Airbrushed Fridays: 2006 Topps Updates & Highlights #UH64

Welcome back to Airbrushed Fridays. It's Friday somewhere, right? Actually, it's still Friday here on the west coast, and that's all that matters to me.

Who is this week's victim, and why do we care? Todd Walker was an offensive minded second baseman who bounced around the league, playing for seven teams in 12 seasons. A former first round draft pick, Walker came up with the Twins where he'd remain until he decided to tour the league beginning in 2000.

Why does this card exist? Walker made one of his last stops in San Diego by virtue of a trade deadline deal with the Cubs back in 2006. The Cubs received Jose Ceda for their troubles, a player who didn't break into the league until 2010 - with the Marlins. Walker would make one more stop - an 18 game cameo with Oakland before hanging it up in 2007. Oh, and the Photoshopping? It's bad. Let us never speak of it again.

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 what's left of Lance Armstrong's career, but you never know!

Airbrushed Fridays: 2006 Topps #424

I think it's a shame that there's no such thing as Friday Night Baseball. I realize that baseball lags behind some of the others major sports (which I shall not name) in popularity and TV ratings, but there has never really been anything worthwhile to watch on TV on Fridays. As an out of market Cardinals fan, I pay for the MLB Extra Innings package to watch the games anyway, but I still wish they would do something about the lack of baseball on basic cable when the next TV deal is up. (Never gonna happen.)

Tony Womack was a roleplayer, manning many positions over the course of his 13 year career which featured stints with 7 teams. He was an All-Star once way back in 1997 with the Pirates, but his best overall season (or at least most surprising) was a one year appearance as a St. Louis Cardinal for the pennant-winning 2004 team.

Why did Topps airbrush Tony's photo? A one year wonder at 2B for the Cardinals, the Yankees pegged Womack as something of a super utility player and signed him up for 2005. He wasn't so super, returning to his pre-2004 career norms at the plate. The Yanks then traded him along with a large sack with a dollar sign on it to the Reds, who sent back two players who never made the majors. He scratched our just 23 plate appearances in 9 games with the Reds before being released three weeks into the season, so it's not all that surprising he appears here as a Fake Red. He'd end up back with the Cubs as his last stop later that season.

What's wrong with this picture, anyway? Just look at Tony Womack and his shoulder shrug. He doesn't even know what he's doing in that uniform.

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.

Airbrushed Fridays: 2006 Topps #163

Although there signs of it here and there in earlier issues, Topps took the full Photoshop plunge in 2006 when it by and large dropped the campy studio photos of some of its recently traded players and draft picks. This, coincidentally, was the first year I returned to buying base Topps packs in earnest (after a 12+ year layoff) and this particular card was extremely confusing to me at the time.

Tom "Flash" Gordon was a hard throwing right handed starting pitcher who gained some notoriety later in his career as a reliever, even inspiring a Stephen King novel to be named after him. He was also one of the subjects of one of the first articles I ever read on the dangers of what card collectors tend to refer to as "prospecting". In the article, he was not-so-kindly referred to as "Flash in the Pan" Gordon. I should mention that the article was written in the late '80s, probably in either one of the Krause Publications magazines or Beckett itself.

Why did Topps airbrush Tom's photo? Topps has adjusted its release schedule a number of times, at times even releasing Series 1 in time for the holidays of the closing year, but they never press their flagship set after live baseball has begun in the new year. Gordon was signed by the Phillies in December of 2005 after a successful two year run setting up for Mariano Rivera.

What's wrong with this picture, anyway? They got the team right - even though the photo is clearly altered (the Nike swoosh is threatening to leave his right shoe altogether.) The background is a blurry mess, so I'm not sure if they did anything to it but it definitely doesn't fit the scheme of Yankee Stadium. For once, the most messed up thing of all is the fact that they clearly altered Gordon's card to make him a Phillie, took care of the back of the card with the new logo and cartoon, yet completely forgot to change his team name in the foil lettering at the top. Nice.

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.

