a moment for fernando valenzuela

i woke up this morning to the news that fernando valenzuela had passed away. it was surprising but not surprising at the same time, as the dodgers had announced late in the season that fernando was stepping away from his role with the club for health reasons, and the last time i saw him on screen (at dusty baker's legends of dodger baseball induction in august) he did not look well.

there have already been so many tribute pieces written and video compilations published so i won't say much other than fernando was one of those players that made me happy to be a dodger fan. growing up where i did i think it was perhaps the first time i saw the power of representation, without understanding what that meant.

i am glad i was able to see him pitch in person a couple of times, and i will never forget nearly running into him in the concourse at dodger stadium as he was being escorted to one of the pregame autograph tables in the early 1980's. as for my collection, he is one of the few dodgers not included in the 1978 topps set of whom i seek out their non-dodger cards, and there are a few of his cards that are also in my "favorite cards of the year" minicollection. his 1981 fleer card

is one of them. that card, along with his 1981 topps rookie card

were such hot commodities in my neighborhood that even the neighbors who were giant and yankee fans were coveting them.

i had these two 1982 o-pee-chee stickers 

in my scanned folder, and this is the newest valenzuela card in my collection

that is a 2017 panini donruss masters of the game insert that sluggo sent to me in our most recent trade.

rest in peace, fernando, but viva fernandomania!

oddballs and ends

here are some dodger oddballs i picked up not too long ago from a few different sportlot sellers. filling out orders to maximize shipping benefit is a lot easier for team collectors with the site's database revisions - you can sort seller inventory by team!

this is a 1983 post super sugar crisp dodger team card

and the back contains a summary of the franchise's history

it is weird to think of a time when pee wee reese and don drysdale weren't in the hall of fame, but it was "just" 40 years ago that they were so honored, and this cereal insert predates that! when will there be cards in cereal boxes again? 

this is a 1993 metz - not mets - baking card of darryl strawberry

it is clearly a dodger card and not a met card.  metz baking company was founded in the 1920's in iowa and grew to be the largest baking company in the midwest. from what i can tell it's been bought out and resold since these cards were produced.

i completed my dodgers 1981 permagraphics team sets with the addition of fernando valenzuela's all-star card 

and a steve garvey credit card beyond the one that is in my garvey pc

apparently there are variations of these cards in terms of how they are numbered on the back

but i think the garveys i have are the same. i also have one of these that garvey actually signed in the autograph spot on the back.

finally, i picked up this 1981 fleer dodger sticker

it has the 1980 all-star game on the back, which features the game played at dodger stadium. i have one of those backs in my dodger stadium mini-collection, and i am pretty sure i have this sticker as part of the 1981 fleer set i put together in real time 43 years ago.

i still need a couple of stickers to complete the team set, so i will be oddball hunting again in the future i am sure.

a moment for vic davalillo, players from my youth, and the new dodger dh

i read last wednesday that vic davalillo passed away, and it made me pause.

thanks to his incredible, rally starting, two-out bunt in the 9th inning of game 3 of the 1977 nlcs and his inclusion in the 1978 topps set as a dodger, i got to know davalillo at the very beginning of my fandom and collecting days. he didn't play a lot, but he was a dodger and there was cardboard evidence of that fact, so he was respected and celebrated in my collection.

i have all of davalillo's major manufacturer cards (issued in the us, anyway), as his entire topps flagship run 

is encapsulated in my "evolution of the 1978 topps dodgers" mini-collection, and his 1981 fleer offering

is in my dodger collection. there are one or two venezuelan releases that i wouldn't mind adding to the collection, but i haven't ever made it a priority.

davalillo is the sixth member of the 1978 topps dodgers to pass away. preceding him were glenn burke (1995), johnny oates (2004), lance rautzhan (2016), tom lasorda (2021), and don sutton (2021). time marches on, but it is still a bit of a thing to see these players whose cardboard i coveted back then pass away.

shifting to another way of looking at the 1978 topps set, i get excited when i can complete the immaculate grid using only players who appeared in that set. it is always my goal to use as many as i can, and there was a two day stretch last week where i was able to do so:

with davalillo getting center square in saturday's grid! as of now, that second one has a score of 8, which would be my second lowest ever.

finally, i would be remiss if i didn't mention the 700 million dollar man, shohei ohtani. i feel for angel fans who will now see ohtani suit up for the dodgers, but not enough to not be excited about ohtani joining the dodgers. here are some 2018 topps update cards i have of ohtani

with the last one being the most valuable, i guess, since it's a rainbow foil parallel. the dodgers still need pitching for the 2024 season (ohtani can't help them there), but it's a good start to a longer term benefit. i suppose my team break costs for 2024 just went up. way up.

who's coming to dinner?

i recall reading back during the second bush administration that the president arranged for a lunch or dinner at the white house that included a number of baseball hall of famers. i believe he made it an annual event and so was able to spend time with a large number of the greatest baseball players from the 1950s through the 1990s. there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that i would do the exact same thing if i were ever in a position to do so.

it's a play on the old question of who you would invite to dinner if you could invite anyone. sometimes, the "dead or alive" option is granted, and i think i will apply that to this exercise.

like michael scott, let's say that i only have six wine glasses so here are the five baseball dignitaries i would invite to join me for dinner.

vin scully

this is a no-brainer. scully would serve as the emcee - keeping the conversation going while staying quiet when others are carrying the conversation. and, he had stories for days about the game.

