Welcome to the card project. Today's victim: Jack McDowell. Not to be confused with new Braves pitching coach Roger McDowell. Nor for that matter with former major-leaguer Odibe McDowell. Dowel is a funny word. Yes Pat, I'd like to buy a dowel. Ok, I'm done.

Jack is pictured here looking quite a bit less surly than I remember. This is more like it. And this is just a little scary, although that is a nice Yield t-shirt. I think I used to have one like it. That said, this is a card from early in McDowell's career, so I suppose I should allow him some time to grow into his surl.

McDowell went on to have a career with a short streak of brilliance, capped by his Cy Young winning 1993 season. He was also the losing pitcher for the Yankees in Game 5 of the 1995 ALDS, a game which I personally enjoyed quite a bit.

Oy. The two set of Topps cards that I have from the 80s just give me fits on the backs of the cards. It's like a mandate came down from the Editor-in-Chief that the cards were too boring. The solution: Verbs. And not just any verbs, colorful ones. So for McDowell, the verbs of choice were earned, achieved, and spun.

Now spun I can almost handle. There's a phrase for a particularly well pitched game to say that the pitcher "spun a gem". So in conjunction with his first complete game, well it might have been. But how do we know he earned his first win? What if he just went five innings? What if his team scored 14 runs for him? It seems a little cavalier to claim that he earned it without showing proof. And the use of achieved with strikeouts is just terrible. You don't achieve a strikeout. You just don't. And even if it was being used to apply to achieving the plateau of seven strikeouts, why seven? That's not a particularly landmark number. Ten is maybe a landmark number, but even then I'm not buying it.

So I spit on you, Topps card writers. Patoo. There'll be more of this, I assure you readers.