finally finalized final tributes

i was a bit annoyed with topps in 1988 when i discovered that steve garvey wasn't in the set. he hadn't played since may of 1987, missing the remainder of the season following surgery to repair a torn biceps tendon, but he didn't officially announce his retirement until january of 1988. i had hoped that his announcement came late enough for him to have been included in the flagship set as he had been since 1971.

i wasn't buying anything other than topps in 1988 - and i only bought a couple of boxes of that - so i didn't really notice at the time that the garv was missing from the donruss and fleer sets as well. thank goodness for score - at least they gave us a genuine final tribute of the nl iron man.

back a dozen years or so ago, travis at punk rock paint put together a 1988 topps steve garvey card that should have been. i added a back, and it's been in my collection ever since.  however, i don't know that anyone ever made the missing donruss and fleer cards.

having had some time on my hands this past summer, i broke out the old photoshop and went to work to bring these missing cards to light.

here's the 1988 donruss card that should have been:

complete with a back:

is it wrong of me to say that i may not mind the 1988 donruss design? i've found one card lately that looks pretty sharp from this set.

now here's the 1988 fleer card that should have been:

this one is not perfect with the fade in the upper corners of the picture. oh well. here's its back:

full career stats there! i started with a scan of reggie jackson's card back from the set, and found that fleer had his splits at the bottom all goofed up. thanks to baseball reference, i was able to use actual splits from garvey's career without having to figure them out on my own.

i mentioned that a topps final tribute of the garv already exists, but i decided to add another card that should have been in the 1988 topps set.  thanks to the turn back the clock subset, we can revisit garvey's 1983 season

as well as his 1978 campaign.

now, i am not suggesting that his accomplishments those years were greater than those of nolan ryan or jim rice (the players actually featured on these cards), but i am saying that it wouldn't be a stretch to have featured garvey. i made backs for the cards, too - here's the 1983 back:

the font isn't a full match, and now that i look at this, i realize that this is the "tiffany" version. oh well.  here's the 1978 back:

aside from his score card, the only issue garvey was featured in back in 1988 was the dodgers sga smokey all-stars set. i'm looking forward to printing these out and getting them in to my garvey and final tribute binders.

i also added a 2013 topps 1972 mini insert of ernie banks

to my final tribute collection.  that is what a true final tribute of mr. cub would have looked like had topps done the right thing back then.  here's the back with his career totals on display:

i suppose there wouldn't have been a cartoon about george brett on the card, however.

lastly, i found a 2014 topps roy halladay card

in my sportlots inventory.

i had an opening day halladay card in my final tribute collection already, but now have flagship in there, too.

i'm not 100% sure who might get a final tribute in 2021 other than alex gordon. i'll be sure to keep an eye out, though.