a moment for pete rose

i did a double take about 24 hours ago when i saw a headline on the espn app that pete rose had passed away. it took awhile for the mlb app to catch up, but by that time i had seen the news on a few different platforms.

i am not a pete rose apologist, but i am a fan of pete rose as a baseball player. can we separate the player and the on field accomplishments from the person? i would like to think so.

during the formative years of my baseball fandom, pete rose was a force. he became my favorite non-dodger player as my knowledge of the game expanded beyond the southern california market and i recognized rose's skill as a hitter and passion as a competitor. it took me a long time, but i finally picked up a (verified authentic) 1963 topps card that i often refer to as ken mcmullen's rookie card

but there is no doubt that the card belongs to the hit king. 

two of my favorite players from my youth collided on september 11, 1985 when rose collected hit number 4,192 against the padres. the iconic photo of rose after reaching first base included steve garvey in the background and has made its way onto cardboard a few times, including this 1994 upper deck the american epic card

in fact, this was the photo espn used for the "above the fold" story on rose's passing.

i boxed up my player collections after i chose to primarily focus on team collecting in 2003, but i still have most of the cards from my rose collection. he is represented in my hall of famer collection (with an asterisk) and i have several of his modern day cards in one collection or another, including a few auto and relic cards which he shared with garvey.

his 1978 topps card remains a favorite of mine, and i was happy to have him sign it for a fee

even as he had previously signed a 1987 topps card 

for my collection for free.

rose's passing had me thinking back to seeing him up close and in person at my hometown's annual hot stove dinner in the late 1970's. my dad took some photos at the 1980 version of the event which was renamed the "don sutton celebrity golf tournament". rose got all dressed up for the dinner following the golf

which was a different look than the other attendees i remember. a year or two earlier, i had followed rose into the bar area of the local elks lodge and i realized in retrospect that he was probably looking for a respite from the crowds. still, he signed my autograph book

and i never forgot that he did so.

rest in peace charlie hustle.

my take on the warhol rose infinite parallel project

it's been about five months since gavin posted about the "warhol rose infinite parallel project" and i am just now getting around to posting my contribution.

for those of you not familiar - click on the link above to catch up. i'll wait.

so, here is the "base" card design that gavin provided

it's a different take on rose's 1985 topps card, with plenty of blank space to play with.

my parallel was inspired by hit number 4192 which came against eric show and the padres 38 years ago tomorrow. this was such a big deal, for those of you who don't recall or weren't around, that the major tv networks cut in to show rose's at bats live.

anyway, there are a couple of cards in my collection that show the aftermath of that historic hit, including this 1991 the shanks collection broder

and this 1994 upper deck the american epic card

i even whipped up a custom of my own a long time ago to create one of the "missing" cards from the 1999 upper deck century legends set

each of those cards are in my collection because they show steve garvey in the background. so, i had to do something similar for gavin's project - behold:

sure, i left some of it unfinished, but for me the background is the focus.

there are two things that i think about every time i see the photo of rose pointing to the sky with garvey in the background:

1. how cool is it that garvey was on the field to see both babe ruth's career home run record and ty cobb's career hits record fall?
2. garvey smiling makes me think that he was happy for rose's success. i try to be that way with others, too.

i wish there were more cards that featured that particular photo, but i am thankful for the few that do - including broders and customs.

thanks for the inspiration and template gavin!

where is my line?

being a player collector can be as difficult as you want it to be. conversely, it can be very simple. i am definitely in the middle; probably skewed more towards difficult, at least when it comes to steve garvey cards.

including "named" cards in a player collection is the very basic building block.

these are easy - it's their card!

i would say the next tier are cards which feature the player as a prominent subject in the photo, but they are not named. an example of this would be a postseason summary card or a card

like so.

from there, i would go to team cards

i discussed their place in player collecting in this post.

and then there are the cards wherein a player appears on another player's card as a "lurker" or "cameo", if you prefer.

it's not their card, but they are happy to be there.

i would say that this is pretty much where my line is drawn. i have a pretty sketchy lurker card

in my garvey collection, i admit, so maybe some of these other types of cards should be added as well.

i'm talking about "name" cameos - as in checklists 

or card back text. collecting cutch covered this topic in this post and i've come across some decent candidates for my garvey collection, like the 1986 fleer star sticker box card checklist above, and this 2005 topps rookie cup davey lopes blue parallel card back

other strong examples are the cards i wrote about in this post and this post, too. 

so far, i haven't added these cards to my garvey collection, although i do have a signed 1978 checklist in the pc and my partial signed set binder.

i have a lot of non-card items in my garvey collection which is a relatively new (last 10 years or so) phenomenon. this includes ticket stubs that bear garvey's photo. greg at plaschke, thy sweater is argyle is collecting ticket stubs for games in which mike trout did cool stuff which is a heck of a endeavor, but i don't plan to do that for garvey's 272 dingers or his 1,207 consecutive games. what an undertaking that would be!

still, if you merge a garvey ticket stub with a card, i don't care whose card it is - i am adding it to the pc! so that's why i have an alfonso soriano card

an aaron rowand card

and a ryan braun card

in my steve garvey collection. those three cards are from 2009 topps a ticket to stardom, and they are great. the card set just happened to coincide with the fantastic tickets the dodgers issued in 2008 for their 50th year in los angeles. 

