1981 Fleer - Kirk Gibson

Fleer joined the game in 1981. They had been around for a long time, making gum, cards and stickers and what-not. In 1960 they made a set of just Ted Williams cards. In '61 a set of baseball greats. In '63 they made a regular set. But card companies structured their licensing contracts with the MLB players in an exclusive arrangement when they could. And by the mid-'60s Topps had the whole shebang under-wraps. In 1980 Fleer filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Topps and won. I believe the trick of it was that the product the cards were sold with could not be gum. So Fleer cards came with stickers. Donruss also joined in and their's came with a puzzle piece (Sportsfliks and Score came with trivia cards).

The early Fleer designs were very simplistic. The 1981 wouldn't be so bad if the background to the name an position matched a team color, but every last one of them is yellow. The overly rounded corners of the baorders also made the white edges too thick. Fleer used a white card stock so the back of the card was had more clarity than the Topps backs, but there was too much negative space on the backs o the early years. I think this set would have been looked on more favorably if (A) there were any significant rookie cards in '81, and (B) if Fleer had improved on their design and quality in year two. But the 1982s are boring and the photography stinks.

Pictured here is the Fleer rookie card of Kirk Gibson of the Detroit Tigers. Gibby was a hard-charging hulk of a baseball player. He played baseball like he played football when he was at Michigan State (He was an All-American and has since been elected into the College Football Hall of Fame). His most famous moment, of course, came when he was with the Dodgers when he hit a dramatic home run off of Dennis Eckersley to win game 1 of the 1988 World Series.

Below is his 1981 Topps rookie card. The '81 Topps cards win no prizes for design, but you can see the little details that make it look like a better quality product. The border around the photo has an extra layer of white and the baseball in the corner is not in line with the curve of the border but overlays it. But the dreaded Topps pink makes a stark appearance on this Gibson card. I wasn't old enough, but if I opened up my first pack of '81 Topps cards and saw that my Tigers were cursed with the pink that year, I'd be pretty upset.