Saturday, January 10, 2009

2008 Upper Deck Documentary

Others have written about this set but I thought I'd throw in my two cents anyway. I'm a blogger, so I'm entitled to my opinion (as are we all).

Anyway, I haven't heard too many good things about the set but I'd have bought a blaster if I'd seen one. Sooz over on A Cardboard Problem was giving away a bunch of these and sent me some Phillies and Astros. Thanks Sooz!

The idea is that each game played in 2008 by each team gets represented on an individual card. I guess there are two cards per game, one for each team. The Phillies and Astros only played 6 games against each other last year. Of the 6 cards Sooz sent, 4 of them are 4 of these games.

The cards feature a player photo, the game #, the score and a little comment on the game on the front. On the back is the game line score, the division standings, and a highlight from the game.

The main complaint I've heard about the cards is that the player on the front is not identified, and is not the player mentioned in the highlight. For example, one of the Astros cards highlights a walk-off home run hit by Lance Berkman, the first of his career. The player on the card is not Berkman, I think its Darren Erstad. But it's worse than that.

These two cards feature Astros pitchers Roy Oswalt and Brandon Backe. The games are both games in which the Astros got blown out. In the game featured on the Oswalt card, the Phillies beat the Astros 15-6. Sounds like a bad outing for Oswalt doesn't it? But Oswalt did not pitch in that game.

On the Backe card, the Yankees beat the Astros 13-0, but again, Backe did not appear in the game. So not only does the player on the front not match the highlight, the photo from the front may not even be from the game on the card. Maybe finding two photos for each game of the season was too big a task but they could have at least featured a player who actually was in the game on each card. Dishonest and sloppy work by Upper Deck.

5 comments:

night owl said...

Yes. Upper Deck could do a good deed in 2009 and while they're scrapping Masterpieces and Sweet Spot they could throw a bone to collectors and scrap Documentary. Lousy product.

MarieBay said...

I agree with night owl. The thought behind this product was fun, but the execution of the product, not so much.

gritz76 said...

This set could be a really cool set if they would just do it right! Who wouldn't want a baseball card for every game played? We need more than just a little write up and a stock photo of a guy who was on the bench for the whole game.

Anonymous said...

Agree. It's as if someone at UD had a good idea and then no one followed through much. Makes X look innovative and stylish by comparison. [looks at sky and whistles]

deal said...

I haven't seen the cards. but this is unbelievably bad execution.

From what I understand the card companies are limited by MLB and MLBPA as to how many cards products they can produce. Apparently they are not limited enough.