21 number salute

newly inducted hall of famer jeff kent will have his number retired by the san francisco giants tonight. i've added his 2000 fleer ultra card to my retired number collection as a result.

kent only spent six seasons with the giants, but that was the longest single team tenure of his career. it was an impactful six years, as he won the 2000 national league mvp award and helped the club reach the world series in 2002. of course, having peak barry bonds in the same lineup helped.

with a franchise as storied as the giants', kent's relatively short stint didn't result in him sitting high on any all-time franchise leader boards, although he is tied for 10th place in home runs with 175 (same number as brandon belt). 

kent finished his career as a dodger, and there are plenty of cards to be had documenting that fact. the most recent one i have acquired is this 2007 upper deck sweet spot sweet swatch relic card

as a dodger, kent wore number 12, which was his preferred number (he wore 12 with the mets, indians, and astros in addition to the dodgers). he couldn't wear it with the giants, however, because it was being worn by his manager, dusty baker. for me, baker is still number 12, and i am guessing he will have his number retired by at least one franchise when he is elected to the hall of fame as a manager at some point in the future. 

in, at best, tangential news, i've added a couple more cards to my retired numbers collection as "header" cards. these are cards that show retired numbers in the background or celebrate number retirement ceremonies. this 1999 fleer tradition matt morris card

shows a couple of the giants' retired number placards in the background. the one that is fully visible is carl hubbell's number 11.

i also upgraded my 2022 topps stadium club chrome lars nootbaar card from base to refractor

which makes it easier to see the retired numbers behind him

this 1993 upper deck julio valera card

shows nolan ryan's number 30 that was retired by the angels in 1992, while ryan was still active.

i should probably add dave bergman's 1983 topps card to the retired number header cards, but that one is representing 1983 topps in my topps flagship year-by-year collection as it fascinated me thanks to the presence of mel ott's placard in the background - something i had just started noticing during tv broadcasts of games the year before.

whether i pick up another copy of that card or not, there are other cards to add to this collection - stay tuned!

kent me if you can

jeff kent is headed to the hall of fame. i didn't really see that coming, as there were a few people being considered by the eras committee for induction that i thought would limit votes for the all-time home run leader among second basemen. i mean, i thought it was wrong that he wasn't voted in by the writers when he was first eligible, but i also think it is an absolute shame that barry bonds is not in the hall, so what do i know.

what i do believe at this point is that bonds (and roger clemens for that matter) will never be inducted while carlos beltran seems to be on his way to eventual election (maybe even this go around). anyway, i recently picked up a couple more jeff kent cards for my dodger collection via sportlots. these two cards from 2007 topps moments & milestones

leave me just 147 away from having the full run of these kent cards. nonsense.

kent doesn't seem to sign at all, so i don't have a card to add to my hall of famer collection, but maybe this election will change that, sort of how it kickstarted ted simmons into signing a bunch of cards. if there is a certified, on card auto of kent out there somewhere, please let me know. i might try tracking it down. i saw kent play, but the connection i think of more often is from his very earliest days as a big leaguer. while i was in college, i worked at the city of costa mesa, where kent's dad was a police officer. the police station was adjacent to city hall, and while i never met either kent, one of my more senior coworkers pointed out the police lieutenant to me. there was quite a buzz at the city when jeff debuted with the blue jays in april of 1992 for sure.

who knew then that his career would result in baseball immortality? not me, but i am happy for him that it is happening. i do hope that he is the only inductee in 2026, unless some how alex rodriguez and manny ramirez get the votes.

the almost daily dodger - odalis perez

there was a point in the summer when i was getting pretty obsessed with colored topps chrome refractors, especially those from about 16 or 17 years ago. i wound up picking up one from 18 years ago for my collection - odalis perez's 2006 topps chrome blue refractor

it's not as impressive in hand as the 2007 topps chrome blue refractors, but it's still nice. some of the other refractors i picked up around that time included a gold 2004 topps chrome cesar izturis refractor

a base 2005 topps chrome traded jeff kent refractor

and a black jose valentin refractor from the same set as kent's card

black refractors are always sharp.

back to odalis, however. it's been over two and a half years since he passed away, but i still think of him from time to time. he was kind enough to hand over a baseball from the dodger dugout during a game at anaheim stadium so that we would have a ball for each of the kids that my friends and i were at the game with. my son got a ball during pregame, and i caught a ball from nomar as he left the field at the end of an inning for one of the other kids. in one of the latter innings, the guy i was sitting next to was chatting up perez in spanish and got him to toss us a ball. all three kids were happy! thanks odalis!

still scratching that 17 year itch

it wasn't too long after i had completed the 2007 topps chrome dodger team set that i decided to go after the blue refractor parallels. the base chrome cards seemed pretty lackluster, and with the chunky borders, the blue refractors were fantastically blue! it took me a while, but i got there, and i recently finished off the regular refractor and white refractor team sets, too.

here's the base dodger team set for comparison purposes later on.

j.d drew, andre ethier, rafael furcal

jeff kent, brad penny, juan pierre

chad billingsley, jason schmidt, matt kemp

randy wolf, takashi saito, russell martin

derek lowe, greg maddux, delwyn young  

the black borders don't do the base chrome any favors, and shame on topps (and other companies at the time) for including autographs as base cards.

