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Cardboard appreciation: 1997 Topps Stadium Club Ozzie Guillen

(Today, believe it or not, is "Embrace Your Geekness Day." Really. It also happens to be "Barbershop Music Appreciation Day." I guess you're really embracing your geekness if you appreciate barbershop music. Time for this geek to appreciate baseball cards. It's the 39th in a series):

Topps Stadium Club gets a lot of credit for their photography. Among the things that people liked about it in the 1990s was that it was sharp and innovative. The photos were beautiful. It also reflected baseball action in ways never seen before. And it featured baseball poses that you had never seen before.

Although I've taken Stadium Club to task for its legacy of spawning a bazillion full-bleed, lookalike sets, I don't think it gets enough credit for featuring thoughtful photographs like this one.

Now, the action itself isn't particularly interesting. It's a play at second base. How many of those have we seen in our lifetime?

But look at the two players in the shot. Here we have:

1. Two players whose first names begin with the letter "O"
2. Two players who are shortstops
3. Two players who wear the Number 13
4. Two players who wear the Number 13 because they both idolized Davey Concepcion
5. Two players who grew up in Venezuela

And there they both are -- Ozzie Guillen on the left side and Omar Vizquel on the right side.

Now, that's symmetry. If this was Fleer in 1983, they would have shown Omar and Ozzie standing together, smiling, with a caption that said "O to the Second Power," or something weird like that.

I like this better. This is something I can appreciate.

Comments

My wife complains about all the "useless" (her word) information I have in my head. You sir, know much about this card and it's players and I SALUTE you for it! I shall subject my wife to these nuggets tomorrow!
You are so on top of that! I have saved that one lone card from that set for a long time for all the #13 Davey Concepcion reasons you pointed out... I wonder how O squared feel about that '09 Goudey card of their idol?