The Antithesis of an Action Card

Let's face it, if you love baseball, then sometime in your youth you imagined yourself on a baseball card.  It is akin to being a child and dreaming of hitting the game winning grand slam in Game 7 of the World Series.  With two out and two strikes, no less.  I even suspect that most professional baseball players like to see themselves framed on a 2.5 by 3.5 piece of cardboard.

However, imagine your surprise when you do see yourself on a card, and it is nothing like you hoped.  You're not making a spectacular diving play in the field.  You're not taking a wicked cut at the dish.  You're not even holding your bat on your shoulder and gazing into the distance, as the palm trees and stanchions sway in the springtime Florida background.

Instead, imagine if your card is this...

Ouch.  Dave Van Gorder was one of four, that's right, four catchers on the 1985 Cincinnati Reds squad.  To be immortalized on cardboard warming up a pitcher between innings, while the starter gets his gear on is just disrespectful to me.  Making it to the major leagues is a great athletic accomplishment, and even if you are a backup, your card shouldn't scream pine rider.

Redefine the Design - 1986 Topps

In my previous two attempts at Redefining the Design, I was met with elation at my redesign of 1981 Topps, and down-right contempt from an anonymous source for the redesign of 1987 Topps.  Here is the harshest criticism I have yet to encounter on this blog:
 
“You must be kidding that you think your plain design is better than the original wood grain card, let a lone (sic) anything special. Overproduced? YES! bad (sic) design? NO! Regardless, could the design be improved? YES! Is your an improvement? NO! I wish they never overproduced it because they were a nice set that most people really liked but got sick of due to the overkill.”

Man, I never knew that someone had a soft spot for 1987 Topps.  Collectors never cease to amaze me.  And by the way, Mr./Ms./Mrs. Anonymous, I have about 8,000 wood-grained 1987 Topps cards if you want to pay for the shipping.

Given that stellar review, I feel it is time to once again tinker with a Topps design, and potentially perform a George Lucas-esque raping of someone’s childhood.  Not taking much of a gamble on this entry, I only went back one year in time to, in my opinion, the ultra boring 1986 Topps set.  It’s not cool enough to have 100% black borders, so you’re left with 25% not-so-cool black borders that still flake.  Maddening. 

Besides the wannabe-1971 Topps design, my main beef is the team lettering at the top of the card.  What is that, the bastard child of Mr. Art Deco and Ms. Miami Vice? 

Well, the one really good thing about the black top is that it can make the text pop.  I tinkered with the idea of losing the 25%, and going 100% midnight, but my vintage oriented self cried foul.  Instead, I opted to try the text from the mid-80s road uniforms. Back then, it seemed that all the teams used a script font of the City/State name for their grey jerseys.  Hence why I came up with the following…

What do you think?