poser

i was looking through cards in my scanned folder over the weekend and i noticed a few duke snider cards in there. i've posted this one before

it's from 2004 topps tribute and shows snider in the latter brooklyn dodger years with his hands on his knees. then i noticed another card, this one from 2005 donruss signature series

that shows him in the same pose. it's clearly a different photo, but the same pose.

then i saw his 2012 topps tribute and triple threads cards (bronze and sepia, respectively)

and again noted the similar poses in different photos.

none of this is shocking, as there are only so many poses that players can strike (like suttoning), and with the proliferation of card releases we are seeing more photos - or more of the same photo.  this 2021 topps finest legacies insert

recycles one of the snider images and pairs it with a cody bellinger action shot.

action shots are the name of the game these days outside of sets like allen & ginter and parts of stadium club. i wouldn't mind a few more posed shots (with their natural background unlike heritage sets from the recent past) mixed in. 

tommy john is in my hall of famer collection

with jim kaat's induction into cooperstown, i've decided to move tommy john into my hall of famer collection. here's his 1999 fleer sports illustrated greats of the game autograph collection card which represents him the collection:

and here's the back:

because it shows john as a dodger (which is mostly how i remember him), this is the second version of this card in my collection.

i recognize that kaat was elected by the "golden era" committee and john was previously subjected to the "modern era" committee (it wasn’t clear to me whether john would be considered today under the "classic baseball era" committee or the "contemporary baseball era" committee as 1980 is the dividing line between the two but the recent announcement from the hall of fame noting that john would be on the classic era committee’s ballot next month makes it clear now) but to me they were peers who pitched for a long time and fell short of the magic 300-win milestone. nolan ryan is the only person whose career spanned more seasons than john's, and only ryan and john had longer careers than kaat. both john and kaat lost some time to injuries during their primes, and both bounced back (john from the revolutionary ligament replacement surgery that bears his name) to excel at the highest level.

over the course of their careers, john won 288 games and kaat 283, although john remained a starter to the end while kaat spent the last few years as a reliever. john had fewer losses and a lower era even though he pitched about 180 more innings than kaat, while kaat had more strikeouts and complete games. both received cy young consideration at times, with john twice placing second in the voting. looking at modern analytics, john has kaat bested in both bwar and fwar.

considered independently, john is a hall of very good pitcher who pitched for a long time and has a unique place in baseball history as a guinea pig of sorts. i didn't see him as a hall of famer unlike, say, bert blyleven, who also fell short of 300 wins but retired with the third highest strikeout total in history. however, with kaat's election, i believe that the door is open for john and am not really sure what the criteria would be to keep him out at this point other than the subjectivity of era committee voters. time will tell, as even 35 years after a career came to an end there is hope.

remember, you can find my hall of famer collection in its entirety here at my want list site.

mirror refraction

if it wasn't topps or upper deck, i pretty much ignored it during the 1990's. as such, i missed out on the bowman craze, although i did finally buy a pack of 1992 bowman in 1997 for too much money. and yes, i know bowman is made by topps, but it is separated in my mind even as i consider stadium club to be "topps stadium club" and finest to be "topps finest" unlike most collector reference materials. at any rate, i have no recollection of when i first learned about bowman's best, but i do know that finding refractor parallels was not easy.

these days, there are traders like sluggo who send me things, and one card that arrived recently was this 1997 bowman's best mirror image refractor parallel

it's more of a craig biggio card than a wilton guerrero card, but i'll take it! and wait - there's more

chuck knoblauch and donnie sadler are featured, too.

projecting rookies, or even young players in general, is always tough, and neither guerrero nor sadler came close to the accomplishments of biggio or knoblauch, but they still had careers that spanned several seasons. these cards are snapshots in time and i am glad to have this one in my collection

the other dodger rookies in this set are paul konerko who was paired with mark mcgwire, and adrian beltre who shared space with chipper jones. not sure if i will ever find those refractors.

thanks sluggo!

meaningful to the max

i had meant to add a max meyer card to my "meaningful and just because" collection a while back, and then i found this 2023 topps red foil parallel

showed up at a show and now here we are.

he missed all of 2023 but returned in 2024 and started the season fairly strong. he was sent down but returned later in the season but finished the year on the injured list if i recall correctly. with all the changes going on in miami, i assume meyer is still a part of their future plans but only time will tell.

