"Do Cards, not Drugs." The universal message about collecting that started somewhere around Reagan and never let go. In an effort to get kids back into collecting (AGAIN), Upper Deck posted a kid-friendly baseball card set. Though, honestly, I'm thinking the target audience for this puppy is about 6 years old. Seriously. And to top it off, we have good ol' Sandy Jr pointing his finger as if to scare the kiddos from doing drugs. Aside from Alomar, the front sports a multi-colored border (purple, pink, and green - perhaps the target was young girls who like Barney the dinosaur?). The team name is in yellow at the top, while the player's name is in black inside the green border near the bottom. What genius came up with this design? Black on green? Ouch.
The back of the card has a comic/illustration with a trivia question: "What were Sandy and his brother, Roberto, the third set of brothers to do?" (answer revealed later in the post) The border on the back is a yellow/purple fade kinda thing with a yellow/orange frame surrounding the text on the card. Below the illustration is a bio tidbit about Sandy with height, weight, etc, and his stats from the previous year (wouldn't want to confuse the youngsters with too much info, now would we?). At the top of the back is the card number, player's name, team, and position.
This set has "oddball" written all over it, regardless of UD's intentions. Even the picture on the front is off center and canted a bit to make it feel "funky-fresh" and I just don't buy it. Well, I did buy it (or trade for it or whatever), but only because it *IS* a Tribe card, after all...
And the answer to the trivia question? "Sandy and Roberto were the third brothers to start on the same All-Star team." There ya go...
I knew there was a reason besides handling the pitching staff that Sandy was on the White Sox three different times! It must be this stern looking card haunting Kenny Williams in his sleep.
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