the k is for kershaw kountdown continues - nattys iced edition!

clayton kershaw made his seventh appearance of the 2025 season friday night against the nationals at dodger stadium, so i am pleased to be able to post another edition of the k is for kershaw kountdown as we track his progress to the 3,000 strikeout milestone.

coming off his best start of the season, kershaw went five innings, allowing two runs and striking out four nats in the process. those 4 k's he recorded bring his season strikeout total to 24, and his career total to 2,992.

in honor of his performance, here are four cards (not seen on this blog before) from my collection to represent strikeouts number 2,989 through 2,992.

2,989 - 2023 topps chrome refractor

2,990 - 2023 topps chrome pink refractor

2,991 - 2023 topps chrome prism refractor

2,992 - 2023 topps chrome sepia refractor

yes, i was waiting for a four-strikeout game so i could show these four refractor parallels in the same post.

kershaw's night included allowing two solo homers to account for the nationals' runs against him, and he allowed three other hits and walked a pair to go with his four strikeouts. one of the home runs was hit by old friend (two-time old freind) amed rosario who is hitting .385 when facing kershaw. regardless, the dodger bullpen was able to hold on to the lead, and kershaw was credited with his third win of the season, and third in his last three starts.

here is a non-kershaw cards - it's a 2023 topps miguel rojas royal blue parallel

rojas and kershaw have history - rojas made a nice defensive play during his first stint as a dodger to preserve kershaw's only career no-hitter back in 2014. on friday, rojas doubled and homered behind kershaw, with his home run accounting for the game winning rbi as the nationals were able to give the dodgers a scare before falling 6-5.

kershaw is still in 20th place on the all-time leader board, and he will remain there unless he passes john smoltz (or is himself passed). smoltz has a career strikeout total of 3,084 and so kershaw is now 92 k's behind smoltz, but just 8 away from the 3,000 milestone. for what it's worth, he now has 215 career wins, which puts him in a tie for 91st place overall with jim perry and stan coveleski.

kershaw should be back on the mound next week against the royals, assuming the dodgers stay with a six man rotation now that ohtani is back. otherwise, it's possible that kershaw will close out the series against the rockies before the dodgers head to kc. know that when he makes his next start, i will be back to update the kountdown soon thereafter. stay tuned! 

one down, still nine to go

it's been a little while, but i have obtained one of my most wanted cards - a member of my "nefarious 9" - and i am here to document its arrival.

1986 sportflics decade greats #33 roy campanella

here's the back:

outside of not always including full year-by-year career stats on the back (i realize in this case campy's stats are truncated to only include the 1950's and match the theme of the card), i miss sportflics backs. the text is pretty solid and it's all easy to read.

number on list: 7

how long was it on the list? i added the card to the list in december of 2024 after acquiring duke snider's card from the same set.

why was it on the list? i decided to target the dodger cards that i was missing from this set a while ago. after picking up duke's card, campy's card was the next one up on my road to team set completion.

how was the card obtained? night owl sent it to me as part of an "almost free stuff friday" trade package in may of 2025.

what replaced it on the list? i need one more card from the set to complete my team set, so i added 1986 sportflics decade greats #39 don newcombe (with bob lemon and robin roberts) to the list at number 9.

i assume that greg knew the card was one of my most wanted, which makes his effort in putting together a mailer for me that much more appreciated. i will be showing more cards from what he sent my way in a separate post.

please take a look at my updated list and see if you can help a blogger out. you will be rewarded! 

here's a heaping helping of heritage

after opening my hobby box of heritage, i went out and bought a fair amount more. i was interested in another box, but i wound up buying two opened boxes for the price of one unopened box. i am not sure why the seller opened two boxes and then sold the contents at half off. i suppose it is possible that they pulled a big card and i got the rest, but the haul matched what i found in my initial box, so i am pleased. i also bought a hanger box or maybe it was a mega box, plus about a dozen cards from an ebay seller. 

at any rate, here are a bunch more cards from 2025 topps heritage.

i think that chuck yeager's notable americans card

is a good one to start with. test pilot is a badass job, and he's related to the catcher from the team of my youth.

i appreciated finding jon jay's notable americans card

because i started reading "the federalist papers" last month. jay, along with alexander hamilton and james madison, published the collection of leaflets under the name "publius". i will say that all americans would benefit from reading this book.

heritage has taken the parallels of inserts to a new extreme. case in point is this foil parallel of mookie betts' through the years insert

and i have a couple more examples for later on.

the two guaranteed hits from the opened boxes were this luisangel acuna clubhouse collection relic

and a gold jonathan india clubhouse collection relic

neither are worth anything, really, but interesting to see.

meanwhile, rod from padrographs sent me a dusty baker father & son card

after i had commented that it was the card i was most looking forward to finding in this year's release. the additional cards i purchased netted me a chrome refractor parallel

the other father & son card of interest to me features the guerreros, and i now have the base

black

and blue

parallels in my big daddy vladdy collection.