the reason i wanted one of his cards is that he is from the city in which i live, and my son played against him in travel ball and high school. not good results, but there is no shame in being a strikeout victim of a future major leaguer! as for me, i don't recall facing any future big league pitchers, but i was teammates with one and once struck out a future dodger minor leaguer while in babe ruth baseball. i should find one of that guy's cards for my collection!

sometimes it doesn't cut both ways

a few months ago, i ordered this 1992 topps archives bazooka 4-in-1 card from an online seller

it features jackie robinson and his fantastic 1953 topps card, but the card itself is terribly miscut. the seller used stock images as i recall, so i didn't know that the one i would receive would be this off centered. it wasn't worth returning, and it doesn't bother me to keep this card in my dodger collection.

the reason for the post is that i was amazed to turn the card over and see this:

the back is pretty well centered!

i suppose it makes sense depending on how cards were printed but it was still a surprise given most of the other miscuts i've seen. the only one like it that i can think of having seen is this 1982 o-pee-chee len barker card

that i found in a dime box a long time ago. it has quite the reverse problem

and this is why you turn cards over!

with a name like that, there better be three

with trey treutel leaving cardboard connection several months ago, i haven't found it as easy to keep up with new card releases. i know ryan cracknell has the same sort of calendar going at beckett that trey had at cardboard connection, but for whatever reason i find it harder to review routinely.

what i am getting at is that i didn't know there was such a set as 2023 leaf trinity until i started seeing cards show up in my saved steve garvey searches on ebay. this was in the latter half of 2024, mind you, and it seems like the release of the set has been staggered in terms of card packaging because a couple of months after picking up my first card from the set, i started to see other types of cards (unique to certain box types) show up. really weird.

anyway, i wound up with three cards from the set. the first one i picked up was this "divinity" autograph card of steve garvey

the divinity cards are sticker autos and it looks like they have a max print run of 10, so i was glad to find this at a nice price.

when the other cards started showing up, i decided to buy this "steel" insert

which is actually a "stars and dots" parallel. or at least that is what the seller said. kudos to leaf for using two different garvey photos, even if they are pretty similar.  here's the back

which mentions garvey's unsuccessful senate run and shows that the print run is 49 for this particular parallel.

the third card i added was this one

dual steves! a steve sax and steve garvey "duos" dual autograph card! this is the platinum parallel, and features a third different image of the garv! these cards were some of the first i saw from the set, but i waited quite a while before one popped up with a favorable buy it now price.

ok, so i decided not to limit myself to three cards from the trinity set, as i figured i should probably own garvey's base card

even though it features the same photo as the divinity card. the back has the same writeup as the steel card above

but the steel card is not a parallel of the base card. speaking of the steel parallels, i've seen a bunch more pop up recently but i am holding my ground and not even thinking about adding more. yet.

how greats is this?!

not too long ago, i was able to score a trio of autograph cards for my dodger collection. they come from one of my favorite retired player sets of all-time, 2001 fleer greats of the game. here are roger craig, joe black, and preacher roe

it was great to see fleer include these players, black and roe in particular, in a few sets during the early part of the century as they didn't get a whole lot of cardboard time prior to then.

black (the 1952 national league rookie of the year) and roe were teammates in brooklyn from 1952 through 1954 (roe was there starting in 1948), and craig and black were teammates for a short time in 1955 prior to black being traded to cincinnati.

with these three cards, i am down to only needing two to complete my team set of autographs from this particular release. of course, the two i need are duke snider and tommy lasorda, the latter of whom i believe is a short print. onward!

things really were pretty bad in '92

the 1992 dodgers were the worst team in franchise history other than a couple of the brooklyn superbas teams from earlier in the century. they lost 99 games and had the worst record in the league for only the second time in franchise history. in fact, they had the worst record in the majors but still missed out on the first overall pick (alex rodriguez) due to the stupid alternating league rule at the time.

as a reminder of how bad this team was, there were no dodger pitchers in 1992 with a winning record, mike sharperson was the team's all-star representative, and only one player had double digit home run totals. sure, that was rookie of the year eric karros, but still.

this 1993 donruss long ball leaders card of darryl strawberry

is a recent addition to my collection, and it shares some information about the dodgers' ineptitude in 1992 on the back:

72 home runs as a team is pretty poor. after karros and his 20 homers, the next highest total on the team belonged to mitch webster and dave hansen with six apiece. thankfully, mike piazza would show up the next season to start launching baseballs all over the place.

