Another Alyea/A's pic, again in three sizes. In this one, you can see Alyea's uniform number (he's wearing Rick Monday's old #7). Which means that he's wearing a 1971 uniform (the A's removed the numbers from the fronts for '72), which means that these are spring training pictures, with the A's wearing the previous year's duds.
Which begs the question of why, if Topps took pictures of Alyea during 1972 Spring Training, they broke out the airbrush for his 1972 card? The set was still released in "series" in 1972; they could have held Alyea back for one of the later editions and used the pictures from ST. I don't know, maybe they hadn't planned on sending the photog to Arizona and just went ahead with the plan to airbrush in Alyea's hat. Or maybe they were disappointed that Alyea's face is in shadow in both of these pictures. (And really, what kind of photographer doesn't know how to position a player so his face isn't in shadow? Perhaps the pictures were sent in by an amateur "stringer" at A's camp? Weird.)
Anyway, here it is, in three sizes again.
