Airbrushed Fridays: 2012 Topps Opening Day #150

We're down to the Final Four in that college basketball tournament thing, with the semifinal games scheduled for tomorrow. Stats on the Back is sitting in the drivers seat right now, with the venerable Colonel Panic sitting in 2nd place with the most potential points overall. Tenets of Wilson has locked up last place, assuring bragging rights for years to come.

Jose Bautista is one of the game's premier power hitters. As if by magic, he suddenly flipped a switch at the end of the 2009 season and started hitting balls out of the field of play like he was transformed into a new slugging mechanical man. If you take a look at his numbers leading up to the past two seasons where he combined for 97 HRs, he struggled a lot more than he slugged. In 2004 alone, he played for four different MLB teams, scraping by for plate appearances wherever they could be found.

Why did Topps airbrush Jose's photo? By now, you've all probably seen the atrocious Marlins Photoshopped cards from this set, so I thought I'd go with a lesser known Blue Jays version. For some reason Topps has focused on trying to get a new uniform/logo look on their players for the Opening Day set. And I get why some people support this, but I think it just looks tacky. Of course, Bautista didn't change teams, but it was apparently really important to get an approximation of this year's return-to-quasi-retro Jays look. (Don't get me wrong, I fully support this logo change.)

What's wrong with this picture, anyway? I guess I explained this above. It was Photoshopped.

If you are interested in obtaining a card featured here, please send me an e-mail. If you have a card you would like to nominate for Airbrushed Fridays, please get in touch as well. I will require that I am able to see the card in person, either on loan or as a donation, so that I can examine the card and experience it in all its cruddiness.