how gcrl got his groove on

a few months ago, my siblings and i were going through some old family photos. it was a task that remains unfinished, but we came across some pictures that we had not seen in decades which was fun. some of those pictures documented my first visit to anaheim stadium back in 1979.

1979 was a special year for the california angels, and i remember following them pretty closely. part of that was due to the fact that they added rod carew to their roster, but don baylor was still my guy - my favorite non-dodger.

baylor's nickname, as proven by this 2006 fleer greats of the game nickname greats card, 

was "groove", and he was in a groove in 1979, on his way to the american league mvp award and the first ever postseason appearance for the halos.

my dad drove our family down to anaheim one weekend in august to see a game and visit disneyland. although we had a camper, we stayed in a motel not too far from the stadium. anyway, i was sure to wear my homemade baylor t-shirt to the game, but i also made sure to wear my dodger helmet from a stadium giveaway, too. here's some photographic evidence:

yep. that's 8 year old gcrl getting his groove on along the left field railing at the big a. the angels' bullpen coach bob clear is walking on the grass. i recall the female usher noting that i was a fan of baylor's and asking me if i was related to him. sadly, i am not. 

here's a photo that i likely made my dad take during baylor's at bat in the sixth inning

he flew out to center with dan ford on first. you can see the blue jays' shortstop (future dodger alfredo griffin) looking up and heading towards center. 

here's a photo of the angels' bullpen during the game

this was obviously after the team relocated the big a structure out to the parking lot and were preparing for the seating expansion to better accommodate the los angeles rams as tenants.

going back to the first inning, here's rod carew being thrown out at first base

this was my first time seeing him play in person, and i was pretty excited about it. this game was also the only time i ever saw danny ainge play a professional sport.

back to "groove", i see that the fleer greats card shows baylor wearing number 12, and i do not recall him doing so. thanks to baseball reference, i know now that baylor wore number 12 in 1977, his first year with the angels, because number 25 was being worn by bobby bonds. when bonds went to the white sox for the 1978 season, baylor switched to his more familiar 25 (and yes, that is a 25 on the back of my t-shirt).

speaking of bonds, he made an appearance in one of the photos we found

my dad was in bonds' foursome in a local celebrity golf tournament back in 1981. this was the tournament's second year, with the first year having been played under the name "don sutton celebrity golf tournament". with sutton in houston in 1981, he was no longer the "host". i believe i got bonds' autograph later that evening at the banquet (it could have been at a hot stove dinner a different year), but i do know for sure that my dad said bonds could hit the ball "a ton". groovy.

as an aside, here is jack clark's nickname greats card from that same set as baylor's

why am i showing this? because, while i did not get a photo with baylor at the game i attended, i did find a forgotten picture of me and jack the ripper at a hot stove event. the dodger fan in me can't bring myself to post it though.

greats pulls from the past

i was digging through a monster box in an effort to streamline some of the cards that don't really fit in my collection. my dodger collection, player collections, and mini-collections are pretty well organized. so are my complete sets. however, i have a few other boxes that include things like a bunch of o-pee-chee cards that are either duplicates or are singles from sets that i decided not to build. same story with a bunch of vintage cards (pre-1980). and then there are dodger duplicates and other cards from when i was buying boxes and packs of various products - mostly from the early 2000's. most of my base duplicates from 1980 on are listed on sportlots, but these boxes have been exempted from that fate for one reason or another, including laziness. it's time to fix that.

anyway, i came across a couple of autographs that i pulled from 2006 fleer greats of the game back in the day. gcrl favorites rod carew and bill buckner

i appreciate carew's pre-heart transplant signature. i have other autographs of these two players in other parts of my collection, but i like that these were pack pulled. 

this card

from 2004 fleer greats of the game is not the only certified fred lynn autograph i have, but it was pack pulled unlike the card of his i have in my 2004 upper deck legends timeless teams master set build (that will never be completed).

i no longer have (and don't intend to keep all of the ones i do still have) every pack pulled autograph i've, well, pulled, but these three are now in my "meaningful and just because" collection, joining other pack pulled autos from jim lonborg and don baylor. there are probably some others in these boxes that i will wind up adding, and i am thinking i should track down some more autographs of non-dodger favorites from my early fandom days for this purpose, too. guys who aren't already in my hall of famer collection like al oliver, joe rudi, sal bando, vida blue, and george foster. just because.

a moment for the cobra

i can't say i was completely surprised to read that dave parker passed away on saturday given his declining health in recent years, but it was still a jolt to the system for me. and, for it to happen a month before he will be enshrined in cooperstown makes it doubly saddening. of course, he at least knew that he would be one of baseball's immortals before he died, unlike his classmate dick allen (or ron santo, for that matter).

to a fan like me, parker was always hall of fame material. i began following baseball in earnest in 1978 which was parker's mvp season. and, because he had led the national league in batting in 1977, he showed up twice in the 1978 topps set which was my statistical introduction to major league baseball. his 1978 solo card is a classic

and one that i was excited to receive back signed by the cobra

in my earliest ttm days about fifteen years ago.

