2017mfc Les Rohr!

Leslie Norvin Rohr (born March 5, 1946) played for the New York Mets in the late 1960s. He was born in Lowestoft, England, where his father was serving with the United States Air Force. Six months later he moved to Billings, Montana with his family, where he grew up, attended high school, and currently lives.

Rohr, a left-handed pitcher, was selected by the Mets in the first round (second pick overall) of the 1965 Major League Baseball Draft.  It was a draft that turned out to be rather weak in comparison to later drafts with only a few players turning into stars. Johnny Bench was drafted in the second round with the 36th pick by the Reds and Graig Nettles was taken in the fourth round with the 74th pick by the Twins.

But the draft gained legendary status in the future because of the Mets' 12th-round selection, which happened to be Nolan Ryan out of Alvin High near Houston, Texas. "I couldn't believe they picked me over Nolan Ryan," said Rohr, who met Ryan shortly after signing a contract worth a combined $55,000, including salary and bonuses.

"I couldn't believe it either."

Les played in the minor leagues until being called up to play for the Mets near the end of the 1967 season. He started in his first Major League appearance against the Dodgers at Shea Stadium on Sept. 19, 1967, and pitched six innings, allowing three runs, two earned, and six hits while striking out six and walking four. Rohr, who was 21 at the time, earned the win in the Mets' 6-3 victory in front of 9,535.

On Sept. 30, 1967, he faced Don Drysdale and pitched eight innings, allowing no runs and six hits with seven strikeouts and two walks in the Mets' 5-0 victory. "That was something else, to pitch against someone like Drysdale and have a game like that," said Rohr, who helps coach the same American Legion team he played for in the 1960s. "I thought I was on my way after that."

The beginning of the end of Les Rohr's career came early the 1968 season in the final innings of a 24-inning game against the Houston Astros. Les was making an appearance as a reliever even though he had thrown batting practice that day, something starting pitchers did on their days off back then. Entering the April 15th game as a relief pitcher in the 22nd inning and pitching through the 24th inning, he pulled a tendon in his pitching arm. After one more failed start against the Los Angeles Dodgers, he spent the remainder of the season on the disabled list or back in the minor leagues. 

Les made only one more appearance on the mound for the Mets, versus the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1969. He pitched 1 1/3 innings, allowing four runs, three earned, and five hits with one walk and no strikeouts. Rohr was later unconditionally released by the Mets when a routine physical discovered a ruptured disc in his lower back, scuttling a proposed trade to the Milwaukee Brewers. He ended up having a spinal fusion surgery and never recovered to play again. 

Rohr's first game was on September 19, 1967, and his last game was on September 19, 1969. He stayed with New York Mets for his entire career, finishing with a 2-3 record and 3.70 ERA in six games and four starts. He pitched 24 1/3 innings and allowed 15 runs, 10 earned, with 27 hits, 17 walks and 20 strikeouts.

Hats off to you Mr. Rohr. You get an mfc card!

mfcNOTE: The text was basically ripped from Mr. Rohr's Wiki page and this article by Chris Girandola.

Talking Shop : Project Colorizations / Part 1

I've had a few questions about colorizing black and white photos. I'll do a series of posts called : Project Colorizations where I'll explain several different techniques. And if anyone wants to talk shop on colorization, card making, photoshopping, PsP7, etc., feel free to do so in the comments.
I can also be reached by E-mail at zvon58@hotmail.com.

_______

In this series of posts (spread out over time between others) I will display the colorizations completed for Mets Fantazy Cards Like They Ought To Be! project and in each instance I will break down how I colorized the image.

Sometimes they come out great. Other times, not so much.
It's not a crap-shoot though. Besides patience it takes determination. Sometimes things are done from necessity and I've learned a lot as I ran into problems and worked them out.

First of all, I primarily use Paint Shop Pro 7.02. It's a graphic program that's well over ten years old but it's still one of the best for basic graphic imaging (I have tried PsP9 and PsP11- both fell short and I returned to PsP7). PsP7 is very deep and it really did take me a long time before I could use it to it's potential. I didn't say fullest because I think there is more to learn.

