Bert Hearts To Fart

I came across this infamous photo of Bert Blyleven and knew it had to have a card of it's own.

I was having a difficult time chasing down the exact year of this image so I put in an email to a pretty resourceful friend of the site and he was able to find that the picture was taken in 1984 in the locker room of the Cleveland's Municipal Stadium where Blyleven spent the '84 season as a member of the Cleveland Indians' rotation.

Bert has all the statistical criteria needed to be enshrined into the Baseball Hall of Fame, but it took him 13 years before he finally got in in 2011.  Perhaps that can be attributed his casual attitude about busting heat on reporters during post-game interviews?  I have to imagine that's not really going to endear you to any of the writers that vote on who gets in.  To Bert's credit he's never hid his high regard for a good ass blast as he told Big League Stew in a 2008 interview:

"That’s why I wore it. I love to fart. I do. When the time is right, I do it. I’m not going to hide it."

I first made this card in the 1984 Topps  baseball inspired template but I just wasn't 100% happy with the final card so I went with my original idea to make it in the style of Topps' long running Turn Back The Clock subset.  Like, "hey, remember that time when Bert Blyleven was photographed in that I love to fart t-shirt?".

The Turn Back The Clock cards remained very similar for a number of years with just the background color changing.  I chose the blue of the 1989 edition to put a couple years between the that and the year that the fateful pic was snapped.

Have Cap, Will Custom

Tiffani Theissen and Barry Gibb don't have anything in common (to the best of my knowledge) outside of the fact that I recently seen a photo of each of them wearing a hat of a professional baseball team.  That's about all it takes for me to want to make a card.

I didn't have a year of significance for either picture so I used two templates that I just thought would compliment the picture.  Tiffani Theissen White Sox with the 1990 Topps baseball inspired design and Barry Gibb Indians with the 1981 Topps.

Major League Turns 30

Now that the 2018 NFL season has wrapped up it’s time to start gearing up for baseball’s spring training.  We’re also coming up on the 30th anniversary of an absolutely iconic baseball comedy, Major League.  It’s a little hard to believe that come April 7th this movie will officially be thirty years old!  Be that as it may it’s as timeless a  tale of underdogs defying all odds as there is.

I actually made a few Major League cards with an ‘89 Donruss inspired design a few years back.  They were okay but I knew that with all the cards I’ve made since that I could do better.  With the timing of the movie’s anniversary coming up I wanted to make a mini-set for the movie that would be one of my best sets to date, and I think I just may have accomplished that with these.

In thinking what design to use there was a few to consider.  I did not consider Topps’ 1989 design because 5 years ago they had Major League cards in their Archives set for the movie’s 25th anniversary.  I wasn’t looking to duplicate my ‘89 Donruss effort and 1989 Score… super “meh”.  There was really only one correct selection … the set that brought collectors perhaps the most infamous baseball card of all-times.  Of course I’m referring to the 1989 Fleer Billy Ripken F*ck Face “error” card!  It was only fitting that I commemorated Major League’s motley misfits with this design.

I wanted the set to be as comprehensive as I could so, unlike the real Fleer baseball cards, I’ve included the coaching staff, team owner, GM, and even color man Harry Doyle.

I added two cards in style style of the “Super Star Specials” and “Major League Prospects” subsets that were part of the ‘89 Fleer set.  The Hayes / Vaughn Prospects card is easily my favorite of the mini-set.

I specifically wanted to find a picture of Pedro Cerrano doing his voodoo snake ritual.  I wanted that

card to be in homage to another famous Fleer baseball issue; the 1984 Glenn Hubbard card.

The two rival Yankee cards in the set are actually cards I made quite a while ago in the style of the 1988 Donruss set.  I think the Clu and Duke cards in a different design adds a nice contrast for the movie’s goliath-like antagonists so I included these two as official parts of this set.