the k is for kershaw kountdown continues - gone fishin' edition

yes, the kountdown to 3,000 strikeouts for clayton kershaw continues as he took the mound against the marlins on tuesday night in miami. he struck out 3 batters to give him 123 strikeouts on the season. those 3 marlins that he k'd increased his career total to 2,930.

in honor of his performance, here are 3 cards from my collection to represent strikeouts 2,928 through 2,930.

2,928 - 2020 panini diamond kings

2,929 - 2020 topps stickers

2,930 - 2021 bowman platinum

kershaw remains in 21st place on the all-time leader board, and he will remain there until he passes zack greinke. greinke, who failed to strike out any red sox in his appearance on sunday, has a career strikeout total of 2,962. kershaw is now 32 k's behind greinke and 70 away from the 3,000 milestone. 

kershaw struggled against the marlins, getting bailed out by the pitcher's best friend (the double play) in two of his five innings. he gave up 5 hits and walked 5 as well, which is uncharacteristic for sure. his whip, while still a nice 1.065, is the highest it's been at this stage of a season since 2010.

it looks like kershaw's next start will come on sunday in washington against the nationals. regardless of when he makes his next start or how many k's he posts, i will be back to update the kountdown soon thereafter. stay tuned!

green grow the cards

here is a somewhat meta card - this 2003 fleer platinum card

is a very green shawn green card! i had a teammate back in high school whose last name was black. he thought it was weird to have a last name that was also a color, and he refused to wear black. names are weird in general, i think.

moving on, here's a green non-green card

that card, from 2005 playoff prestige, is the purple parallel. 

and another, from 2001 fleer authority:

i stumbled upon this one in my dodger dupes box and noticed that the dodger stadium murals (hi, pee wee!) are visible behind green despite the best efforts of fleer's card designers. to the dodger stadium binder it goes!

i do have some other non-green green cards to show that have entered my collection over the last couple of years.  here's a 2020 panini diamond kings jackie robinson all-time diamond king card

that is green by design.

i stumbled upon this retail green parallel of a 2019 topps sandy koufax decades' best card

in a target or walgreens somewhere back in 2019, and this 2018 topps gypsy queen chris taylor green parallel card

was a sportlots order filler.

green green green! happy st. patrick's day!

cards on cards sends cards and cards and cards and cards

it's going to take me a while to show off as many of the cards that kerry from cards on cards has sent me over the last few months. i figure i had better get started before the next batch arrives...

if i recall correctly, kerry busted a box of 2006 bowman heritage a long time ago and offered up dupes to folks. i received some nice cards for the collection, including a card of one prospect named clayton kershaw!

chad billingsley rookie, too

and when is the last time you saw a julio lugo card on a blog? well, here you go

i must have received these cards early in the pandemic, as they arrived with a 2020 topps cody bellinger rainbow foil parallel

and a will smith card from 2020 topps heritage.

kerry was also kind enough to acknowledge one of my more obscure player collections by sending me a card of the current qb coach for the detroit lions, mark brunell

nice.

while these cards were still new to my collections, i received another envelope from kerry.

i am pretty sure i specifically claimed these first two cards - a 2001 topps heritage joe randa card

for my set build (20 years and still working on it!) - and a 1990 topps magazine card featuring barry larkin, eric davis, and chris sabo

hanging out in dodger stadium. you know i appreciate a good pun, and "battin' rouge" delivers.

i also claimed the twins in a 2019 topps "topps of the class" break, and received a couple of jose berrios cards 

as a result. kerry and the person who claimed the dodgers were kind enough to share the wealth, and so i also received cards of walker buehler and cody bellinger

as well. just missing kershaw for the team set. speaking of whom, kerry sent me this purple holo parallel 

of the future hall of famer along with the base version and a couple of other dodgers from 2020 panini donruss

which was great because i never did see these cards on any retail shelf.

the last cards i will share from kerry (for now) are these 2020 panini diamond king cards of walt alston

tony gonsolin

and vladimir guerrero

the vladdy all-time diamond king insert is a great addition to my vladdy pc, but all of these cards were appreciated!  trust me when i say i have only scratched the surface of what kerry has sent my way over the past year - more to come!

thanks kerry!

talkin' baseball - brian, jackie, and the mick

recently, brian at highly subjective and completely arbitrary showed off 9 cards featuring the 1982 yankees as part of his ongoing series of posts related to teams of the 1980s. the post got me thinking about yankee cards from 1982 and i remembered one that i had come across a few years ago while researching a different set.

this is a 1982 asa the mickey mantle story card that features the mick playing first base during a spring training game against the dodgers. that's jackie robinson diving back to first, as the card tells us.  i had seen this card when i was looking up the similar 1982 asa the duke snider story set, but i didn't give it a lot of thought at the time.  after seeing brian's post, i went to sportlots and ordered the card for my collection.

the back of the card references the 1955 world series

which begs the question of why didn't they use a photo from said series on the front? no matter, it's a yankee card that i am happy to (finally) add to my dodger collection.

meanwhile, brian also sent me some cards over the summer - a great variety of cards, in fact. take a look:

2020 topps chrome ben baller brusdar graterol

another version of chrome, with the design interpreted by ben baller, i guess. this version is also different from the regular chrome version in that graterol's number has been corrected from "00" to "48".

