In order to make their newest edition of baseball cards seem all up-to-date, Topps has photoshopped some players so that they’re wearing the jerseys of their new teams, despite not having actually played in those jerseys yet.  Apparently it’s something Topps has been doing for quite some time, and I guess it makes sense since nobody’s going to want a “new” card of a guy on his old team.

David Brown at Yahoo! points out, though, that Topps missed a spot when photoshopping Cliff Lee.  Specifically, they forgot to photoshop out the “HK” patch on his jersey, which was a tribute to the late Harry Kalas.  Oops.

The thing is, does anybody still collect baseball cards?  Anyone?  I mean, we all used to, but once the big three (Donruss, Fleer, and Topps) were crowded in the market with other brands – LOTS of other brands – everything felt watered-down and the hobby lost a lot of its appeal.  Looking back, though, what was the point?  Statistics can be found online, as can images of every player.  I imagine there’s very little resale value, too.

A few years ago – I think it was on a Derek Jeter card – Topps photoshopped Bush in the crowd of Yankees fans.  It was a nice photoshop job and it was pretty funny.  My proposition is that Topps simply release an entire set of cards with weird or random photoshopped images to raise interest in their cards.  I mean, I’ve seen Chase Utley field a ground ball 500 times, so if that’s what he’s doing on a card, I won’t care.  If he’s somehow riding a surfboard with Billy from Predator, then I’m interested.  Make this happen, Topps, I assure you you’ll sell a lot more cards.