1974 Cubs Coaches in Living Color

The manager cards in both the 1973 and 1974 sets included floating head shots of the coaches. While the manager was in color, the coaches were in boring black and white. After looking closely at the 1974 card of Cubs manager Whitey Lockman and his staff, I saw that I could do something about the lack of coach color.



First, here is the original card



And here is my colorized version. Well, its 3/4ths colored. I think it looks so much better in color. My guess as to why Topps went black and white: they didn't have their own pictures of the coaches, and instead relied on pictures from the teams. Usually the team publicity shots were in black and white.

Now, are you amazed at my photoshop and colorizing abilities? Don't be! Because I didn't colorize the pictures.....Topps did.

How, you say?

Because Topps didn't use team photos for the three colored coaches (wow, does that sound like something out Alabama in the 1950s!). Instead, they recycled pictures from the coach's playing days.

The J.C. Martin picture comes from his



1971 cards. For Al Spangler, Topps went back to



his 1970 card. And for Jim Marshall, Topps went all the way back



to his 1960 card! I wonder if that sets a record for oldest picture used to pass off as current on a card? Topps used a 1961 picture of Ron Santo in the 1969 deckle set (an eight year difference), but a 14 year gap; that's crazy!

I looked through the other 23 manager/coaches cards in my 1974 set, but didn't see any other coach that looked like he was only 28 years old (Marshall's age in 1960). Most of the other coaches looked like old guys.