Thursday, May 30, 2013

A COUPLE OF DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH

I've always considered the 1979 Topps set one of the more boring, uninspired sets of the decade. The design was flat, it lacked any kind of color or excitement, most of the "important" players had lame photos, and I swear it seemed like Topps used a different kind of card stock, which felt less "slick" (I'm probably imagining this one, but I STILL insist). 
Even their good idea of having an "All-Time Record Holders" sub-set fell flat on its face with horrible design choice (see below. Ugh).
Funny enough however, the set did include what ended up being two of my favorite cards of the decade: George Brett (#330) and Rod Carew (#300). For some reason, the way the photos interacted with the rest of the card design ended up working well together. The blue tones of the Brett card image play well off the brown, yellow and red of the card design, while the overall blue and red tones on the Carew card work well with the Twins design color scheme.
Two classic cards depicting two classic players. I'm sure what help's even more is the fact that both cards show "action" shots, instead of some lame photos like Mike Schmidt and Reggie Jackson, or sadly Thurman Munson's last card and Ozzie Smith's first card.
As a side note, many baseball fans will point out that Carew was actually an Angel for the 1979 season, and there are some out there who went ahead and designed a "card that never was" with Carew as an Angel. I've also drawn one up and included it here to add to the virtual "collection.

Topps regular issue card as a Twin

My own "corrected" update as an Angel