a new era

with 1978 topps being the first set i collected, i missed out by a year seeing davey lopes on a league leader card in real time. i was ever hopeful that a dodger would show up on a league leader card, as well as a record breaker or highlight card, in the annual topps set. in 1980, i got my wish in regards to the record breaker card as manny mota made the cut thanks to his pinch hit mark. a year later, don sutton graced the era league leader card, and for the first time in my collecting days, a dodger was featured.

the next dodger to lead the league in era was alejandro pena in 1984, but topps had stopped giving space to league leaders in their flagship set conveniently enough starting with the 1985 release. league leader cards were back as inserts in 1995, but not the way they were meant to be with representatives from each league on the fronts. 

in 2000, the league leaders returned to the base set, but the leaders were shown one on each side which is dumb. it happened again in 2001, and to show why it is dumb to do it this way, here is kevin brown on a 2001 topps chrome league leader card

brown was the first dodger to lead the national league in era since pena. that card, by the way, is the refractor parallel, or as it was called then the "retrofractor" parallel. the back, of course, is not chromeified even though it features the american league era leader

why brown was given the front of the card when pedro martinez had a lower era (1.74!) makes no sense to me but then again doing league leader cards like this makes no sense to me either. i am glad that topps is back to multiplayer league leader cards (which started in 2008), although i prefer one card with both leagues on it rather than one card (with multiple players) for each league.

here's some bonus content - a dodger pedro martinez card!

that's his 1993 topps gold parallel, and it completed my team set of these early days gold inserts. pedro didn't lead the league in era as a dodger of course, but he did as an expo in 1997 before going to boston and leading the american league on four different occasions. i am of the mind that he deserved some traditional league leader cardboard for his efforts!

football is in the air (and the mail)

right after i posted about the cards that fuji sent me from his summer sort, he let me know that another envelope was on the way with some cards that failed to make it into the initial mailing. he noted that these included cards from my "nefarious 9" list of my most wanted cards. one of them that showed up a few days later was this 2021 score mark brunell card

it was one of my most wanted non-dodger cards, a "bonus" 9 cards in addition to the top 9 that are all dodger centric. not to be outdone, i also got an email from jon at a pennysleeve for your thoughts asking (as he does from time to time) if i need a certain card or two. most of the time (all of the time?) the answer is yes! this time, the ask involved a couple of brunell cards - a 1997 pacific crown royale

and a 1998 skybox premium d'stroyers insert

i don't mention it often, and i don't have it loaded into tcdb or have a want list, but i have a pretty solid mark brunell collection. 

now, through the interaction with jon, i took a look at jon's "yours for the taking" page and asked for a few others to accompany the brunells through the mail

here's a double play card i didn't have - 2003 bowman bret boone

and four topps archives reserve cards - two from 2001

and two from 2002

the 1952 topps jackie robinson looks especially nice all refractored up! thanks jon!

as for the remainder of fuji's envelope, he was able to hit the top three cards from my "nefarious 9" list, including a 1987 drake's fernando valenzuela card

that isn't cut too badly. the other two cards were kevin brown's 2002 upper deck sweet spot

and marquis grissom's 2001 topps stars

cards. all three of those completed team sets for me (in brown's case, the non-sp team set) and i was quite happy to take them off the list. thanks fuji!

if you are interested in helping a blogger out, i have since refreshed my "nefarious 9" linked above with some new most wanted cards. in the meantime, i think a decent goal for the football season is to get my brunell collection cataloged. more fun than watching the vikings, that's for sure. stay tuned!

the almost daily dodger - kevin brown

kevin brown took both the marlins (in 1997) and the padres (in 1998) to the world series so you understand why i was excited when he joined the dodgers for the 1999 season. of course, i would have preferred the dodgers had given the money they spent on brown to mike piazza instead, but there were two different regimes in charge of those transactions. kevin malone (the "new sheriff in town") was the one who signed brown to the hefty contract that included private jet privileges while the fox folks went behind the back of then gm fred claire to make the piazza trade.

anyway, i received this 2001 topps stadium club king of the hill pitchers mound dirt card

from sluggo a few months ago. i knew i already had the card, but the one that was sitting in my dodger binder has a protective film on it, so i've put this one alongside it. i don't think we've seen a card like this since, but it makes a nice companion to the film cannister i have of dodger stadium infield dirt that i collected when i was on the field for a concert back in the early 1990's.

the checklist for that insert set is small - pedro martinez, randy johnson, greg maddux, brown, and rick ankiel. remember what a hot pitching prospect ankiel was back in 2000?

here's one more of brown - 1999 fleer brilliants blue parallel

theses parallels are pretty sharp, and i am halfway (4 of 8) to having the complete dodger team set of them.

unfortunately, despite another stellar season, brown didn't come close to taking a third team to the world series in three years as the dodgers were eight games below .500 in 1999, 23 games behind the division champ diamondbacks. not much one starting pitcher can do on the days he doesn't pitch.

