while working towards the eddie murray final tribute post from a while back, i looked to see how many cards were made of the hall of fame switch hitter in 1998. i found a few that i didn't know about before, and still couldn't believe that topps didn't bother with a card commemorating his great career. one of the issues that i didn't realize existed was put out by pinnacle. i am assuming it was an insert set to another set, but i could be wrong. it was called 'epix' and there were a number of versions/parallels. ok, it's more crazy than i thought - here's the baseballcardpedia article on these cards. here's a purple card of steady eddie.
this one focuses on a specific play (hence the 'play' text). turning the card over, we see that murray was an indianwhen he got his 3000th career hit. both the dodger and the indian logos are displayed, and the photo on the back shows murray in his tribe gear. very nicely done, pinnacle, although i would question why murray was in dodger blue on this card if i weren't a dodger collector.
here's an orange version (that article linked above confirmed my suspicion that orange is the most common version) of the same card
same front, same back.
i like the purple better.
now, here's another orange version of the card, only this one focuses on a game.
specifically, a game in which murray hits three home runs in the first five innings, and, well, you can read the back.
again, pinnacle shows murray in the correct uniform (although i would suspect that the photos are from his second go around in baltimore) and we see the o's logo on the back.
here's yet another orange version of the card, with this one celebrating a moment.
it's kind of the same as the 'play' version, except this one celebrates his 500th career home run. the photos and the text correctly identify murray as an oriole, except
there's a dodger logo on the back. say what? especially since murray not only hit his 500th home run with the orioles, he didn't hit any homers during his second tenure with the dodgers at the end of the 1997 season. so, what's a team collector supposed to do with that card?
Ignore it.
ReplyDeleteCards in the late '90s are a pain in the ass.