Thursday, October 14, 2010

Collision at the plate!

I've been scanning a lot of lot cards recently and came upon this gem. This is a 1995 Pinnacle card featuring Mickey Morandini of the Phillies crashing into some poor catcher so hard he knocked his face mask off.I like action shots like this which feature another player, especially if the other player can be identified. So who is this catcher? Looking closely, very closely, you can guess that he's wearing a Mets uniform. Look under the catchers right arm. Could be the M in Mets, and the color is right. I can look up the Mets roster for 1994 (it's a 1995 card so the photo is likely to have been taken in 1994) and see that the Mets had two regular catchers, Todd Hundley and Kelly Stinnett. Since Hundley played about twice as many innings as Stinnett, I'd probably conclude that this was most likely Hundley.

But then I saw this card.
A 1995 Stadium Club card featuring what looks like the exact same play! Here you can clearly see it's Hundley. Is it the same play? I think it has to be.

It's not so unusual to see the same play pictured on different cards. The instances I can think of appear to be shots made by the same photographer with the auto-winder going. But these photos are from entirely different angles so it can't be the same photographer. Also, the cards were made by different manufacturers, Pinnacle and Topps. I find that amazing.

2 comments:

Play at the Plate said...

That is AWESOME! Those would look good side by side in a binder.

deal said...

that is a great catch. very cool - definitely the same play - I am pretty sure you can see Hundley wearing some sort of aniversary patch on the 2nd shot, which would indicate both pix were taken in the same yr.