i don't see any garvey stubs in cards over at comc right now, but maybe some other player collectors will find something to add. where's your line?

on the field when it happened

i was reading a piece on jaime jarrin towards the end of the 2020 season, and there was an infographic that listed all the different on-field accomplishments he had witnessed and called during his career (which isn't over yet).  the same was done when vin scully retired, and it got me thinking. what player has borne witness to the greatest number of significant baseball moments on the field? i'm not talking about the player achieving the accomplishment, but rather another player participating in the game. 

now, one of the most, if not the most, significant baseball events was jackie robinson's debut on april 15, 1947. a couple of those dodger players (pee wee reese and carl furillo) were also in the lineup for 'the shot heard around the world' in 1951 and don larsen's perfect game in 1956. those are three pretty big events in baseball history, for sure. yogi berra caught larsen's perfecto and then was on deck five years later when roger maris hit home run number 61 to break babe ruth's single season mark. carl yastrzemski was on the field for that home run as well, and he would go on to witness some other big baseball moments, too.

i, however, would like to submit that steve garvey may have actively witnessed more statistically significant baseball moments as a player than any other player. first, garvey was playing first base in atlanta on april 8, 1974 when hank aaron hit home run number 715 to break babe ruth's all-time home run record. dusty baker was on deck when the hammer went deep, by the way. i enjoy finding new cards from this event, and the latest one to join my collection is this one:

that's a 2021 topps now turn back the clock card that was issued a couple of months ago to mark the anniversary of aaron topping the babe. there is a very strong chance that the dodger in the background to the left of aaron's right arm is garvey himself

but it's too hard to tell for sure. the video footage from the game that i have seen doesn't provide a view that would confirm the dodger's identity, and so, as a result, this card goes in my lurker collection with the lurker being "unknown dodger".

seven years after aaron's historic home run, garvey was in the on deck circle on september 26, 1981 when nolan ryan retired none other than dusty baker to complete his fifth career no-hitter, breaking sandy koufax's all-time record. 

that 1991 upper deck nolan ryan baseball heroes card above addresses his record breaking fifth no-hitter on the back.

so garvey and baker were both active witnesses (along with davey lopes) to those two historic events. however, garvey was also on the field at riverfront stadium on september 11, 1985 when pete rose collected career hit number 4,192, which at the time was thought to be one greater than ty cobb's all-time record.

that is a broder card from something called 1991 the shanks collection. it shows garvey (more accurately, it shows his right arm) lurking behind rose who is standing at first base after collecting his record breaking hit, and it sits happily in my steve garvey collection.

that means steve garvey was on the field for three all-time record breaking moments (two of which were the most hallowed in the game), plus three other no-hitters (although nowhere near bert campaneris who was on the field for 11 no-nos). this doesn't even mention reggie jackson's three-homer game in the 1977 world series or the myriad other all-star, playoff and world series games garvey was involved in. speaking of reggie's game 6 performance, here's a card i added to my lurker collection recently:

it's from 1994 upper deck american epic, and features steve yeager behind the plate as reggie hits home run number 1 or 2. i know it's not home run number 3, because yeager dropped to a knee when that one was launched.

i did some research and found that in addition to nolan ryan himself, his astro teammates terry puhl, jose cruz, phil garner, tony scott, and denny walling appeared in both ryan's fifth no-hitter and the game in which he surpassed walter johnson's all-time strikeout record with k number 3,509 in 1983. ryan was passed by steve carlton later that season before retaking the title for good, something that is also noted on the back of that baseball heroes card shown above.

terry mulholland is another guy who witnessed some baseball history as a player. he pitched in the game in which mark mcgwire broke roger maris' single season home run record with home run number 62 in 1998 (the aftermath of which was presented on this 1999 upper deck century legends memorable shots card).

mullholland was also in the dodger bullpen when barry bonds broke mcgwire's record with his 71st home run of the season in 2001. several dodger players were there for bonds' 71st dong and shawn green's 4 home run/19 total bases game in milwaukee in may of 2002 which set a major league baseball record as well, although i believe mulholland was on the disabled list when that game took place.

ryan klesko played in the games in which rickey henderson broke ty cobb's all-time runs scored record of 2,245 and babe ruth's walk record of 2,062, and he also played in the game in which bonds broke hank aaron's career home run record of 755 (a moment celebrated on this 2007 topps update & highlights card). 

that's being a witness to history for sure. however, rickey didn't hold the walks record for long, as bonds passed him after just three years at the top, and klesko wasn't there for that one.

and, not only was ray durham playing in the game in which bonds hit home run number 756, he was also in the lineup the night bonds drew walk number 2,191 for his career to break rickey's short-lived record.  however, the player who might give the garv a run for his money as an active witness to history is jt snow. he played in the games in which bonds hit his 71st homer of the season, and drew walk 2,191, and he was also in the lineup for the angels in september of 1995 the night that cal ripken jr. played in his 2,131st consecutive game and broke lou gehrig's record. that game was immortalized on a number of cards in 1996, including card number 1 in the '96 upper deck set:

it was the defining event of the 1995 season for many fans, and an important post-strike moment as well.

so, as of now, garvey and snow both saw three all-time records fall - and the records that snow witnessed have yet to be re-broken, even if there is an asterisk associated with at least one of them. what do you think - any other players that i'm missing that have been on the field when it happened?