actually, the biblical reference to false prophets is not the right allusion for this post. this is more about masqueraders. you all know how much i treasure the o-pee-chee team variations, and i enjoy finding other similar type cards to add to my dodger collection.
case in point, i discovered while entering my dodger collection on tcdb that i was missing a card from my checklist of dodgers included in the 1986 true value super stars set - bill madlock's card:
once i saw that it was, in fact, a dodger card, i couldn't obtain it quickly enough. he is clearly a pirate, but also a dodger.
similarly, eric davis' 1992 topps kids card
uses the old o-pee-chee "now with" angle. eric the red dodger!
this 1994 donruss triple play delino deshields card
manuel barrios became a dodger thanks to the mike piazza trade, and donruss was able to get some text on his 1998 donruss card to reflect that status
it shows manny ramirez as all dodger, while matt holliday is straddling the line between colorado rockie and oakland athletic.
barrios pitched in one game for the dodgers before he was dfa'd and claimed by the marlins. i seem to recall that interim gm tommy lasorda may have taken some heat for barrios' departure (on a procedural level) but barrios never pitched in the big leagues again, so no harm no foul.
kevin brown is all padre on the front of this 1999 upper deck ovation card
but i assure you that on the back, there is a nice looking dodgers logo. just like the one on the front of this 2007 upper deck first edition juan pierre leading off insert
fun juan pierre trivia - he played in 821 consecutive games (a streak that ended during his dodger tenure) which is in the top ten all-time, except in one of those games he appeared only as a pinch runner so i guess mlb says it doesn't count and instead he has two streaks of 386 and 434 consecutive games played. doesn't make sense to me - he played in the game so it should count.
here's one where upper deck tried to make a card more of a dodger card than it really is
that's a 1998 upper deck collector's choice starquest insert of eddie murray, who was back for his second stint in la. he is wearing an indians or orioles uniform however, although the name and number on the back have been colorized to blue.
i also include cards of "outbound" dodgers in my dodger collection such as this 1998 donruss todd zeile card
which is a perfect companion to the barrios card above.
and then there is this 2005 donrus throwback threads card of hideo nomo
who is officially listed as a tampa bay devil ray.
here's another one - a 2006 fleer flair showcase wave of the future card of cody ross
who is a dodger playing in cincinnati.
i also recently picked up this card from 2009 upper deck a piece of history for the collection
there are other cards that are quite sneaky and escape my knowledge for decades before i become aware of their dodgerness, like this 1971 dell todays ted sizemore
definitely a dodger on the front
but a cardinal on the back. the dodger album features al downing as a brewer as far as the photo goes, but dick allen is shown in a dodger uniform so i just assumed that sizemore would have been shown wearing the cardinal get up. i was wrong and just happened to stumble upon an image of this item a couple of months ago.
speaking of allen, he was included in the 1971 kellogg's set
while sizemore was not. in this set, allen is still a cardinal until you turn the card over!
that's a dodger card for sure.
That Dick Allen card is the trickiest of the bunch. At least there's a logo on it, albeit on the back. The logo-less cards, like the Madlock and Davis, make it easy to miss the Dodger affiliation.
ReplyDeleteThis is the kind of thing that would drive me nuts if I was a team collector. It'd be so weird having to track down so many Dodger-adjacent cards like these.
ReplyDeleteIf a guy is clearly depicted in a different uniform on the card (like the Cody Ross), then I put it under that jersey in my team binders. Ones like the Kevin Brown & Hideo Nomo are trickier - since the logos are mostly obscured, those would probably count as Dodger cards for me.
So many of these have snuck by me over the years because I always go by the jersey the player is wearing, while TCDB is the opposite. So if there's a line of Red Sox in a set but one player got traded to, say, Cincinnati.. I have to go find that card because TCDB won't list it under Red Sox :/
ReplyDeleteI never know how to treat these! Also never knew that True Value had cards, I hadn't seen those. Very cool!
ReplyDeleteI've discovered a good amount of these: Allen, Nomo, Pierre, Brown, Barrios and I believe DeShields. I'll have to get that Davis but don't know if I'll bother with the Madlock. Those things are a pain to get into pages.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason this made me think of that old Bazooka set that came out in the mid-90s. I know that's not the intent of this post, but it just dredged up a random old card memory.
ReplyDeleteMasqueraders sure make an interesting topic for a blog post... but down inside I'm always a little bummed to see a card feature a photo that doesn't match the name or team logo on the card.
ReplyDeleteSome of these would go by me completely unnoticed. Like other, I tend to see the jersey and just assume that that's the team being represented.
ReplyDelete