I am currently putting together a Giants blog post with lots of baseball card pictures. I needed to find one of the late Bobby Murcer in a Giants uniform and this one kept popping up on Google Images.
And I can't lie to you, dear readers. I am fascinated by it.
This was the picture that the Topps editor decided to go with.
This is TOPPS mind you... not Fleer who, as I wrote before, had a tendency to go with odd photos on their cards.
First of all, if I were to describe the picture, the first thing I would say would be "It's a picture of Cardinal catcher Joe Ferguson's back."
I mean if you are going by what takes up the majority of the space, this should be a Joe Ferguson card.
Murcer is obscured... and he doesn't look happy about it.
He's being blocked in his own card!
And it isn't like the picture is Murcer sliding into home and you see Ferguson's back.
Murcer is arguing a balls and strike call in the picture. And frankly looks like a dick doing it.
Bobby Murcer is a guy who has always had the reputation of being one of the nice guys in the game and a true class act. Someone who you look at and think it was so unfair that he just barely missed two Yankee eras of World Series titles in his career.
And what picture is used to represent him?
One where he looks petty and is obscured.
This was the best picture they had?
Was he sneezing in every other picture?
Or maybe he did looked pissed in every picture.
He clearly didn't want to be traded from the Yankees and just as he left, they started their winning ways again.
Maybe he is more mad about that than the balls and strikes calls.
Either way, this is one of the strangest baseball cards I have ever seen. And worth a salute.
