Airbrushed Fridays: 1991 Bowman #261

Airbrushed Fridays takes us to 1991, where I was hoping to find a gaffe of some sort with the Topps base set. However, this was the year that I feel that Topps finally stepped it up and recognized that they had some competition and put out a really interesting product for their 40th anniversary year. You don't really have to be a baseball card historian to know that Topps took over and squashed their primary competitor Bowman back in the '50s. They ended up deciding to revive the brand name in 1989. I have to admit that I was a pretty big fan of the first three Bowman revival sets as they each had somewhat of a retro feel while also introducing undeveloped minor league prospects to the printing press.

Bret Boone was a strong hitting second baseman with equally strong Major League bloodlines. His father was Bob Boone and his father's father was Ray Boone. His brother is Aaron Boone, who underwent open-heart surgery last spring and yet recovered to play with the Astros before the season was over. He's perhaps best known for his series-winning home run off Tim Wakefield in the 2003 ALCS. For what it's worth, Bret had an impressive run during the first half of this past decade with Seattle as a slugger, but his career ended pretty abruptly after the 2005 season.

Why did Topps airbrush Bret's photo? From what I recall, in earlier Bowman issues some of the more recently traded/acquired players were airbrushed into their new uniforms as is the usual Topps practice, but it seems like by 1991 they had a better handle on this. However, there was a subset (complete with foil stamping) of minor league award winners that had obviously drawn cards instead of photos. Bowman's resurgence including a healthy dose of prospects even before they became known as the Home of the Rookie Card, so Topps felt it necessary (probably due to licensing issues) to depict all of the players in major league unis no matter who they were.

What's wrong with this picture, anyway? I'm not sure what happened here, exactly. Bret's card looks mostly drawn (not just the cap - check out his hand!) but I actually wonder if his face may have been at least somewhat based in photograph. The bat also looks like it was not drawn. Normally here I'm picking apart what isn't real, but I think that in this case it's worth noting what might not be hand-drawn and wonder how this card even came to be.

I don't really know what to say about his shirt, either.

The Quest For Jamie Moyer

I have a mission, and it starts with Jamie Moyer. Yes, that's right, Jamie Moyer, the quintessential soft-tossing lefty. He's 45 years old and still going strong, with numbers that are probably better than 2 or 3 of the starters in the rotation of your favorite team. It seems like he's led several lives throughout his career. He came up as a stuggling Cub of the 80s, was out of the big leagues by 1992, only to be reborn as an all-star and two-time 20-game winner in the early 2000s. He's now a rock-solid member of the Phillies rotation.

Jamie Moyer was also a Cardinal at one point, as evidenced by the blurry, Beckett-pilfered 1991 Bowman card photo above. I would have been in high school at the time and in the prime of my card-collecting days, but until sometime last season I had no recollection of him ever being on the team. I also did not have any cards of him in Cardinals uniform, which is the most important thing of all. From a look at Beckett's checklist, it appears he is only depicted in a Cards' uni in the 1991 Stadium Club set as well as the aforementioned Bowman of the same year. There also appears to be a 1991 O-Pee-Chee "Now With Cardinals" card where they took the same card as Topps, as per usual, and most likely added his new team status as a footnote in the corner somewhere on the front. I also need to own this card. He also appears to have made it into the 1991 Lousiville Redbirds team set. He would be released by the end of the year, having spent a good portion of it in AAA, not to return to the majors (for good) until 1993.

Moyer also was the starting pitcher for Seattle in the first Cardinals game I ever attended, a 10-0 trouncing of the Redbirds at Safeco Field. It would be notable for being So Taguchi's major league debut and not much else. But he isn't really the mission here. What I really am looking for is to accumulate as many unique Cardinals baseball cards as cheaply as possible. But it's best to start small and break things down into small, attainable goals, isn't it?