1934 Goudey Gehrig Batting

[Runscott]

This card has always bothered me - it just looks 'wrong' compared to the other cards in the set. My thinking was that while almost every other '34 Goudey was created from direct photographic images, this one somehow was not.

Ben's recent Gehrig photo discovery sheds some light on this. With Ben's permission, I'm using his photo (watermark and all).

I feel certain that the card was based either on this exact image or one that was so close that this one will do to illustrate my point.

The first image shows the part of Gehrig that was used on the card, switched with that same part of the photo. As you can tell, there are some problems with proportion that make it impossible to get an exact match;e.g-the bat in the card is too small and the head is too big. Because the card image looks so weird on the actual photo, I'm showing the photo on the card, as well.

The second image further illustrates the problem: on the card, Lou's head is simply too big.

So why did the artist decide to free-hand the 'Gehrig batting' card, when images based on actual photos worked so well with all the other cards in the set? My guess it that they started off with a card image similar to the one shown in the upper right of the first image, but the shadows on Lou's face and hat made the artist decide it wouldn't work. The end result just got out of hand - similar to repeated bad plastic surgery.