Topps' 1971 White Sox Airbrush Fail

Welcome to today's edition of Wrigley Comiskey US Cellular Wax.

In yesterday's post, I touched on the fact that by series six of the 1971 set, Topps was changing logos on the hats instead of just removing them.

Four of the cards that got changed were cards of White Sox players. As good as the Cubs were during this era, the White Sox were just as bad. In fact, there were rumors that the team would move to Milwaukee, though when the Pilots became the Brewers in 1970, relocation talk died down. Because the team was struggling, it makes sense that there was a lot of player movement. Hence, many Sox players in 1971 series six.

So the Topps' artists got to work, using their newfangled color logo changing technique.



On Vicente Romo's card, they just changed the hat color.







But as you can see on these cards of Lee Maye, Don O'Riley, and John Purdin, they added the Sox logo too. Well, they tried to add the logo!

Just one problem, Topps. During the off season, the Sox changed uniform colors. They switched from royal blue to red. So in 1971, the White Sox were wearing red, including red socks. (Maybe someone can explain to me why the White Sox wore red socks. Wasn't a team in Boston supposed to wear red socks?? Well, maybe my Cubs bias is showing here, but I could never figure that one out!)



In fact, Topps even had one card in series six that shows the red uniform, manager Chuck Tanner's card. Did anyone at Topps notice that when they put series six together there were White Sox with two different hat colors? And what did Topps' artists think? I wonder if there was any talk about redoing the card with red, or if they just said, "Oh well."

Apparently they said, "Oh well," because we were left with this failure of bad logos in the wrong color.

And what about the Cubs in series six? There were four of them.









All four are shown in their actual Cubs uniform!

Topps 1963 Airbrushing

The 1963 set is one of the more popular set from the 1960's because of the bright colors on the card. Remember, these followed the rather boring 1961 design (see Heritage 2010) and the 1962 wood grain set.

Two photos were featured on each card. The large picture was more of a portrait type pose. The smaller circle insert was in more of a positional type pose. It was also in black and white.

One interesting feature of the Cubs cards was how Topps dealt with players that were recent acquisitions by the team (I'll assume they did the same thing with all the teams, but the only '63's I've got are Cubs). There were cards for 26 players and six of them were picked up by the Cubs after the 1962 season was over.

Topps had no picture of these guys in a Cub uniform. They dealt with this problem the same way for all six.













Instead of airbrushing, they used a hatless picture.

But, on the smaller circle-insert pictures, a C was plastered on the hat and any uniform logos were removed.














On most of the cards, it was pretty obvious that a C was added. It seems that the technology of the day made if possible to doctor black and white photos, but changes to color pictures were more difficult and Topps didn't bother to try.

By the late '60's Topps was removing logos on color cards. But the earliest cards I could find that had color logos actually changed were in the last series of the 1971 set.





From the looks of these two cards, it seems like the technology still had a long way to go.

Here is one other oddity from the 1963 set. Look at the insert picture on Ron Santo's card.





It looks like the C was taken away. I wonder what happened here? Did they cut and paste it onto Lindy McDaniels' hat??

A Tale of Two MB's

Let's compare the two MB's the Cubs acquired the past two years.

The 2009 MB, Milton Bradley.



Here is Bradley's April, 2009 line:

4 for 34, for a .118 average, 2 HRs, 2 RBIs. And Cubs fans booed Milton.

And the 2010 MB, Marlon Byrd:



This April, he was 31 for 93, for a .348 average, 4 HRs, 16 RBIs. Byrd is quickly becoming a Wrigley favorite.

Sorry Milton, but it wasn't the color of your skin that brought out the negative fan reaction. It was your performance on the field, or actually, your lack of performance. Admittedly, the fans may have been impatient. But you didn't play well and you heard about it. Marlon is playing well and he is hearing about it too.

Cubs fans don't care if you are black, white, green, or purple. Heck, they even cheered for long-time Cardinal Jim Edmonds when he came to the Cubs. All they care about is winning. Help the team win, and you will hear about it. Contribute to the team losing and you will hear it, too.

