The Mad Guru, when he's not tossing the SABRmetrics guys into a tizzy, still finds time to read books and host a contest. This particular contest is related to books. Well, one book. Robert Coover's The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. Jon has asked for card creators to design a card for one of the book's fictional characters, Damon Rutherford.
So, I thought that I'd give it a try. The card is not based on any specific set, although I was a bit inspired by the 1961 Fleer colors, which, in my mind, are red, white and blue. Yes, I know that it is a different blue, but this my card design. I thought about stacking the colors in order, which would leave white at the bottom (using 1/4" stripes). Good place for a name.
The picture is actually Hugh Radcliff, a High School player at the time the photo was taken. I lifted the image from LIFE magazine's image archive hosted by Google.
Using PaintDotNet I slapped this together. I created the front at 300dpi, but ran into some letter/font issues when scaling it down to 96dpi.
I created the back at 96dpi, because that is what my blank cardboard image resolution is. Since I have no idea how Damon is described in the book I decided to make up all the info. Reading reviews of the book, I gather that Damon is supposed to meet a great calamity. For irony, I gave him the birth date of St. Patrick's Day. I figured that his father had been in World War II, did some post war time in Europe and returned in the summer of 1946 to find his bride of three years eagerly waiting for him.
I don't know where Hugh Radcliff went to High School. I made up the team, Dunkirk Rebels. I thought that Dunkirk would be located in the mid-west. A quick check showed that there are a few Dunkirks in Indiana. I selected the one in Cass county. Logansport is the county seat.
I figured that the Dunkirk Rebels were a low level farm team or some sort of semi-pro team. I then made up the stats. I didn't give too much thought if the numbers even made sense. I didn't include ERA stat because I didn't want to have to do much math. I wanted him to get better each year in his W-L record.
So, there you go. I give you my version of Damon Rutherford. Head on over to Rain of Error, find out the details of the contest and get creating.
Nice card. Because I had to know, I checked out Dunkirk. The only Dunkirk to have a professional team is Dunkirk, NY. They were part of the New York-Penn League in 1890 and part of the Iron and Oil League in 1898.
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