Cardboard Cousins: '58 Topps/'07 Heritage

'58/'07 is the first instance where I have a lot of cards from both sets. Clearly there was a lot of intentional pair-ups by Topps. These are just instances where I own both cards.

#439 Two Indians pitchers. Narleski was primarily a reliever though, unlike Westbrook.

 #390 Two All-Star Braves catchers.

 #366 Two Cardinals outfielders at the beginning of their careers. Sadly, both died quite young.

 #255 Not teammates here, but Topps paired the '06 Cy Young winer with the '58 Cy Young winner, surely not a coincidence.

 #244 Two rookie Dodger outfielders. Kemp would have a much better career but Demeter had several solid seasons with the Phillies in the early '60s.

 They even used the same cartoon on the back, just reversed.

 #226 A couple of undistinguished Pittsburgh relievers. It's a shame Topps couldn't duplicate the bright blue background from the original.

 #224 The '57 Yankees' relief ace paired with the '06 Yankees starting ace. Topps using the wrong shade of orange here . . .

 #23 . . . and even worse, here with the KC A's red. I wasn't familiar with Bill Tuttle but he was actually quite similar to Mark Kotsay. Both were regular outfielders but not stars, who had come over to Oakland after some success with other teams (Tuttle with Detroit, Kotsay with Florida and San Diego).

 #21 Topps does a better job here with the blue. Barclay and Cain were both promising pitchers coming off their rookie seasons.  After going 13-12 in 2006 Cain would be a three-time All-Star, winning over 100 games and was a part of three World Champion Giants teams. After going 9-9 in 1957, arm injuries limited him to just 7 more major league games. Every time people complain about modern pitchers being weak, remember that for every Gibson or Drysdale there were 20 guys like Barclay who had promising careers cut short because of the primitive handling of pitchers back then.