out of the park with these prices

it's been almost 15 years since chan ho park pitched in his final major league game. he was with the pirates then, following in the footsteps of another dodger pitcher of the 90's who ended their career in pittsburgh - ramon martinez. unlike martinez, however, park has made a return to baseball card releases in 2025 with topps hyping his first autograph cards in quite some time.

i was interested in adding one to  my collection, but then i saw the prices. here's a sampling:

good golly miss molly. those are sandy koufax prices.

instead, i will show off a few new to me park cards that came via a sportlots order a while back. here's a trio of cards from 1998 topps stars

and here's one from 1999 fleer flair showcase

those will have to do for my collection unless the prices of the 2025 autographed product takes a dramatic downturn. 

so, instead of a chan ho park autograph, here's a 2021 topps clearly authentic zach mckinstry auto

that i picked up for just a couple of bucks. it's not in the one touch it was originally distributed in, but that's ok by me. maybe park continues to sign and gets a fan favorites autograph later this year that helps to dilute the market. i sure hope so.

scott rolen is in my hall of famer collection

scott rolen was elected to the baseball hall of fame on yesterday, and i've been holding on to this card to mark the occasion. he is now officially a part of my hall of famer collection with this card as his entry:

that is a 2021 topps clearly authentic red parallel autograph, numbered 39 of 50. here's the back:

not much to the backs of these cards, admittedly.

i only saw rolen play in person once, and it was the start of his rookie of the year campaign. on april 1, 1997, the phillies opened the season in dodger stadium. they shut out the dodgers behind curt schilling 3-0 with rolen playing third and going 1 for 5 with an rbi.

once i began playing fantasy baseball in the early 2000's (i had first played in 1988 and 1989 but who wanted to comb the newspaper box scores every morning to track the scoring), rolen was a guy i targeted. he wasn't flashy but put up decent numbers. i was successful with him on my squad a couple of those years, so i paid fairly close attention to his career. by this time, he was a cardinal which was kind of weird as i had started a pc of him in '97.

as i mentioned up top, rolen was the national league's rookie of the year in 1997, the first non-dodger to win the award since jeff bagwell in 1991. rolen was the unanimous selection for the award, by the way. the dodgers had no real rookie to celebrate that year, so i was happy with rolen's win.

even though he falls a bit short of one of my personal checks for hall of fame status for guys who may just be worthy of the hall of very good (hits+bb >3000), his defensive prowess adds to his record, and he is deserving of the honor according to those who vote. i am sure you can find many articles explaining why he was elected (and some as to why he shouldn't have been) so i won't go in to that. i will just say i am happy to have him in my hall of famer collection.

john smoltz is in my hall of famer collection

with the announcement a week ago regarding former dodger fred mcgriff's election to the national baseball hall of fame, i figured it was time to post about an addition to my hall of famer collection, and i've made a few since i last posted about it.  this one features a teammate of mcgriff's - john smoltz.

smoltz wasn't included in my initial cut of hall of famers to chase for my mini-collection, but i've added him now. here's the card that i have to represent him in that collection:

that's a 2021 topps clearly authentic autograph, numbered 18/99.  here's the back.

getting a good photo of encased acetate cards like this is tough.

although i don't believe i ever saw smoltz pitch in person, i saw him on tv a lot thanks to the superstation and the national world series broadcasts in most years during the 1990s. paired with greg maddux and tom glavine, he mixed things up in the braves' rotation by being the hard throwing righty. i figured that if i had those two guys in my collection, i should have smoltz, too.

additionally, i decided to go for more (but not all) of the guys who have surpassed the 3000 strikeout milestone, and smoltz has that feat on his resume. in fact, smoltz is once again low man on that list as his 3,084 strikeouts as the pitchers who have approached his total since he retired after the 2009 season - cc sabathia, justin verlander, and max scherzer  - have all passed him on the leaderboard. what is different now on that leaderboard is that jim bunning is no longer the pitcher with the most career strikeouts without reaching 3,000. that honor currently belongs to zack greinke who i personally doubt will ever reach the milestone.

as for smoltz and my baseball memories, watching game 7 of the 1991 world series ranks high on the list. he held the twins scoreless through 7 and a third innings before being lifted, but jack morris was doing the same to the braves. when smoltz retired, he was the all-time leader in postseason strikeouts with 199 (since passed by clayton kershaw and verlander) to go along with a tidy 2.67 era in 209 innings pitched. in hindsight, i am glad that smoltz and his teammates got one ring out of their incredible run, even though i was cheering for the indians that particular season.

you can see my full hall of famer collection here.  welcome to the collection, john smoltz!

clearly this was a rainbow i would chase

the inclusion of steve garvey in 2021 product continued with topps' clearly authentic release. seeing the garv on a 1986 design as a dodger was a bit weird, but i got used to it real quick:

so quick, in fact, that i didn't stop with his base card. i picked up the green parallel /99

the black parallel /75

the red parallel /50

and the blue parallel /25

there is  also a purple parallel /10, an orange parallel /5, and a gold 1/1 parallel. no luck on any of those (so far). i have no idea what percentage of the time garvey adds his number "6" below his signature, but only one of these (the green one) has it. in the past, i would treat those as a variation and chase both types of signatures, but not anymore. i'm content with one of each for this pursuit. maybe two of each if i want to feed the dodger collection, but that's not a priority when it comes to garvey autos.