Correcting A Common Error

I know that most people in the world could care less about a baseball card blog right this second. There's some Big Game going on in another sport, preempted by an impromptu classic rock medley (with only two original members performing) in the middle. It may be hours or days before you stumble across this post.

Meet Tommy Davis. This is his 1968 Topps Game card. Number ten in a series of thirty-three.

Commonly, this card of Tommy Davis has him associated with the Dodgers. I can see where people would assume that. The picture on this card features no team identifiers. The card fails to mention his team affiliation. Tommy's best days up to this point were on the Dodgers. Hell, even the picture is likely to hail from his days in Dodger blue.

It just ain't so.

From 1959 until 1966, Tommy Davis was part of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He did very well during those formative years. In 1967, he found himself on the New York Mets. He wasn't a part-time player, who could get lost in the shuffle. Tommy played 154 games for the Mets.

By 1968, Davis found himself on the White Sox. How anyone could look at his stats and mistake him for being on the Dodgers, at this point, is beyond me. It happens. That's why I am here to point out this common error. The White Sox did wear a similar color on their uniforms during this time, which is probably where the genesis of this misinformation started. That certainly isn't a Mets uniform he's wearing.

That has been a White Sox PSA. Thank you for your time.

1968 Fleer Cloth Emblem Patches

I've been watching the progress over at The Fleer Sticker Project thanks to Kevin's mention of it. It's not a site that I would normally frequent, since it has nothing to do with baseball cards to the naked eye. But as we all know, Fleer baseball logo stickers are a part of baseball card collecting, so I was intrigued enough to take a look.

I was expecting logo sticker cards of the 1990 set, that I seemed to have a million of. Or the 1985 stickers, that seem to accumulate around my collection. I check this site out and I'm treated to images of Fleer baseball products that I've never seen before.

Fleerfan has certainly done the homework on these forgotten gems. I'm certainly enjoying everything I'm seeing over there. If you're looking for something a bit different, but still in the realm of collecting, check out The Fleer Sticker Project.

Warning: side effects include wanting to find these Fleer products without regard to time, money or sanity. Proceed with caution.

I didn't heed the warning and now I want all the White Sox cards that I see on Fleerfan's site.

The Sandy Alomar Picture Show

OK, is it just my imagination or is this the same picture for the 1968 and 1969 Topps cards of Sandy Alomar? The 1968 card looks like the original picture and the 1969 card looks like it was airbrushed slightly to make it appear like a different photo. He actually looks like he was airbrushed younger in 1969.

I've heard many complaints that Topps reuses the same picture on the front and backs of their cards nowadays. This is just plain lazy compared to that! Granted they only really used posed shots for the cards at this point, it couldn't have been too hard to get Sandy to pose again or to use one of the throwaway shots from the original shoot. Then again, the photographer could've said, "Same pose this year. Go ahead and stand in the same spot. Try and look a little younger."

I kinda doubt that, but I wasn't around then. You never know. I do know that these are 2 of the 3 cards that I know about of Sandy in a White Sox uniform. The other was a 1969 team issue black & white card. That is the card I don't own. I own the two doppelgangers pictured above. For all I know the team issue card might be this shot, just in black & white. If it is, I'll be happy if someone airbrushed a Sox cap on him.