pete rose

i was at a couple of hot stove dinners that rose attended back in the late 70s and early 80s, and i remember him commenting at one of them that it had turned in to a mild roast. the other players were sharing some benign stories about rose, and i would love to hear his side of those stories as well as others that probably weren't fit for a hot stove crowd. one of my favorite pete rose quotes comes from george will's "men at work" where pete says during a moment of severe turbulence on a team flight something along the lines of "we're going down but at least i have a .300 lifetime average - what do you have?" it would be a blast, i think, to hear more stories from rose.

steve garvey

another no-brainer for me as a fan, although they say never meet your heroes. i would definitely run the risk with the garv. i would love to ask him about a few things and maybe even bring up don sutton or the 1981 world series mvp announcement that initially had him as a co-winner and not steve yeager.

jackie robinson

robinson would bring some gravitas to the dinner, i think, but i would want to focus on the on-field activities and hear about playing in the 1950's. sometimes i wonder if because of who he was and what he represented, jackie's playing experience and record lacks the level of respect it deserves.

lou gehrig

gehrig would bring the pre-war perspective to the party. i've been a fan of him since reading a biography back in elementary school. he may turn out to be a boring guest, but i would take that chance.

others i thought of in the first minute or so of this exercise

dusty baker

rickey henderson

old ross hadbourn

joe jackson

ty cobb

sandy koufax

tommy lasorda

and did i consider inviting jim tracy

just to ask him what the heck he was thinking with his lineups back in 2005? yes i did. these days, i don't care so much about tracy and his band of ja(y)sons, but 18 years ago he may have made the invite list.

not sure if this is "bat around" material, but i'd be interested in hearing your ideas for baseball dinner party guests. happy thanksgiving no matter who your dinner guests are!

i'll take dodger potpourri for $100

i watch jeopardy pretty regularly, and back in early august old friend davey lopes showed up in one of the clues

the answer, of course, is "what are stolen bases?". or, if you are recent champ matt amodio, it's "what's stolen bases?".  here's davey's 1981 fleer card

on which he was referred to as "davy". i found this card in a lot of dodger cards that i bought on a whim a few months ago. i mentioned this purchase in a recent post that showed the 2008 topps heritage chuck essegian "real one" autograph that was included in the purchase. that essegian plus a couple of other relic, autograph, and serial numbered cards were the only ones fully shown in the photos, although there was more information in the description. at any rate, the lopes was not among the hundreds of cards described, but i lucked out and found that it was actually the "finger" variation that i needed!

it's a super dumb variation/error that i had never intended to chase until someone sent me the ron cey card with the same mark in the lower right corner. i half-heartedly added it to my want list and it arrived without warning. sweet.

one of the other autograph cards shown was this 2012 panini cooperstown maury wills famous moments card

that i was eager to add, even though it is a sticker auto.

there was a manufactured sandy koufax historical stitches patch from 2012 topps

but the big ticket item was this 2011 topps jackie robinson topps 60 relic card

super cool.

there were other jackie robinson cards that i needed, such as this 2021 topps legends of baseball insert

on which he is suttoning.  here's a 2011 topps cmg worldwide vintage reprint

and a 2011 topps 60 years of topps insert

which uses his fantastic 1952 topps card. that card also shows up on this 2021 topps doubleheader insert

and again (with some friends) to complete my 2002 topps chrome 1952 world series insert set

jackie was also one of a few 2011 topps lineage parallels that i needed

along with other dodger hall of famers sandy koufax, roy campanella, and duke snider.  here are three more snider cards that were keepers for me:

those cards come from 2005 topps gallery, 2012 topps (golden giveaway golden moments die-cut), and 2012 topps archives.

there were a bunch of 2013 topps chasing history inserts, including these three holofoil versions that i needed

two of which feature sandy koufax. speaking of koufax, i was able to add a few other cards to my collection:

some gypsy queen framed parallels, a 2011 topps lineage stand-up insert, a 2013 topps "the greats" insert, a 2013 topps heritage baseball flashback insert (on which topps commits the sin of coloring the dodger uniform number blue), and some gq and an a&g mini.

there were other minis, too, of different colors and releases:

and a bunch of single card needs.  just a fun box to go through.

one of the cards i found was a 2003 donruss the rookies rickey henderson card

i suppose this set was sort of donruss' update set.

i completed my 2005 topps dem bums insert set through this purchase. one of the cards i needed was carl furillo's

and there it was!

a couple of dodger team cards were keepers, too - the first from 2005 topps heritage

and the second from 2007 topps. the first one is for the team set, and the second goes in the dodger stadium mini-collection.

this 2010 topps national chicle roy campanella sp card

completed my team set. it's a bit disturbing to see campy in a modern jersey and batting helmet, let alone the los angeles nature of it all.  i do still "need" most of the bazooka back variations, but there was one in the box (pee wee reese)

along with a 2013 topps heritage josh beckett venezuelan parallel (fronts not pictured).

more recent dodgers were represented, too, and i added a 2011 topps finest matt kemp card

to the collection.

this 2012 panini cooperstown red barber voices of summer insert

completes the team set (i already had vin scully's card), as did this 2012 upper deck goodwin champions card of charles ebbets

but this 2013 panini golden age card of gil hodges

didn't come with the other two cards (branch rickey and jake daubert) that i needed to be done with this base set.

i thought i went for the rainbow back in 2012 with dee gordon's topps card because of its double play image (with a lurking chipper jones), 

but i guess i failed to track down a gold parallel. not a problem anymore!

finally, here is another one of the numbered cards that was included - a 2001 donruss orel hershiser rookie reprint

numbered to 1985. donruss reprinted this card again in 2005, but without the 20th anniversary foil stamp. it's confusing because the 20th anniversary stamp here could refer to 1985 in 2005 or 1981 in 2001. so, good on donruss for not stamping the 2005 versions.

very happy that i took a chance on this lot! have you ever purchased a lot of team cards like this?