This is a picture of Jason Frasor's 2010 Topps card. It's a pretty nice shot of Jay in the middle of a pitch, in Oakland, on May 10, 2009.
I'm was psyched that Jay got into the 2010 Topps set somewhere, because Topps completely forgot him in 2008. Whoops!Fast forward to 2011 and I become very excited to see Jay is in the 2011 Topps Series One set!
That is, until I see the picture Topps chose.
Look familiar?Take a look at a side by side comparison.
It's not the same picture of Jay, but it looks like it was captured mere seconds later. You can tell it's the same game, on May 10, 2009, because the Cubs at the Brewers final score is still 4 to 2 in the Cubs favor and Jeff Suppan still started that game for the Brewers, Plus, Jay still has the same expression on his face. If it's not from the same pitch, it's definitely from the same game.Like I mentioned before, this game was on May 10, 2009. Between that game and the end of the 2010 season, Jay has appeared in 117 games and pitched a total of 109.2 innings. Does anyone honestly believe that Topps couldn't find another picture of Jay in almost two years worth of games?
Yes, it is technically a different picture of Jay. That is the only saving grace though. This is just a hair better than what Topps routinely did the last time they had a monopoly on the hobby, when they would use the exact same picture year after year. Don't believe me? Check out the comparison of Sandy Alomar Sr.'s 1968 and 1969 cards.
3 comments:
I don't like repetition of photos, but I don't think it has anything to do with the Topps monopoly. They were doing this when Upper Deck was around, too. (Hell, Upper Deck did this, too).
I see a lot of repetition with retired players, but that's to be expected. I'm aware that Upper Deck did this too with current players, but I do notice it happening more often when there is only one company producing licensed cards. It was pretty wide-spread in the sixties and seventies with Topps. I'm just hoping that this is an exception and doesn't become more widespread.
Sad. There's really no excuse for this when only one company has a contract.
One would really think that Topps would have a system where the card designer could pull up all the previous cards of a certain player and make sure they weren't re-using the same shot. Or would that make too much sense?
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