the k is for kershaw kountdown continues - giant slayer edition!

clayton kershaw made his sixth appearance of the 2025 season saturday night against the giants at dodger stadium, so i am pleased to be able to post another edition of the k is for kershaw kountdown as we track his progress to the 3,000 strikeout milestone.

coming off his best start of the season, kershaw registered another solid outing, going seven innings without allowing a run (matching the best outing by a dodger starter this season) and striking out five giants in the process. those 5 nocal's he k'd bring his season strikeout total to 20, and his career total to 2,988.

in honor of his performance, here are five cards (not seen on this blog before) from my collection to represent strikeouts number 2,984 through 2,988.

2,984 - 2024 topps finest

2,985 - 2014 topps wins leaders walmart blue parallel

2,986 - 2018 topps big league nl whip leaders gold parallel

2,987 - 2019 topps heritage 1970 scratchoff

2,988 - 2019 topps high tek

kershaw's night included allowing only three hits and just one walk to go with his five strikeouts. he faced the minimum number of batters through the first two innings (thanks to a walk-canceling double play) and then registered a strikeout in each of his last five frames. it was a low stress outing, as the dodgers piled on the runs early, and the giants did not mount any sort of rally against kershaw whatsoever.

kershaw's performance saturday night also reclaimed solo possession of first place in the national league west for the dodgers after they lost the series opener to the giants on friday and fell into a tie with their division rivals. it's worth noting that kershaw has struck out more players pitching against the giants than any other team, although that's not really a surprise given the old unbalanced schedules that teams would play.

here are some non-kershaw cards - starting with a 2007 topps moments & milestones russell (russ) martin card

martin was the catcher for kershaw's debut back in 2008. i would like to see kershaw asked to name the starters who were behind him that day because i sure as heck didn't recall a dodger named luis maza who started that game at second base.

seeing the 2019 topps heritage insert above referring to kershaw as "team captain" got me thinking about austin barnes. i recently read a quote from mookie betts - it may have been on a card back - that barnes (who served as kershaw's unofficial personal catcher for a few seasons) was the team captain of late. of course, he was recently released by the club. here's a 2021 topps big league rainbow foil parallel that features barnes and company as they celebrate the 2020 world series win

that is barnes, of course, in the catcher's gear. he is part of a very short list of dodger catchers (john roseboro, rick dempsey, and will smith are the others) to catch the final out of a dodger world series victory.

of course, you can't mention dodger catchers and kershaw without thinking of a.j. ellis. here is his 2013 topps gold parallel card

that features kershaw prominently.

kershaw is still in 20th place on the all-time leader board, and he will remain there unless he passes john smoltz (or is himself passed). smoltz has a career strikeout total of 3,084 and so kershaw is now 96 k's behind smoltz, but just 12 away from the 3,000 milestone. for what it's worth, he has moved past smoltz on the all-time wins leaderboard and is now tied with mark buehrle and rick reuschel with 214.

kershaw should be back on the mound later this week against the padres. know that when he makes his next start, i will be back to update the kountdown soon thereafter. stay tuned! 

another standout chrome year

while i was completing my 2007 topps chrome refractor run dodger team sets, i was also picking up other refractors from other topps chrome releases. the one set that i hit the hardest during that time was 2008. the card design from that year really lends itself to the refractor treatment as there is color built in to the design along with ample border space.

these base refractors - hiroki kuroda

blake dewitt

and chin-lung hu (autograph)

were the ones i needed to complete the team set of refractor parallels.

the copper parallels from 2008 are pretty sharp, and i've almost completed that team set, too. here are the last few that i acquired in that effort - brad penny

russell martin

james loney

derek lowe

andre ethier

hiroki kuroda

and blake dewitt

i also have the matt kemp and andruw jones copper parallels, leaving the chin-lung hu autograph as the only card yet to obtain.

there is no x-fractor hu autograph but i only have a few of the dodgers, including russell martin

martin is also only one of the two blue refractor parallels that i own

but i will probably work to correct that. they are really great looking cards. i don't know if topps has changed their refractor printing or if its design based, but these 2008 cards hit a little differently than more recent releases from what i can see.

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!