The 2015 Topps Heritage Baseball Perfect Error Card That Should Have Been

It’s Free Dress Friday here on All About Cards. That means anything goes. So put on your casual clothes and let’s look at the lighter side of Trading Cards.

In the past week All About Cards has been all about 2015 Topps Heritage Baseball. From a mobile friendly checklist to Action Image Variation Visual Checklist to a post on How To Spot 2015 Topps Heritage Error Cards.

We predicted all the error cards before the release of 2015 Topps Heritage in rather detailed form, but there was one error card we were hoping would be a little different.

We had a good feeling that Chris Sale would have an error card based on Dick Ellsworth's 1966 Topps Baseball card. The only thing that separated this card for us from being a “High Alert” card placing it in the “Possible Error” card category was that Ellsworth was on the Chicago Cubs and Chris Sale is on the Chicago White Sox. Close but not an exact match. Had card #447 in 2015 Heritage been Travis Wood or Jake Arrieta, this would have been on the “High Alert” list.

So here’s card #447 from 1966 Topps Baseball.

The photo is not of Ellsworth, who was a pitcher. It’s Ken Hubbs, who was a promising Golden Glove second baseman and NL Rookie of the Year in 1962. This is Hubbs’ 1963 Topps Baseball card.

As you can see, Topps used the insert photo, outlined in the green box, from this card for Ellsworth’s 1966 card. All of this is rather bizarre as in a tragic turn of events, Hubbs was killed in a plane crash, at the age of 22, prior to the 1964 MLB season.  Topps even issued a memorandum card for Hubbs in 1964. 

How his1963 insert image wound up in a release three years later is odd. 

Now looking at 2015 Heritage, this is Chris Sale’s base card.

And this is the 2015 Heritage error mimic card.

Sale’s image has been replaced with another pitcher, Jose Quintana. 

But wouldn’t it have been cool if Topps had gotten closer to the original error. And no… we are not suggesting using another player who passed away a few years prior in tragic circumstances.  But we are suggesting using the White Sox’s second baseman who appeared in 2012 Topps Heritage. Well… at least in the High Series release, Gordon Beckham.

Using the same (OK.. not really because we couldn’t find it) image as his insert photo, here is what that error card would have looked like.

Beckham was on the Angels last year and then his future was unsure before the White Sox picked him up again for 2015 so maybe that was taking too much of a chance for Topps. especially considering advanced schedules of designing these cards. In that case Alexei Ramirez would have worked for us too. Ramirez was the White Sox 2nd baseman in 2008 before Beckham arrived in 2009 when Ramirez was shifted to Shortstop.

Infielder photo replacing a pitcher's photo being the theme. Not Pitcher for a Pitcher.

All of this is a bit nit picky, but in thinking about it, going with the Cubs still would have been the preferred route. They could have gone with the Cubs young, promising shortstop from a few years ago, Starlin Castro.

So here is Travis Wood from this year’s Heritage.

It would have been simple enough to make Travis Wood's card number 447. And now using that actual insert photo from Castro's 2012 Heritage card, here is the error card. 

It's a sharp looking card too. But if you want to go with a LITERAL mimic, Topps could have gone with the Cubs second baseman from 2012, Golden Glove award winner (just like Hubbs) Darwin Barney.

Here is the error card that should have been.

It's close to the Action Image variations, but for an error mimic card it matches player, positions and teams which makes it a perfect error card in our book. And in a further probably unintended match, Barney is not longer playing for the Cubs. No tragic circumstance here, he is just with the Dodgers now.

And that will do it for this installment of Free Dress Friday where anything goes. Hope you enjoyed it and it gets your weekend off to a good start. Let us know in the comments below if you like this idea for the perfect error card that should have been. Please check back next Friday for more causal trading card fun.