June Pickups

[JollyElm]

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I meant to ask, what stadium was the 1974 Topps #1 Hank Aaron taken in? The 1973 All Star game was held in Kansas City, and the scoreboard has the same trademark shape, but no crown appears atop it (which would've added that much more pop to the card had it appeared looming over Aaron's head, but I digress)...unless Topps airbrushed it out for some reason, although it doesn't really look like they did. There seems to be a couple of Reds(?) warming up in the background. Searching for footage of the game didn't really provide any help or answers.

Any idea if it was definitely KC?

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

Any idea if it was definitely KC?

I think the crown is there and maybe just difficult to see? That would definitely appear to be the base of the KC scoreboard and the green structure underneath that supported it.

[JollyElm]

It's possible that the scoreboard has a detachable top section? Or did? Maybe when events other than Royals home games were being played, they removed the Royals' crown? Just speculation, but it might make sense.

Here are three shots of it. The first is sometime during the 1970's, I imagine? Native son, Harry S Truman, passed in December, 1972, so perhaps this pic was taken in 1973? He is adored out there, so it could be from any year, but the pic seems to be 1970s-ish.

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This is obviously a recent picture, but someone must have sprayed it with 'Corona-B-Gone,' because there's no crown up there...

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And this is a screenshot taken after the narrator stated that Kauffman Stadium hosted the 1973 All-Star game. The lower part of the huge crown is very evident, so it was obviously there. This is quite puzzling...

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Perhaps, it is an airbrushing job by the Topps art department, after all? We're so used to seeing their godawful 'retouching' work on caps and uniforms, that maybe this was a much easier job, just cutting and pasting parts of the bluish sky around to mask the area? Who knows why...but it could be?? What further points to that is the fact that all (or any) of those prominent, white, vertical support beams are nowhere to be found (or just faded into the sky) on the Aaron card.