i remember when gibson brought his game

thanks to the lockout, the content on mlb.com has been solely focused on retired players and past events. without any free agent movement, i don't really spend much time on the site these days. however, i did check it the other day to see if there were any updates on negotiations between the owners and players. while i was disappointed to not see any new news in that regard, i did see an article that noted the dodgers had signed kirk gibson 34 years ago that day.

34 years?! how is that possible! well, it is possible because time marches on. we all know how that signing played out, and here is a card from 2006 upper deck sp legendary cuts

that only exists because "the impossible" happened. i realize that even though gibson was a good player, we wouldn't have post-career cards of him as a dodger if it weren't for his 1988 season and world series heroics. the card, by the way, is from the "when it was a game" insert set. usually that phrase applies to the pre-expansion era, and certainly pre-free agency. make no mistake, however; owners have known it was a business since day one.

back to gibson - i didn't recall the date of the signing (january 29), but i do remember the day itself. i heard about the gibson signing on the local news that evening. i was surprised because i felt like the dodgers had shied away from big name free agents after the dave goltz and don stanhouse signings earlier in the decade, but was excited because i had watched gibson closely in the 1984 postseason, and again in 1987, and he was an obvious talent.  a nieghborhood friend of mine happened to be hosting a house party that night, and i walked over with a smile on my face. i remember sitting on his kitchen counter and talking with friends about the signing, and really looking forward to baseball season. for one night, there was no teenage angst - just happiness, optimism, and enjoyment of the moment.

this year i am again looking forward to baseball season, but have no idea when it will arrive. it feels a bit different than it did 34 years ago.

'ello joe, whaddaya know?

i think i have mentioned before that when i first started following baseball, the expos' logo confused me. i thought it said "ello" or "elb" before eventually learning or being told that it was a multi-colored "m". i've also heard that "elb" might be correct, in reference to "expos league baseball", but that seems forced. thankfully, there is a copy of a press clipping here that i assume legitimately records the story behind the logo and its colors. it certainly would have helped me if there were a symmetrical white dot in the blue curl of the "m", although that would have strengthened my belief in the "ello" theory.

whatever it is, the logo shows up three times on joe hesketh's 1989 donruss card

which i only saw for the first time a few months ago. i recently acquired this card for my dodger stadium collection, as hesketh is standing with the stadium club windows behind him. 

seeing hesketh in dodger stadium will always bring to mind his home plate collision with mike scioscia that ended his 1985 season. that play took place in montreal, but you can understand regardless the dodger connection that this card brings to mind.

so many dodgers on cards

by the end of this post, i will be caught up with trade packages that have been sent my way by kerry, he of cards on cards. i've posted some cards over the last year from some of these mailings, but i had a few remaining in my scanned folder so here we are.

back in november 2020, i received this 2020 topps update keibert ruiz insert

among other cards. it was an exciting card to have as the 1989 design has grown on me in recent years, and ruiz was the dodgers' top prospect. today the card means as much to me as the 1984 donruss sid fernandez rated rookie card. happy to have it in my dodger collection, but beyond that - meh.

more cards from kerry came in march of 2021, including this shiny card from 2020 topps chrome update

i like cards that focus on jersey numbers. there have been a few, such as the entire 2001 topps tribute set, plus various insert sets like this one. 

a month later, in april of 2021, still more cards arrived. i am guessing that maybe i didn't show any cards from this package before now, because i had quite a few scanned - such as...

a 2017 honus bonus chase utley card

sort of the opposite of those 2009 topps legends of the game inserts i showed earlier in the week.

how about a 2019 panini prizm dennis santana rookie auto red, white, and blue prizm

nice!

plus a 2020 topps turkey red insert of jackie robinson

i know kerry was trying to complete this insert set, and i had sent him a couple of cards for his set build.

and then there was this 1994 topps jose offerman

nothing really special about this card other than you don't see a lot of 1994 topps on the blogs. the player name text is reminiscent of 1970 topps and doesn't seem to fit too well with the other design elements. at any rate, this card goes in my "names/numbers on the back" mini-collection.

