I rarely pay attention to Baseball Cards anymore because I am continually bored by most of the content these days. However, National Chicle baseball has been making a splash, network wide, so ill offer some commentary. Now, outside of my reports on Chicle football that looks to be as bad, or worse as this stuff, I was not familiar that National Chicle was even a baseball product to begin with. Then after some looking around, I saw that some baseball cards were made, but they never got the same notoriety that the iconic football cards did.
Of course, my feelings on retro sets aside, National Chicle, when done right, can be a great product idea, AS A FUCKING SUBSET IN A FUCKING FOOTBALL PRODUCT. There is absolutely no reason to A) Make an entire baseball product of it, and B) Do what they are trying to do with the throwback cards of Ruth and company. Let me give you an example of what I mean. Back in 2008, Upper Deck decided to do some “Time Warp” cards, as they put it, for Masterpieces football. What that meant is cards that feature today’s players on the same “card” as older players. This meant Adrian Peterson being chased by Dick Butkus, Brett Favre handing off to Paul Hornung, etc, etc. The difference there, was that all players were in their existing uniforms, and it kept the history of the old timers in tact. On top of that, there were no desecration of beloved cards, and so on and so on.
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For National Chicle Baseball, Topps is working on a different level that makes many people understandably angry, unless you have to play to your magazine’s advertisers that is. This means that many collectors are going to shit a brick over seeing cards like this, like this, and like this. The Ruth card has caused a considerable amount of damage with baseball fans, as Dayf has so interestingly described. Personally, I really couldnt care less, but that is more about my lack of care for this entire set.
My beef stems from the fact that Topps has taken a “brand” synonymous with Iconic football cards, transformed it into a baseball set, and done an extremely poor job with it. In fact, I believe that they have done a pretty poor job with both Football AND Baseball, as evidenced by the sticker autos and horrible artwork done in the upcoming football set. So, if this is what it means to have an exclusive baseball license, I sincerely hope they have some aces up their sleeve because recent news and releases has left a taste in my mouth usually reserved for my feelings about Evangelical Christians who try to “save” me.
In addition, it looks as if many of the cards look as bad, if not worse than than their football counterparts, though this time, I believe many more collectors will use them as toilet paper.
The lesson here is that you dont fuck with history, no matter how attractive that may seem. I will always support new TRIES at innovation (even if it turns out as shit) rather than forcing me to endure set after set, produced from past successes. All that retro sets prove to me is that there is no more creativity left in the buffet line at the different companies. Trust me, Laziness is not a virtue.