This has got to be the best scan I've ever gotten of a Sportflics card. Usually portions of all three images are picked up, but this scan gives a pretty clear image of Fred Lynn in mid-swing. You can't really tell just how weird this card is.Most Sportflics featured three images of one player, placed in juxtaposition with one another to create a moving image of the subject in action. But this one actually features static images of three separate players: Lynn, Reggie Jackson, and Dave Kingman. What's even more unusual is their loose rationale for grouping the three 1970s/1980s American League stars. They are apparently "Comeback Players". On the card back, there are stat lines from two consecutive years selected for each man. I would have at least expected that all three would have had their bounce-back efforts in the 1985 season, the most recent at the time of this card's release. But for Reggie, they went back a few years: 1981 (.758 OPS) to 1982 (.907). Same for Fred: 1981 (.639) to 1982 (.891). Kingman was at least only off by a year: 1983 (.648) to 1984 (.826).
As you can see, each member of the trio did improve markedly from one year to the next. But the text on the card curiously refers to the boost in Reggie's counting stats (HR and RBI) from 1981 to 1982, when a good deal of the increase can be attributed to the player strike that cut a chunk of games out of the 1981 season. I can see what Sportflics was shooting for here, but it's just odd. They should have stuck with single-player action sequences; I'm pretty sure they did so in subsequent years.
5 comments:
As a team collector, the 3-players-in-one Sportflics drive me batty. I put the card in the team binder, and the non-Dodger is the one that shows up most prominently.
I'm with you: one-player Sportflics are the best way to go.
Greg - I forgot to mention the biggest oddity on this card: the 1981 and 1982 seasons that are referenced came when Fred Lynn was an Angel, but he's pictured with the O's. Sportflics was all over the place here.
I used to like Sportflics cards when I was a kid, I would put them in the Starting Lineup display stand (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200416472396) with the corresponding figure of that player. They gave it a 'Diamondvision' look to the whole thing. Today though, these cards would probably give me a headache.
By the way, I saw that post that was here this morning... who knew English callgirls collected Orioles baseball cards ;-)
I was still team collecting the O's when Sportflics were around. I made believe they didn't exist.
FTB - Here I deleted it because I thought it was spam. I'm so heavy handed!
Bob - Not the worst decision on your part.
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