These 5 Baseball Cards *Spring* to Life ...

... all year long and twice on Sunday. Or something.

This one’s pretty simple …

It’s March.

Spring begins in March.

Spring is king when it comes to baseball, at least if you’re into sappy stuff like hope and renewal and reason to believe.

So let’s celebrate this momentous occasion with some baseball cards that look like Spring no matter when you hold them in your bubble-gum-stained fingers.

1953 Topps Ray Boone (#25)

Sure, Boone himself looks a bit squashed here, and maybe more than a bit like The Great Gazoo (the Indians’ logo sort of does, too, for that matter).

But the rest of the card gives us:

• Lush, starting-to-be unruly grass

• Palm trees

• Tiki fence

• Stadium lights strung between two palm tree trunks

• Full-on “Land of the Lost” forestry in the background

So, this card depicts one of: Ray Boone at Spring Training, Ray Boone on Pangea, or Ray Boone at Spring Training on Pangea.

1971 Topps Dick Bosman (#60)

Dick Bosman has his heavy warm-up undershirt thing going on here, and with palm trees in the background.

And also either a grassy rise of some sort, or a stone-faced outfield wall.

Either way, this card makes you cold and warm at the same time, so you know it’s Spring.

Also — extra points for the starred i-dot that makes Dick really stand out.

1979 Topps Junior Kennedy (#501)

You think Topps has airbrushed the football-shaped “C” off Junior Kennedy’s Reds batting helmet on his 1979 Topps card, but I’m not so sure.

For one thing, Kennedy was with the Reds for part of 1974 and all of 1978.

For another, you can see “CINCINNATI” or something shaped like it on the front of his jersey.

For another another, there are sparkles and reflections of the sun and other stuff, right where the airbrushing would be.

No, I think this is one of those spare-part helmets that invitees and such sometimes wind up (or used to wind up, at least) with while they’re scrapping to make the team.

It screams “makeshift stuff in the Spring.”

That all-blue sky, soccer-field backstop, and left-field UFO in the background pretty much cinch the Spring Training feel.

1984 Fleer Tony Fernandez (#152)

Seeing Tony Fernandez standing there in the Dunedin Spring sunshine on his crisp, clean 1984 Fleer baseball card … well, it makes me miss Tony Fernandez.

And 1984.

And Fleer.

And Spring.

At least we can get that last one back for a few months each year, even if none is ever quite the same as the ones before, or the ones yet to come.

1986 Topps Traded Barry Bonds (#11T)

Barry Bonds’ hands may look Springtime cold here on arguably his most popular rookie card, protected as they are by those thick gloves and jutting out from under his black Pirates longsleeves.

But you know los manos are really on fire, just like the rest of young Bonds, burning to get the show on the road and let everyone know just how great he planned to be.

Mission accomplished, haters be damned.

He was the greatest, fiercest weapon I’ve ever seen step to the plate, that’s for sure. And this pre-almost-everything beauty with its crystal sky definitely gives me the Spring feels.

Anything is possible.

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Until next time, I hope you get some Spring weather out your way, wherever that may be.

And if you don’t, well, you can always cuddle up with some Spring-y cardboard treats.

Thanks for reading.

—Adam