traded set was issued in its usual factory set box with thinner, lighter card stock than its base set counterpart, but the wax packs contained cards printed on the standard card stock that everyone got to know and love over the years. I'm not certain which is the rarer version at this time, but I wouldn't consider your team set complete without a cards of each player in each card stock variety.

Brent Knackert logged 32 appearances as a major league pitcher in his career, including 2 starts and 8 games finished. Was he a fringe major leaguer? Certainly. The odd thing with Brent is that he appeared in the majors in two separate seasons, 1990 and 1996.

Why did Topps airbrush Brent's photo? I suppose Knackert's career could have been some sort of hoax and that he didn't really exist. The Mariners were a last place team in 1990 and Ken Griffey Jr. was still figuring out how to play the game. Growing up in the Portland area, we've always had Mariners game televised to some extent, and it's hard to pry my eyes away from baseball when it's on. I don't remember Knackert existing, though. It's even more curious that he showed up more than a half of a decade later.

What's wrong with this picture, anyway? Hand-drawn shirt and hat? Closely cropped photo? Actually, if it wasn't for the blip of color just above his right shoulder, I would seriously wonder if this was one of his class photos when he was in high school. Although, I suppose it's best to look directly into the camera when you're attempting to immortalize yourself into Senior Photo Glory.