a moment for tommy john

tommy john passed away yesterday, which was not a surprise given how much attention his health had received lately. john penned a "farewell" message to his fans during the yankees' oldtimers' weekend just over a week ago, and it was picked up by nearly every media outlet that i came across. 

he obviously associated himself, or a large part of himself, with the yankees as he had two stints playing for them and won more games while in pinstripes than in any of his other stops. to me, however, he was always a dodger.

when i think of numbers, it's john who is number 25. being a member of the 1978 topps dodgers 

asserts that "privilege", with very few exceptions.

being included in that set as a dodger means that i have all of john's topps flagship cards, thanks to my "evolution of the 1978 topps dodgers" mini-collection. as i've done for some other recent passings, i've compiled the full run of his primary cards in the topps sets. in john's case, that means cards from 1964 through 1989

for others, i've tiled the cards into a single image, but there are just too many cards here to do that effectively. john was left out of the traded sets each time he switched teams - 1982, 1985, and 1986 - but he does have a sweet 1979 topps burger king yankee card that serves the purpose of a "traded" or update set. he also was featured on the yankees' 1982 team leader card as well as a 1983 super veteran card and one of the 1984 career leader cards. the latter two speak to his longevity in the game, a remarkable feat especially given the fact that he had his namesake surgery (what turned out to be) so early in his career.

he began his career in 1963 (no card) and ended it in 1989. he was left out of all major 1990 releases, although i did make a "final tribute" for him years ago

the stats on the back of that card show his 288 career wins and 760 games pitched. he is one of eight men to have started at least 700 games as a pitcher. the top 15 pitchers on that list are all in the hall of fame except for john and roger clemens. yes, he was a stat compiler due to his longevity, but i think he is worthy of the hall of fame. he's in mine.

john is the ninth member of the 1978 topps dodgers to pass away, joining davey lopes, jerry grote, vic davalillo, don sutton, tom lasorda, lance rautzhan, johnny oates, and glenn burke. i am sad to have lost another member of the team of my youth, but happy that i was able to witness the majority of his career. rest in peace 25.

a vintage chase of a different sort

with only two cards to go in my 1955 bowman set build, i don't have a lot of vintage to chase at the moment. i thought about reinstating my "sampler sets" of those topps flagship sets that i have not completed (1952-1956, 1958-1964, 1966-1969) and i just might do that although i think i still have most of the cards that comprised that part of my collection so there probably aren't a whole lot of cards to chase there either - mostly dodgers that migrated to my team collection.

what i have done is seek out some topps vintage stock cards for my collection. after seeing some from 2025 topps series 1, i was intrigued enough to pick up a couple of examples. here's clayton kershaw's card

just like last year, topps reimagined the current design for a simpler time. here's the back:

kind of christmasy.

i also picked up chris taylor's card

because it uses completely different colors than kershaw's, although the back is the same

and then i had the opportunity to add one of the checklist cards

that had another color scheme. here's its back:

which happens to be the only one of the three that is readily legible.

i also went back and found some vintage stock parallels from other topps releases for not a lot of money. here's a 2018 topps brandon mccarthy card

and a 2020 topps update terrance gore card

while i was happy for the short-timer gore to get a dodger card, this is probably one of my least favorite dodger cards in recent years because of the photoshopping and the design. but, i turned a blind eye to that fact when i found the vintage stock card for a very low price.

from 2022, here's tyler anderson's 2022 topps update card

in vintage stock form, and here's a dodger checklist card from 2022 topps flagship

that came from sluggo quite a while ago. that card is interesting because it appears that topps played with the image to make it look like an older photograph. vintage, if you will, in terms of irregular exposure. 

of course, 2024 was the first year that topps took vintage stock parallels in a whole different direction, and i recently added another example to my collection by way of jason heyward's card

i'm still annoyed by the addition of his number 23 to his jackie robinson day jersey.

another vintage pickup of mine has been a couple more dodger vintage embossed buyback cards from 2003 topps all-time fan favorites. you'll recall the 1979 steve garvey card i acquired, and now here is a 1975 topps roy campanella card (with yogi berra)

that includes the non-foil stamp. here's a photo that tries to show it in more detail

love seeing the "la" cap on campy!

similarly, here's a 1978 topps tommy john card with the stamp

with a photo for your benefit

the placement of these stamps seems to have been pretty willy nilly. for the record, the campy is listed as having 11 copies and the tommy john is listed at just 10. rare vintage adjacent pickups for my collection!

i really do doubt that i will chase any more vintage sets to completion. i would like to finish my 1953 topps dodger team set, but even needing only four cards (255 dixie howell, 258 jim gilliam, 263 john podres, 272 bill antonello) might be too much. luckily there are "other" vintage forms to keep an eye out for!

this would have made more sense during the olympics

i've acquired some gold, silver, and bronze of my own without dedicating years of my life to an intense training regimen. all it takes is several saved ebay searches. over the last several months, i've come across a couple of sellers who offered up several parallels from the 2004 upper deck legends timeless teams set, and i pounced on quite a few.

i added a couple of gold parallels to my master set build, including tim mccarver's 1964 subset card

and mookie wilson's 1986 subset card

these are numbered to 5, and i don't really have any plans around this particular parallel. for the bronze parallels, which are numbered to 50, my main goal was to have at least one from every team subset. my recent purchases got me quite close to that goal.

bob gibson 

is card #1 in the set, and it's always nice to start at the beginning. 

this jim kaat card

was the first bronze parallel i've found for a 1965 twin.

jim lonborg

was my first non-dodger pc, so adding his card made a lot of sense to me, and it is the only 1967 red sox bronze i have as well.

lou brock

is now one of four 1967 cardinal bronze parallels in the collection

and i didn't "need" denny mclain

as i already had a couple 1968 tigers in bronze form, but because it's a memorable moments card i pulled the trigger

this steve carlton

is my lone 1968 cardinals bronze

but boog powell

is one of the six i have for the 1969 orioles

here are two bert campaneris bronze parallels

and one vida blue

the blue is the lone 1975 a's bronze card in my collection

i added cecil cooper's card

just because he's cecil cooper

same can be said for george foster

but this one was a happy find as it represents the 1979 reds in the collection

manny trillo

is the only 1980 phillies bronze card i have, and i found it on sportlots!

i had no bronze parallels of the 1983 orioles, but came away from my most recent transaction with two - cal ripken jr

and john shelby

as a dodger fan, i couldn't leave shelby behind.

dwight gooden

lou whitaker

and dave winfield 

were the remainder of my non-dodger bronze additions, but they were opportunity acquisitions and not needed for the one from each team effort.

al downing's 1974 bronze parallel

is a duplicate so i now have a card to represent that team in the "set" build. i added some other dodger bronze cards, but they feed the dodger collection first.

ron cey

steve garvey

tommy john

steve yeager

bill russell

jerry reuss

ron cey

i added a second kirk gibson

to the collection to represent the 1988 dodgers in the set.

i am missing only bronze parallels from the 1987 and 1991 twins teams, so you can be sure i will be keeping an eye out for any of those that might pop up.

i did also add a few more dodger gold parallels while i was at it - al downing

ron cey

davey lopes

pedro guerrero

and ron cey

again. as i said up top, i don't have any illusions about picking up all or even most of these but i will bite from time to time.

as for the silver part of the post, the "base" autographs are sometimes referred to in that way, and i've added three since my last update. first, the late merv rettenmund

and the late luis tiant

and finally another steve garvey

that garvey goes into the dodger collection as i already had one in the pc.

there are still a bunch of parallels out there for sale, but for now i am content. until i see some bronze twinkies.