Now I pretty much know my way around the program and what does what. And it does zillions of things. Still, after over 12 years of using PsP7 I discover something new that it can do every once in a while. PsP7 is simply a fantastic graphic imaging program that came bundled with a pretty impressive (for 1999) animation shop.
I have GIMP and CorelDraw6 but it's rare that I need to use them.
PsP7 is a very light program that cost me 99 bucks at the turn of the century. Best $99 I've ever spent on a PC program.
_________________________________________
___________Colorization in general

I don't always do colorization's the same. I dabbled with colorizing years ago when I first got PsP7. After a long time of not doing that type of thing, and learning other things that PsP7 could do, I returned to colorizing recently

with a better understanding of how other functions of the program could help in doing colorization.
So I'm really not all that experienced at colorization itself. But I've been cramming a lot lately.

I've learned stuff just by looking at the work of other colorists like the folks from Baseball Birthdays and OOTPdevelopments. These guys do great work and they, like the custom card makers out there, are inspirations to this project. And as David Wright would phrase it: "Well, obviously I'm somewhat inspired by the Mets."
____________
Colorization does take time. The more the better. But because I don't always have the time I have a number of overall processes that vary. How much time I have to complete it, how important I consider the work to be, and the quality of the original source image, stuff like that dictate the process. Spending any time colorizing a bad quality (or small in resolution or size) image is not a good idea unless you absolutely have to. I've had to.

There are fast & loose ways to colorize the image and get pleasing enough results.

There are also slow & deliberate ways in which you break each individual subject in a photograph down to its own layer and colorize each one separately.

Colorizing is done through use of coloring filters as well as by hand, (or mouse, with painting tools in a graphic type program like PsP7) manually working certain color additions and details. After all the color work is done, I'll merge all the layers back into one single layered image (.bmp or .png) and save it.

Now having said that, sometimes you hit a bump & you have to improvise as you work it.

I can tell you from experience that sometimes I get great results using the fast method. On the card above I used it. While doing the page it was on, at the last minute I needed to make that rookie card and I wanted it in a half hour topps. Jesse Hudson took maybe all of 5 minutes to colorize, Les Rohr around 15 minutes. Time-wise these are exceptions and also small images that I was forced to use because of the lack of photos available of these guys.

Now, basically because the original images were small, the color work was done directly to the images at the small size (always avoid enlarging a digital image). Considering the time put into them, these two came out great and I was happy with them.




____________________________________________

The average time spent on a color job is around 2-3 hours for a decent to nice sized, mid to hi-resolution picture. But sometimes it can take days to get it right. Salty Parker took about 5 days of work at about an hour a sitting. I wanted this one to be as good as I could so I gave it all the time it needed. I did tests, or takes, of different colorization filters, lighting, contrast and whateverelse on each layer and chose what I thought looked the best. That's a lot of time, but well worth it, especially since there are so few color images of Parker out there.


The Salty colorization was done in the more time consuming layer method and I believe it shows. Pictured is the complete work and the merged layers consisting of his face and skin color. The face alone is comprised of five separate layers: skin, eyes, lips, hair with hat shadow, and eyebrows.

Salty Parker Eyes.

Now granted, I like to punch up the saturation and make colors pop on a digital screen, especially blue and orange, so this might not look to you to be natural colors( the green grass is too vivid and, to me, that skin job looks almost 3-D. It's creepy. Or is that just his nose?). The thing about going over the line is the entire completed work can be taken and dialed back a few notches to look more natural.

Yikes! It is his nose.

Sometimes using the more complicated and time consuming process, the end result is less than I had hoped. But usually...,strike that, always, however much time and attention to detail you put into the color work the better it will be, regardless of using layers. Because the colorization is not finished until it's finished.


Right before I posted this page I blurred the face and hat. L'il bit. Now the skin is not so shiny looking. I couldn't do anything for that nose.
So you can always step off from it & go back later if you think of something that can improve it. And I suggest you do step off before you consider it finished. Look again after a time, even ask others to look at it, to get another sets of eyes to see if it's on track and where it might need additional work.
Well, at this point I am really sick of looking at this one, so it's finished.
_______________________________________________________________

Went back into this after not looking at it for a long time. Tweaked gamma and background tints.

UPDATED- 11/14

Z-Tip: When applying color to the black & white image it can sometimes be helpful to take the original photo and lighten it a little bit,or ramp down the contrast. In this way it will accept color changes better, colors not getting lost in the dark areas. Later, after completed, you can always adjust the contrast again to whatever best suits you.