A truly terrifying trip to the '80s, brought to you in part by Swing and a Pop-Up.
Who is this week's victim, and why do we care? Neil Allen was a reliever and sometime starter who came up in the Mets system. Ask most Cardinals fans and they'll tell you that Allen was their team's return for letting Keith Hernandez go in 1983. Keith had become a hassle and a nuisance to Whitey Herzog, and it's rare that you'll ever get equal return when you're just trying to get rid of a problem.
Why is this a thing? This is the rare pre-Photoshop era card where Topps actually tried to doctor up a player's name and number on their uniform. And boy, does it look hilariously awful. Someone must have had a lot of fun with painting the numbers on, at least. The curious thing about it is that the inset photo looks quite passable. I suppose I wouldn't be completely shocked if it was a current photo, but I'm not completely convinced.
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 some gum from a pack of 1983 Topps, but you never know!
Truly a horrifying display of airbrushing.
ReplyDeleteThe sad part is it took me years to realize it.