Airbrushed Fridays: 2011 Topps World Series Champions #WS9

We're in the thick of the baseball season now. The Cards and Reds are currently having it out over on the MLB Network. The Dodgers are trying to buy all of the Red Sox. I wonder if they're going to trade for the Green Monster (and Wally, too) while they're at it.

As I alluded to earlier this week, I have yet another bone to pick with Topps in regards to the World Series set that I just purchased.

Who is this week's victim, and why do we care? Ryan Theriot was supposed to be the Cardinals immediate and opposite reaction to Brendan Ryan, who they had traded away for a raw pitching prospect who could throw 100 MPH, Maikel Cleto. Ryan was a goofy character, while Theriot is as straight as they come, humorless. Ryan was an excellent defender. Theriot had bricks for hands. Most importantly, apparently, Ryan couldn't hit his way out of a wet paper bag with Wonderboy. Theriot was supposed to at least provide an average bat, despite declining numbers that said otherwise. When Theriot eventually lost his job because he failed to resemble a major league player, forcing the Cardinals to acquire Rafael Furcal, Theriot bristled at the idea that his reduced role had helped the team at all and busted out his now infamous "it is what it is" quote.

Why does this card exist? This is what is puzzling to me. Topps used the same photo on Theriot's Series 2 base card, an obvious Photoshop job. Check the fuzzy cap logo. How about the funky shaped Cardinals lettering on the front of his jersey, or the fact that it appears that Theriot has no number at all. It's an odd choice, considering that he already had an even more obvious Photoshop job done to his Cardinals team set card (not to be confused with the World Series team set) and then Topps chose to produce another fake Cardinals card with the regular set. Here, they are just being lazy. I guess they could have used a photo of Theriot from the World Series, standing in the dugout, looking indignant. They took great care to come up with a posed photo for his sticker card, but no version of a standard sized Ryan Theriot Topps baseball card would have a real Cardinals uniform on it.

Airbrushed Fridays is a weekly feature as the name seems to imply. If you know of a card with an altered photograph that you'd like to see featured, please contact me. You probably won't win anything other than a hyperlink and some stale taffy, but you never know!