the last couple of cards i will show from this package come from the 1979 tcma the 1950's set.  here we have joe pignatano and gil hodges

along with someone named carmen mauro

i mean no disrespect, i mean mauro was a major league ballplayer for goodness sake, but i had not heard of him before. it turns out that he was born right here in st. paul, and the dodgers were the first of three teams he played for in 1953. he appeared in only eight games for the dodgers, so we should count ourselves fortunate that this card exists.

fast forward to may of 2021, and kerry sent almost a full team set of 2021 topps opening day dodger cards

along with a couple of 2021 topps needs

i like to see dodger world series cards!

also included was this 2021 panini donruss walker buehler name variation

i prefer "ferris".

one more card from that package, a 2021 topps heritage will smith boyhood photos of the stars

nice ymca representation. our local y didn't sponsor baseball or any other sport, although i played a lot of basketball there after school and on weekends.

last but certainly not least, i received some cards from kerry's annual spring cleaning event. these arrived in september of 2021. i had put in for twins as well as dodgers, and would up keeping a couple of cards featuring the minnesota club.

1994 pinnacle dave winfield

kirby puckett's presence on the card puts it in my lurker collection.

2011 topps update michael cuddyer

is a perfect fit for my tatooine collection

2018 topps chrome zack granite

goes in the dodger stadium collection, even though the scan doesn't show the background too clearly.

i picked a few cards from the dodger side of the box, including this 1983 donruss card of mark belanger

just like '94 topps, i don't think we've seen too much belanger on the blogs.

here's a 2011 topps triple threads pee wee reese card

and a 2021 topps stadium club mookie betts virtual reality insert

watching mookie in the 2020 postseason was a treat. such a great defensive player.

not the best segue to this 2021 topps allen & ginter max muncy relic card

but muncy's card does provide a good transition to this batch of cards also from 2021 topps allen & ginter 

in addition to sending me a complete dodger team set of the regular a&g cards (of which that lasorda is a short print), kerry also included those eight silver parallel cards. shiny!

2021 was a great year for dodger cards thanks to their 2020 postseason success. it made the back of allen & ginter cards all the more appropriate

the world's champions, indeed!

thanks kerry!

keeping kershaw

i figured by now we would know whether clayton kershaw was staying, going, or retiring. thanks to the lockout, we do not.

he will be 34 before the season begins, and he is 330 strikeouts shy of 3,000 for his career. based on recent years, that is more than two years worth of strikeouts. i would really like to see him reach that milestone, and i would like it even more if he did so with the dodgers.

i have added a few of his cards to my collection that were missing. some were throw-ins to sportlots orders, and a couple were targeted acquisitions.

here's a 2011 topps chrome refractor parallel

and this is a 2020 topps chrome sepia refractor parallel

those are both legitimate topps chrome issued cards. this next one

is actually from 2021 topps. it's a chrome version of the 1965 redux insert found in series 2 cards. i don't care for this sort of thing, to be honest. it's too bowman-y and it's confusing for folks who collect cards from multiple sets.

i had decided early on to track down one of these photo variation short prints from 2021 topps

but had sort of forgotten about it. i think it was night owl that showed this card a few months ago that served as a reminder to me to go out and get it. i guess there are a few cards that use this perspective in this year's release, but i've only sought out kershaw's.

here's a 2021 topps stadium club red foil parallel

as usual, stadium club brings some unique photographs to the set. this photo has been modified to remove the surgical mask that was down under kershaw's chin. i get it, and i wish topps would have rotated the orientation of the card to portrait while they were messing around with the photo.

from the same release, here's a triumvirate insert

i have the red foil parallel of cody bellinger's triumvirates card, but i have no version of mookie betts' card. note to self...

the last card i will show is kershaw's 1992 redux insert from 2021 topps update

i was hugely disappointed when i learned that 1992 was being used in update. series 1 had 1952, series 2 had 1965, and so it would have only made sense for update to use the 1978 design. alas, topps doesn't care much for that design and jumped to '92.

