I was working on this colorization of a fantastic photo from the 1963 World Series with no plans of making a card. It was just such a great pic. From time to time I will pick out a classic and try to do it up. Look at this one. Two legendary future Hall of Famers in one frame. And the first baseman facing away from us (disturbingly wearing Gil Hodges #14) is none other than multi All-Star ex-Yankee Bill "Moose" Skowron! To be fair Moose did wear 14 on the Yanks before coming over to the Dodgers.
This was a fantastic World Series game. I knew very little about the 1963 series before I started this color work. Did you know that in the game above Sandy Koufax was going up against Whitey Ford in game 4, Dodgers up 3 games to none. And Ford, at the very tail end of his illustrious career, only allowed 2 hits to the Dodgers. AND HE LOST! Sandy allowed 7. This is a game I will do up with a few more cards if I can find the photos. I'll do up the entire series if possible.
I collect World Series cards. I have since I was a kid. It went hand in hand with me becoming a baseball fan in 1970, when I first started collecting. After school I'd carry folks groceries from the supermarket for a handful of change and grab a few packs and run home for dinner. I wanted the Mets players. I didn't even know there were World Series baseball cards until I saw my first one in the 1970 Topps set. And they were also Mets cards! IN ACTION! The fact that Topps used black & white pictures on these grey bordered commemorative cards is one of the main reasons the
Mets Fantasy Cards blog exists. The entire mfc project started with me turning those 1970 Topps cards into color versions.
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I didn't know I'd become a bonafide World Series card collector until 1971. I watched the series in 1970 and became a instant Brooks Robinson fan. When the 1971 Topps World Series cards came out these beauts were black bordered and in living color. I'd pull them and put em in my top desk drawer with my Mets cards (and certain favorite players) and collected series cards ever since. There have been lulls, as there has been in my card collecting in general, but I still enjoy these types of cards immensely. So I looked in my collection for any 1964 Topps World Series cards (I started buying older WS cards in the mid 80's) and was disappointed to see I only owned one from that year, the game four clincher. That is certainly better than none though. The design on these were excellent. Very simple, no frills, right to the point.
Reading about this game and consequently the '63 series made me realize there's one thing I love as much as the Mets when it comes to baseball and that's the World Series. So I'm going to spin-off a side project devoted only to World Series fantasy cards. I have no plans to do the current series (tho I could see whipping up one for a great catch or huge hit-also, it'll be very hard not to do something for the Cubs should they finally go all the way).
I hope to do cards for World Series games of the past, hopefully do at least one card for each series starting in 1903. The blog won't be super active, but I'll try to get something up each week. In many cases there may be longer delays between additions because of the colorization work involved. Maybe I'll even put up some posts regarding the colorwork.
So Stay tuned, I will be adding more 63mfc World Series Cards as soon as they are completed.
Here is the second card from the set covering game one. This was much easier to make because the was no colorization involved.
I just finished the colorwork and completed the 3rd card for this set .
All these 1963 World Series Fantasy Cards will eventually be gathered together for a post about game one. The more photos I find that are usable the more cards there will be. I will cover all four games.
I hope you enjoy my stuff as much as I enjoy making it. :)
This is the next colorization I'm going to attempt for one of the final cards of the set.
But look at that crowd.
In the colorization below this classic photo (of Mickey and Sandy), that crowd took three days of work. Not three solid. As a matter of fact I worked on that while I was watching the last three post season games. So it took quite a few hours. 75% of the time went to working that crowd.
Now look at this crowd below. I almost don't want to take it on but I know if I do it good it'll be worth it. Wish me luck with that.
(If anyone out there has a higher resolution copy of this photo and would like to share it that could make the work a bit easier and swifter- certainly would make for a better result)
I believe both photos, the Mick HR and Koufax celebrating, were taken by the great Neil Leifer.
More 1963 World Series Fantasy Cards to come.
For now:
