The worst card of 2009, contestant #9

I don't have a lot of time tonight to post, as I'm at work, struggling to find worthy stories to put in tomorrow morning's sports section. As much as I love baseball, it's about the only thing going on in the summertime, which makes filling a newspaper mighty difficult. Thank goodness there was a perfect game today. I pray for no-hitters on a daily basis when I'm working during the summer.

So I've saved this card of Humberto Quintero on the chance that I'd be busy.

Raise your hand if you know what Humberto Quintero looks like. You'll notice I'm not raising my hand. Because I have no idea. And I don't feel guilty about that. Because I think there's an unwritten rule somewhere that says you're not supposed to know what a backup catcher for the Houston Astros looks like.

Apparently, Topps is clued into the unwritten rule, too, because they thought this photo of the back of Quintero was good enough for inclusion in the '09 base set. In fact, I've noticed over the last four or five years that there are quite a few more cards that feature photos of the backs of players. Most are taken of hitters swinging, but periodically you'll get something like this.

It reminds me of watching baseball on TV back before they had 445 different camera angles. To watch the batter hitting, you would get the traditional center field camera shot. You would view the action behind the pitcher. That is still the primary camera angle for games today. I'm used to that angle. It makes sense, I can see what's going on from that viewpoint.

But sometimes, they would give you the camera shot from behind the umpire. I hated that angle. I couldn't tell whether the pitch was a ball or strike. If a player made contact, I couldn't tell if it was good contact or not. I couldn't see anything. Just a mass of people blocking my view.

I know there's nothing blocking your view with this photo. Quintero is preparing to make a tag on a play at the plate. But showing him from behind, while cropping out the runner, just makes the whole photo look odd. Why not keep the runner in the shot and make it a horizontal card? You have those cards in the set this year, you know. Instead we just get the back of some dude.

It's a poor crop job, something I'm super sensitive to, since I do quite a bit of photo-cropping at work. If a photographer showed me this photo, I'd say, "I can't use this. Where's the rest of the shot?" And therefore I'm making it contestant No. 9 in the race for the worst card of 2009.