What Roped Me Back In

One of the things that's struck a chord with me as I continue to read others' thoughts about sports cards on the internet is that how many people have a similar story to their collecting habits. Most people, like myself, seem to have collected at some point in their younger days before giving it up for whatever reason. Somehow, we got roped back into somewhat peculiar habit of collecting small photos of professional athletes.

I believe the first packs that I saw since my high school days were given to me by my girlfriend sometime in 2005. What really grabbed me, however, is something that looks very similar to the pack that I'll show you in this post. You see, back in 1991, Topps put out their 40th anniversary flagship set with a serious new commitment to quality photography and all that. They also inserted at some secret ratio some "vintage" baseball cards from their first 39 years. At the time, I was gullible enough to believe that - according to people down at the card shop - Topps randomly inserted one of every baseball card that they ever made. Even if this were true, in failing to account for the unfathomably high production numbers and low odds of ever pulling something like this, I somehow believed that if I opened enough 1991 Topps packs that I could eventually pull a pristine condition card from the '50s. I wasn't expecting Mickey Mantle or anything, but I think I assumed that Topps had some sort of vault of uncirculated cards from all years that they could pull out on a whim.

So we now know none of this was true, but imagine my adult delight at seeing that 3 vintage cards were inserted into every rack pack of 2006 Topps. This was dangerous. This is what caused me to start spending actual money on baseball cards again. Since these have long disappeared from the shelves, here's a pack of this stuff that I actually got in a repack thing not too long ago.

Opening from left-to-right (right-to-left if you flip it over to pull out the cards...)

81 - Kyle Farnsworth

78 - Nick Punto

BB663 - Barry Bonds Home Run History 663 (I'd like to meet someone who collects these. Actually, no, I probably wouldn't. But if there are any Bonds collectors out there, I have plenty of stuff for you.)

6 - Nolan Ryan Record Breakers (1988 Topps) (Well, it is only an '88 Topps card, but no card of Nolan Ryan is a bad card. You could certainly do worse.)

163 - Flash Gordon (Here's the confusing Tom Gordon card where they took the time and effort to photoshop Gordon into a Phillies uniform - check out that Nike swoosh that's practically falling off of his shoe - but failed to change the team name from Yankees to Phillies. At least, I think that's what happened.)

154 - Ryan Church (The 2006 set itself isn't bad, but I wasn't inspired enough to bother to collect it, either. The only Topps base set in the past decade I am interested in collecting is 2003.)

137 - Victor Zambrano

Section 2, coming right up...

270 - Chicago White Sox (It was nice to see team cards included as Topps had gotten away from that when I stopped collecting.)

284 - New York Yankees

1 - Mickey Mantle Home Run History 1 (If I am following everything correctly, this was the only card from this monotonous insert set put in series 1 packs. Doesn't that make this card about 100 times more common than the others? They were still inserted at the same rates as series 2 and Updates & Highlights, which had 100 different cards to choose from. Also, again, I want to find someone who collects these.)

464 - Jeff Jones (1984 Topps) (Can't complain too much about this one, printing defect and all. I like 1984 Topps.)

103 - Junior Spivey (Probably one of the most disappointing free agent signings the Cardinals made this decade.)

129 - Joe McEwing

130 - Richie Sexson (I wonder what Sexson is up to these days.)

3 of 3 - Checklist

And now, the finale...

263 - Albert Pujols MVP (It's also very easy to convince me to buy something if Albert Pujols is showing on the front.)

242 - Felix Hernandez

132 - Russ Adams

9 - Alex Rodriguez Topps 2K All-Stars (Some of this insert set was available only through buying the MLB 2k6 video game, which I owned. I got three of those cards and they all had some sort of indentation on them from the plastic packaging. Others were inserted into 2006 Topps packs. On the back there is a video game representation of the player, which is kind of amusing.)

174 - Todd Burns (1989 Topps)

131 - Rod Barajas

300 - Ryan Garko

- Topps of the Class filler card

Does anyone else have a similar story to share?