once again, no coke pepsi

much to my chagrin, pepsi is the official soft drink of major league baseball.  it's been that way since the late 1990's.  i am happy to report that dodger stadium still serves coke products, but sad that target field is pepsi territory.  anyway, pepsi gets its logo on baseball cards from time to time, like this 2003 fleer pepsi card of shawn green

it wasn't always this way.  there were the coke sets for a few teams in the early 1980's, and here's a non-pepsi, non-coke product from the same timeframe.  it's a card of fernando valenzuela

from the 1982 squirt set.  thanks to patrick from hot corner cards for sending this former nefarious 9 need to me.  at the time, i believe that squirt was owned by a company out of michigan.  these days, it's part of the dr. pepper/snapple group.  i don't know if i have ever had one, to be honest.  

i do like the card, however, but not as much as the 1981 squirt set.  here's steve garvey's card from that set

look at that!  i bet you can guess why i prefer the 1981 set.  not only does it have the position ball, it's got the same team name script as 1978 topps!  the 1982 version of the squirt cards kept the ball but ditched the script text.  for shame.

sometimes pepsi products show up on cards that are not sponsored or distributed by the beverage company, like this 1988 topps greg brock card

i pictured brock as more of a bud man, myself.  

once in a while coke products will see some cardboard, too.  like on this 1993 topps lloyd mcclendon card

it's too bad that the old coca-cola sign that used to be on top of the right field scoreboard in dodger stadium was so high up - it would have been cool to see that on some cards.