A Custom Card with a Custom Backstory

Today's custom card was inspired by an obscure Major League pitcher, and features a man with special powers who tried to spend some of his younger days in obscurity.

Here's the original card:

1974 Topps #261, Jerry Bell

Any guesses for the look-alike? Here are some hints:

Grow those sideburns down even farther, and make the hair a little more wild.

Add him to a well-known team of superheroes.

Just hope he keeps his claws from tearing up that baseball glove.

Got it?

Here's the custom card:

Wolverine (a.k.a. Logan) has been everywhere over the past couple of decades. But I've got to say that I'm not a big comic book or superhero guy. I haven't even seen any of the X-Men films. That means for this custom card I had to do a little research on the guy.  

It turns out that he spent some of his young manhood in the Yukon, living in deliberate obscurity on a mining colony. In fact, that's where he adopted the name "Logan". And all of that is excellent news, because it helped me come up with the perfect name for his baseball team: The Yukon Miners.

How well does it work? 

Just have a look at the image on the card once more. There's an "M" on his cap, originally for Milwaukee, but that can easily stand for Miners. And on his jersey you can only make out the E-R-S from the word BREWERS. Well, now it's the E-R-S in the word MINERS. There's even the edge of a mountain and a wide-open blue sky in the background, which would certainly match the scenery of the Yukon.

And after a long week of mining, I could picture Logan and the boys winding down with a game of baseball on Sunday. After all, the same sort of thing happened in farming towns all across America in the early 20th century.

Maybe someone from Marvel Entertainment will read this post and add the baseball-themed backstory to a future X-Men film. They've got to run out of material at some point. And Logan would make quite a pitcher, don't you think?


Now let's get to the man on the original card, Jerry Bell.

After being selected in the second round of the 1969 amateur draft by the Seattle Pilots, he'd have a short four-year career in the majors, all with the team the Pilots would soon become: the Milwaukee Brewers.

Seems like he spent some time as a middle reliever in 1971 and 1972, and in 1973 got his chance as a starter, going 9-9 in 25 starts, logging 183.2 innings along the way. 

Here are some career pitching numbers: 17-11, 3.28 ERA, 283 IP, 89 SO.

Interesting note: Bell threw right-handed, but batted right-handed and left-handed. Not quite Wolverine superhero level, but rare for a pitcher nonetheless. The switch-hitting didn't do much for him, though. Bell only had one hit—a single—in 14 career at-bats. He also had a sacrifice bunt.

There's not much additional information out there on Mr. Bell. According to his 1973 Topps card (which has a very similar picture on the front compared with the 1974 version), Bell had good control and spotted his pitches. And he was a basketball MVP in high school.

So I guess you could say that both Logan and Jerry Bell have a bit of a mysterious nature.

At least now they're both captured on a baseball card.


WOLVERINE ALL-STAR:

The design of the 1974 Topps all-star subset diverged from the norm. Not only did the cards have a horizontal layout this time, but they also featured two all-stars per card: the National League and American League representative at each fielding position. This resulted in some attractive combinations, such as Carlton Fisk/Johnny Bench, Dick Allen/Hank Aaron, Rod Carew/Joe Morgan, and Reggie Jackson/Billy Williams.

It also provided a great opportunity to feature two superheroes on the same card. I chose Wolverine as one all-star, of course, and for the other I went with Thor.

I know that's quite an outdated image of Wolverine, but it shows him in a uniform of sorts, and that makes a better parallel to baseball players and their uniforms. (Otherwise he would be wearing a leather jacket or flannel shirt or something.)

As for the rest of the card, the "A.L." and "N.L." designations that appeared next to the banners in the original design didn't really make sense, so I replaced them with the star design. The player name and team name, however, work perfectly, as Wolverine is a member of the X-Men and Thor is a member of The Avengers.

Another fun project complete. Thanks very much for reading, as always.