National Chicle Cubs

Some of these look nice! I like that Topps used original artwork. Its much better looking that last year's T206, which had too many recycled pictures.

I found the Cubs set on ebay for a reasonable price and hit the BIN. Four days later they were in my hands. The base set features eight Cubs, seven current players and Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks. There is also another Banks card among the SP's. I just bought it this weekend, but it hasn't arrived yet.

The seven current players are all of the big names. Topps did a nice job with player selection. No Cubs rookies made the list, but that's ok, since there aren't any real high-profile prospects on the way.



Ernie Banks, Artist: Mike Kupka, This looks really nice. Its based on a photo from late in Ernie's career. The uniform is one the Cubs wore from 1969 - 1971, but since there is no centennial patch, it would be either '70 or '71. This is the Ernie Banks I knew as a kid. Great card.



Marlon Byrd, Artist: Dave Hobrecht. I guess this is ok. Hobrecht had to add the Cubs logo and did a decent job. I'm much happier about Byrd's on-field performance than I am about the looks of this card.



Kosuke Fukudome, Artist: Dave Hobrecht. Sorry, but Dave struck out on this one.



The painting looks more like a WWII propaganda poster than a Cubs player. All Kosuke needs are the round glasses.



Derrek Lee, Artist: Don Higgins. Now we're back on track. Higgins has done some A&G for Topps, and it looks like he knows what he is doing.



Ted Lilly, Artist: Jeff Zachowski. Here's another nice one. This has a Turkey Red 2005 feel to it, with the old time stadium background.



Aramis Ramirez, Artist: Paul Lempa. I guess this is fine, but I don't like the sun glasses or the BP jersey.



Alfonso Soriano, Artist: Mike Kupka. Everything is ok except for Soriano's face. That doesn't really look like him, to me.



Carlos Zambrano, Artist: Don Higgins. Our second Higgins card in the set. We've got Zambrano in his usual blue alternate jersey, but otherwise, well, Higgins did a better job on the Derrek Lee card.

So that's eight Cubs, and five artists. Kupka and Zachowski get a thumbs up. Higgins and Lempka get the sideways thumb, and Hobrecht gets a thumbs down.

Sunday Cubs Fact: Grace and Sandberg

I haven't done one of these in a long time. But last week I found this fact in the 1996 Cubs media guide and thought it was worthy of a post.

"From May 2, 1988, the date first baseman Mark Grace made his major league debut, to June 13, 1994, the date second baseman Ryne Sandberg announced his retirement, the duo was in the Cubs' starting lineup 840 times. Over the six-plus season stretch, Grace and Sandberg each committed an error in the same game only twice--September 7, 1988, and September 16, 1992."



So, Mark Grace's debut was 22 years ago today. And for the next six years, he and Ryno gave the Cubs a pretty decent pair of gloves on the right side of the infield. Sandberg won the NL Gold Glove for nine straight seasons, from 1983 - 1992, and set various fielding records. Grace won Gold Gloves in 1992, 1993, and 1995.

I own 192 Ryne Sandberg cards and 180 more cards of Mark Grace and this is the only one I've got that shows both players (plus Randy Myers).




Otherwise, the rest that I've got for you here seem to match together.

Andre Dawson Screams, "I'm Falling!"

I was paging through my Score binder and found this in the Score Select set from 1993.

There are 14 Cubs. Of the 14, all but one have a vertical picture. Among them are this card of first round draft pick (and flop) Derek Wallace. Wallace was a pitcher, but they had him do this jump pose.



I'm not sure why you have a pitcher jump, but it's semi-interesting.

But it looks better when you see it along with the only horizontal card of the 14. Andre Dawson goes horizontal, but in the binder, its vertical like the others and looks like this:



It looks like Dawson jumped out of a plane and is falling! Look out below!!

Or maybe the card was symbolic of Dawson bailing out on the Cubs, since he didn't even play with them in 1993. Instead, he went to the Red Sox.