four on one

first up - r.i.p. tommy davis. owner of one of the greatest offensive seasons (1962) in franchise history. i hope the franchise recognizes him this year. take a trip down the path of his career with this post.

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earlier this year i shared a 1989 donruss card that was new to my dodger stadium collection. it featured three prominent team logos in the card design, hat and jacket. gtt wondered about the greatest number of logos on a single card, and i responded that i assumed there was a card somewhere with four of the same logo - card design, hat, jersey and patch or jacket.

i wound up taking a cursory look through a few different sets to see if i could prove myself correct. most teams don't repeat their hat logo on their their jerseys, so i focused on just a handful of teams. i started with fleer and donruss cards that included the team logo on the cards and pretty quickly came close to four full logos.

here's a 1988 donruss baseball's best david wells card

there are four blue jay beaks visible - card design, hat, jacket, and jersey just barely visible under the jacket.

this 1993 donruss mcdonald's expos card of gene mauch

would get us closer to four if donruss had used an expos logo in the card design.

i've had this 1990 fleer update oil can boyd card 

in my dodger stadium collection for a while. like the wells card above, it has just over three logos - card design, hat, jacket and the tip of the "m" on a shirt under the jacket.

it didn't take long to find this 1984 mike vail card

card design logo - check.

hat logo - check

jersey logo - check

equipment bag/box logo - check

that is the cleanest four logos on one card example that i found.  i did find some cards that i added to my collection as a result of this review, so that's a bonus.

1986 fleer bryn smith

if you count tim wallach back there in the background, there are five "m" expos logos on this card. i bought this card for it's dodger stadium background though. i am surprised that it wasn't already in that collection as i used to collect bryn smith cards (he's from my neck of the woods) and he has a few other dodger stadium cards in my collection already.

the phillies were another team i checked on, thanks to their "p" logo. i didn't find any cards with four logos on one, but i did find and purchase a 1987 donruss opening day juan samuel card

and a 1988 fleer mike jackson card

for the dodger stadium collection. the colors are inverted, but i still consider the jackson card to have three logos on it.

i didn't seek out mets cards for this exercise, but a few did pop up that featured dodger stadium in the background. welcome to the collection 1989 donruss all-stars gary carter

and 1988 donruss bonus mvp darryl strawberry!

i saw the strawberry when i took a closer look at the 1988 donruss bonus mvp set thanks to this card

the cubs were another of the teams that i looked in to, and this card does feature four cub logos, but they are different. one could maybe make an argument about the "c" being the same in three of the logos, but the actual bear cub logo on the left sleeve disqualifies it altogether. i still bought this card because it features andre dawson at the 1987 all-star game in oakland. standing to his right is a dodger that i am fairly confident is orel hershiser. that's good enough for me to put this in the lurker collection!

anyone have any other four logos on one card examples?

finally finalized final tributes

i was a bit annoyed with topps in 1988 when i discovered that steve garvey wasn't in the set. he hadn't played since may of 1987, missing the remainder of the season following surgery to repair a torn biceps tendon, but he didn't officially announce his retirement until january of 1988. i had hoped that his announcement came late enough for him to have been included in the flagship set as he had been since 1971.

i wasn't buying anything other than topps in 1988 - and i only bought a couple of boxes of that - so i didn't really notice at the time that the garv was missing from the donruss and fleer sets as well. thank goodness for score - at least they gave us a genuine final tribute of the nl iron man.

back a dozen years or so ago, travis at punk rock paint put together a 1988 topps steve garvey card that should have been. i added a back, and it's been in my collection ever since.  however, i don't know that anyone ever made the missing donruss and fleer cards.

having had some time on my hands this past summer, i broke out the old photoshop and went to work to bring these missing cards to light.

here's the 1988 donruss card that should have been:

complete with a back:

is it wrong of me to say that i may not mind the 1988 donruss design? i've found one card lately that looks pretty sharp from this set.

now here's the 1988 fleer card that should have been:

this one is not perfect with the fade in the upper corners of the picture. oh well. here's its back:

full career stats there! i started with a scan of reggie jackson's card back from the set, and found that fleer had his splits at the bottom all goofed up. thanks to baseball reference, i was able to use actual splits from garvey's career without having to figure them out on my own.

i mentioned that a topps final tribute of the garv already exists, but i decided to add another card that should have been in the 1988 topps set.  thanks to the turn back the clock subset, we can revisit garvey's 1983 season

as well as his 1978 campaign.

now, i am not suggesting that his accomplishments those years were greater than those of nolan ryan or jim rice (the players actually featured on these cards), but i am saying that it wouldn't be a stretch to have featured garvey. i made backs for the cards, too - here's the 1983 back:

the font isn't a full match, and now that i look at this, i realize that this is the "tiffany" version. oh well.  here's the 1978 back:

aside from his score card, the only issue garvey was featured in back in 1988 was the dodgers sga smokey all-stars set. i'm looking forward to printing these out and getting them in to my garvey and final tribute binders.

i also added a 2013 topps 1972 mini insert of ernie banks

to my final tribute collection.  that is what a true final tribute of mr. cub would have looked like had topps done the right thing back then.  here's the back with his career totals on display:

i suppose there wouldn't have been a cartoon about george brett on the card, however.

lastly, i found a 2014 topps roy halladay card

in my sportlots inventory.

i had an opening day halladay card in my final tribute collection already, but now have flagship in there, too.

i'm not 100% sure who might get a final tribute in 2021 other than alex gordon. i'll be sure to keep an eye out, though.