The Bad News Bears Are Coming To Cardboard

Another announcement from Panini today regarding 2013 Golden Age Baseball, they will be including 6 players from The Bad News Bears movies; Amanda (Tatum O’Neal), Kelly (Jackie Earle Haley), Ahmad Abdul Rahim (Erin Blunt), Engelberg (Gary Lee Cavagnaro), Rudi (David Pollock) and Toby (David Stambaugh). Sorry, no Ogilvie, Tanner Boyle or Timmy Lupus in the set, maybe next season. It would also be cool if Panini added a Walter Matthau cut signature too.

 

Almost 4 years ago I actually did a tribute to Jackie Earle Haley and one of the custom cards that I made was a Kelly Leak card using the 1976 Topps Baseball design. The other three cards were Dukes from Semi-Pro (actually decided to make the Haley tribute after making a Semi-Pro set), Rorschach from Watchmen and Freddy Kruger from Nightmare on Elm Street. Here are the links if you want to take a look at the other cards: Three card Haley tribute and the Freddy Kruger tribute.

 

The six players will have a silver base card, an autograph and a red mini card. There is also a Kelly Leak Tip Top card but I am not sure if all 6 players are included in that insert checklist.

 

This is the second time within a week that Panini has made an announcement regarding the autograph checklist in the upcoming Golden Age Baseball release that is relating to the 1970s. It is like fond memories from my childhood.

 

The autograph cards are similar to the other autographs in the set, a red card design and an on-card autograph. The only difference is the inclusion of the Bad News Bears logo on the top left corner, which is a nice addition. The backs give information about the character from the movie.

 

 

I have no information regarding the Tip Top cards; only the Kelly Leak card was shown but the card is marked as Card No. 9 so I would assume there are at least 8 other cards in the set.

 

The base cards (and minis) are what bother me about this release. The images on all of the cards are lower quality and blurred, what surprised me is that these images were actually supplied to Panini by Paramount. So to their support, Panini worked with what they had.

 

But, what I do not like is that the images were edited poorly, not sure if this was Panini or Paramount, but then Panini designers used a filter, which appears to be a Dry Brush filter, and to add to the dismay the designer then used the Outer Glow style and cranked up the noise and size, this is what causes the “pixilation” appear to be radiating off of the player. The card backs include information about the character as well as some follow up history for the actor.

 

I found it interesting that the mini parallels are actually a different color form the base cards, Panini switched the dark red background for a bright red background and border. I can handle the bright red background but the border is too much for me.