Night Owl Cards

In honor of the official announcement Monday that Stephen Strasburg will be called up to the majors and start against the Pirates on June 8, I thought I'd actually go through with my threat of attempting to name some of the Bowman sets of the last 10 years. Strasburg, after all, is the face of 2010 Bowman, which should appear on shelves in my neighborhood by, oh, say Strasburg's fifth major league start. Unfortunately, as I mentioned in the original Define the Design post, those Bowman sets aren't easy to name. Even after opening it to suggestions, there weren't a lot of confident answers. I fully expected that. There is not a lot of design to define. But I will name three of them. I'm not married to any of them, so if something cool springs to mind, don't hesitate to let me know. If you didn't see the original post, go here . Maybe you have an idea on some of the other ones, too. OK, these three have names, and they're on the sidebar: 2003 Bo...

We here at Define the Design do not shy away from the tough questions. After all, anyone can come up with a descriptive set name for 1987 Topps or 1982 Donruss. Finding design answers for a few other sets is a lot more challenging. Score, when we get to it, will be a bear. Some of the Upper Deck sets out there are almost indefinable. And then there's Bowman. The early days of Bowman produced some memorable sets and nobody is going to have much trouble coming up with a name for some of those '50s cards. You plaster a giant wood-panel TV set on each card and you've named the set, too. Done and done. Even when Bowman returned in 1989, it at least made the look of its sets relatively different from year to year (1990 and 1991 excluded). The problem arises at the turn of the century. Here is the 2001 Bowman card. Bowman went with a very cool black-and-red design. You can't argue with black and red. It always looks great, as the Atlanta Falcons have shown for years. ...

I never expected to find seven worthy candidates for the Worst Card of 2009 by early June, but those card companies are up to the challenge, aren't they? I also never expected to find a card that could top the first candidate for "Worst Card," the Topps Ryan Braun card. But I do believe we have a very appropriate contender here. And you might be surprised to know that this card also is connected to Ryan Braun . What we have here is an official 2009 Bowman scout card, autographed by the scout in question, Larry Pardo . As the esteemed motherscratcher would say, "I crap you negative." The first time I saw one of these cards was during a Bowman break on Crackin ' Wax . My comment on that post was the following: "Scout? Auto? Mind. Just. Blown. To. Smithereens." Seriously, what bowling ball thought inserting autographed cards of scouts was a smashing idea? But surprisingly, after reading that post and a similar one on Wax Heaven, I forgo...

I did my darndest to prevent myself from receiving free Clayton Kershaw cards. But in the end, Mario of Wax Heaven could not be stopped. He was going to get those Kershaws to me no matter how many obstacles I put in his way. So, despite forgetting to send postage the first time, it wasn't held against me. This week, Mario sent five wonderful Kershaw cards to me from 2009 sets. The first is the Upper Deck SPx base card from this year. SPx is definitely not for me. X, in all its Upper Deck forms, has got to go. I don't even like the X Games. And I don't like weird position designations going down the left-hand side of my card. But it's Kershaw . It's a Dodger. So it must be mine. Here is the Upper Deck base Kershaw for the year. A nice use of the horizontal photo. I'm still not crazy about the gold bar, but it doesn't bother me as much as when I first saw the cards. Kershaw on the 2009 Bowman. The black border is OK with me. I know it chips and all ...

I have zero time to post today. About all I can do is rehash a post that I just did and hoping you're still interested. But I'm off tomorrow, so new posts with fresh ideas will commence in the wee hours of Friday morning. Now, what I want to know is, regarding the two Manny Ramirez cards that I just featured, which photo is the bigger lie, in your opinion? Here is the 2008 Stadium Club card. The issues with this card are the following: 1. Manny is actually playing for the Red Sox in this game, he is painted into a Dodger uniform and helmet. 2. The umpire has disappeared from this photograph. 3. There is no major league ballpark with a backdrop that looks like that. That is because Fenway Park's green fence behind home plate was painted blue in an attempt to make it look like Dodger Stadium. All those fans sitting there are really in Fenway Park, not Dodger Stadium. The restaurant advertised is a restaurant chain that exists only in the Northeast. OK, here is the 20...

OK, class, when we last left off we were talking about Manny Ramirez and the case of the disappearing umpire. Remember the 2008 Topps Stadium Club card? Manny Ramirez was photoshopped into a Dodgers uniform and the entire stadium was transformed into Dodger Stadium (it's actually Fenway Park). And the poor umpire was erased from the photo altogether, because of licensing issues. And you remember why that was wrong, right? In photojournalism circles this is a No.1 no-no. A good way to earn your pink slip. But even for a card company, it's bad news because it's deceptive. And we all know that card companies have trust issues when it comes to their customer base these days. (Not to mention, when have you ever seen a photo of a hitter at the plate during a game without the umpire in the shot?) All right, for those of you who remember all that, I apologize for the rehash. That was for the benefit of the rest of the class that may be a little, um, slow, or were in the princip...

Marie, of A Cardboard Problem , was nice enough to send me some Dodgers the other day. One of the cards she sent was the first 2009 Bowman card I've seen in person (no Bowman where I live at the moment). It's a gold parallel of current Dodger minor leaguer Blake DeWitt . But even though I haven't seen any Bowman yet, the card photo seemed awfully familiar. So I did a quick inventory. Sure enough, the photo was the same one used in the 2008 Bowman Chrome set. This stuff drives me batty. It's bad enough when the same photo is used in multiple sets during the same year. But we've turned the calendar to 2009 now. Find an updated photo, please, or at least a different one. This isn't 1969. You don't need to keep using the same Hank Aaron picture. Even an exclusive card, like one with an autograph, isn't immune to DeWitt photo duplication. Here is the 2008 Stadium Club autographed card of DeWitt : Golly gee, DeWitt's arm has got to be tired maki...