Card of the Moment #16
April 15th, 2010 by slangon

So as you read this, I’m probably sitting pool side in Florida, drinking a beer and doing nothing. I was thinking of just not writing for a spell, but instead, you get a week and a half of pre-written Cards of the Moment posts.

2005 Donruss Greats Souveniers #5 Dwight Evans Bat Relic

A while back there was someone on eBay selling a bunch of relic cards starting at $0.99. By the time I stumbled upon them there was only a few hours to go and many of them weren’t bid on yet. There was a handful of Mets cards being offered which I jumped at, but since the seller was only charging one flat shipping rate I picked up a bunch of other interesting non-Met cards.

This Dwight Evans was one of them. I find this card interesting for 2 reasons.

First off, when I was a wee lad and first falling in love with the sport of baseball, I pretty much knew all the Mets by heart and not too much outside of that. When I would get a new pack of cards I would get real excited to see anyone wearing a Mets uniform. There were some other non-Mets that I would get excited about as well, like Mike Schmidt, Goose Gossage, Dave Winfield, Reggie Jackson, Jim Rice and George Brett. Of course, all those dudes went on to become Hall of Famers, so that makes sense. There was also another tier of non-Mets that I would get excited over who were good enough to be regularly mentioned in sportscasts and news recaps, but not quite HOF good. Some names that come to mind are Bill Buckner (pre-1986), Pedro Guerrero, Dale Murphy and Fred Lynn.

Dwight Evans is another of those guys who I have hazy memories of being in awe of, but nothing concrete. Looking at his Baseball Reference page though, I see that he had a 9 year run of 20+ home runs (which would’ve been a 12 year run except he only managed 18 in 1980). He also was a 3 time All-Star and 8 time Gold Glove winner, along with 2 Silver Sluggers. At the bottom of the page, where they list similar batters, some of the players who he’s compared to are Luis Gonzalez, Billy Williams, Tony Perez, Al Kaline and Joe Carter. Maybe those hazy childhood memories aren’t so hazy after all.

The second reason that I find this card interesting is the design. Anyone who’s read this blog semi-regularly knows that I’m a big fan of vintage cards as well as retro themed cards. If I had one complaint about most of the retro sets that come out however, it’s that they usually just take an old semi-obscure card design and then reproduce it with current players. They usually still look awesome, but that’s more because the original design was so cool. I used to be ga-ga over the 2008 Goudey set until I got an original 1934 Goudey card. Now I still like the ’08 version, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the original. What I like about this card is that they obviously made an attempt to make it look old-timey, but didn’t base it off of any particular card. They actually came up with an original design. Imagine that. I alwasys hear people within the hobby talking about now that relic cards and autographed cards and DNA relics and cut signatures and printing plates and serial numbered cards are all starting to loose their luster, what’s going to be the next big thing. Here’s a suggestion: try designing nice looking cards.

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