The Team Card

For my inaugural post as I try to help resurrect TDTC, I have for you an exposition of the "small stuff" team card. Above I posted an image of a classic team card, the 1961 Detroit Tigers Team Card. This card sort of embodies the KISS model to me-the whole team, right there. Lately, though, especially in the years that I've started collecting (2008, 2010-2012) there's been some messing with that formula by Topps and Upper Deck. Take a look.

Here's a classic card for you. The Diamondbacks, one of the newest franchises, congregating for the timeless team photo in the bleachers. Some of them are even smiling. Imagine that!

Very next year-WHAT?!? Upper Deck portraying Scott Rolen on more than one card in a year set is enough for me to with they were out of the baseball card business! (A quick glance at the back, however shows that the next best player on the team at the time was...uh...Alex Rios. Never mind.) Anyway, there's one example of the "team" card...a player fielding spring training grounders. Any Jose Bautista Blue Jays from you in the comments section might make this a tad less awkward.

Speaking of less awkward, here's another "team" card. Tim Lincecum and...someone else. Better...but still feels like a representative sort of effort. I don't know that I like that. Why not just do away with the team card and have two player cards from this angle? On to the next card:

Here's the 2011 Topps rendition of the Detroit Tigers team. Brennan Boesch and Miggy Cabrera. I still really don't like this. Is Topps implying that the Detroit Tigers play with two players every game? On another odd observation (maybe Topps really does have too many inserts this year) these guys probably have a Diamond Duo insert somewhere...

Here's a slightly more classic example. You know what, this feels about right. It's not posed, per se, though they are smiling for the camera, and they've obviously just wrapped up a game, so they're all in uniform and (presumably) smiling after a win.

So there you have it. Here's a final Topps Heritage classic version team card.

I had a couple of other 2011 Topps cards with more players in the shots, but the White Sox card really seemed best to me. Another card I didn't post was the 2010 Tigers "franchise history" card, which (I think) showed a statue inside the ballpark. Hm. Somewhere, there's a fine line between cards in a Baseball set, and promotional cards you get in a fan pack, I think.