There's just a few more weeks left in this baseball season. I'm still feeling relatively good about the Cardinals chances this year, but I really wish there was only one wild card spot available as in years past. I can't stand the thought of an entire six month's seasons worth of games played nearly every day coming down to some arbitrary 9 inning affair. If you are a wild card play-in game loser, do you even consider yourself a playoff team? Will you remember that your team made it ten years down the road? Will there be baseball cards featuring photos of your team in the playoffs under the lights? Will Joe Buck care? (Probably not.)
Who is this week's victim, and why do we care? Ramon Hernandez is an offense-first catcher who has bounced around the league a bit and is currently at the twilight of his career. He was an all-star in his final season with Oakland, the team that drafted him.
Why does this card exist? After several successful seasons with the Reds, Hernandez was signed by the Rockies this past offseason. He has floundered in Colorado while threatening to set career lows in nearly every category while being used sparingly. This card continues the trend of Topps using Photoshopped images liberally in its Series 2 product. Let's hope they change this next year, although seeing that they're rehashing some of the same design concepts for their base set next year that they've used going on some six years now, I have my doubts.
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 the orange dust from the bottom of a Doritos bag, but you never know!
Wait a sec... he's still playing? I was ready to do some research to find a private address for him. Weird...
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