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One of the things I miss the most about trading cards from the 1950s through the 1990s is the personality of the players coming off of the cards.

 

Card backs were for finding out who was behind that face on the front. In the early going, from the 1950s through the 1970s, you could get some inside information about the player from a cartoon or a short write-up. The cartoons from specific sets like 1956, 1970, 1973 and 1974 Topps baseball and great oddball sets like Kellogg's, which dared to ask what players' hobbies were, made ball players human, guys you could relate to -- they were just like you in a lot of ways. They liked to draw, they liked to watch TV.

 

We get very little of that on baseball cards today. Once in a while, we do (as recent as 2010 or 2011 there was some good personal material). But most of the time we get spin-rate and so-and-so's "outstanding extension," and this:

 

Well, that's great for George and the team. But as a fan, it'd be nice to know whether George actually has a dog, what the dog's name is and if he and the dog go on adventures together.

Today, if you get lucky and find a writer who has enough insight to ask a player good questions -- not just stuff about his bat speed and quick hands -- you might find an article where you can get to know the person. Otherwise you'll have to rely on a TV network miking a player in the field and asking him weird questions while he's trying to field a ball in front of the whole world to get something real.

That's why the early Donruss Studio sets in the '90s were so great. Right on the back you could find out about a player's hobbies and favorite teams and TV shows without the potential for mishaps in the field. That was perfect. That's all I need. I don't need to know your salary or who your girlfriend is, just tell me who your favorite player was as a kid. That's why Studio was perfect.

This beat-up Mookie Wilson Studio card from 1991 that I'm sure I found in a repack box is the only non-Dodger Studio card I have. But it gives me a window into Mookie that's right there in my hands.

I've enjoyed these nuggets from Studio for so long that I've often wondered if I could assemble your average baseball player from the early 1990s -- not as a player, not how he trained or what kind of equipment he used -- but from a personality standpoint. What were they like, as a group? Could I come up with some sort of composite?

So I've started counting and tallying -- all of the 1991 Studio cards.

This is a partial early tally after a few cards (those first four heroes are from Glenn Davis -- he was going through some things). 

I plan to run through all 264 cards and give a comprehensive report when I'm finished.

Now, normally I don't announce I'm doing something on this blog until it's finished, just in case I don't end up doing it. But I had actually gone through almost the full '91 Studio set a few weeks ago with a report nearly ready to give -- and then I accidentally deleted the whole thing.

 

Oof.

It's taken me a little while to recover from that. But I'm ready to restart and have. And in order to give myself the boost I need to go through it a second time, I'm announcing it here to make sure I stick with it to the end.

Hopefully, by that time you'll get a full view of a major league baseball player back then that has nothing to do with launch angle or OPS or what his batting average is on a fastball on the outside corner on a 1-1 count. Because there are plenty of sites for that stuff already.

But if you want to know whose hero was "The Green Hornet," in 1991 there is only one place to go.