And it's precisely for that reason that I wanted to take a crack at it myself since he was my first "favorite" player as a kid, along with millions of other young baseball junkies in the New York Tri-State area in the late 1970's.
As we all know ad nauseum by now, Reggie was one of the first big-time free agents in baseball, and signed with the Yankees on November 29th of 1976, after a year in Baltimore.
Needless to say, Reggie was already a star by the time he came to the Bronx, but he cemented his all-time status immediately, either with his bat or his mouth.
Never one to shy away from controversy, he was also never one to shy away from the spotlight and delivering under any type of pressure. "Mr. October" was born.
As for his 1977 baseball card, because of the "late" signing to the Yanks Topps had to airbrush the now famous image of Reggie for the 1977 edition of cards, and while it wasn't the worst airbrush job, it certainly left a lot to be desired.
So what I did was re-design two versions of the card: a portrait shot, and an action shot.
Of course the action shot would have been impossible for Topps to accomplish since it would have had to be Spring Training at the very least to get a shot of him in a Yankee uniform while playing.
But what the hell, I'm having a little fun with this. And if there was ever a card worth giving two versions of, this one qualifies for sure.
Check them out:
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| As issued by Topps. |
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| A portrait re-design. |
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| An alternate action shot version. |