Above: The ultimate photobomb – 2007 Topps card featuring Derek Jeter with Mickey Mantle in the dugout and George Bush waving from the stands. Topps spokesman Clay Luraschi told the AP: “We saw it in the final proof and we could have axed it, but we decided to let it run, we wanted to print it. We thought it was hilarious.”

In the realm of card collecting, no other company is more notorious for retouching photos than Topps – they have airbrushed out logos, changed uniform colors and even photobomb popular players (see above). With the advent of Photoshop, fake photobombing may be a new recreational pastime for the Topps creative department, but the removal of logos and changing of uniforms has been well documented throughout the history of the company.

Above: Two cards of John Brockington from the 1972 Topps football card set. On the left is his rookie card which shows him in his college all-star jersey, and on the right is his All-Pro card which shows the same photo with the jersey airbrushed green.

It seems Topps likes to show players in their current uniforms – it doesn’t matter to them whether that player has just been signed or traded and photos of him in action on the new team are either scarce or non-existent. The most recent offense is in the 2010 Topps set of  Seattle Mariners pitcher Cliff Lee (see image on right). Considering Lee has yet to play a game for the Mariners, the fact that the image on this card has been fudged is, well, glaringly obvious. Even disregarding that fact, the blue cap he is shown wearing is not the official Mariner blue and the black circle patch with the white “HK” that is over his heart on the jersey is a memorial patch worn last season by the Phillies to honor legendary game caller and sportscaster Harry Kalas who passed in April of 2009. That’s some pretty shoddy retouching work. It almost would have been better to photobomb him.

Update: The site Baseball Think Factory linked to this story (hi BBTF folks!), and the comments that ran under the post on their site have some great insight (and funny commentary) on these and other Shopped Topps cards so I am linking to it here.

Related articles…

Card trick: Bush, Mantle cheer Jeter in gag image [ESPN]

Topps fails to erase all of Cliff Lee’s ties to Philly on new card [Yahoo! Sports]

Topps Screws Up The Cliff Lee Card [Crossing Broad]

Airbrushed Fridays [Cards on Cards]

Airbrushing Football Cards [Nearmint’s Vintage Football Card Blog]

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