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While I was up in Connecticut this past weekend competing in my bonspiel, I received the following note from reader David Wishinsky, which immediately piqued my interest:
Hi Phil –
Great work. I stop by the site every day as I have for an untold amount of years. I’ve been doing this project that I thought is uni-adjacent and might be of interest to readers — a friend who reads the site suggested I contact you. Anyhow, I wanted to learn Photoshop and the way I did so was to make my own baseball cards. I’ve always loved cards and now I am coming up on making my 4th straight full set for the year (I’ve also started doing inserts, and other things too). Its been a really fun way to share my love of baseball and has become a bit of an obsession as I try new tricks and find new inspiration. You can see what I’ve done here: https://www.instagram.com/davidcustomcards/. If its of interest, great! If not, thats cool too!
Keep up the good work!
David A Wishinsky
I went to Insta to check out some of his work, and I was blown away with the quality and the graphics. So I followed up with David and asked if he’d be interested in sharing some of his favorite cards with an explanation of his motivation for each, and also an introduction to a very impressive project!
Enjoy…
• • • • •
Learning Photoshop by Creating Baseball Cards by David Wishinsky
I work in marketing and always wanted to learn Photoshop to be able to uplevel the designs of my slides. I went through a few tutorials and it wasn’t very interesting, just following along and the vase of flowers was now on a beach. So I decided to find strategies or things I wanted to learn and incorporate them into making my own baseball cards. This way I could do something creative while teaching myself a few things. And thus began an obsession and also a really fun hobby of mine now that I really enjoy. I started in 2022 and my first set was fairly simple and sort of inspired by Topps’ 72-73 Basketball and 1986 Baseball sets.
Here is Lucas Giolito’s card from that year, front and back.
I completed a 605-card set, complete with leaders cards and awards cards. I then followed it up with a traded set that included All-Star cards, each time trying to incorporate a new element or thing I wanted to learn to do (and the volume of the cards helped me to learn them quickly and at scale to really think through how to simplify the process).
I added a few inserts and decided to get started on 2023. That represented trying some more things and I think the cards looked more sophisticated.
Then wanting to make more designs and try new things, I covered the WBC and also went a little wild on some inserts. I even added a World Champions set and a sort of Topps Archives-like set throwing my designs onto old players.
As time marched on to 2024, I made one big base set and then really started to make a lot of different inserts, things like a set if Dairy Queen gave them away with a purchase, and even one for the Arizona Fall League to take advantage of their zany colors.
Now in 2025, I’ve created an anniversary set for the Nats and White Sox, a Spring Training promo set, a Tokyo Series set, and today I started posting my 2025 Base Set.
_____
To be honest, what’s most fun about this is the weird stuff. Like coming up with trivia questions or even making the checklist. Without actual print lead times I have the luxury of being able to have my set be 100% accurate on the day of “release” and I always love those final hours of who to cut and who to keep and making the set fair so that any “collector” wouldn’t feel their team unjustly got shafted. So, yeah, this now is how I spend a good chunk of my free time.
I buy cards on ebay to try and emulate things (in many of my sets you can see the inspirations, for example, this year’s is 1964 and 1988 Topps). It’s cool to get to share my love of baseball and as of now I have made well over 5000 cards, front AND back (the back is important for a baseball nerd). I hope you enjoy them and if you see anything on my Instagram and are like “that’s a way better card to use” let me know and I can swap them out. Dropbox loves me haha!
• • • • •
Thanks, David! That’s a really cool (and fun) project — definitely right up Uni Watch’s alley. As a kid, collected thousands of baseball cards (most of which my pop sold for about $50 when I was away at college), then picked up the hobby for a few years after that, but I ended up stopping after the 1994 strike tanked the values of many of my cards. I still have a fair amount of them stored safely away. So this was a trip down memory lane for a number of reasons. Great work David!
Readers? What say you? Have you ever (or do you still) collect cards? What’s your take on David’s project? Once again, you can see his body of work here. Which is your favorite?
Uniform Concepts and Tweaks
Time for more Uni Tweaks from the UW readership.
I hope you guys like this feature and will want to continue to submit your concepts and tweaks to me. If you do, Shoot me an E-mail (Phil (dot) Hecken (at) gmail (dot) com).
• • • • •
Today’s concepts come from Hovie Hawk.
Washington Commanders Uni Tweek
Here are my suggested tweeks:
1. Use the Riggins era stripe pattern throughout
2. Include that stripe pattern on the helmet (always bothered me that they never did this back then)
3. Use numerals on the helmet (current W is not a great mark and if you can’t use the old logo, best to keep it generic)
4. Use WASHINGTON wordmark on all jerseys to distance from the Commanders name
Thank you.
