Friday, December 14, 2012

Airbrushed Fridays: 2007 Topps #107


In case you've been in a The World Is Ending Soon type of bunker hole, there's a contest going on here at Cards on Cards. There's still time left to sign up! Just get some picks going and you'll be entered to win some prizes, including cards from your favorite team/player(s), a blaster perhaps, and question marks (????)! Good luck and... good luck.

Who is this week's victim, and why do we care? Rafael Soriano is one of the top relievers in the game. He's also an example of the wide gap between closers and non-closers that exists in baseball. He was relatively unheralded (but decently paid, I suppose) until Mariano Rivera went down with a freakish season-ending injury last spring. Suddenly, he's the team's closer and shutting down fools like it was 2010 again. After finally "proving" himself by maintaining a closer role for the better part of three out of the last four seasons, he's being pushed out the door for someone born in the '60s. I can't blame the Yankees for keeping Mo around, of course, but this team (Ichiro, Youkilis, Jeter, A-Rod's withered corpse) is going to be hilarible to watch next year.


Why does this card exist? Soriano was brutally hit in the head by a comebacker in 2006 in what would prove to be his final season with the Seattle Mariners. Atlanta took a flyer on him, not knowing if he'd ever be the same. He ended up being pretty effective as a mostly non-closer. Of course, Soriano was nowhere near a major league uniform when this set was being put together, which explains his non-Braves-ness.

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 the tears of a Kansas State fan, but you never know!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments are highly encouraged, but then again, so is eating your fruits and vegetables.