parker solidified himself as a hall of famer in my eyes with that '78 season and the 1979 followup campaign wherein he helped the pirates win the world series, but more memorably to me, dominated the all-star game with his cannon from right field. his outfield assist to nail brian downing at the plate during that game was gloriously replayed in my home every saturday morning during baseball season for the next year or two as it was included in the closing credits of "this week in baseball". 

in 2013, topps reimagined parker's 1978 card with a different photo in their archives release

i like it (and have it in my 1978 topps master set), but it's not the original.

parker is the third national league player with the all-star shield in the 1978 topps set to pass away (joe morgan and don sutton are the others) and it hits close to home when these players that i studied for hours on end leave this mortal coil.

i wrote more about my thoughts on dave parker when i added him to my hall of famer collection back in 2021. i am glad the eras committee corrected the mistake of the baseball writers' association and voted him in to cooperstown. he was a decade great

and an all-time great.

rest in peace, hall of famer.

blue plate is special

blue parallels or blue cards of any kind are near and dear to the hearts of dodger collectors, and that extends for me to printing plates. now, due to their nature, one can't be too picky when it comes to those items, but it is nice when the cyan plate pops up for sale.

such was the case a short time ago with this 2012 leaf lumber "the franchise 4" plate

featuring steve garvey, ron cey, mike piazza, and kirk gibson. it had a very reasonable buy it now, and so i pounced.  here's the back:

take note topps - the numbers on the backs of those jerseys are definitely blue!

now, where cyan works so well, the yellow plate does not. i couldn't pass up this yellow plate

a couple of weeks ago as it is the 2021 leaf lumber "decade vs. decade" plate featuring johnny bench, garvey, reggie jackson, willie stargell, mike trout, ronald acuna jr, fernando tatis jr, and victor robles.  here's the back:

as you can see, there isn't a lot of yellow in the dodger jerseys.

this yellow plate

from 2006 fleer greats of the game is a little bit better due to the photograph used. here's the back:

nice of upper deck to tell me to enjoy my "fleer" card. i am still ticked at fleer for the redemptions in 2004 greats of the game that were never fulfilled, including a number of garvey items that i sent in for. maybe i would enjoy it a bit more if it were the cyan plate.

barrels are (not) overrated

if you watched any dodger baseball in 2020, you likely saw one of them get on base and then do this:

i hope the .gif loads properly!

whether you saw that or not, the shaking of the hands and fingers represents the pain experienced when getting jammed by a pitch and having the bat vibrate as opposed to the zen feeling of hitting a ball square on the barrel. the point is that the texas leaguer hits that resulted from being jammed were still productive hits, and so, "barrels were overrated". like everything else, this quickly became a t-shirt.

in the card collecting world, bat barrel cards are scarce and coveted. in my opinion, they are not overrated. overpriced? very often, yes. it's been about two years since i showed the first two bat barrel cards that i acquired for my steve garvey collection, and in the time since i have found another card that i was willing to set the market on.  it's this card from 2006 fleer greats of the game

that's a blurry scan of it, so i tried to take a picture, too.

still not the best, but you get the idea. it is a "bat barrel autogreats" card of steve garvey. it features a sticker auto, unfortunately, and is numbered 1 of 4. i find it interesting that fleer (upper deck at this point, really) made multiple versions of this card rather than save inventory for future releases. 

speaking of future releases (actually now a current release), 2021 topps sterling has two garvey cards on the checklist. both are 1/1 with one being an autographed bat knob and the other being a bat barrel nameplate. the latter card, which is more appropriate for this post, hit ebay the other day with a $1,600 buy-it-now price.  it's a snazzy looking card

but i will just enjoy the downloaded image at that price.

here's another card from the final greats of the game release that i have added to my collection in the last year or so

it's a dodgers greats auto-jersey parallel numbered 30/30. it's another sticker auto, sadly. it comes from the same set as the barrel card above, and the photo somewhat prominently features the barrel of garvey's bat, so i figured it was appropriate for this post.

finally, here's another bat barrel card that i've acquired recently - this one in the last month or so.

that's a 2021 leaf lumber davey lopes bat card. as leaf is wont to do, there are a ton of parallels and different bat cards in this release - it's crazy.  this particular card is the emerald parallel and is numbered 2/4. the card doesn't explicitly mention the barrel, but this chunk is from the outside of the bat. i suppose it could be from closer to the handle, but who cares. barrels are, according to some, overrated.

04/10 on 4/10

today, 4/10, is lee lacy's birthday (he's 72), as well as the 73rd anniversary of jackie robinson signing his big league contract in 1947. it's also the 58th anniversary of the opening of dodger stadium. and, more to the point of this post, it's the number on this card:

that's a 2017 topps update storied world series gold parallel card celebrating the 1955 brooklyn dodgers. it features duke snider (number 4 - ebay 1/1!) and teammates pee wee reese and jim gilliam, along with the bat boy (according to getty images, anyway) after duke hit a home run in game 2 of the '55 world series against the yankees.

i picked it up in what i considered to be an underpriced dodger parallel/game used/auto lot, that also included this 2006 fleer greats of the game steve garvey dodgers greats auto, numbered 21/30

among other cards. since there is no 21/30 on the calendar, that card gets added to this post. i enjoy finding good deals out there on dodger lots!