So here we are in the 21st century, and ain’t the future a wonderful thing?
We carry tiny computers in our pockets that have more technological muscle than the mainframes that helped put men on the moon.
At home we play video games with graphic palettes that would be nearly unfathomable to our primitive ancestors, raised as they were on Tempest, Q-Bert, Defender, and the like.
Our pal George Jetson is working for Spacely Sprockets, while his boy Elroy pulls straight A’s in nuclear physics at the Little Dipper school.
And the domestication of the dog continues unabated.
But the best thing about this glorious future in which we reside is that no one ever makes mistakes. Quality-control practices across all manufacturing industries are flawless, and as a result, every product at our disposal is an ever-loving Platonic ideal.
Well, that last part might be just a slight exaggeration. To wit, here are some notable post-Y2K Mets-related card-manufacturing errors.
2005 PLAYOFF ABSOLUTE MEMORABILIA JAE WEONG SEO
You had one job, Playoff autograph-sticker affixer. Just one job.
But you messed it up, so we are left to paraphrase the immortal Bee Gees and wonder how a card so right could turn out to be Seo, Weong.
To be fair, it’s easy to see how this one would start to go off the rails, given how the “Joe” in Joe Torre could be mistaken for the “Jae” in Jae Weong Seo.
But beyond that, anyone but the most committed bath-salt addict should be able to tell a Torre from a Weong Seo…
2007 UPPER DECK MASTERPIECES TOM GLAVINE AUTO
What was that mnemonic device we all heard in third grade? Oh yeah, “I before E except after C.” Well, Upper Deck made a slight modification to that: “I before E except before and after C.”
And thus was born the Masterpeices Stroke of Genius (I kid you not) insert set…
2010 BOWMAN STERLING PURPLE REFRACTOR IKE DAVIS
The error here is interesting enough. I’m no Gutenberg, but I’m guessing that the printer flipped the plate, causing all cards in this rare, numbered-to-10 parallel set to render as a mirror image.
More interesting is the fact that someone somewhere just had to notice this error before these cards were inserted into packs, and then make the heroic executive decision to run with it…
Thumbs up to the exec who said to release the Davis card. This is so much more interesting than it would have been otherwise.
Just got to shake your head at these mistakes, but it was nice to be reminded of Jae Weong Seo.
Seo Weong, but Seo right.