one good thing about kershaw not signing prior to the lockout is that most cards issued in 2022 should show him as a dodger. if, by the time update rolls around (assuming topps - or is it fanatics now - has a more reasonable deadline than they did in 2021) he's in a different uniform, i'll still chase his cards as i intend to add him to the list of players for whom i collect their post-dodger cards. either way, i hope i can collect a 3,000th strikeout highlight card someday, regardless of the uniform he's wearing.

if i had a million dollar arm

i pulled this card from a pack of bowman back in 2009.

it features rinku singh, one of two indian athletes signed by the pirates. singh was the first of the two to appear in a professional game, although just by an inning. in doing so, he became the first indian player to appear in a professional baseball game. singh and the other player signed by pittsburgh, dinesh patel, were the subjects of the disney movie "million dollar arm".

neither one of them, it turns out, had a million dollar arm, but their appendage certainly opened the door for them to a world that most of us will never know. if i had a million dollar arm, by the way, i would still eat kraft dinner.

anyway, i suspected that the card was hard signed based on the blue signature, but there was no certification on the back:

so i didn't know for sure. i forgot about this card until recently, and decided to look at comc to see if i could figure it out. i guess there are no cards for singh that feature a facsimile autograph, so it is indeed signed by him. it also lacks a jersey number inscription that was on the other cards in comc's inventory, although looking the other day i do see one that looks like mine on their site.

singh didn't advance too far in terms of baseball, but after he left the game around 2016, he remained a professional athlete. these days, he wrestles under the name veer mahaan on wwe's raw. i wonder if there will be a sequel to the movie to cover that career evolution.

legends of pleasantville?

i scanned a few more cards from my neglected monster boxes. i bought a lot of 2009 topps at target back in the day, and so i had a decent stack of their gold legends of the game inserts.  here are a few:

jimmie foxx

lou gehrig

honus wagner

what struck me when i was looking at these cards was that only the player was colorized. the backgrounds were left in black & white. it reminded me of that movie "pleasantville" where tobey maguire and reese witherspoon find themselves in a black & white tv show (thanks don knotts) and help bring color to the residents therein. jimmie, lou, and honus would have been initially ostracized in pleasantville until the rest of the background catches up to them.

i am guessing the color and black & white motif was a conscious choice by topps, similar to what they did that same year with their "ring of honor" insert set. here's thurman munson's card from that set:

in this case, the background would have been purposely made black & white, as i assume this photo was a color one.

however, there are some more modern players in the legends of the game insert set that have full color photographs - bob gibson

mickey mantle

and nolan ryan 

are examples, and i found another earlier player whose full image was colorized, so maybe it wasn't a fully thought out approach by topps.

so, ed goodson got in touch...

it's been a few years now since i received an email from none other than ed goodson.  somehow, someway, he became aware of my search for a signed 1978 topps card of him.  thankfully, he did not notice (i don't think) that i had secured one through a dealer in the marva area.

the email was short and to the point - something along the lines of "i'd be happy to sign your card", but it was one of the best hobby related emails i've ever received.

i sent off two cards - one for my dodger team set and one for the partial signed set i have - and they came back looking great!

i was also able to trade the goodson i had purchased for a couple of good additions to my steve garvey collection - a 1976 hostess twinkie card

distinguishable from the regular hostess issue by the black bar on the back, and a 1977 bob parker cartoon card

both were elusive wants, and i am very happy with this trade!

these days, i believe goodson signs for a fee through pastpros, but i thankfully have no need to confirm that fact! i am also very appreciative of the time that all players take to sign for fans, but am especially pleased that ed goodson reached out to make this happen for my collection. today is his birthday (happy birthday ed!) and i hope he has a great one.

every career is finite

i saw recently that jon lester retired. one of the things he said was that he wanted to be the one to decide when he was done, rather than have someone else do it by way of being released or just not signed at all. i get it and i respect his decision. i don't know what i would do if i were a professional athlete. i've heard of guys who play a sport because they are good at it and can earn a lot of money, but they don't love it and so might retire sooner rather than later. and then there are guys who don't want to stop playing because it is too fun and/or rewarding. 

