they are iron men

steve garvey is featured on only one card in the 2018 panini national treasures release, and i added it to my garvey collection last month.

however, he was not alone on the card, as it is a "triple-legend trios" booklet card!

here's a list of the folks featured

the common link among them is, of course, their respective consecutive games played streaks.

cal ripken jr. is the all-time leader with 2,632 consecutive games.  here's his part of the card:

good to see some oriole orange!

the guy who made the streak famous was lou gehrig, the iron horse. he played in 2,130 straight, much to the chagrin of wally pipp.  here's his part of the card:

glad to see pinstripes!

garvey played in 1,207 consecutive games, and is the national league's all-time leader.  somewhat screwed out of this card is everett scott who appeared in 1,307 consecutive games from 1916-1925 (his streak ended a month or so before gehrig's began).  unfortunately for scott, he did it all while in the american league and so he is typically never a part of iron man discussions.

here's the whole booklet all laid out - front and back:

this card reminded me that i really dug into gehrig's career and life back in the early 1980's as garvey's streak became more of a thing. i read all that i could find about him, and learned of the 1961 topps baseball thrills card hailing his streak.

i guess the card doesn't actually hail his streak. it's more about him benching himself.

it took me a long time to finally own that card, and even longer to show it on one of my blogs. ripken's streak was ended in a similar fashion to gehrig's, while garvey's came to an end by injury.

back to the present day, i was very happy to see that panini didn't make this just a two-man card, and gave the national league leader in consecutive games played some attention.