Matt Merullo played only one game at first base in Toronto in 1991 (and none in 1992). That game was a 5-2 Toronto victory on May 11. Dave Stieb outdueled Charlie Hough as Glenallen Hill's home run gave Toronto the lead for good in the fourth. However, as you can see from Retrosheet's boxscore, no Toronto runner was picked off.
While it looks like the ball beat the runner, you don't have any depth perspective in this shot. Merullo is probably on the inside part of the bag and the baserunner is darting to the outside part, forcing Merullo to sweep around to make the tag, which would be too late. I guess Donruss thought they could get away with a little white lie to make the card more exciting - a routine throw to first is probably not an action exciting enough to qualify as awesome. They failed to anticipate the creation of retrosheet and of people weird enough to actually check this stuff there.
The resources available to us today will dispell a lot of these kinds of things. I think it's great that there are collectors who hold companies' feet to the fire. Nice research!
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