BY TROY KIRK
There are more than just baseball cards in the world of card collecting. This is especially apparent these days with the many football, basketball and hockey sets that are being issued.
Baseball has always been the most popular theme for trading cards, however. The card manufacturers have long realized this and have even included many cards with a baseball theme in sets that do not fall into the traditional baseball card category.
One popular theme for cards and stickers shows cartoon weirdos or freaks in a baseball setting. Donruss has led the way with these issues, with their Baseball Super Freaks set from the late 1970s, as well as Baseball Awesome! All-Stars, and Baseball’s Greatest Grossouts issued in the late 1980s. Fleer issued a Baseball Weird-Ohs set in 1967.
Donruss Baseball Super Freaks
Fleer Baseball Weird-Ohs
Donruss Baseball’s Greatest Grossouts
Probably the best of these is Donruss’ Baseball’s Greatest Grossouts set. The artwork is very well done and some memorable players are featured, including San Quentin Chicken who looks very similar to the San Diego Chicken, Chainsaw Jason who’s wearing a hockey goalie mask and batting with a chainsaw, and Samurai Sam who’s batting with a Samurai sword. The Henry the Horrible sticker from the Baseball Super Freaks set bears a striking resemblance to Howard Cosell.
There is a set of Peanuts baseball cards issued by Dolly Madison in 1983, with Charlie Brown, Snoopy and all the rest of the Peanuts characters wearing baseball uniforms. A card set issued by Round Table Pizza in 1987 shows players from a fictional baseball team of cartoon characters. Each of the characters has a pizza theme, such as left fielder Pepe Roni and second baseman Mike “The Pro” Volone.
Individual cards with baseball themes also regularly show up in non-sports card sets with no baseball theme for the set in general. For example, the 1988 Topps Dinosaurs Attack! set shows artwork scenes about dinosaurs being transported forward in time and wreaking havoc on humans. One card in the set is titled “Panic in the Stadium” and shows a baseball game being disrupted by dinosaurs.
Topps Dinosaurs Attack!
Topps Batman (A)
The 1966 Topps Batman A series set contains a card with a baseball scene. The “Striking out the Cobra” card shows Robin at a ballpark throwing baseballs at bank robbers to stop them from escaping.
Several of the cards from the Magnum, P.I. set by Donruss show Magnum wearing his Detroit Tigers baseball cap. In the Donruss M*A*S*H set, Corporal Klinger is shown wearing his Toledo Mud Hens hat. In the Topps Brady Bunch set, the Brady boys appear on a card with their bats and gloves, ready for a game. Pee Wee Herman is wearing a baseball uniform in a card from his 1988 Topps set.
There is a card in the 1971 Topps Partridge Family set titled “Baseball or Music.” Apparently the youngest Partridge boy had been spending too much time playing baseball, and not enough time practicing his music.
The many Wacky Packages sets issued by Topps in the 1970s showed parodies of real products, such as Quacker Oats (instead of Quaker), Liptorn (instead of Lipton) soup, and Cracked Jerk (instead of Cracker Jack). One of the more interesting stickers in the set is a parody of 1975 Topps baseball cards, titled “Beastball.” The sticker shows a drawing of a wax pack from this fictional set. The design of the pack is similar to the Topps baseball wax packs of 1975 which show a pitcher hurling a ball at the plate. The Beastball pack shows some kind of an apelike animal throwing a spiked metal ball to the plate.
Donruss Magnum P.I.
The Topps Garbage Pail Kids sticker sets of the 1980s showed many of the kids in baseball settings. There is a sticker of Tooth Les with baseballs in his mouth instead of teeth. One of Foul Bill’s hands is in the shape of a fielding glove.
The latest entry into this card collecting category is the Looney Tunes Comic Ball card set from Upper Deck, released at the end of 1990. These cards picture characters such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Wile E. Coyote in baseball settings.
The cards are designed to be read as a series of comic stories when placed in the standard nine-pocket plastic pages.
The Looney Tunes characters play baseball with about the same success as they do other things in their television cartoons, with Bugs Bunny and Road Runner playing very well and Wile E. Coyote, Daffy Duck, and Yosemite Sam having their difficulties.
This article has just scratched the surface of the many cards and stickers with a baseball theme that have been issued over the years in various non-sports sets. As far as I know, nobody has made an attempt to checklist the cards with baseball themes from these sets.
Packs of various Baseball Cartoon Weirdos / Freaks as Mentioned Above
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See related article on BaseballCardFun.com entitled:
“Non-Sports Cards Offer Great Collecting Fun and Variety”
Click Link Here
• Originally Published in June 1991 “Baseball Hobby News” •
THIS ARTICLE FROM “BASEBALL HOBBY NEWS” MAGAZINE IS REPRINTED WITH THE PERMISSION OF BOTH THE EDITOR/PUBLISHER AND THE AUTHOR. IT HAS BEEN RETYPED, BUT NO CONTENT HAS BEEN CHANGED (EXCEPT FOR VERY MINOR ADJUSTMENTS, CORRECTIONS TO TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS AND CHANGES TO GRAPHICS). COMMENTS OR INFORMATION IN THE ARTICLE MAY BE OUT-OF-DATE.
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