Anyone who knows baseball uniforms knows that the New York Yankees have never, and I mean NEVER had a player's name across the back of a jersey.
It's one of those little things that gets on my nerves every time I see a Yankee fan with one of those "authentic" jerseys they spent out the ass for, only to ruin it by getting letters across the back, making a joke of a beautiful piece of baseball history.
Anyway, take a look at the disaster below.
Here we have card # 619 of Topps 1972 set showing Rich McKinney, who was traded to the Yanks in December of 1971 for pitcher Stan Bahnsen, in a poorly airbrushed Yankee cap (seriously, that "NY" is hilarious).
But upon further inspection, not only can you can clearly see the first few letters of his last name on his back, but you can even see the "x" of the word "Sox" on the front of his jersey as well.
Kind of funny actually. But I have to ask: if the person airbrushing the image already had the equipment out, why not pull the trigger a few more times AT LEAST to get rid of the last name?
Forget the front for a minute. Airbrushing away the last name on the back would have been an easy one.
Oh well. I guess these guys were NOT being paid by the hour.
As for Rich McKinney the player: by the time this card saw the light of day his best days were behind him.
He played in only 37 games for New York in 1972 before going to the Oakland A's as part of the trade that brought Matty Alou to the Yanks a year later.
In Oakland he managed to stick around until the 1977 season, playing sporadically at best, though he did play in 86 games in 1977 (second highest seasonal total in his career), good enough for 198 at-bats.
Yet Topps didn't include him in the 1978 set, to which I will right this "wrong" in the future as part of my "missing" thread.
Now let me go and count how many Yankee jerseys I can find with player names on the back, I'm heading to the Stadium...
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| You ever see a Yankee uniform with a name across the back?! |