now here is the blue refractor team set - note that there was no delwyn young card in the blue refractor style

j.d drew, andre ethier, rafael furcal

jeff kent, brad penny, juan pierre

chad billingsley, jason schmidt, matt kemp

randy wolf, takashi saito, russell martin

derek lowe, greg maddux  

having the blue refractors but not the regular refractors gnawed on me a bit, so i got that job done.

j.d drew, andre ethier, rafael furcal

jeff kent, brad penny, juan pierre

chad billingsley, jason schmidt, matt kemp

randy wolf, takashi saito, russell martin

derek lowe, greg maddux, delwyn young                

much, much brighter, of course. the young card is numbered to 500 in refractor form.

now for the white border refractors

j.d drew, andre ethier, rafael furcal

jeff kent, brad penny, juan pierre

chad billingsley, jason schmidt, matt kemp

randy wolf, takashi saito, russell martin

derek lowe, greg maddux, delwyn young    

the "pop" on these is largely background dependent. speaking of backgrounds, there was no nomar garciaparra chrome card in 2007, but he is in the background of chad billingsley's card.

the white refractors are numbered to 660 - hard to see on the scanned card back

but the delwyn young auto is only numbered to 200

interestingly enough, i have no xfractors in my collection. maybe that's next. or, the red refractor parallels. there is always something to chase!

the 17 year itch

after completing the 1992, 1993, and 1994 topps dodgers gold parallel team sets (and seeing night owl's complete 2008 topps series 1 and 2 dodgers gold parallel team set), i figured that it was time to complete a numbered gold parallel team set, and i decided that it would be 2007 topps. i chose that set mainly because it has big, chunky borders that allow for a lot of color, but also it does not include any rookie or early career clayton kershaw cards that i missed out on in real time!

i had maybe a third of the team set when i started, and it took me a few months to pull it all together, but i managed.  so, here is the complete 2007 topps gold parallel dodger team set

j.d. drew, andre ethier, rafael furcal

jeff kent, james loney, jonathan broxton

brad penny, grady little, delwyn young

greg maddux, juan pierre, jason schmidt

matt kemp, randy wolf, luis gonzalez

takashi saito, russell martin, wilson betemit

derek lowe, chad billingsley, ramon martinez

dodger team card

 

but that's not all - i also completed the update team set

brady clark, david wells, mark hendrickson

olmaedo saenz, hong-chih kuo, tony abreu

andy laroche, russell martin, brad penny

takashi saito, russell martin (alex rodriguez) combo, russell martin (cole hamels) combo

scott proctor

the proctor card was the last of these that i acquired. there weren't too many options when it came to purchasing the vagabond reliever's card, but thankfully one of the two sellers who had high hopes with their buy-it-now prices sent an offer that was pretty reasonable and i was able to complete the set.

there are a lot of "let's remember some guys" up there, but i remember being pretty happy with kemp and martin and ethier showing up. luis gonzalez not so much. and, as you can see, there are definitely some differences in the pigmentation of the gold across the collection.

another difference is the numbering on the back. topps switched the orientation of the serial numbering between flagship series 1 and 2 and update. ramon martinez is from series 2 and olmedo saenz is from update

ok, so it's hard to see, but on the flagship card, the 2007 is closest to the topps logo, and in update it's closest to the player inset photo. and, how great is it that topps noted each of these as "gold parallel" on the back?!

with the black borders, topps was in need of a different treatment for the other-colored border parallels (this was before camo /25 and all that). they went with copper

which was numbered to 56

the low print run black border parallels debuted in 2003 and were numbered to 52 copies. since then they have increased in production by one to match the "years of collecting" on the front. as far as i can tell, 2007 is the only year that the border for these cards hasn't been black.

i have no plans to chase the copper parallel set, but i do have more 17 year itch to scratch. stay tuned!

missing 2007 nomah!

it's hard to believe that it has been 18 years since the dodgers beat the padres in what is known as the "4+1 game". on september 18, 2006, the dodgers hit four straight solo home runs in the bottom of the 9th inning to tie the game, and then nomar garciaparra hit a walk-off in the bottom of the 10th.

i was looking forward to 2007 to see all of the cards that would be issued highlighting this tremendous achievement, but it was crickets when topps and upper deck sets were released. nomar didn't sign with topps, and upper deck didn't bother to include that game in their highlights subset.

at least there were some nomar cards, and i've recently gone back and added some that eluded me back then.

one of those cards is this 2007 ud spectrum season retrospection

the only topps cards that featured nomar in 2007 came from the co-signers set where he was named, but took a back seat to jeff kent. kent, coincidentally, was one of the four dodgers to homer in the 9th inning of that game that took place 18 years ago tonight.

here are the bronze and gold parallels from the set

and their backs

i scanned them just to show the variation in font size of some of the serial numbering which i find odd.

here are four more - blue, red, silver red, and silver bronze

by my count, there are six more variations showing nomar that i have yet to acquire, so there's a goal for the future.