i would like to think that if it were me, i would go the steve carlton route and run the risk of tarnishing my career in the eyes of others a bit just to keep playing the game. to be able to retire at a relatively young age is a foreign concept to me, and i certainly don't begrudge those who have that option. in fact, i recently had a conversation with someone who was that very situation. they had retired around the age of 41 but have continued to work in various capacities over the last decade. they said there was too much time to not work. anyway, i am taking a long time to get to this card

a 2003 upper deck finite miguel cabrera card from the "major factors" subset. it's a base card that was numbered to 1599. it's not a parallel or insert. i guess i bought a lot of finite in 2003 because i found quite a few cards in one of those monster boxes in my basement that i've mentioned a few times. this cabrera was the best of the bunch for sure (anyone want a ryan madson card from this set? i've got two).

cabrera is definitely at the back end of his career. he does still have a couple of years on his contract, but that doesn't mean the tigers couldn't cut him loose. i am sure there are many who think that he should hang it up - we heard similar opinions about albert pujols over the last few seasons - but i am glad that miggy is still playing. i am looking forward to him getting his 3000th hit early in the 2022 season and playing with some newly acquired talent in detroit. it's his career and he can decide when he's done just like lester or let someone else decide for him like carlton. and, if it's someone else who decides for him, that's a risk he (and most of the rest of us for that matter) seems ok with taking. for what it's worth, i hope pujols signs with someone for 2022 as well.

very few have retired and unretired - ryne sandberg comes to mind - so why not just make the most of the finite time you have and play for as long as you can.

2131 was a big deal to me

i wasn't going to leave baseball, but i certainly understood why some fans were ready to give up on the sport because of the 1994 players' strike that ultimately cost the 1994 postseason and a slew of games in both 1994 and 1995. no, i was still a fan but definitely a bit cautious in jumping back in full throttle.

at some point on the evening of september 6, 1995, i was all the way back and then some.  that was the night that cal ripken jr broke lou gehrig's consecutive game streak.

the game was televised, and there was a lot of pomp. ripken hit a home run in the fourth, and when the game became official at the end of the top of the fifth, the place exploded. the 2130 banner changed to 2131 and a record i thought would never be broken was shattered. ripken took his famous run around the stadium and it was just a great night to be a baseball fan.

i've written many times about my affinity for the consecutive games streak which was borne from my fandom of steve garvey and spread to lou gehrig and eventually cal ripken jr. the streak and that particular game and fan experience prompted me to add the 1996 topps card shown above to my "meaningful and just because" mini-collection.

anybody else remember that night?

those three little words really make my day

i'm not referring to those three words, although they certainly fit the bill. "you've got mail" certainly applies, as this post shows off some cards that i received recently from brian at highly subjective completely aribitrary. however, i am thinking of three other words. let's take a look...

here's a 1969 walt alston card

and a 1965 bob miller card

and their backs

you might have noticed from the card backs that i'm talking about these three words:

"printed in canada" typically equates to o-pee-chee and that is exactly what the two cards above are!

equally as cool is this 2005 topps pristine need:

orel hershiser never looked so cool.

the dodgers have a strong history of developing guys named clayton from texas, and i am hoping that becomes a trend with this guy in the pipeline

i think that 2021 bowman chrome refractor of clayton beeter (who hails from fort worth) is my first card of the dodgers' 2nd round pick in the 2020 draft.

here are a couple of cody bellinger highlights from 2021 topps

and the gold label mookie betts insert from 2021 topps update.

all were easily identifiable and needs!

the one card that made me tilt my head was this one:

i was not familiar with the topps future stars club, but a quick check of comc let me know that this is a thing and more digging revealed that it's one of topps' online membership offerings. the backs are pretty generic to the theme of the month: 

although the cartoon question (not the image) is different for each player featured.

thanks brian! always appreciate the cards you send!