custom cards

The Bad Guys Won

After I finish reading Joe Posnanski’s “The Machine” (about the 1975 Reds), I’m planning to dive into Jeff Pearlman’s “The Bad Guys Won” (about the 1986 Mets).

I was rooting hard for the Mets that year, and the end of game 6 was one of the most incredible, ridiculous, amazing endings to a baseball game that I’ve ever seen .

I’ve been trying to make a design that incorporates a scorecard somehow, but none of them have worked out. I got the idea for this card last night, though, and worked on the design as I watched the Nationals win the second game of the Series.

1977 & 1978 Topps Football Remixes

Here’s a mix of some more football card designs turned into baseball card designs. The ’77 and ’78 sets were two of the ones I collected as a kid. Sadly, most of them were destroyed when our basement flooded.

The ’77 design is a classic, but the ’78 design is pretty bland, in my opinion. On the other hand, the ’77 design was a pain to recreate, but the ’78 design only took a few minutes.

New Custom Cards

I love the 2019 MLB post-season logo, so I used it as the starting point for this design.

I created several different versions of this design before landing on this one. The placement of the name was the part that took the longest – I tried it at the top, on the left side, and then at the bottom. I chose the version with the red bar at the bottom, since it brings together the red from the home plate element.

I wanted to try this design with another team, just to see how the design holds up for other colors. So…here are the first non-Reds custom cards I’ve ever created.

Here are the 3 of the Astros:

I also created a couple of cards for the A’s:

And finally, I made a horizontal version of the card:

NOTE: Big thanks to Frank Jewett from Facebook’s Custom Baseball Cards group. Frank suggested a couple of small revisions that really improved the overall look of this design.

1964 Alternates

I can just imagine how this photo day went…

Photographer: “OK, guys…just stand there with your hands on your knees!”
Frank: “Um…why?”
Photographer: “‘Cause that’s what you ballplayers do.”
Pete: “Well, actually…the proper stance is to…”
Photographer: “I SAID HANDS ON KNEES!!!”
Frank & Pete: “Yeah, OK. Whatever.”

I created this card design yesterday, and it was one of those times when all the pieces just kind of clicked right away. I usually keep tweaking and editing my designs until all the elements feel right, but this one seemed to work on the first try.

I know I’ve made a lot of cards for Senzel and VanMeter, but I’ve got a lot of hope for what these guys will do for the Reds. VanMeter should be an everyday player in 2020, and I’m hoping we see more of the “early 2019 Senzel” next year.

UPDATE: I got some valuable feedback on the original card designs from JT over at The Writer’s Journey and Frank Jewett from the Custom Baseball Cards Facebook group. Big thanks to both of these guys for helping me make improvements to this design.

More football remixes

I liked the look of those 1984 Topps football cards remade as baseball cards, so here are a couple more. This time, I used the 1985 Topps football design to make cards for a couple of 2019 Reds rookies – Aquino & Senzel.

Castillo & Votto Customs

When I found the Luis Catillo picture, I knew I had to do something with it. So I immediately started working on a design that, I hoped, would bring more focus on the photo than the other design elements.

Then I found the Votto pic yesterday, and it seemed like a natural fit for the same design. I’d love to add more cards to this series, but I don’t think it will be easy to find more photos with this same style.

Custom Reds Designs

Here are a couple of my recent custom designs for a pair of great Reds outfielders.

With the Davis card, I was working with the idea of including more statistical info on the front of the card. The Foster card was an experiment with Photoshop’s “darken” feature.

I really liked the way these turned out. They’re kinda different than most of the cards out there (that I’m aware of, at least), but I think full team sets of these would look pretty cool.

What do you think?

2019 “Highlights”

The Reds’ 2019 season didn’t end the way I wanted it to, of course, but it wasn’t without its share of highlights. I created these 3 cards, based on Topps’ 1975 Highlights series, to honor my three favorite things about this season.

Aquino’s 2019 is one of my all-time favorite seasons by any player, ever. They way he burst into the majors was an amazing thing to witness.

And when Garrett charged at the Pirates’ dugout, he gave us a bit of hope that there was still some life in this team.

And Geno’s record-breaking home run pace down the stretch kept things interesting even when the playoffs were well out of reach. He set new records for the number of home runs in a season by National League third basemen, and also broke the record for most homers in a season by a Venezuelan.

I posted two of these on Facebook’s Custom Baseball Cards group the other day, so I thought I’d throw ’em all up here.

These cards use the same colors as the 1975 Highlights cards for Bob Gibson, Al Kaline & others. How in the world did Topps come up with this color scheme in 1975?

White Out

The Reds wore all-white uniforms for “Players’ Weekend” 2019. These uniforms were pretty much hated by everyone. One MLB manager even said he wouldn’t go to the mound to make a pitching change because he was too embarrassed to be seen in the all-white uniforms.

But these are the first alternate uniforms the Reds have worn during my time blogging alternate cards, so I kind felt obligated to make a card for them.

I keep telling myself to quit posting Aquino cards, but the guy is just too good right now. Also, he hit a homer in the all-white uniform and pumped his signature “Punisher” pose while rounding the bases, so…