Thursday, August 12, 2021

1974 Willie McCovey - Redone?

A recurring feature that was typical of Topps in the 1960s and 1970s was to airbrush players into their new team's uniform.   In 1974 Topps may have jumped the gun a bit by declaring the San Diego Padres were now the "Washington Nat'l Lea."  That variation turned out to be a fun variation in the 1974 set.  But what if Topps took it a step further?

By that I mean, what if instead of poorly airbrushing a newly traded Willie McCovey into a San Diego Padres uniform for this "Washington Nat'l Lea." card, they poorly airbrushed him into the proposed "Washington Stars" uniform?

I had already made a 1974 Topps card of Dave Freisleben who modeled the proposed Star uniform in an earlier post.  I think it would've been cool if Topps really ran with this concept, going even further than the "Washington Nat'l Lea." variation.







3 comments:

  1. You made me look up this story. I remember following the developments in 74, because my interest in baseball (not just cards) was at its peak, but I had forgotten what actually happened. This picture of Freisleben accompanied the article I found. What's with the pose with a bat, especially since the DH was in full swing (no pun intended)?

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    1. They were a National League team, so no DH in their games. (It would be many years before they had interleague play, and at that time the DH wasn't used in the World Series.)

      It would have been a shame if the Padres had given up their unique color scheme to be yet another red-and-blue team.

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