by the way, even though this is a fairly sad dodger card thanks to strawberry being "plagued by injuries" and the display of the dodgers' home run ineptitude, i need another one of these for the dodger stadium collection - can you help a blogger out?

if it looks like a dodger and quacks like a dodger...

here's another card that i pulled from brian's dime box at that recent church show.

it's a 1982 tcma greatest hitters card of joe "ducky" medwick. i noticed that medwick was shown on the card as a dodger, as he played for brooklyn at two different points (dodger double dipper!) in the 1940's. i noted that i had the complete greatest hitters set (still missing the burleigh grimes greatest pitchers card, and it's currently one of my most wanted cards) but that you don't see cards of medwick as a dodger too often. i referred to the action packed card (shown in that same post linked above) that shows him as a dodger but is catalogued in every team checklist i have ever seen (other than my own) as a cardinal card.

well, i got home and discovered that this card is also catalogued as a cardinal card, even though the dodger uniform is plain as day! so, i re-completed my dodger team set. as far as i know, anyway.

here's a bonus tcma card that i also grabbed from brian's dime box - a 1977-84 tcma renata galasso wilbert robinson card

actually that is not a dodger, but a robin. which i suppose, tweets and doesn't quack. still, it goes in the dodger collection. truthfully, the robins nickname was a play on robinson's name, as he was their skipper for 18 seasons and led them to the franchise's first two pennants.

with today being veterans day, i took a look and neither of these men served in the military, although medwick did go on a1944 uso tour to europe. as for robinson, he was born during the civil war and was in his fifties at the height of world war i. there are plenty of other veterans out there to acknowledge today and every day - thank you!

is that a name or a doctor's eye chart?

just as i did with "yastrzemski", i taught myself to spell "grudzielanek" through card collecting. i didn't necessarily think of him as a favorite, but topps included mark grudzielanek in the fan favorites autograph issue within 2020 topps archives. i finally picked up one of the cards for just a few bucks.

it looks like he gives up on the auto after "grudz".

i did like the dodgers' acquisition of him back in 1998 as i had seen enough of wilton guerrero. he was fairly productive as a dodger until he was dealt to the cubs after the 2002 season. i believe that harry caray did not enjoy saying his last name (let alone spelling it) and called him "g-man" instead.

two of grudzielanek's teammates - eric karros and shawn green - have also been featured as dodger fan favorites in these archives autograph subsets, and i am looking forward to seeing if there are any included this year. is it too much to hope for a certified fan favorites andre ethier or russell martin auto?

almost forgot - shoutout to paul westerberg for the title/lyric!

one last time

the nhl season is in full swing, but that's not why i am featuring this 1993-94 opc premier luc robitaille card

yes, it is a card of my favorite hockey player, and one that i did not previously own, but it's not one that i sought out. rather, it came from my dad.

during a recent visit, we were going through photos and books and other things and this card was among the other items. it was completely out of place and my dad had no idea where it came from. whether or not it was originally meant for me (he never collected individual hockey cards - just sets) it didn't matter, as he gave it to me now. he had previously handed over his collection to me in the fall of 2018, so this will almost certainly be the last card that i receive from him.

our collecting adventure began when i gifted him a 1966 topps jim lefebvre card for his birthday in 1979 or 1980. lefebvre was his favorite player you see, and i was so into baseball cards that i thought it would make for a nice gift. my dad thought so, too, and although he had supported my hobby by taking me to the lcs and some card conventions, soon we were collecting together.

at some point i will take some of the hockey sets that he bought back in the early 1980's in for grading and see what happens with the gretzky and lemiuex rookies. for now, finding luc and having a conversation with him about our collecting days is enough.

base set bs

even with the proliferation of sets, it's always nice as a team collector to complete a team set. that's why it is so frustrating when card companies make it difficult to do so thanks to short printing or other shenanigans. 

i get that high numbers are scarce in many vintage sets, but there were no separate series in topps sets during the latter part of the 1970's, so why are short prints still a thing in topps heritage sets? sure, scarcity drives some collectors, but in a set like heritage it is just annoying. here's a 2024 topps heritage short print of freddie freeman

that i bought from a third party meaning topps gained no advantage from me by making this card and most of the other first 100 cards short prints. the freeman completes my team set and that makes me happy.

topps big league is another current set that uses short prints, thanks to its tiered checklist. i only have the foil and the "rare" blue foil cards in terms of upper tiered dodgers, including max muncy

and will smith

what makes this tiered system even more bs is that shohei ohtani has a regular base card but is also featured in the "super rare" red foil part of the checklist. nonsense.

