Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Weird Card File - Lenny Dykstra

Did you recognize this as Lenny Dykstra? For you non-Phillies fans out there, Dykstra was the spark plug of the 1993 World Series Phillies team.

To me he's recognizable from the dirty uniform, the unshaven look and especially the tobacco juice dribbling from the corner of his mouth. Dykstra's nickname, by the way, was "Nails", as in "tough as...". I like that his helmet features a piece of raw meat.

This card is from a set called "The Baseball Enquirer" and was published in 1992. I got two packs of these in a box of repackaged cards. I'd never hear of them before. The cards feature a caricature of a player on the front and a made-up interview on the back.

Notice that the card does not have the player's name or his team name or team logo. This enabled the card manufacturer to avoid paying licensing fees. A company making set of cards featuring caricatures of players a few years earlier was sued by Topps and Major League Baseball but the courts ruled in favor of the company saying that the cards were allowed as an expression of free speech.



2 comments:

Bart McClaughry said...

Thanks for explaining the "The Baseball Enquirer Cards"
Baseballcardman

Anonymous said...

I had never heard of these cards, but started seeing them on blogs a few weeks ago. It seems they are starting to pop up quite a bit lately.