—
Hovie Hawk
Founder / Creative Director
Design Hovie Studios inc.
• • • • •
OK readers (and concepters). If you have some tweaks or concepts, shoot ’em my way with a brief description of your creation and I’ll run ’em here.
Guess the Game from the Scoreboard
Guess The Game…
…From The Scoreboard
Today’s scoreboard comes from Hudson Peters.
The premise of the game (GTGFTS) is simple: I’ll post a scoreboard and you guys simply identify the game depicted. In the past, I don’t know if I’ve ever completely stumped you (some are easier than others).
Here’s the Scoreboard. In the comments below, try to identify the game (date and location, as well as final score). If anything noteworthy occurred during the game, please add that in (and if you were AT the game, well bonus points for you!):
Please continue sending these in! You’re welcome to send me any scoreboard photos (with answers please), and I’ll keep running them.
Guess the Game from the Uniform
Based on the suggestion of long-time reader/contributor Jimmy Corcoran, we’ve introduced a new “game” on Uni Watch, which is similar to the popular “Guess the Game from the Scoreboard” (GTGFTS), only this one asked readers to identify the game based on the uniforms worn by teams.
Like GTGFTS, readers will be asked to guess the date, location and final score of the game from the clues provided in the photo. Sometimes the game should be somewhat easy to ascertain, while in other instances, it might be quite difficult. There will usually be a visual clue (something odd or unique to one or both of the uniforms) that will make a positive identification of one and only one game possible. Other times, there may be something significant about the game in question, like the last time a particular uniform was ever worn (one of Jimmy’s original suggestions). It’s up to YOU to figure out the game and date.
Today’s GTGFTU comes from Jimmy Corcoran himself.
Good luck and please post your guess/answer in the comments below.
And finally...
…that’ll do it for the early morning post. Big thanks (again) to David for sharing his project and his passion! Really great work.
Ticker Assistant Mike Engle is enjoying some time off this week, so I’ll have today’s Ticker for you, and probably a couple more articles (I will be taking some time midday to drive my mom to the hospital, where she’ll be having outpatient surgery, then head back when it’s over, then bring her to her house — which isn’t that far away from my condo, thankfully). So if there’s any breaking news, I’ll try to get an article up as soon as I can.
Everyone have a great Wednesday, and I’ll catch you guys tomorrow. Till then…
Peace,
PH
Comments (18)
Those look so good! I directly attribute my breadth of obscure baseball knowledge to the trivia found on the backs of Topps cards (although I loved the puzzle you collected with Donruss).
GTGFTS
Pretty sure it is 16 July 2010, but not 100%.
First game at Yankee Stadium II after the Boss’s death.
Nick Swisher gets the walk off single to beat the Rays 5-4.
Thank you Marc! I am totally with you there. I also though miss the lame stuff it used to have like Mike Pagliarulo likes to fly fish in the offseason. I can’t replicate that without either intense research or just making stuff up hah
GTGFTU must be November 3rd, 1974. The Steelers beat the Eagles 27-0, meaning Tom Dempsey must have missed that field goal he was attempting in the photo.
You got it Patrick L, always easy to tell the Eagles in 1974, those are one-year style socks they are wearing. I had the chance to meet Tom Dempsey as a kid, he was a real nice guy.
Tom’s in my Mount Rushmore of kickers along with Fred Cox, Mark Moseley and Jim Bakken. Skip Butler is another favorite… mostly because he wore the Best Uniform Ever.
That photo would look great on my Wall of Kickers, but I already have him as a Saint and as a Ram. I’m trying to keep my wall Eagles-free and Raiders-free.
I’m sorry Jimmy but I always despised Tom Dempsey for missing a chip shot 33 yarder at end of 1979 season opener in Buffalo vs Miami. It would have ended an 18 games losing streak to Miami in the 70’s. They would go on to finish the 0 for the 70’s later that year in Miami. I was in 6th grade and that loss still stings.
I had a really strong emotional reaction to these. As someone who has explored photoshop and utilized it for several projects, I can just see all the little details you had to keep in mind while working on them. You made a lot of great choices with the pieces you utilized and I think I can give it no higher praise than to say that this has me interested in making some cards of my own! Great work!