back in the early 2000's, every card company was playing along with short prints as part of base sets. in some cases, like with 2002 upper deck diamond connection, these cards were numbered as seen on the danny mota and jose diaz cards below

there are a bunch of these and i am nowhere near a complete dodger team set for this release. i am somewhat closer with 2002 upper deck sp authentic now that i have this jose diaz card

but being three cards closer isn't really enough to make me go out and track down the other three cards. two of those cards are autographed which is a whole other level to base set abuse.

bowman and topps chrome were some of the notable offenders of this trend, along with other upper deck sets like 2007 spx which included this delwyn young rookie signatures card 

as a base card.

and, it hasn't just affected me as a team collector. i've only attempted to complete one topps heritage set - 2001 - and i consider it complete even though i don't have many of the high number short prints. and then there is the case of 2003 upper deck vintage. i've long considered my set to be complete as i have all the regular cards and short prints, other than the super short printed 3-d sluggers. i have several of them, but not all. 

most recently, i was able to add carlos delgado's card

but most of the others are usually priced beyond my interest level. these should have been inserts!

i like shiny cards and i like numbered cards and i like autographed cards. i just don't like them as base cards.

is this the proper use of the phrase?

oh snap!

just a month or so after i wondered if the initial brooks robinson memorial patch worn by the orioles on september 27, 2003 would make its way to cardboard, topps released 2024 pristine. that release included this card

which shows the orange number 5 on his right sleeve.

the phrase "oh snap!" is defined as an expression of surprise or dismay. maybe not exactly what i was feeling when i saw the card, but maybe it applied to my feeling when i saw the initial prices for the insert. $20? oh snap!

i waited a while and got one for much less, and now i have updated this post. for the record, the back of the card tells the story of henderson doubling in a game for a second time when all he needed was a single for the cycle. needed a single, hit a double. oh snap!

the 17 year itch

after completing the 1992, 1993, and 1994 topps dodgers gold parallel team sets (and seeing night owl's complete 2008 topps series 1 and 2 dodgers gold parallel team set), i figured that it was time to complete a numbered gold parallel team set, and i decided that it would be 2007 topps. i chose that set mainly because it has big, chunky borders that allow for a lot of color, but also it does not include any rookie or early career clayton kershaw cards that i missed out on in real time!

i had maybe a third of the team set when i started, and it took me a few months to pull it all together, but i managed.  so, here is the complete 2007 topps gold parallel dodger team set

j.d. drew, andre ethier, rafael furcal

jeff kent, james loney, jonathan broxton

brad penny, grady little, delwyn young

greg maddux, juan pierre, jason schmidt

matt kemp, randy wolf, luis gonzalez

takashi saito, russell martin, wilson betemit

derek lowe, chad billingsley, ramon martinez

dodger team card

 

but that's not all - i also completed the update team set

brady clark, david wells, mark hendrickson

olmaedo saenz, hong-chih kuo, tony abreu

andy laroche, russell martin, brad penny

takashi saito, russell martin (alex rodriguez) combo, russell martin (cole hamels) combo

scott proctor

the proctor card was the last of these that i acquired. there weren't too many options when it came to purchasing the vagabond reliever's card, but thankfully one of the two sellers who had high hopes with their buy-it-now prices sent an offer that was pretty reasonable and i was able to complete the set.

there are a lot of "let's remember some guys" up there, but i remember being pretty happy with kemp and martin and ethier showing up. luis gonzalez not so much. and, as you can see, there are definitely some differences in the pigmentation of the gold across the collection.

another difference is the numbering on the back. topps switched the orientation of the serial numbering between flagship series 1 and 2 and update. ramon martinez is from series 2 and olmedo saenz is from update

ok, so it's hard to see, but on the flagship card, the 2007 is closest to the topps logo, and in update it's closest to the player inset photo. and, how great is it that topps noted each of these as "gold parallel" on the back?!

with the black borders, topps was in need of a different treatment for the other-colored border parallels (this was before camo /25 and all that). they went with copper

which was numbered to 56

the low print run black border parallels debuted in 2003 and were numbered to 52 copies. since then they have increased in production by one to match the "years of collecting" on the front. as far as i can tell, 2007 is the only year that the border for these cards hasn't been black.

i have no plans to chase the copper parallel set, but i do have more 17 year itch to scratch. stay tuned!