missing tommy

tommy lasorda would have been 94 today had he not passed away this past january. as he was the manager of the team of my youth, i have an interest in his cards, and i've been targeting them specifically in these days where it is more and more difficult to be a complete team collector.  as a result, i've added a couple of lasorda cards to my collection this year.

first up is a relic card from 2018 panini national treasures

it's from the "greatness" insert set, and the base version is numbered to 99. the silver holo version

is numbered to 25. i paid about the same for each of these, so scarcity doesn't seem to matter. i also bought another of the /99 version to put in my dodger stadium collection as the card offers a nice view of the dodger bullpen and left field pavilion, not to mention the three sisters palm trees.

here's another card of tommy in dodger stadium that i added earlier this year - a 2020 bowman heritage cavan biggio card

you can see tommy in the background sitting in his seat next to the camera well on the home plate side of the dodger dugout. tommy was a mainstay in that seat for many years now - i believe since the current ownership group took over. i don't think he sat down there during the mccourt years. anyway, he has shown up on a few cards as a result which is always a treat.

i also added this 2017 panini donruss mike trout card

to my dodger stadium collection. you can see that lasorda is not in his seat, and you will also notice that there were further renovations done after 2016 to convert those seats to blue.

after tommy's death, the team placed flowers in his seat

tommy will continue to be missed - he definitely had a great run, and i am sure he is hanging out with the big dodger in the sky!

they are iron men

steve garvey is featured on only one card in the 2018 panini national treasures release, and i added it to my garvey collection last month.

however, he was not alone on the card, as it is a "triple-legend trios" booklet card!

here's a list of the folks featured

the common link among them is, of course, their respective consecutive games played streaks.

cal ripken jr. is the all-time leader with 2,632 consecutive games.  here's his part of the card:

good to see some oriole orange!

the guy who made the streak famous was lou gehrig, the iron horse. he played in 2,130 straight, much to the chagrin of wally pipp.  here's his part of the card:

glad to see pinstripes!

garvey played in 1,207 consecutive games, and is the national league's all-time leader.  somewhat screwed out of this card is everett scott who appeared in 1,307 consecutive games from 1916-1925 (his streak ended a month or so before gehrig's began).  unfortunately for scott, he did it all while in the american league and so he is typically never a part of iron man discussions.

here's the whole booklet all laid out - front and back:

this card reminded me that i really dug into gehrig's career and life back in the early 1980's as garvey's streak became more of a thing. i read all that i could find about him, and learned of the 1961 topps baseball thrills card hailing his streak.

i guess the card doesn't actually hail his streak. it's more about him benching himself.

it took me a long time to finally own that card, and even longer to show it on one of my blogs. ripken's streak was ended in a similar fashion to gehrig's, while garvey's came to an end by injury.

back to the present day, i was very happy to see that panini didn't make this just a two-man card, and gave the national league leader in consecutive games played some attention.