my favorite cards of the year - 2008 edition

i recently introduced my mini collection focusing on my favorite cards from each year that i've been a collector. the basic jist is that i wanted to create a space for the cards that i most appreciated having in my collection in the year that they were released. these were cards that i acquired in the year that they were issued, and that i considered to be my favorites at the time. i have disallowed (most) cards that are already in other mini collections in order to avoid having a mini collection consisting of more steve garvey, double plays, and dodger stadium cards.

2008 was an important year in my collecting experience, as it was the year that i started blogging.  more on that later.  here are my favorite cards from 2008.

favorite non-dodger card: donruss threads pete rose

pete rose was one of my first favorite non-dodger players, and even though he bet on baseball i remained a fan. not an apologist, mind you - he broke a sacred rule of the game (and lied about it) and deserved to be punished - but still a fan of his playing career and accomplishments on the field.  when i first saw cards from this release appearing online, i went and bought some packs looking for steve garvey's card. i found that card as well as this rose and several other decent cards as well.

i hadn't seen a new pete rose card since 1994, and thankfully donruss didn't put much effort in to hiding team logos with this one. at the time, i was still holding out hope that pete would be reinstated and elected to the hall of fame even though he had admitted to betting a few years prior. these days, i don't expect his status to change, but i still get excited to see new cards of him hitting the market.

favorite dodger card: topps update & highlights manny ramirez

sure, if i were doing this today, my favorite dodger card from 2008 might be clayton kershaw's rookie card from this same set, but twelve years ago it was all about manny.  i recall watching the trading deadline special on espn (mlb network did not yet exist) on july 31, 2008 as i tried to do each deadline day. a friend of mine used to joke that opening day and trade deadline day should be holidays, and i was on board. anyway, right at the end of the show as the cameras were pulling away, one of the pundits said something like "did the dodgers get manny ramirez?". that was it, and i spent the next half hour scouring the web to find out if this was, in fact, true. spoiler alert - it was.

manny headed to la and flat out raked. the dodgers were in second place in the nl west when he arrived, and a week later they were in first. they fell back to second but finally ascended to first for good on september 6 when manny homered and drove in five runs against the diamondbacks. i was super excited about this team with manny, plus matt kemp, russell martin, james loney, nomar garciaparra, and kershaw. i was commenting quite often on jon weisman's 'dodger thoughts' website, but that outlet was not enough to express the passion i felt at the time. so, three weeks after manny's big game that propelled the dodgers in to first place to stay, i started blogging at garveyceyrusselllopes.

manny led the dodgers to their first postseason series win and to the nlcs for the first time since 1988, hitting .500 in the nlds with a couple of bombs, and then hit .533 in the nlcs with two more homers. sadly, the dodgers failed to advance to the world series, and it turned out that he was using performance enhancers as he was suspended for 50 games in 2009. still, i couldn't wait to get my hands on his first dodger card back in 2008, and it remains a special card in my collection to this day.