remembering a legend

i was hoping against hope that i'd be able to include fernando valenzuela's election to the hall of fame in this post, but the eras committee didn't vote for him to be inducted. i was surprised that he was even considered to be honest, but once his name was on the ballot i thought that there might have been a path to selection. why else have his name added to this ballot if there weren't something beyond his hall of very good statistics?

what i do have is his topps living set card

that i bought sometime during the fall of 2025. i have a handful of these cards featuring various dodger subjects and should probably seek out some others. it's nice to see fernando included in the set and even better to see an image of him with his big hair and comparatvely small hat.

another card that i picked up later last year related to fernando was this 2025 bowman chrome yoshinobu yamamoto mojo refractor

i actually bought two copies of that card so that i could put one in my memorials collection. yamamoto is sporting the black patch that the dodgers wore in memory of fernando during the 2025 season. while they also wore the patch during the 2024 world series (i have blake treinen's card featured in this post in my collection to mark that occurrence) we know that this card features a photo from 2025 because of the gold adorned jersey and world series champion patch that yamamoto is sporting.

this is the first time that the dodgers have had a memorial span seasons. jim gilliam's patch was worn only during the 1978 world series as the team did not carry it over into 1979, but i am glad that they honored fernando for the entire 2025 season. the yankees did a similar thing for thurman munson in 1979 and 1980 and yogi berra in 2015 and 2016, as did the cardinals for august busch jr in 1989 and 1990 although i don't have any examples of the 1989 memorial. 

regardless of hall of fame status, fernando remains an icon of the sport. viva fernandomania!

a '54 shuffle

last week i showed the card that represents 2025 topps in my "flagship through the years" colleciton, and four years ago i showed the cards that represent topps' baseball releases from 1952 through 1959 that collection.

today i am sharing that the card representing 1954 topps has been switched out. the o'brien brothers are out, and mel parnell is in.

parnell's card is a nice example of the 1954 topps set. here's the back:

had there been a cy young award in 1949, it may well have been parnell to win it with his 25 wins and 2.78 (bbref says 2.77) era. it is also interesting to consider that parnell accepted help from a fan - pretty sure that wouldn't happen today.

so, the reason that i've made this swap is that my sampler sets are back in play and i wanted the o'brien card as a "combo" card example from the set. i'll have more to say about my samplers in the coming months, but you might recall that they were cards that i acquired from topps flagship sets that i had not completed and they represented the different teams, subsets, and other various elements of those sets.

i have a different card representing the red sox and the blue background in my 1954 sampler set, but parnell round his way to become a part of my "permanent" collection anyway.