>>>>'68 mfc 3-D Tommy Davis Plus

I didn't think I'd find a good photo of Tommy Davis batting to use but I did. There was a very suitable one in an old Mets yearbook (thank you again Wayne). I have to wonder if these photos were taken close to the same time by the same person. They very well could be.

It's close to the original pose and makes a nice improvement on the 68t 3-D card. I guess it was the lighting that made Topps go in and re-draw Tommy's face. 

Since that was not released as such, I figure Topps would have gone back in and tried to improve the initial work that makes him look like he's wearing a mask or something. But who knows with Topps. They did some wacky stuff back in the day.

Topps also inserted a generic background, one they used for a number of the '68t 3-D cards.

 You can see it's a Mets home uniform but that certainly is not Shea in the background. The same background was used as the Dodgers home field. 

So of course I'm going to fix that and make it Shea Stadium.

I used an old shot of Amos Otis for the background, using all kinds of tricks to remove Otis and then applied a motion blur side to side to simulate the 3-D card look. 

This is the source photo of Tommy batting. There was not enough existing background to use and that's why I had to use the Otis background. I also had to create extensions to the bat and the unseen part of his hand & bat. 

All together this all equals up to Tommy Davis's mfc 3-D card.

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I've tried a little experimentation. Using today's advances in graphics and animation for the home computer I feel like I should be able to expand on what I've done and go a step beyond, making some kind of animated effect that would lend itself to the 3-D look.

.Gif cards are a nice example of going a step beyond reality and more into the realm of fantasy. In real life we had Sportsflicks and that was a form of animation, although it rarely had more than 3 separate images in succession. .Gif cards can go from two to hundreds of images, or in this case, frames. 

So I tried to mix my .gif card making with the blur backed background that simulates the 3-D look. My goal was to blow your socks off with a new kind of 3-D .gif card. Unfortunately you'll have to settle for this not so amazing result. This is close to what I was aiming at. I had hoped just a little bit of movement would enhance the 3-D effect.

But I may be on to something. What I'd like to do is couple the moving background with a moving foreground, say a batter swinging the bat and hitting a ball. Six to twelve frames of the swing should do. The result won't look like a simple .gif because the batter and the background will move independently. I have an idea how this will look but I won't really know until I try it, and I'm sure somewhere down the line I will.

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The Magic Number is: 9!

The New York Mets take on the New York Yankees tonight in game one of a three game set. The Yankees are playing for their playoff lives and the Mets are just hoping to stay the course and widen the gap between them and the competition.

These should be some excellent games. 

LETS GO METS!!!!!!!!!!

Lets light up the city in orange and blue.

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A special report from MFC central:

The Mets bullpen cart through history.

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>>'64mfc 3-D Prototype • Casey Stengel

I ran into a Casey Stengel photo that just had to be colorized. Using the cut-out method, this one went quick. Casey was in color in about 90 minutes. This came out good :)

On an unrelated note that becomes related, I was looking at old Kelloggs 3-D cards. As far as I knew the first of these appeared in 1970. I was delighted to find that Topps attempted to jump into the 3-D scene in 1968, issueing a test set of 12 cards.

From BaseballCardPedia:

"1968 Topps 3-D is a 12-card set. Issued two years before Kellogg's inaugural 3D set, 3-D was a "test set" sold in plain white wrappers -- believed to be only in the New York City area. Each card measures 2 1/4" X 3 1/2", a quarter-inch narrower than a standard-sized trading card, have rounded corners, and were produced by a New York-based printing company named Visual Panographics.

The cards use the same lenticular printing technique that would later be employed by Sportflics in the 80s, and by Topps with 1995 Topps D3.

The backs were left blank, and the set checklist below is in alphabetical order.

Roberto Clemente

Willie Davis

Ron Fairly

Curt Flood

Jim Lonborg

Jim Maloney

Tony Perez

Boog Powell

Bill Robinson

Rusty Staub

Mel Stottlemyre

Ron Swoboda

Test cards of Sam McDowell, Brooks Robinson, and of an Italian soccer player were issued before this 12 card set was released. Those cards measures 2 1/4" by 3 1/4" and has the team name on the top but with no player identification. In addition, test cards of Tommy Davis, Rick Monday and John O'Donoghue were issued and recently discovered without either team identification or player identification."

It turns out that there are a lot more than 12 of these 68t 3-D cards. 

Learn much more about them here:

Deciphering variations in the quirky 1968 3-D’s

Categories: Keith Olbermann Archive

Here are some of the 68t 3-D cards from the set and an uncut test sheet:

                             ^The Maloney Variations^

The Roberto Clemente is one of the most sought after and valuable 3-D cards out there.

Look what was done to 1967 Mets Tommy Davis on his 3-D card. Did someone try to draw his face in? Wacky Topps.

So, back to the colorization. 

Since I use the cut-out method I end up with a bonus. A stand alone color cut-out of Casey that I can use with any background image I desire. And of course the image would be Shea. 

Casey didn't manage the Mets in 1968 so I didn't want to use the same 1968 design that Topps has used for it's experimental 3-D cards. Since his last full year managing was 1964 I tried to imagine what a Topps 1964 3-D card might have looked like if had they issued one.

I hope to find a nice color picture of Tommy Davis batting and remake his 68t 3-D card without the doodling all over his face.