something about wolves and sheep and clothing

actually, the biblical reference to false prophets is not the right allusion for this post. this is more about masqueraders. you all know how much i treasure the o-pee-chee team variations, and i enjoy finding other similar type cards to add to my dodger collection.

case in point, i discovered while entering my dodger collection on tcdb that i was missing a card from my checklist of dodgers included in the 1986 true value super stars set - bill madlock's card:

once i saw that it was, in fact, a dodger card, i couldn't obtain it quickly enough. he is clearly a pirate, but also a dodger.

similarly, eric davis' 1992 topps kids card

uses the old o-pee-chee "now with" angle. eric the red dodger!

this 1994 donruss triple play delino deshields card

is decidedly more "dodger-y", thanks to the logo being front and center on the card, but it is also overwhelmingly "expo-y".

manuel barrios became a dodger thanks to the mike piazza trade, and donruss was able to get some text on his 1998 donruss card to reflect that status

barrios pitched in one game for the dodgers before he was dfa'd and claimed by the marlins. i seem to recall that interim gm tommy lasorda may have taken some heat for barrios' departure (on a procedural level) but barrios never pitched in the big leagues again, so no harm no foul.

kevin brown is all padre on the front of this 1999 upper deck ovation card

but i assure you that on the back, there is a nice looking dodgers logo. just like the one on the front of this 2007 upper deck first edition juan pierre leading off insert

fun juan pierre trivia - he played in 821 consecutive games (a streak that ended during his dodger tenure) which is in the top ten all-time, except in one of those games he appeared only as a pinch runner so i guess mlb says it doesn't count and instead he has two streaks of 386 and 434 consecutive games played. doesn't make sense to me - he played in the game so it should count.

here's one where upper deck tried to make a card more of a dodger card than it really is

that's a 1998 upper deck collector's choice starquest insert of eddie murray, who was back for his second stint in la. he is wearing an indians or orioles uniform however, although the name and number on the back have been colorized to blue.

i also include cards of "outbound" dodgers in my dodger collection such as this 1998 donruss todd zeile card

which is a perfect companion to the barrios card above.

and then there is this 2005 donrus throwback threads card of hideo nomo

who is officially listed as a tampa bay devil ray.

here's another one - a 2006 fleer flair showcase wave of the future card of cody ross

who is a dodger playing in cincinnati.

i also recently picked up this card from 2009 upper deck a piece of history for the collection

it shows manny ramirez as all dodger, while matt holliday is straddling the line between colorado rockie and oakland athletic.

there are other cards that are quite sneaky and escape my knowledge for decades before i become aware of their dodgerness, like this 1971 dell todays ted sizemore

definitely a dodger on the front

but a cardinal on the back. the dodger album features al downing as a brewer as far as the photo goes, but dick allen is shown in a dodger uniform so i just assumed that sizemore would have been shown wearing the cardinal get up. i was wrong and just happened to stumble upon an image of this item a couple of months ago.

speaking of allen, he was included in the 1971 kellogg's set

while sizemore was not. in this set, allen is still a cardinal until you turn the card over!

that's a dodger card for sure.

once upon a time in echo park

at the start of the 2020 pre-season, one of the things i was looking forward to the most was the return of the mlb all-star game to dodger stadium, forty years after the first and only time it had been held there. of course, stuff happened, and the game wasn't played. dodger stadium was given the 2022 game and so i had to wait for what i knew would be an onslaught of dodger stadium cards to collect.

before we get to the all-star themed part of the post, i will share a couple other cards i picked up last year showing the stadium in the background. these two cards 

come from a 2021 release in conjunction with espn's 30 for 30 episode "once upon a time in queens". strange that they used a photo of gary carter almost as far away from queens as can be for this card, and stranger still that black and white parallels were deemed necessary.  i will also take this moment to remind you that one of my custom card creations was used in the glenn burke 30 for 30 a few years ago.

and now on to all-star stuff.

here's a 1982 all-star game program "insert" of robin yount

that features the brewer shortstop in action during the 1980 midsummer classic. pretty sure it is a double play turn, too, but i only have the one copy and it goes in the dodger stadium collection. it is likely that the lower left corner shows a minute amount of keith hernandez sliding in.

the beauty of modern cards is that there are a lot more cards to count on, and update will probably always pad its checklist with all-star game cards. in 2022, we had both topps update and chrome update provide all-star game inserts. i decided only to collect the ones that show the all-stars in dodger stadium, as there were a few cards of players who wound up not appearing at the game, such as bryce harper and nolan arenado. i will still list those players as i go through the full 50 card set(s).

here we go:

1. mike trout

2. mookie betts

3. vladimir guerrero jr

4. shohei ohtani (batter)