I’ve wanted to but I actually have not printed any. Typing in the stats is a hack I figured out. I can download them off of Baseball-Reference in excel then when inserted as text I do it in columns which it then has all the spaces for. Basically a strand like:
.343
.288
.291
.299
.307
I *DO* have to type in the lines for birthday, ht, wt etc so it isn’t super easy. But the stats which look like the bulk of the work are actually probably the quickest part save for a number or number.
These cards look fantastic, but I can’t believe you worked with that much text in Photoshop. Adobe InDesign and Illustrator are both set up to make type handling and manipulation a lot easier, especially when there is so much of it. Can’t argue with the results though.
I do want to learn InDesign and Illustrator. I think when I started it was just the colloquial “Photoshop it” and that was that and now I am so familiar with it it’s like if it aint broke don’t fix it. But as I wrote earlier in a comment above I found a few hacks with the text so it’s pretty straightforward (far better than powerpoint or even Word) for me. The only times I’ve struggled with text are some curved text that I can’t quite manipulate the way I wanted to. That’s one of my next goals and so there might be a bunch of that and also colored overlays in my next sets or inserts.
Those look so good! I directly attribute my breadth of obscure baseball knowledge to the trivia found on the backs of Topps cards (although I loved the puzzle you collected with Donruss).
GTGFTS
Pretty sure it is 16 July 2010, but not 100%.
First game at Yankee Stadium II after the Boss’s death.
Nick Swisher gets the walk off single to beat the Rays 5-4.
Thank you Marc! I am totally with you there. I also though miss the lame stuff it used to have like Mike Pagliarulo likes to fly fish in the offseason. I can’t replicate that without either intense research or just making stuff up hah
GTGFTU must be November 3rd, 1974. The Steelers beat the Eagles 27-0, meaning Tom Dempsey must have missed that field goal he was attempting in the photo.
You got it Patrick L, always easy to tell the Eagles in 1974, those are one-year style socks they are wearing. I had the chance to meet Tom Dempsey as a kid, he was a real nice guy.
Tom’s in my Mount Rushmore of kickers along with Fred Cox, Mark Moseley and Jim Bakken. Skip Butler is another favorite… mostly because he wore the Best Uniform Ever.
That photo would look great on my Wall of Kickers, but I already have him as a Saint and as a Ram. I’m trying to keep my wall Eagles-free and Raiders-free.
Indeed!
link
I’m sorry Jimmy but I always despised Tom Dempsey for missing a chip shot 33 yarder at end of 1979 season opener in Buffalo vs Miami. It would have ended an 18 games losing streak to Miami in the 70’s. They would go on to finish the 0 for the 70’s later that year in Miami. I was in 6th grade and that loss still stings.
I had a really strong emotional reaction to these. As someone who has explored photoshop and utilized it for several projects, I can just see all the little details you had to keep in mind while working on them. You made a lot of great choices with the pieces you utilized and I think I can give it no higher praise than to say that this has me interested in making some cards of my own! Great work!
Thank you Memal! I appreciate your complements and I am glad you enjoyed them!
These baseball cards are awesome! Good work!!
Thank you! Much appreciated!
If it’s anything like the cards from that era that I have, one card per pack would usually be ruined by the piece of gum Topps put in.
I’m sure I can figure out how to make some gum stains. Not sure I can get that intoxicating smell though!
You actually get these printed up? Wow. I cannot believe you typed in all of those stats. Holy cow.
I’ve wanted to but I actually have not printed any. Typing in the stats is a hack I figured out. I can download them off of Baseball-Reference in excel then when inserted as text I do it in columns which it then has all the spaces for. Basically a strand like:
.343
.288
.291
.299
.307
I *DO* have to type in the lines for birthday, ht, wt etc so it isn’t super easy. But the stats which look like the bulk of the work are actually probably the quickest part save for a number or number.
These cards look fantastic, but I can’t believe you worked with that much text in Photoshop. Adobe InDesign and Illustrator are both set up to make type handling and manipulation a lot easier, especially when there is so much of it. Can’t argue with the results though.
I do want to learn InDesign and Illustrator. I think when I started it was just the colloquial “Photoshop it” and that was that and now I am so familiar with it it’s like if it aint broke don’t fix it. But as I wrote earlier in a comment above I found a few hacks with the text so it’s pretty straightforward (far better than powerpoint or even Word) for me. The only times I’ve struggled with text are some curved text that I can’t quite manipulate the way I wanted to. That’s one of my next goals and so there might be a bunch of that and also colored overlays in my next sets or inserts.
Great cards, I love the designs and so cool that it helped you to enhance your designing skills!