Airbrushed Fridays: 1974 Topps #430

Less than one week left of baseball. We're all going to miss it.

Who is this week's victim, and why do we care? Matty Alou was an All-Star outfielder who bounced around a bit in his career. He won a World Series ring with the A's in '72 and had multiple brief stints with the Cardinals. He's best known as the middle child of the three Alou brothers, all of whom were successful MLBers. Matty was a career .307 hitter who won a batting title in his first season as a full-time outfielder. He's also the second Alou brother (third card overall) to be featured on Airbrushed Fridays.

Why is this a thing? As you may have figured out, this technically isn't even an airbrushed card. Topps found a hatless photo of Matty two teams removed from the Padres and called it good. While Alou finished up the 1973 season with the Cardinals, he's pictured here in Yankees pinstripes. Topps has always had some sort of unwritten policy to always match player photos to the team the player represents on the card, so I thought it was fun to include. Matty concluded his major league career with San Diego in 1974. But unlike a number of the Padres cards in this set, there's no Washington "Nat'l Lea" variation of this card.

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 Boston beard trimmings, but you never know!