Friday, May 8, 2015

The case of the disappearing logo

I've posted some pairs of cards recently where the same play is depicted on different cards. Here's what appears to be another such pair from 2000.

The first card is 2000 Topps. It shows Barry Larkin apparently on the first half of a double play. He's leaped over the sliding runner and thrown the ball to first.

The second card is 2000 Topps Stadium Club. It looks like it's an instant after the Topps photo. Larkin is descending and completing his follow through. The runner appears to be starting to sit up after his slide. I don't know who the Giant player is but it's clearly the same guy on both cards. The angle of both photos is nearly the same. If you look closely, Larkin appears to have dirt or mud caked on his right show in both photos.

So it this is the same play, what happened to the MLB logo on the center field fence?

6 comments:

arpsmith said...

Those have to be the same play, very interesting that the logo disappeared. I am thinking that might be Charlie Hayes in the Giants uniform but not certain.

Ryan G said...

I pulled up the two cards and flipped back and forth between the two images a bit. It's definitely two different photos; Larkin's legs have switched (right knee up -> left knee up, for example). Oddly enough, the yellow line on the outfield fence lines up perfectly on the two images. But the infield lines change a little bit, and the fence is a bit "shorter" on one card than the other. The angles are close enough that it looks like it's from the same spot, but I'm guessing that it's two separate photographers in the same photo corral (whatever those things are called). Moving just a small bit would change the background angle enough on such a zoomed photo that the MLB logo would disappear after just one or two steps to the left or right.

capewood said...

Hey Ryan G thanks for the comment. I figured it was something like that. I couldn't imagine why Topps would photoshop out the logo in the one photo.

arpsmith - Charlie Hayes? Could be.

Josh D. said...

But the wall color changed between green and blue. That's got to be a photoshop.

Ryan G said...

It's not just the wall that changes color. The grass changes color, the background above the wall changes a bit, and Barry Larkin himself changes tone a bit. You're talking about probably two levels of printing techniques, with color correction issues, exposure differences, and other issues that come together to change the overall appearance of the photos.

I don't know what Topps was doing to print cards in 2000, but they could have even been sourced to different printing companies to take advantage of different machines for the two levels of cards (budget/premium).

Jason Presley said...

The 2000 Topps card looks like they over-saturated the colors, similar to the entire 1993 Upper Deck set.