check your 6

i was pretty excited back in 2001 when i first read about topps tribute.  knowing that the set would focus on retired numbers, and knowing that the padres had only two numbers that qualified, i thought it was a pretty good bet that steve garvey would be included in the set.  spoiler alert: he was not. dave winfield (whose number 31 had just been retired in april of 2001) beat out garvey and randy jones to represent the padres, while most of the dodgers with retired numbers were included (no jim gilliam or sandy koufax, unfortunately).

still, there were some number 6 cards in the set, including stan the man musial

it's been a fifteen year journey for me, but i am down to needing only two cards from the set - ernie banks and willie mays.  i would appreciate any help in finishing off this set.

for a long time (21 years to be exact), garvey's number 6 was unofficially retired by the dodgers, waiting for his enshrinement in cooperstown so that it could be officially retired as is the team's tradition.  a funny thing happened on the way to immortality, and when it became apparent that garvey would not be elected by the writers to cooperstown, number 6 fell back into rotation.  jolbert cabrera, in 2003, was the first to wear it post-garvey, and many have followed - brent mayne, jason grabowski, kenny lofton, tony abreu, aaron miles, joe torre, jerry hairston, darwin barney, and now, charlie culberson.

there's culberson on a 2016 topps now card celebrating his division-clinching, walk-off home run last september, with his 6 fully visible.

fernando's number 34 still sits in mothballs, and i wish the franchise would pull the trigger on retiring it officially even though fernando isn't a hall of famer.  other than that, and barring some revelation (that should occur, in my opinion) about manny mota's number 11, i would guess that the next number to be retired by the dodgers will be 22.  clayton kershaw should pass 2000 strikeouts this season (and then some), and he is certainly on track to get at least a thousand more.  while it doesn't show his number very well, here is the 'bonus' topps now card

i received last fall after buying the postseason team set. as a bonus, i thought at the time that it would likely be the only card to feature carlos ruiz as a dodger, but he's in flaghsip as a dodger,

even though he was traded to the mariners last november leaving what i consider to be terry forster's number up for grabs.

a couple of giant memorial patches

the san francisco giants wore two memorial patches during the 2016 season - one for former player monte irvin and one for former player, manager, and coach jim davenport.  the patches ("monte 20" and "davvy 12") were worn side-by-side on the right sleeve during the giants' short playoff run, as seen on this 2016 topps now kris bryant card

(yes, i bought a topps now card specifically for the giants' patches - at least it's not a giants card).  however, i later found this hunter pence card

in a pack of 2017 topps opening day, so i'll use him instead of the bryant card to represent the memorials.

they also wore the patches side-by-side during their fourth of july game

and the all-star game

all because of additional patches added to the sleeve.  during the regular season, the patches were worn stacked, with irvin's patch on top as shown on this 2016 topps chrome joe panik future stars insert

however, the patches are a bit easier to see on this 2017 topps opening day buster posey card (it was a giants hot pack!)

irvin was a hall-of-famer who spent several years in the negro leagues before debuting for the giants in 1949.   he was a member of the giants' 1951 and 1954 national league championship teams, and won a ring thanks to their defeat of cleveland in the '54 world series.  his number was retired by the team in 2010.

davenport was a member of the original san francisco giants team, and drove in their first run thanks to a sacrifice fly off of don drysdale. he is still their all-time leader in games played as a third baseman, and following his retirement he became a manager in their minor league system, and later the manager of the big league team.  later in his career he served as a scout and coach, teaching young players in the giants' system how to win world series championships in even years, apparently.

irvin was 96 when he died in january of 2016, and davenport passed away at the age of 82 in february of 2016.

when topps now was really topps then (a memorial patch for jacob wetterling)

contrary to many of you, i checked out the topps now site every day during the season, and wound up collecting the entire dodger set (minus the auto and relic parallels).  i was holding out hope for a vin scully card at some point and was ultimately disappointed on that front, but topps now to me turned out to be what upper deck documentary failed at - providing actual game photos for the game/event that the card represented.  that is not to say that the cards all used iconic photos from their game or event, but a quick getty search could verify that the photo was indeed from the game topps said it was from.

that was not the case, however, with this particular card

that purports to show the indians celebrating their first american league central title since 2007 on september 26th.  the indians were in detroit that night, but the photo topps used comes from their september 9th game in minneapolis against the twins.  i know this, not only because my getty search confirms it, but also because of the jacob wetterling number 11 patch that the clevelend player is wearing on his chest.

jacob wetterling, who wore the number 11 in youth hockey, was an 11-year old boy from a town near st. cloud, minnesota who was kidnapped in 1989 after riding his bike with some friends to a store to rent a video.  his fate was unknown for almost 27 years until september 2016, when his abductor confessed to assaulting and killing jacob that same night that he was abducted.  following the confirmation of the confession, the twins, as evidenced by this getty images photo of joe mauer

along with the visiting indians, wore a number 11 patch with jacob's name beneath the number in jacob's honor.  jacob's parents, who like all minnesotans hoped for a different end to the story, had started the jacob wetterling resource center in 1990 to assist other families in similar missing children situations, and to help end child exploitation of any kind.  following the game against the indians, the twins auctioned off many of the jerseys worn by the players that night, and donated the proceeds to the foundation.

