my favorite cards of the year - 2005 edition

i recently introduced my mini collection focusing on my favorite cards from each year that i've been a collector. the basic gist is that i wanted to create a space for the cards that i most appreciated having in my collection in the year that they were released. these were cards that i acquired in the year that they were issued, and that i considered to be my favorites at the time. i have disallowed (most) cards that are already in other mini collections in order to avoid having a mini collection consisting of more steve garvey, double plays, and dodger stadium cards.

2005 was a crazy year for my collection. there was just so much product, and the explosion of parallels in many releases was really too much to handle. i was working in downtown minneapolis, and would walk over to the card and comic shop on hennepin during lunch hour fairly frequently to check things out. i usually left with a pack or two of the latest release, or a card from one of their display cases. with so much new product to choose from, there was always something different that caught my eye. anyway, here are my favorite cards that i obtained in 2005.

favorite non-dodger card: upper deck classics lyman bostock

i was really looking forward to seeing how upper deck was going to follow their (in my opinion) fantastic legends timeless teams release in 2004, and the classics set was as close as it came. i was a big fan of the new sets featuring retired players, beginning with 1999's century legends, and so this set was a winner for me. the fact that bostock was included was just tremendous. i was a young fan just finishing up my first year of following a full baseball season when bostock was murdered, and i didn't quite understand it. i had followed the angels as well as the dodgers in 1978, and bostock had been a big deal for the halos. expectations were high given that bostock was coming off of a couple of seasons wherein he had finished in the top 4 in the american league batting race, and he was in the papers for acknowledging that he hadn't lived up to those expectations early on in his new contract. 

bostock had hit well over .300 over the final four months of the season to get his average up to around .300 and silence the doubters of his talent. the angels were still in contention for the al west title when bostock was murdered, and with their performance the following year, everyone was left wondering what might have been had bostock survived. a terribly sad story, but having a new card of his to add to my collection in 2005 was a joy.

favorite dodger card: topps all-time fan favorites pedro guerrero

topps archives, introduced in 2001 (aside from the 1953 and 1954 reprint sets of the 90's and the 1995 brooklyn dodgers focused set), was another instant favorite of mine. and, when topps went to retired players with new photos in a variety of card designs in 2003 and rebranded it as all-time fan favorites, i was even more enamored. my favorite card of the 2005 release was this pedro guerrero card using the 1981 design. while guerrero received a card from topps in 1981 (after being absent from the 1980 set), this one is brighter and would have fit right in. it uses a photo from 1980 spring training which gives a nice view of the dodgers' all-star game patch. the card remained such a favorite of mine that three years later, i made sure to include it in the header of my first blog.

next up, 1986. stay tuned!

don sutton doesn't always sutton

he was a pitcher, after all.

i recently acquired a big card for my post-dodger don sutton collection showing him in action as an angel

this might have been (it was) the non-dodger sutton card that i coveted the most due to it being from the awesome 2004 upper deck legends timeless teams release and it being an on-card autograph of the dodger double dipper hall of famer suited up for the american league team from orange county.  it's a short print in the set - only 75 copies - and the only one of sutton's four autographs to have that distinction. i am still missing his 1980 card autograph version, however.

i'll request that you take note that sutton is no older than 42 in that photo. 1970's baseball must have been a hard knock life.

in other sutton news, i submitted a post the other day to kevin at the diamond king regarding the hall of fame righty as part of the “take him or leave him” series kevin is hosting. check it out if you haven’t already. 

the cards i showed in that post are mostly recent pick-ups for my sutton collection, including a 2020 topps series 2 decades’ best

the photo topps used is not from the 60’s.

this is a 2005 donruss signature series k force insert

and this is from 2017 panini chronicles

the last card i showed in that post we sutton’s 1986 leaf card

which was one of my “most wanted” for a short time (or was it his 1987 leaf card?)

no matter, i recently added them both to the collection. 

here are a few more sutton cards i’ve added over the last few months:

1985 topps stickers (with mookie wilson)

 

2005 donruss diamond kings hof heroes framed red parallel

2005 playoff prestige prestigious pros red parallel

2005 upper deck classics classic moments

2006 upper deck sp legendary cuts ultimate legendary materials

i also showed a photo of sutton in that post at the diamond king. 

i promised a separate post here in the future that will address that photo and others like it, and i’m working on it. 

stay tuned.

secret santa statis: pro

thanks to matt from bob walk the plank for organizing the secret santa program again this year. i had fun picking out cards to send to my recipient - the daily dimwit - even if that meant looking for astros cards a few weeks after they beat the dodgers in the world series.  my secret santa was rob, who runs a few blogs (which i can appreciate) - 1988 topps, collecting 1982 topps, and statis pro 1984.

rob tied our collecting habits together by sending me copies of the infield's statis pro cards from the 1984 season.

a quick look at these and the wikipedia site for statis pro tells me that steve garvey is not likely to miss many games (his consecutive game streak ended in 1983, otherwise i assume his "inj" rating would be 0), ron cey is the only one likely to be hit by a pitch, bill russell is the better bunter, and davey lopes is the better base stealer.  at closer inspection, i also see that the garv would never walk in this game.  this is very realistic, as garvey didn't walk much.  in fact, i think that his inability to take a walk (he took the free, non-intentional pass only 366 times in his career) is one of the things keeping him out of the hall of fame.  172 more walks instead of outs (lay off that slider down and away, please) would have netted him a .300 career average and boosted his obp to .348.  that's just 10 more walks per season, on average. in the end, as much as i want to see garvey in the hall (and i think he should be in), he just made too many outs for him to be a more obvious choice to the people who matter. we'll see if anything changes in three years when he is eligible for consideration by the modern committee again.

rob included some real cards in the package - there were these two relic cards from 2002 upper deck world series heroes featuring davey lopes and bill russell

plus a 2005 upper deck classics ron cey relic card

thanks rob!