Wednesday, February 12, 2014

25 Years And Still The Champ



Last week Ken Griffey Jr. did an interview with the Sporting News, during the interview he talked about his first Upper Deck card. Upper Deck was in such a rush to get him in to their premier 1989 Upper Deck baseball release that they selected an image of him in his Single-A San Bernardino Spirit’s uniform and they airbrushed the hat to appear as a Mariners cap.

In honor of the 25th anniversary of that first release Upper Deck released some of those original images that were taken during the same photo session. It is interesting to see the original image and the final airbrushed image. 
 I don’t know if this was an Upper Deck photo shoot or UD just happened to select these images to work with but I was wondering if it were UD doing the session why wouldn’t they just toss a Mariners cap on Griffey while taking the photos and not worry about airbrushing the photo afterwards.

3 comments:

  1. I don't think the photo on the left is the one they actually used. Just from the same shoot. If you look closely there are some subtle difference between the two that would not the the result of airbrushing. His head is slightly more turned in the left image. And his right eye is slightly more squinted in the left image. The cap is also at a slightly different angle. Maybe UD forgot which one from the original shoot was the one they used?

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  2. I read an article about the airbrushing... and I think it's mentioned in the book Got 'em, Got 'em, Need 'em. Maybe UD didn't want to jinx him by putting a Mariners hat before he actually made it.

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