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The Mets dropped the last two to the Marlins. Not good but nothing to get worried about. I sense a bit of a downswing and some fatigue, but the closer we come to clinching the more revved up they'll become. This was just a little lull. 

It would be fitting, if we really want to take back New York, that we spank the Skanks in this series coming up. 2 of 3 will suffice, but a sweep and I'll be dancing around the room like Snoopy.

The carnival like atmosphere of a subway series is just what the Mets need to wake them up & prepare them for what's to come. 

Lets go Mets!!

1967 Mets Team Leaders / 1968 Fantazy Cards

WHATS THIS!? A batting average over .300?

*grabs chest*

Tommy Davis, an ex- N.L. batting leader twice over (1962,'63), joins Richie Ashburn (.306 in 1962) & Ron Hunt (.303 in 1964) as the only .300+ batters in the teams history up to now.

Tommy had a good season in his one year as a New York Metropolitan. He led the team in games (154), at bats (577), hits (174), runs scored (72) HR and batting average. Davis's slugging % (.440), OBP (.342), and OPS (.782) all led the team. He smashed 32 doubles and drove in 73 runs. His totals in at bats, hits and double all established new Mets team records.

Ed Kranepool is in the middle of all these team leader cards in the mid 60's and I'm lovin' it. I knew Ed was a lifelong fan favorite Met but I thought that was just through longevity, at which he excelled. But he put up some numbers, albeit numbers only a Met fan could love.

Jerry Buchek! You go Jerry.

Rocky Ron trying to act like he isn't hanging out at the Sadecki Spot.

Tom Seaver was great and would have been considered great on any team he debuted on (it almost wasn't the Mets). But can you imagine how he must have looked to a Met fan in 1967? After years of pitching ineptitude suddenly we had a real top knotch pitcher who was just starting his career. It must have been so exciting, like in 1984 when we saw Dwight Gooden and thought WOW, we got a stallion of a pitcher here.

Tom once told fellow pitcher Chuck Estrada: " Chuck, I never in my wildest dreams thought I'd be this good. I knew I could play, but I never thought I was going to get to this level."

And Mets fans were in for a treat as they had the priveledge of witnessing as Seaver rose through the ranks to become one of the best pitchers in baseball history.

1967 Fantazy Met cards- Tommy Davis to Tom Seaver!

The 1967 Topps set is great in so many ways. If the '66 set was generic looking, like a knock off, the '67 set made up for it in simple coolness. So many great players. Team name nice and big and bright. The real estate afforded the excellent photography was never so large, and I loved this. The choice of hot pink for the Mets though, it looks cool and all but I wish they used a different color.

*^#@*~!>>>>>>>My wish is my command.

____1967 Fantazy Shaun Fitzmaurice X2____

Fitzmaurice gets a card because I found some nice pictures of him. Gets a second card because I needed a guinea pig for the orange METS. He played 9 games for the Mets, managed two hits. A card for each hit. I imagine the clubhouse laundry guy was very happy Shaun didn't spill any coffee on the uniform.

1967 Fantasy Wes Westrum

1967 Fantasy Tommy Davis

______Topps recycled Tommy Davis in 1961 and '69______

Tommie Davis was a great hitter who had an interesting career. In 1962 he batted .346 for the L.A.Dodgers and won the N.L. batting crown. He smacked 27 home runs & drove in 120. He finished third in the MVP balloting, behind teammate Maury Wills (who won) & Willie Mays.

In 1963 he won his second batting title in a row. To date, Davis' back-to-back batting titles are the only two in the Dodgers' Los Angeles history. On May 1, 1965, Davis broke and dislocated his ankle on a slide and was out for the rest of the season. For the 1966 season he batted .313 in limited plate appearances.

After the 1966 season, Davis(along with Derrell Griffith)was traded to the Mets for Ron Hunt and Jim Hickman. He did good, batting .302 with 16 HR and 73 RBIs.

Still, the Mets decided to trade him in 1967, and it ended up being a crucial trade in Met history.

He went to the Chicago White Sox in a six-player deal. Two of the players the Mets got were Tommie Agee and Al Weis. More seeds, more pieces to the puzzle that would make the 1969 miracle Mets. They join Cleon and Buddy :)

Topps called Ed & Rocky Mets Maulers. I never liked that for some reason. Not too fond of Mashers either. I was going to go with Meticulous Mets but I have no idea if these guys were finicky. And there's one of the Millers at Butterball Field, St. Petersburg Florida.

_____________Mets 1966 Team Leaders__________

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On an earlier post I said that the ultimate Met rookie card would be a Seaver/Ryan. That's true, but from a card collectors standpoint. From a real Met fans perspective a Koosman/Seaver rookie card would have been the ultimate. Our one two punch that took us to the series twice. If I actually did fantasize about these things I'd conjure up a Koosman/Seaver over a Seaver/Ryan anyday.

When I was making the mfc Koosman/Seaver rookie I first added the photo of Tom and it looked like this before I shrunk it down.

But looking at it like this, I thought, ya know, this is really how the card should look. No disrespect to Jerry, cause I loved him and in those days I was more a fan of his than I was of Seaver. When I came along to the Mets Seaver was their ace and I kinda took him for granted. But the truth is that's how big George Thomas Seaver was to the New York Mets in 1967.


          Updated 12-19-13Z
~Last Updated 12-17-14z