Phungo 2 Cents: Whats Your Position Topps??

Muy first complaint with the 2012 Topps design is that the player position is not present. 

2012 Topps #150 Roy Halladay

(image stolen from The Phillies Room - or else you'd be seeing Vance Worely again)

From 1953 until 1986 The Players Position appeared on the player base cards every single year but one (1972).   That is 33 out of 34 issues.  Recently Topps has been more hit or miss with the postion.  In the three years prior to 2012 the position was present.  Both 2007 and 2008 did not contain player postion on the card. 

In such a minimalist design I think it would be easy and nice to add the Position somewhere.  This once again leads me back to the conclusion that 2012 Topps was ripped off of 2002 Topps Football - which also did not have player position. 

lazy topps.

Full Disclosure

Here is a look back at our previous 2012 Topps postings 

2012 Topps Review - Its a Like
First Look
Hanger Pack Phils
Hanger Pack All-Stars
Topps Back-loading Stars into Series 2
2012 Topps v 2002 Topps Football

Next Up on our 2012 Topps discussion - Foil

Introducing Phungo Cards!!!

To start of the New Year we are today debuting for the first time ever Phungo Cards. Yes, you heard correct team Phungo has been working very diligently over the last couple of weeks and has now put together a set of trading cards as a companion to the Phungo blog.

This is also the first day of the year which makes the Phungo cards The first card set to be released in 2009. We are very proud to announce that the first card in the inaugural Phungo set is of Phillies Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn.

2009 Phungo #1 Richie Ashburn

Today is also a Hall of Fame Thursday which makes Richie Ashburn a very appropriate subject for the first Phungo card. It is the first day of the first month and Ashburn's uniform number was also #1 - A perfect opportunity to recognized one of Philadelphia's great baseball Icons.

I recently went on a brief rant about topps Photography in a comment over at Night Owl Cards. I was almost positive, I could get better looking card shots then Topps. And I did on a few cards not a lot but I am pretty happy with the pictures I have taken.

Part of my inspiration came from the pictures taken by Mario over at Wax Heaven. My photos are no competition for Wax Heaven - I think Mario knows a lot more about what he is doing, has better equipment, has much better access than I do, and he is just plain and simple a better photographer.

My other inspiration was White Sox Cards, where Steve sought out to produce a card of every White Sox from this season. Once again my design is pretty simple, restricted to my meager skills with MS Paint, but functional - not nearly the caliber of White Sox Cards.

Thats where I started. I wanted to see what it would take me to design a set of Baseball cards. Just me a crew of one. I ended up with 64 cards that I thought were presentable to some degree. I shot and cropped all of the pictures, created the card design, and proofed all the text on the cards. I did the entire project over the last two months and was pretty happy with my output. My design was no-frills. Mainly I wanted to see what it would take to create a decent set of baseball cards.

There are bunches of subjects I have created cards for, they are not all statues like the one of Ashburn above. I hope you enjoy them.

After spending two months editting and selecting pictures I am mostly left disappointed with Topps. I am sure they have hundreds of Photos to choose from. I restricted myself to shots that I took. My picture were often taken more than 30 rows from the field. Several shots were taken from the upper deck. I used a fairly inexpensive digital camera with a modest but efficient zoom capacity. The 64 photos I came up with are not all baseball card worthy, but a few are. It amazes me that a company with Topps resources couldn't do better.

The cards are largely Phillies, but I did get players from about a dozen other treams, which should keep you non-phils fans interested. And I think I have 1 or 2 cards of players that have not gotten cards with their current teams yet. I drew from Allen & Ginter a tad and produced some Phungo Cards of non-baseball subjects.

Let me know what you think of the cards and a Happy New Year's to everyone.

2008 09 11 Brewers 3 @ Phillies 6

Topps 2007 #UH99 Carlos Ruiz
Topps 2008 #281 Carlos Ruiz

Thursday was a great night all Around as the Phils beat the Wild Card Rival Milwaukee Brewers 6-3. There were many Phils deserving of the Top Card Billing but I wanted to take this opportunity to recognize Carlos Ruiz. Nice Cards just that it's the same picture. Same Set, different years, same photo - this all points to Lazy Topps.

But wait the Laziness doesn't end there - flip the cards over and....


Both cards use the same stinkin factoid in the second sentence. It is also another game where Ruiz contributed to a victory over the Brewers.

Okay, Enough of the Lazy Topps Rant and on to Carlos. After a disappointing offensive season, Ruiz has been hot lately and He did post an RBI double versus the Brew Crew. However, his most exciting contribution was getting down a suicide squeeze bunt for an insurance run in the bottom of the 8^th. I have been to roughly 150 Phils games and can’t remember having witnessed them successfully execute the squeeze play. It was just as exciting as Ryan Howard's moon shot homer in the first.

In addition to Ruiz the Phils received contributions from across the team. Jamie Moyer took the rock on three days rest and gave the Phillies 5 2/3 solid innings. The big man Ryan Howard posted 3 RBIs including the two run homer in the first, he narrowly missed another in the fourth. The bullpen, erratic lately, looked more like the surprising staff that was so stellar in the first half of the season. Ryan Madson pitched 2 innings of shutout relief, Chad Durbin came in to get a critical out and Brad Lidge pitched a 1-2-3 ninth.

On the other side of the Diamond, if you’re going to see Prince Fielder blast a 2-Run homer - it doesn’t feel as bad if it comes when your teams is up 3 runs - even if the ball is absolutely crushed to centerfield.

Plus – The Phils were able to beat Ben Sheets, a quality starting pitcher who has been hot lately. I love a good pitching match-up but it is also something to see a couple of the league's big young mashers like Ryan Howard and Prince Fielder absolutely crush balls over the centerfield fence.

I picked up the cheapest tix available for the game and for the first 6 innings sat 4 rows off the field just beyond first base. The game was over in 2:48 and I was home around 10:30. Saw a quite a few Brewers fans out there. It is good to see them get some support, after being one of the more invisible teams for about a decade.

The Phillies arranged pre-game festivities which honored members of the armed forces, police, fire, and emergency services and also saluted the victims of September 11th. The Brewers and Phillies as well as all the teams in major league baseball brought out their patriotic caps from the 4^th of July weekend this year and wore them during Thursday Night’s games.

Damages - $13 ticket, $10 Park, $14 for two beers, and $5.50 for two dogs. Total $42.50.