Ahh... Expos infielder Brad Mills sitting on his butt, blowing bubbles.
It MUST be a Fleer Card from the early 1980s!
These are the 1982 Fleer cards... and how I had some in my mom and dad's garage I have no idea.
I have recollection of adding them to my collection.
But there's something odd with this series..
Yes they have that same homemade quality that the 83 Fleer series had that Scott Mortimer obsesses over and I wrote about.
But there is something even stranger.
Look at this shot of Bruce Hurst.
It seems so distant... like it is really zoomed in.
And look at these of Jerry Remy and Carney Lansford.
Not crisp at all.
Kind of fuzzy and hastily framed.
It's almost as if they didn't have permission to be on the field and just snapped the first picture and ran off before they were caught.
Or maybe... just maybe Fleer didn't hire professional photographers.
Maybe they hired private investigators or surveillance men.
Think I am exaggerating?
Check out this one of Astros reliever Joe Sambito!
It's bad enough that the photo is of him leaning against the railing at Dodger Stadium talking to a kid...
But it looks like he spotted the camera man.
You can almost hear him saying "He spotted me! I got to get out of here!"
I'm sure picking which pictures to use must have been a painful job.
The editor must have been screaming "Every picture is 500 yards away! Didn't any of you take a close up picture of a ball player?"
"I did sir! It's of Red Sox pitcher Bill Campbell."
"Let me see it."
It's out of focus.
What a surprise!
Ah Fleer!
Thy name is quality.
Another thing that comes to mind about that set is the large number of cards that were photographed at Fenway Park. Almost the entire SEATTLE Mariners team was snapped at Fenway (512 - Dan Meyer - That's the Prue in the background!).
ReplyDeleteOther cards worth mentioning...
399 - Alan Ripley - Got a kind of dopey look on his face. You begin to wonder if that's the only photo taken of Ripley. If not, why didn't they go with the other one?
445 - Gaylord Perry - Takes sitting-on-his-ass to a Hall of Fame level.
488 - Steve Nicosia - Pulling a Brad Mills and blowin' a bubble.
524 - Pete Falcone - Falcone is breaking open some 1981 Fleer wax and showing off the fine photography of his '81 Fleer card.
555 - Darrell Jackson - Wish I could post this card. Upon initial glance, there's nothing unusual about it. In action photo of Jackson delivering a pitch to the plate. But take a closer look. Sharp, clear photography. Good color. Night photo. Wait ... how did this end up in the set? You think Fleer got this photo from ... Topps??
639 - Len Barker/Bo Diaz Perfect Game Battery - ...or was it? Nope! Fleer miffed that one and corrected it the following year with 83F #642 Len Barker/RON HASSEY. Oops.
I read on a blog somewhere that the reason '82 Fleer were so bad is that they used a different printer that year that printed all the cards slightly out of register and that Fleer was so infuriated they went back to the printer they used in '81 for the '83 set.
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