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!

the almost daily dodger - andre ethier

i've been meaning to have andre ethier be the subject of one of these posts for a while now as i had quite a few of his cards languishing in my scanned folder. however, it was only after acquiring this card

that i got around to putting this post together.

that is a 2007 topps 2006 topps all-star rookie team insert or retail hanger exclusive - however you look at it. ethier's teammate russell martin was also included in the set and i have had his card for about 18 months. ethier's was much more elusive and the one i purchased (as part of the set) is the only i've seen offered for sale over the last couple of years.

it just so happens that it was my 301st andre ethier dodger card according to my inventory listed on tcdb.  here are some of the other 300 cards i have of ethier that i've added over the last few months, each of which are parallels.

2006 bowman gold parallel

2009 bowman chrome refractor parallel

2010 topps chrome refractor parallel

2011 topps marquee blue parallel

2012 topps chrome blue refractor parallel

2013 topps chrome xfractor parallel

being essentially a lifelong dodger resulted in a lot of cards, and he's shown up in a recent set or two (although i can only think of an allen & ginter set) following his retirement.

with 301 ethier cards (all as a dodger), he sits 21st in my list of players - 23 cards behind kevin brown and 33 cards ahead of ramon martinez. of course, some of those cards are duplicates in other player and/or minicollections so tcdb tells me i have only 295 unique ethier cards loaded. either way, i am behind night owl by about 20 cards in terms of the top ethier collectors on the database.

mariano rivera is in my hall of famer collection

it took a while, but i've finally added the only unanimously elected hall of famer to my hall of famer collection. here's the card representing mariano rivera in said collection:

that's a 2015 topps finest generations autograph, numbered 10/25. here's the back:

rivera took over the yankee closer role from john wetteland and elevated the position to new heights. he is baseball's all-time leader in saves with 652. he won five world series rings and was the mvp of the 1999 fall classic. he also has 42 postseason saves and a 0.70 era over 141 innings of postseason pitching. incredible. and, while he never won a cy young award, he did have five seasons in which he finished in the top 5 in terms of voting for the award.

i got to see him pitch in person just once. it was may 6, 1999 and the yankees were playing the twins at the metrodome. the game went into the 10th inning and the yankees took the lead on a ricky ledee hit. rivera came in and earned the save by getting matt lawton, brent gates, and doug mientkiewicz to each ground out. i don't have a strong memory of the inning, but baseball reference notes that two of the three groundouts were "weak" and the third one was a comebacker.

i did see the yankees play during rivera's final season - 2013 - but he did not get the call in the game that i attended. five years later, he became the first person to receive 100% of the baseball writer votes to gain election to the hall of fame.

as a reminder, you can see rivera and the rest of the players in my hall of famer collection here.

the almost daily dodger - frank howard

you don't see too many frank howard cards being produced these days, and i should have made an effort sooner to acquire this one

which is from the 2022 topps rookie of the year 75th anniversary set. i had found jackie robinson's card from the set at a card show in 2023 but continued to neglect the rest of the set. then, i found three of the other four dodgers at another card show

and decided to track down howard to complete the set.

howard, who passed away one year ago today, was the dodgers' fifth rookie of the year, and the first from their time in los angeles. his 23 home runs as a rookie in 1960 cracked the league's top ten but he wouldn't lead the league in that category until he was with the washington senators in the late 1960's.

in 1993, mike piazza passed howard by hitting 35 home runs as a rookie for the dodgers. his team record stood until cody bellinger came along in 2017 and hit 39. for two years, that was also a national league record, but then along came pete alonso. for the record, corey seager, the other dodger featured in this post, hit 26 dingers as a rookie in 2016.

bust a move

not too long ago i got an email from bo at baseball cards come to life. he said he had a sandy koufax card to trade. 

he said it was a '63 jello. and asked if i would like to own that fine fellow. i replied without a second to lose, and what comes next? a pwe trade!

here is the aforementioned koufax

classically cut by someone working with scissors in an amateur style, but it's still a 1963 sandy koufax card. as an aside, i was thankful for my dad having a paper cutter at his office where we would go to cut up the topps team card sets that i sent away for in the late 1970s and early 1980s. we didn't buy hostess products (certainly not boxes of them) so i don't recall cutting any cards off of boxes as a young collector.

the card references sandy's no-hitter against the mets and other accomplishments achieved in 1962 as he was just starting the dominance that led to him becoming the legendary pitcher he is known to have been today. sandy is approaching his 89th birthday but still looks good. he's been shown on tv at a few dodger games this past season and i hope he is able to make it out for some clayton kershaw starts next year.

unexpectedly, but not surprisingly, bo included a few more cards to keep koufax company on his way to my mailbox. he sent a few albuquerque dukes from the 1991 line drive set to get me closer to a team set. here's billy bean

and john wetteland

who are a couple of the more recognizable names from that dukes team. it's not quite the same as the 1981 dukes set which had a bunch of dodger prospects like mike marshall, greg brock, and candy maldonado. plus a pitching coach named sandy koufax, although claude osteen is in the 1991 set in the role formerly handled by koufax.

bo also included a 1990 topps kaybee kings jack morris card

this is my first look at these - i think i last went into a kaybee store in 1988 or 1989. bo saw that this card shows morris' number 47 and is a better balanced card than the 1982 fleer card i currently have in my retired number collection. i'll give this as a replacement some consideration!

thank you bo! please reach out about cards like this to trade anytime!

i didn’t expect it

the dodgers of recent years have definitely moved from the “make the postseason and anything can happen” mentality to “world series or bust” but having to play the padres in the nlds was a worst case scenario for me in terms of playoff anxiety. i have a couple of friends who are actually padre fans and they were pretty excited given how well the pads played down the stretch and i was resigned to a “bust” season given the injuries to the pitching staff. 

so getting to the nlcs was more than i figured for that version of the 2024 dodgers. even once they made it to the fall classic i was pretty nonchalant about their chances to win it all. freeman’s game 1 homer gave me hope and ice cube and clutch hits had me fired up but it was only when they went up by three games that i started to worry that it might actually slip away. ohtani’s shoulder injury in game 2 and the patchwork rotation requiring the game 4 bullpen game didn’t instill a lot of confidence. knowing that gerritt cole was waiting with game 5 made matters worse.  

even though i was traveling, i was able to follow game 5 through various means and ultimately watch the bottom of the ninth from the delta sky club at lax with some other displaced dodger fans. seeing walker buehler strike out alex verdugo was glorious.

so it’s another commissioner’s trophy for the dodgers 

and there can be no denying by the 2020 naysayers like verdugo that this one is legit. beating the yankees in the postseason is the best dodger baseball there is and now the franchises are even head to head in my lifetime. 

by the way, hearing vin scully’s 1988 game 1 call imposed on video of freeman’s at bat was and is spectacular. to steal another scully call, if you have a sombrero throw it to the sky!