Tuesday, December 7, 2010

1989 Upper Deck

When discussing 1989 Upper Deck you can’t overstate the impact on the baseball hobby.

Counterfeit-Proof Cards using holograms! Better quality card stock and photography. Tamper-Proof Pack.  The Junior Griffey rookie.

1989 also happened to be a horrendous year for card designs.
Topps, Donruss, Fleer, Score, Bowman & even Sportflics all fought for the title of worst set of the year.

Let’s face it -1989 Upper Deck without the context isn’t that great of a design itself but the upstart company literally caught everyone else sleeping and forever changed baseball cards.

However, Mike Schmidt’s card wasn’t the beneficiary of all the newness. We see arguably the best 3rd basemen of all time being interviewed - presumably because his bat stopped talking.

On May 2nd, 1989 vs. Houston Astros, Jim Deshaies served up his world famous meatball to Schmidt in his first at bat and he hit what turned out to be the last home run of his illustrious career. It was the 548th time he rounded the bases and left him at #6 on the career HR leader list. At the end of 2010, Schmidt stands 15th.

No comments:

Post a Comment