You may or may not remember buried in this post that I had created a Jose Canseco Simpsons card from the episode “Homer at the Bat”. I had to re-draw the entire thing to make sure it was nice and clear.

I just had to get this autographed, after I thought up an epic inscription, but I wanted to give a bit of back story on it all.

Remember this lovely lady?

The one and only Mrs. Krabappel.

In the episode “Homer at the Bat”, starring Jose Canseco, Don Mattingly, Darryl Strawberry and tons of other players, the script called for Jose and Mrs. Krabappel to have a torrid love affair. Jose’s wife Esther at the time did not like this one bit, and insisted it be pulled. This put the writers of the Simpsons in a scramble to come up with something else last minute. They instead had Jose go into a woman’s house that was on fire to save various objects from the fire.

The whole thing gave me the idea … what if I had Jose inscribe it “To: Mrs. Krabappel” ???
I would absolutely love that, and think Simpsons / Canseco fans would go nuts over that, given the back story.

So, I handed him the card to sign:

He said “Mrs. Krabappel…that is a strange name.” I said “that is the name of the teach…” and he finished my sentence “OH OH OH yeah … the teacher on the Simpsons, ok!”

Here it is!

To Mrs. Krabappel, Jose Canseco

Step aside, Madonna! It looks like Mrs. Krabappel had his heart back then.

After it was done, I wished it had been signed perfectly in the white area, but what can I say? The man signed 170 or so items … some are bound to not be perfect.

But then I started to think about it.

What if I redrew Steve Sax’s face behind the Isotopes logo (shown at the top of this post), invert it all, erase 80% of the card and print on acetate, then overlay it on the card?

It is worth a try, right?

Here is the final product … and might I say BAM!!!

It looks just slightly faded in the middle on purpose to have him sign there. I’m really happy how well it turned out. As a matter of fact, it is one of my three favorite inscriptions from that day, next to “Faster than Rickey” and his inscription personalized to me.