daves to be different

i happened to be adding cards to my sportlots inventory, and it's a pain when the new cards are of older stature. i have to go into the monster boxes on the bottom of my stack to get them in the right place, knowing full well that the likelihood of someone actually buying a card from 1990 topps is pretty low.

all was not lost, however, as i took some time to peruse some of the other cards already in my inventory and found a couple of anomalies worth a few words here. first up is dave dravecky's 1990 score card

this is, at face value, an interesting card because the photo shows dravecky waving his cap with his arm in a sling. for those of us who remember, dravecky broke his arm during a game following recovery from surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. so, the photo is to be respected as a record of that and not just a random photo of him pitching in a game. what really sets the card apart from the rest of the set, however, is the back

rather than a portrait shot like every other card, score used a photo of dravecky warming up before making his first start after surgery, and even captioned the photo for us. this sort of willingness to vary from the norm should be appreciated, applauded, and replicated on more cards to this day.

the card also opted for more text than stats in order to explain the challenges that dravecky faced. unfortunately, he did not return to the majors in 1990, so the card is effectively a final tribute for him.

the other card i pulled to scan is dave clark's 1989 fleer card

it is the only card i am aware of in the set (to be fair, i have not completed this set nor seen every card in the set) that lists "rookie" as part of an individual player card. the designation does not appear on the back

i didn't bother to peruse comc's library to see if there are others like this in 1989 fleer. even if there are, it's fun to find some anomalies among the monotony of junk wax era sets.