[edit: topps featured a photo of byron buxton wearing the patch on this 2017 topps triple threads relic card

that i was able to add to my collection.]

i have to say that was a pretty crappy week here in minnesota.

giving up 5

i'm a numbers guy. math has always been my thing, and numbers speak to me. i like numbers and the absolute certainty of things associated with numbers.  i'm also a baseball guy, which makes sense given all of the numbers associated with the sport through statistics and uniforms.  

i used to remember my high school locker combination by using dodger players (dusty baker - fernando valenzuela - pedro guerrero). that's 12 - 34 - 28.  i would remember license plates using dodger players. the number portion of my first car's license was pee wee reese - davey lopes - steve sax.  most of the dodger players i referenced for these tasks were players from the team of my youth (the 1977 and 1978 dodgers), although some like pee wee and duke snider and jackie robinson came from before my time, and some others, like fernando and petey and saxy came after that and earned their place in my numerical lexicon.

one number, however, that never belonged to johnny oates (who was on those dodger pennant winning teams) was 5.  that belonged to my dad's favorite player (and the 1965 national league rookie of the year), jim lefebvre.

i recently picked up his 1971 ticketron dodgers card, which displays the red numeral nicely.  

for almost 40 years, number 5 has been, to me, lefebvre.  never mike marshall or dave hansen or even nomar garciaparra, who was for a while my favorite dodger.  today, however, i think i am making a change.

meet the new number 5, who is coincidentally the 2016 national league rookie of the year.  that would be corey seager.

long may he reign.

who edits these things?

the cons of topps now have been well documented - price, subject selection, mailing method, etc. there was even a lawsuit filed due to erroneous text on the proof being corrected in production.  i've purchased all of the dodger cards offered so far, most at a discount from the $9.99 price so not from topps directly, and i have no substantial complaints, as it is my choice to purchase these things.  as such, part of my afternoon ritual has become checking their website to see if a dodger card was produced, and as a result i have seen all of the cards offered this year.

while there have been a few topps now cards that have given me the itch to compose a post, one recent card finally tipped the scales. it was this one, one of many gary sanchez cards that have been produced since the yankee catcher was called up

as you can see, sanchez is being feted for being the second fastest of all-time to reach 16 home runs.  ok. now, whether or not you feel that this is an achievement worthy of a topps now card is not the point. the card is made.  being a fan of the history of the game, i was intrigued enough to find out who the fastest to 16 home runs was.  so, i took a look at the back of the card.

the good folks at topps feel that it is more important for me to know that sanchez hit his home run in a nationally televised game than which immortal slugger owns the record.  they also fail to tell me by what measure sanchez became the seond fastest to this arbitraty plateau.  they mention it was his second at-bat of the game, and that it came in the third inning, but that's it.  so, i am left to my own devices to find this information.

now, i remember seeing a note earlier in sanchez's run that only george scott and trevor story had reached the 10 home run mark faster than sanchez. so, perhaps one of them got to 16 quicker.  a check of baseball reference tells me that it is not so, as scott hit his 16th in his 57th game, and story hit his in his 55th game. sanchez has only played in 47 games.  this, of course, assumes that it is games played that is the measure being used.  and it could be, or it could be at bats, as the guy who hit 16 home runs in fewer at bats than sanchez (who took 156 at bats to get there) was wally berger. berger took somewhere between 145 and 148 at bats and 41 games to get to 16 for the 1930 boston braves, so he has sanchez beat on both counts.

i am left to ask, would it have been so tough to at least mention berger? the reason topps gives for creating this card begs for the rest of the story, but topps didn't bother.  if they didn't want to mention berger, why not just say that sanchez reached 16 home runs faster than any other yankee.

this past wednesday, there were four topps now cards related to milestone sort of accomplishments (plus one walk-off card), and on two of the four cards, topps does mention either the person whose record was eclipsed (dave kingman used to hold the record for most home runs in a final season - now it's david ortiz - and ichiro was the last guy to have 200 or more hits in 3 straight season before jose altuve accomplished that feat during this season). good job, topps. one of the other cards features mookie betts and nomar garciaparra, and notes that nomar is the only other player to reach 200 hits, 30 homers, 40 doubles, and 20 steals in an age-23 or younger season.  that is an acceptable amount of information, even though the card mentions that there are five other players to achieve the feat regardless of age, but does not name them.  the fourth card, however, falls short, as it tells me that trey mancini is the second orioles player to homer in his debut in the last 50 years. great. who is the other oriole to do that, topps?  well, to quote dough boy, "they either don't know, don't show, or don't care" to provide that information.  thanks to the interwebs, i have learned that it was jonathan schoop in 2013, so mancini was the first oriole to do it in three years. wow.

i mentioned up above that there were some other cards that got me thinking about posting, and one of them was joe mauer's recent card celebrating a walk-off hit of his over the indians.  here's the back

i had thought that topps would have fixed this, but it looks like they've kept mauer as a catcher even though he hasn't played behind the plate since 2013.

the season is almost over, and i will continue to buy the dodger topps now cards (including their special postseason set that will go live as soon as they clinch the division), but i am really looking forward to/hoping for a vin scully card.  it really needs to happen, and i hope that he grants the use of his likeness to make it happen. then, it will just be up to topps to get the text right.