the vladimir guerrero card that was used for this subset comes from 2000, which was only a year old when heritage began. that means that heritage has now run through half of the flagship sets that were in place when it started. makes me feel old. as does the holliday's card from the father & son subset

thanks to the 2007 card being used for the old man.

you might recall that in the box i opened, i found an image variation of tyler fitzgerald. one of the opened boxes i bought included an image variation of brooks lee

the variation is on the left. nice pickup considering i am low key collecting lee.

between all of these purchases, i was able to complete my dodger team set. here are the dodgers i didn't show in the first heritage post - hunter feduccia

will smith

clayton kershaw

max muncy, edgardo henriquez, michael conforto, andy pages

and shohei ohtani

i also found a few more of ohtani's all-star compadres, including corbin burnes

christian yelich, william contreras, and vladimir guerrero jr

i am looking forward to the first of the banner all-star designations in next year's heritage.

i did ok with dodger parallels, including a feduccia blue border

plus a couple of chrome parallels featuring ohtani

there were many light blue sparkle chrome refractor parallels for me, too, including these three dodgers

plus the league championships card

the base of this card was one of the few dodger short prints that i didn't pull from my first box of heritage, but it was there in the cards that i purchased

along with the world series short print

i appreciate seeing dave roberts on the card, plus the freddie freeman walkoff grand slam and walker buehler, too! even better, i added the chrome and the chrome light blue sparkle refractor parallels

but wait - why did topps change the layout of the card from paper to chrome? two of the four outside photos swapped places, and four of the five photos on the card are cropped differently. stranges.

here are those other insert parallels i foreshadowed earlier. these are yoshinobu yamamoto's

and mookie betts'

1976 revisited foil parallels. this insert set not only reimagined the card front design, but the back as well. here's a comparison of the card backs - original, 2025 base, and 2025 1976 revisited

the brighter back helps, but the green background would have been the first thing to go if i were redesigning things.

ok, i know it's not all about the dodgers or inserts, so here are some non-dodger, non-insert cards i found interesting enough to scan.

juan soto

topps is not waiting for high numbers this year to get soto out there in mets' pinstripes.

jose miranda record breaker

records aren't just broken by superstars, and topps did a good job this year to include jose miranda and danny jansen (i am still looking for one of the jansen cards, unfortunately). although i was at one of the games that was part of miranda's streak, it wasn't the one pictured on the card so i am not keeping this card in my "games i have seen" collection.

sonny gray's card, however, is a keeper

that's because he is wearing number 42 on jackie robinson day!

evan carter's card is a high number/short print

and i took note of the text on the back

over the years, i have sold cards to a players' relative or two, as well as the photographer whose image was used on a card. i've also filled sportlots orders for a blogger and the father of a blogger. most recently, jason grilli was buying up copies of his 2013 topps card on sportlots, including the two that were in my inventory.

speaking of sportlots, i had to go there to finish my topps news all-time all-stars subset set

my previous purchased netted all but the roberto clemente. i don't mind topps overloading this set with outfielders, although i will admit i was curious to see who topps would put at third base (schmidt or robinson?) for the record, i would pick schmidt. anyway, after last year's debacle with the mvp subset, i am just glad that they included both the father & sons and the all-time all-stars.

here's a sharp looking julio rodriguez red border parallel

and a triston casas chrome refractor blue parallel

plus a couple of chrome refractor green parallels

those green parallels came from the opened boxes. i didn't get anything like that in the box i opened.

here are some of the all-time all-stars in chrome parallel fashion - ernie banks is a sparkle refractor

willie mays is a light blue sparkle refractor

and hank aaron is a good ol' chrome parallel

aaron, being a member of the braves, reminded me that my purchases were a good one for a braves fan. in amongst my purchases, i found three braves blue parallels

a chrome refractor parallel of orlando arcia

and a sparkle refractor parallel of austin riley

the mega box yielded a clubhouse collection single player dual relic of ronald acuna jr

which isn't too bad. 

i know i am all over the place with this post, but bear with me - almost done. one of the reasons i decided to buy the open boxes was that one of the cards visible in the lone photo was this 1976 al downing buyback

i have mostly been targeting the quartet of steve garvey, ron cey, bill russell, and davey lopes when it comes to heritage buybacks, but i will add other dodgers if the mood strikes.

case in point, i picked up dusty baker's 1976 topps traded card in buyback form, too

it's interesting to note that the stamp on baker's card is lower than the stamp on downing's card. this is good to see as topps is playing attention again to stamp placement. i have a card from 2024 heritage high numbers that i haven't shown yet that demonstrates this as well.

with the bill russell and davey lopes cards already in hand, i was happy to find ron cey's card, too

and i also upgraded my lopes buyback

still no sight of the steve garvey card or the stolen base league leaders card, but i was able to add the one that i was most excited about - the davey lopes record breaker!

believe it or not, i have another heritage post in the queue. stay tuned!