Name: Barry Bonds
Team: San Francisco Giants
Position: Outfield
Value of card: $99 sensitivity training session
Key 1991 stat: One instance of blatant racism
Score, hang your head in shame: Most of the cards found on the Bust are funny. You look at them, you laugh, or smile, or quickly redirect to a better site. Don Aase has a funny name. Ha-ha. Julio Franco is embracing his bat like a lover. Ha-ha. Al Newman is PhotoShopped into a sauna. Ha-ha. But then there are cards that make you cringe. The 1993 Score card featuring a racist depiction of Barry Bonds, above, is one of them. Think of this: It's the early 1990s, and a group of Score executives sit around a boardroom table. They examine this artist's work, nod, and deem it appropriate for the youth of the day. One fat cat in a suit and tie turns to another and says, "Sure, looks just like Bonds to me. Sign up this artist. These will be a hit with the kiddies." It doesn't take a sociology professor to see the similarities between this card and the infamous black caricatures of the early 20th century. And it's not only Bonds who got the Sambo treatment. It's a surprise that with the Score executives in control at the time that Mark McGwire wasn't dressed in green, drinking a beer and eating corned beef and Steve Balboni wasn't holding a Tommy gun. Sensitivity? Score: 0-0.
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Was the steroid joke about the giant head too obvious?
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