5. willson contreras

6. alejandro kirk

7. paul goldschmidt

8. jazz chisholm jr

9. jose altuve - not an all-star game card

10. albert pujols

11. miguel cabrera

12. manny machado

13. rafael devers

14. trea turner

15. tim anderson

16. shohei ohtani

17. ronald acuna jr

18. joc pederson

19. aaron judge

20. giancarlo stanton

21. xander bogaerts

22. jose ramirez

23. george springer - not an all-star game card

24. byron buxton

25. kyle tucker

26. julio rodriguez

27. yordan alvarez - not an all-star game card

28. freddie freeman

29. nolan arenado - not an all-star game card

30. pete alonso

31. dansby swanson

32. kyle schwarber

33. juan soto

34. starling marte

35. shane mclanahan

36. nestor cortes

37. alek manoah

38. clayton kershaw

39. sandy alcantara

40. corbin burnes

41. luis castillo

42. corey seager

43. tony gonsolin

44. joe musgrove

45. justin verlander

46. gerrit cole

47. bryce harper - not an all-star game card

48. ian happ

49. william contreras

50. austin riley

there are some real dodger stadium beauties in there for sure.

i also picked up a couple of examples of the all-star stitches cards - liam hendriks

and manny machado

because those cards also feature the pavilion in the background. here's mookie betts' card

for good measure.

one of the packs i bought back when update came out included a blue parallel of gerrit cole's card

and i decided to keep it even though dodger stadium is all blurry in the background.

topps also issued a "now" card of the national league's starting pitcher that i picked up

seeing as how it was clayton kershaw.

unfortunately, i was not in socal to attend the game. back in 1980, some friends of the family went to the game and they regaled me with tales of all of the stars of the game back then and ken griffey's home run off of tommy john. i was pretty jealous.

i was jealous, too, of fans who attended fanfest and received some all-star game themed cards like this mookie betts

i was able to find the betts card for cheap, but jackie robinson's card hasn't come down to a price i am willing to pay yet.  and, i have only seen one version of steve garvey's fanfest autograph card 

come up for sale

it would be nice to have, though!

i also wish topps would print some of their digital only cards for us old school hard copy collectors. they issued quite a few 1980 all-star game themed cards last summer, including one of the garv

topps did, of course, issue a factory set again in 2022 with the all-star game logo foil stamped on the cards, and i picked up kershaw's card

plus the factory bonus mookie betts card

i will wait to find others in repacks or on sportlots. however, those last few cards aren't dodger stadium cards, so let me get back to the point of the post.

speaking of repacks, i found a couple of new to me dodger stadium cards recently after a stop at walgreens, and they are both braves.

1989 fleer tom glavine

and a 1990 woolworth's dale murphy

complete with dodger personnel hanging over the railing.

another braves card i have added to my collection also features a photo from dodger stadium and it's this 1998 donruss signature series javy lopez autograph card

but i have this card in my lurker collection thanks to todd zeile there in the background.

i have picked up some actual dodger cards for my collection, as well as some duplicates for the dodger stadium collection, including this 1997 upper deck home team heroes card of hideo nomo and mike piazza

it's oversized like a lot of upper deck stuff was in the late 1990's, but provides a bird's eye view of the stadium and right field pavilion in particular.

i will always want to add cards to my collection, and hopefully also the dodger stadium collection, that show the murals in the background, and i've done that with cards like this 1999 topps chrome darren dreifort refractor

and these 2000 bowman chrome kevin brown cards

base and refractor, as well as a nice 2000 topps stadium club chrome refractor card of devon white

great stuff.

dodger team cards are a good source for dodger stadium cards, and the 2001 topps 

and 2004 topps

gold parallels are good examples of that. i also grabbed a second 2009 bowman clayton kershaw card

for the dodger stadium collection. it captures the short amount of time that the bullpen doors had yellow padding on them.

i have been paying less and less attention to topps now in recent years, but i did take a look at some cards last year and bought this mookie betts card

which also netted me a nice blue parallel

but the main reason i wanted it was for the back

because it shows some of the retired numbers up on the dodger stadium facade, including the newest number of the bunch - gil hodges' number 14. hello to don sutton's 20 as well.

i also decided to pick up albert pujols' card

celebrating his 700th career home run

which happened at dodger stadium, although the card is in my name/number on the back mini-collection. with some of these topps now purchases, i qualified for the september card of the month

which celebrated aaron judge and pujols and their home run exploits.

here's a 1998 upper deck special fx card that i've added to my vladimir guerrero collection

that features a dodger stadium background, although it is obscured by the "fx" treatment. and here's one from 2003 topps stadium club

that i bought in duplicate so i could put one with my vladdys and one with my dodger stadium cards. it shows eric karros' mural behind the hall of fame outfielder.

just one more card to go in this post, and it's this 1989 topps baseball talk card

that celebrates the greatest moment in the history of dodger stadium, but features the cover of the 1988 world series program on the front, rather than a photo of the event.

not a dodger stadium card, per se, but one that belongs in my dodger collection and my "games i attended in person" collection, too.

i know i am biased but i really do consider dodger stadium to be the best baseball stadium in the game, and my visit there earlier this week confirmed that stance. stay tuned for tales from those games!