Sunday, June 30, 2019

Personalized Back-of-Card Cartoon

If you enjoy the cartoons on the back of vintage baseball cards, then it's possible you've thought about what your personal cartoon would depict.

I know what mine would be, and recently I had some time to scan through a bunch of vintage cards in an effort to find one that at least partially matched.

Well, I found one. It took a bit of editing, adding, and removing of text in Photoshop, but here's the finished custom card back:


The cartoon fielder and words "triple play" were from the back of Luis Aparicio's 1973 Topps card. The rest of the text I had to cull from a few other cards in the set.

And I really did complete an unassisted triple play in Little League. Here's how it happened:

Back then I loved to play the middle infield and third base positions. However, I loved to pitch even more. And in this particular game, I was pitching. Bases were loaded, and I wheeled in a pitch that produced a high pop-up just to the right of the mound. Yelling "I got it!", I sidestepped over as the ball began to drift toward third. It continued to drift, so I backpedaled and moved closer and closer to the third baseman, a classmate who at this point had heard my call and kindly moved into foul territory. By the time I caught the ball (out #1), I was just a stride from the third base bag. I expected to nearly bump into the baserunner there, but he'd mistakenly broken for home before I caught the ball. So, I quickly stepped on third (out #2). Then I heard their coaches yelling "No! Get back to second!" Incredulous, I looked toward second base, and the runner who'd been on second was sprinting straight toward me. As he slid into third, I crouched down, baseball still in glove, and tapped him on the foot before he touched the base (out #3).

Now, of course this unassisted triple play was mostly the result of very, very poor base running, combined with a third baseman who allowed me to track the pop-up all the way over to his position (probably should have been his glory, not mine). But it was a triple play nonetheless, and I still remember walking back to our team's bench on the third base side, my coaches noogie-ing my head and slapping me on the back while they laughed and cheered.

13 comments:

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    1. That's awesome! I played one year of little league (coach-pitch) and the only decent play I made was throwing out a runner trying to score. I was playing left field, don't remember how deep, but it felt good to throw him out!

      Also, that cartoon is very cool. I wish I knew how to Photshop one for myself. Joe Shlabotnik has a neat one in his blog header.

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    2. Wow, an outfield assist? Nice!

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  2. Great job on that custom! And congratulations on the unassisted triple play too.

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    1. Thanks Fuji! If we only kept stats back in Little League, I could have created the entire card back. That would have been fun.

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  3. Love the card back and the backstory, very creative work!

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    1. Thank you! This was a fun little project, for sure.

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  4. My fielding highlight in little league was a diving catch in the outfield. I was surprised more than anyone when I caught it. Later in the same game, a few inning later another ball was hit in my direction. I ran but started to stumble, so I dove. Figured I will take the chance since it worked out the first time.... The ball landed in foul territory... outside the fence. I was at least 20-30 feet away. I could hear kids on the other team ask each other in disbelief "Did he dive for that?"
    as for the carton. Good work. I hate trying to do cartoons on the back of cards. I can never find a clear enough copy and if I do, it's rarely the correct shade I need to match the rest of the card.

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    1. Great story, JG! It's good to know that you and others have the same types of Little League stories to share. (I think we've all made some highlight-reel plays and some others that were not so memorable.)

      As for the custom, thank you! The text can definitely be a little tricky.

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  5. First time on your blog. Awesome story and cool custom.

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    1. Thanks for stopping by, and for the compliment! Going to check out your blog, too.

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  6. Three! Great backstory from those glory days. Gotta love this game!

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