Card of the Week: Fractal Materials Part III - Leather

1998 Fractal Materials #94
Edgardo Alfonzo
Materials: Leather and Cardstock

The Player:  For those of you that have followed my blog or my collecting interests, you probably already know Alfonzo is my all-time favorite player (that is why I have all these cards).  So what is there to say about him that I haven't already said?  Well since this is a leather card I thought it would make sense to talk about Fonzie's prowess with the glove.  Alfonzo played four positions during his 12 years in the big leagues.  He spent 889 games at second base, 549 at third base, 34 at shortstop, and 2 at first base.  Fielding is notoriously difficult to capture in a statistic, so I'll talk about his statistics in relation to the league averages.  His fielding percentage was incredibly consistent: while playing several positions he always kept his fielding percentage above the league average.  This shows how well he made the plays on balls he was able to get to.  His range seems to have been less stellar and slightly below average with the exceptions of 1996, 1997, and 2002 (his last year with the Mets) when his range was above the league average.  It seems, then, that he was a consistency-over-range player who had several years of very good defensive play over his career.

However, it was good enough to earn him a spot on one of my favorite Sports Illustrated covers ever (which is also depicted as a mural on one of the walls in Citi Field's new Mets Hall of Fame).

The Card:  The leather cards from the Fractal Materials parallel set were numbered to 1000 and again have the image printed on a textured leather card front with a normal cardstock back.  It is a bit thinner than the wood or nylon cards and I have to admit that it is not obviously leather.  The front could easily be confused with a 2007 Turkey Red Card front because of the similar textures.

The Material: Leather is sort of a sibling to the previously discussed suede. Leather is made from an animal "[h]ide or skin with its original fibrous structure more or less intact, tanned to be imputrescible. The hair or wool may, or may not, have been removed. It is also made from a hide or skin that has been split into layers or segmented either before or after tanning."  Now, I have no idea whether this card is made from real leather or some sort of imitation leather.  I do know that this card contains no hair or wool.  If you are interested in learning more about leather and the differences between real and imitation leather check out this site, from which I got the above quotation.