Mets Baseball Cards Like They Ought To Be!: Chico Fernandez

Showing posts with label Chico Fernandez. Show all posts

Sunday, March 9, 2014

Catching Up On Requests

Here are some cards that were requested.
They will be added to existing pages.

I went with the 71-OPC full sentence style. Or in Charlies case, a small paragraph.

These go out to Anonymous#1. If you would rather have a more serious Charlie Williams lemme know. I tried to stop myself but I had to go there.
If you look close there's a question mark on the fence in the Stanton card. Anonymous is too long a name.
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Pat, the pictures at Centerfieldmaz were usable. I wish I had a more appropriate pic for the circle on the 63 card. Maybe someday I'll come across one.

It really should be a 1964 card, I suppose.

Chico was first signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1951 as an amateur free agent. After 6 years in the minors watching Pee Wee Reese play short and a cup of coffee with the team in 1956, Chico was traded to the Phillies. He ended up playing full seasons for the Philadelphia Phillies and the Detroit Tigers on his journey to New York.

A very slick fielding shortstop, his hitting was unremarkable with little power until he exploded with 20 homers for Detroit in 1962. Then he somehow got traded twice in one day and ended up with the Mets, where he again became an unremarkable player whose slick fielding had deserted him. Read more about him here: Centerfieldmaz: Early Sixties Mets Short Stop: Chico Fernandez (1963)

When the Mets traded him at the end of the 1963 they got Charley Smith in return. In 1964 Charley would give the Mets the home runs that Chico didn't when Smith led the team with 20 long balls.

Chico wore number 7 in 1963 while Ed Kranepool was number 21.
Was Chico Fernandez the first Met to wear #7?
I have no idea.

Go take a look at METS BY THE NUMBERS and find out.
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And I just realized I spelt Smith's name wrong on the '64 fantazy card. DOH!
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For the Billy Wynne: I had a Billy Wynne pic that I had colorized for the 1967 Sgt. Pepper/Mets tribute collage. It was a quick rush job just to get him included so it wasn't very good. I tried to continue on with that.

I used the WIZ card pic as the source. Bad source, small pic, washed out. That's 3 strikes but I still tried to use it.

The Wynne for the 67 Mets team tribute^. Just good enough to say its "in color" and use.

I used the 67 Tribute Wynne as the base (all I had was his head), added Ralph Terrys body for the uni and a Shea backround.

I tried to add shadows and depth to the washed out face. It's not great but it don't suck. If I put more time into that (took app 2 hours) I could have continued to work it and hopefully made it better. Now it looks more like color-by-numbers pic than an actual photo. But that'll have to do. I have to get to work on the 73 cards.
Pat, your name is on the billboard beyond the outfield fence.

I found this nice quality Don Rose photo and I will colorize this for use here, but I have no idea when I will even start on that and I will give that one all the time it needs. So someday this will be colorized.

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If anyone (or any other cardmakers out there) wants to make a 1972 manager card for the team of your choice using the rehashed Fantazy Card design, here's a template minus team name & colors.

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CREDITS & THANKS
Thanks to both Pat S. & anonymous#1 for their comments and requests.

As always thanks to Centerfieldmaz for the photos (in this case Ken Singleton & Chico Fernandez), info & stories he shares.

The Trading Card Data Base for the Billy Wynne WIZ card.
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Late addition:
I read a review of the 1972 Topps design in which it states that Topps returned to a white border this year after the black 1971 design. Now I always considered those '71 cards to be a black card with no borders. But it could be said that they had black borders. I looked at the white frame around the players picture as the border.

That got me to thinking what if they went with the '72 design but kept the black border look. It looks kinda kool, and Dave Marshall gets a well deserved 1972 Fantazy Card.

Sunday, September 15, 2013

1964 Met Fantazy Cards: Thomas/Stengel/Smith/Coleman

Figures the picture captures Bobby making an error.

Yep, that's the Petener.

Fantazy 1964 Frank Thomas card^

Frank Thomas-the Mets first bona fide slugger. Clubbed 34 home runs in their inaugural year of 1962. As a matter of fact, he set almost every Met offensive record in '62 and many of them were not topped for years. He led in games (156), at bats (571), runs (69), hits (152),doubles (23), home runs (34) and runs batted in (94). Franks 94 R.B.I. stood as a team record until 1970 when Donn Clendenon drove in 97, and his 34 bombs wasn't topped until Dave Kingman smacked 36 in 1975.
He had a great season. In 1963 he dropped down to 15 long balls and I guess Mets President George Weiss figured we could win 40 odd games without you Mr. Thomas, and he was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies for Wayne Graham, Gary Kroll (aka Mister Spock) and cash.

No wonder he hit so many homers. He swung like 20 bats!

He had played quite a bit of baseball before he became a Met. Frank debuted with the Pirates in 1951. In a 16-season career, Thomas posted a .266 batting average with 286 home runs and 962 RBIs in 1766 games. Read about him.
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Fantazy 1964 Casey Stengel card^

I love the '64 Topps Stengel, which I've posted, but when I saw this photo of Casey I had to colorize and use it, and it fits that '64 border the best.

Instead of lounging on the dugout steps as he entertained the press (which he was very good at) the ol' professor is standing proudly on the steps lecturing whoever would listen (which he was also very good at). That's the way I want to remember Casey.
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These additional Stengel's were created for some more recent posts and were added here.

Fantazy 1964 Charlie Smith card^

Charlie Smith had a dreadful start to his Met career going 0 for 25 before getting a hit. He played mostly third, with some games at short and a few in the outfield. He ended up with 20 home runs in '64, leading the team. But he only batted .239 while driving in 58. He hit 16 round trippers in 1965 while driving in a team leading 62 RBI. Unfortunately he struck out 123 times. After the '65 season he and Al Jackson were shuffled off to St. Louis for third baseman Ken Boyer.
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Fantazy 1964 Choo Choo Coleman card^

All I know about Choo Choo Coleman was that when I started collecting old Met baseball cards in the eighties I had to spend fiddy bucks for his high-number 1966 Topps card.

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For the '64 set I really dug how Topps had the top portion of the player, usually the hat, go out onto the border/team name area. Sometimes Topps was ahead of its time. Sometimes behind. I think with this set they were right with the times. IMO this is the best looking Met card border design of the decade, a graphic embodiment of the sixties.