the stan wall final tribute card that should have been - a ttm success story

stan wall pitched in the dodgers' minor league system for 7+ years before making his big league debut in 1975.  he spent all of 1976 with the dodgers, and then split his 1977 season between the big club and aaa.  topps saw fit to include wall in both the 1976 and 1977 sets, but denied him an entry in their 1978 masterpiece.  but, thanks to my 1978 topps burger king/update dodger project, he is now given that final tribute with the card that should have been.

which, of course, comes with a back.

wall started the 1977 season with the dodgers, but he had a few bad outings, including his second to last appearance which was against the braves on the road towards the end of june.  in 1.1 innings, wall allowed 5 hits and 5 earned runs.  although the dodgers won the game, wall appeared just once more - a 'scoreless' 0.2 inning outing (he allowed two inherited runners to score) against the giants a few days later - before he was demoted to albuquerque for good.

it was tough to find a color photo of wall, so i used his 1977 topps card, more closely cropped.

then, my hard drive crapped out in september before i could post my creation.  as a result, i had to go back to the drawing board, as i could not recover the image or the psd file.  it was easy enough to recreate, but i used the time to locate a better image to use.  i found a corbis photo of wall and johnny podres behind the batting cage and decided to use that image instead.

half of it, anyway.  then i stumbled across an ebay auction for an autographed photo of wall taken at wrigley field (i think).

i just photoshopped out the auto.  so now, there are three versions to choose from.  while i prefer the second one (the podres one), i felt i should show the original version first.  that's because, before my hard drive crashed, i printed one out and sent it to mr. wall to sign, which he did.

he also signed and returned a 1976 and

1977 card for me.

i wonder if he'll sign another version of his 1978 topps burger king dodger/update card that should have been!  thanks mr. wall!