Willie McCover-up

[JollyElm]

It's always been pretty obvious to me that much like the silly George Scott card from the same set, Willie McCovey's 1973 Topps card had more work done on it than any of the faces seen on those dumb-ass 'The Real Housewives of...' shows, but I noticed something else today, too.

Take a look at the space between Johnny Bench's helmet and the umpire's hand. There is a clear demarcation line separating the 'real' photo and the Topps art department's airbrushing activity. They obviously fuzzed out the area hitting the umpire, and that same fuzzing engulfs the upper half of 'Stretch' and the outfield stands as well. The jagged edges of his face almost makes him look pasted in (and the ump's edges above the outfield wall are choppy and not naturally smooth either).

Does anyone have any idea what they were obscuring here? Normally, you would think of a brand name that needed to be hidden, but although Candlestick had large red-based ads for Budweiser/Marlboro/Coke/etc. looming in the outfield, they were in the left center area, and the area of right field shown seemed to be free of such things.

Anyone have access to the original photograph used? Perhaps the crowd area was too busy and took the focus away from Willie??

This 'problem' is now a half century old, but it's really bugging me!!!!

s-l1600.jpg

[jchcollins]

I have no clue, Darren - but will be interested to see what you can come up with here. Though I own this card, I never noticed the "work" on it before.

[deweyinthehall]

Anyone have access to the original photograph used? Perhaps the crowd area was too busy and took the focus away from Willie??





Something tells me that in the 1973 in particular they weren't very concerned with the composition of their on-card images - I'm talking to YOU, Steve "Get out of my way Wes" Garvey, Joe "That's Mrs. Tenace's baby boy!" Rudi, Tommie "which one is he?" Agee and Luis "you want the undercoating packaged with that?" Alvarado.

[bocca001]

Yeah, there sure was a lot of work done to that card. But I don't think there was any work done related to the bleachers. There were not seats in that lower area of right field at Candlestick. The football bleachers pushed in right there. You could sit higher up, but nowhere near the top of the outfield fence.

[JollyElm]

"It's a mystery! It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma! The fuckin' photographers don't even know! Don't you get it??!!"

Maybe the CIA blurred everything??

[toppcat]

Topps did this on their display boxes all the time, Ben Solomon's Art Dept. was kept busy with this kind of stuff, I'm sure. Here's a link to my blog post about the 1973 Wax Wrapper art, they did some interesting work on those:

http://www.thetoppsarchives.com/2015/11/wrapping-is-many-splendored-thing.html

[JollyElm]

A screwy amalgam?

It's also very possible that the three-man image came from a separate photograph, was X-Acto knifed out and laid atop a generic outfield scene. There's a lot of evidence for this, but there are also semi-seamless areas that may dispute it. How skilled were the airbrushers? Tough call.

The 'right fielder' (who looks to be situated only a step in front of the warning track) seems way too large for that perspective to be real, coupled with the top of the wall being much too thick to have been photographed from some 400 or so feet away with the 'McCovey folks' in the foreground.

Here's a bold (but maybe accurate?) theory. That outfielder may actually be a left fielder (with red blatantly added to his entire head to definitively be a Cincinnati Reds player) playing at Candlestick (with the slice of red at the very top right of the image being from the Budweiser of Marlboro ad next to the scoreboard), and that's the generic photo that McCovey, et al, were laid on top of. Topps then airbrushed the heck out of everything to shoehorn the images together to make a whole.

[savedfrommyspokes]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

"It's a mystery! It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma! The fuckin' photographers don't even know! Don't you get it??!!"

Maybe the CIA blurred everything??

It's all in the shadows....just like with the CIA's "back yard" photos.

[savedfrommyspokes]

This video seems to offer some insight as to when the card's image was taken.

https://youtu.be/_GG_bIHpsUo

Go to the 22:30 mark.

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

"It's a mystery! It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma! The fuckin' photographers don't even know! Don't you get it??!!"

Maybe the CIA blurred everything??

LOL now I'm picturing Joe Pesci going through a pile of '73 Topps...

[D. Bergin]

You'd think they'd have just found a nicer shot of McCovey, so the photoshop guys didn't have to work overtime just to create such a weird shot for a baseball card.

Looks like the umpire was just laid in there from a completely different photo, for some reason.

[Casey2296]

Here’s some shots of those ramps.
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