2020 panini diamond kings mookie betts bat kings relic

my first dodger mookie relic. i continue to reap the benefits of brian's dodger mojo!

2019 topps clayton kershaw superstars of baseball/stars of the game

2006 upper deck special f/x jose cruz jr

there were other dodgers, too, but brian also likes to send me some tatooine cards that are new to my collection. this time was no exception.

2007 topps opening day grady sizemore gold parallel,

the indians had a few cards that looked like this in 2007, almost as if they played their home games near mos eisley.

1997 fleer mike sweeney

1998 pinnacle doug glanville

he'll be your doug.

1994 pinnacle jose vizcaino

with a normal-sized barry bonds lurking

1994 upper deck minors arquimedez poao

1995 upper deck collector's choice se orlando merced

and a pair of 2008 bowman yunel escobar cards

one being the blue parallel and one being the base.

it's been a long year here in the twin cities, and not meeting up with brian at a card show has been one of the byproducts of the conditions under which we are living. i'm hoping we can meet up sometime in 2021, but until then we will keep on trading.  thanks brian!

of diamond and other kings

not sure if it was don or russ who came up with the concept of 'diamond kings' for their sophomore release, but i was happy to see the subset when opening packs back in 1982. that year, it gave me an extra card of my favorite player (steve garvey) while opening my eyes to cards that were meant to be art - as in, purposefully using aa painting as opposed to bad airbrushing trying to make an altered photograph look semi-real. remember, at that time, i had seen some stuff like the 1978 topps greg minton card. soon, fleer and upper deck were featuring art cards as part of the base set, and it was not a big deal anymore.

anyway, the diamond kings eventually became inserts and were therefore more difficult to track down. 11 years after their inaugural release, the reigning national league rookie of the year was featured, and it took me about 27 years to obtain that card.

eric karros looks pained. now, i wasn't actively looking for that card until i put it on my most wanted list sometime last year, and i finally added it to a comc or sportlots order sometime later.

2005 was a big year for donruss and their diamond kings, as they issued a huge set with a ridiculous number of parallels.  here's one of steve garvey's parallels that i picked up sometime in the last few months

that is a 'green frame' parallel (trust me), numbered to 50.  here's the back:

glorious text on the back as it mentions the game on april 16, 1983 wherein garvey surpassed billy williams on the all-time consecutive games played list. yours truly was at that game, and i've recently been putting together my "games i've attended" mini-collection. so, you will see more about that game in a future post.

over the last few years, panini has continued the diamond kings brand, and in each of the last two releases, they've included steve garvey on their checklist.  unfortunately, they are limited in their print runs, and in 2019, his cards were of the redemption variety.  i was able to secure three redemptions for two different print runs; the purple, numbered to 10

and the holo blue, numbered to 25

the checklist also notes that there is a "base" version that is unnumbered, but i did not see any of those redemptions hit ebay. this year, the diamond king garvey cards are pack inserted, and there are only two varieties. the purple, which is numbered to 20

and a one-of-one.  as you can see above, i managed to pick up the purple card, but the one-of-one went to fellow garvey collector mrmopar.  congrats curt!

as the title of this post mentions, there are other kings than diamond.  case in point, here is a 2012 panini golden age steve garvey mini card that i purchased

it is the fourth variant that i have, and this one is the 'ty cobb" back variation

i was not sure if cobb was the king of the smoking tobacco world, or if he had his own line of tobacco and it was the king of the smoking tobacco world, but recent (2018) developments have shed light on this topic. apparently, there was a product that featured cobb although it was not widely distributed, nor did it stay on the market for long. so, cards with this particular back are rare.

another type of diamond king to show off are some of the cards i've received in the recent 'diamond 9' giveaways at the diamond king blog!  kevin has been offering up some great cards, and i've been able to send him a few as well.

some of the cards he has sent me include this 1997 topps finest brett butler refractor

super shiny! 

i was also able to claim a 2005 donruss champions j.d. drew parallel

which is serial numbered to the number of time drew landed on the disabled list

kidding, of course. it just felt like 75 times.

another card for the dodger collection that i claimed was this 2011 bowman platinum blake smith xfractor

i have claimed a few non-dodgers, including a 2008 upper deck baseball heroes card featuring vladimir guerrero

for my big daddy vladdy collection, plus a couple of braves cards.  this 2006 topps chuck james black parallel

and this 2011 topps lineage jason heyward stand-up insert

were added to a couple of trades that i've made recently that were borne out of a comment on another blog. i will have a post dedicated to those trades in the future, but it won't do the trades justice.

thanks kevin and don and russ and dick perez, and even ty cobb i suppose. kings all around!