opening day 2001 showed up on a baseball card come to life

bo from baseball cards come to life and i swapped some cards earlier this year. most of what i sent to bo were yankees and most of what he sent to me were cards featuring dodger stadium in the background. when he mentioned that he was finding some cards from 2002 topps, i asked if he had an extra jeff shaw card, and he did!

now, i already had this card in my team binder and my dodger stadium binder, but i wanted another one to add to my "cards featuring games i attended" mini-collection. you see, i am as certain as i can be that this card features a photo of shaw taken on opening day, 2001 - a game i attended at dodger stadium.

it's interesting to me that eric karros was featured on my ticket, but not because the same photo was used on one of the large murals hanging on the exterior of the stadium as we approached it

but rather because i narrowly missed a screaming foul ball off of his bat - a ball that grazed my fingertips and made me instantly glad i wasn't a couple of inches taller. more on that in a minute.

you may recall that 2001 was the year that the dodger murals focused on their retired numbers. the pregame ceremony included large jersey tarps out on the field:

the team also handed out rally towels to fans as they entered. gary sheffield was standing by at the left field entrance that we used. he was shorter than i expected, but was the star of the game (along with chan ho park) as the dodgers won 1-0 behind a sheffield homer.

anyway, more pregame stuff - there was a skydiver

because it was 2001.  

the skydiver was not barry manilow, but manilow did perform the national anthem. you can't see him in this photo, but it was taken after manilow was introduced.

full disclosure - i saw manilow in concert on new year's eve at the old universal amphitheater in the early 1990's. it was a fun time.

our seats were just in foul territory down in the left field corner, and you can see in this photo where we were sitting relative to the foul pole. in one of his at bats, karros hit a line drive that i watched curl foul towards me. i stood and raised my hands and felt the ball graze my fingertips. any regret i had was instantly replaced with relief as i am sure i would have broken some fingers had the ball made more solid contact with my hands.

the last game photo includes the blimp.

my dad was a blimp fan, having been up in one a couple of times to take photos. this photo also gives a slightly better look at some of the murals, and you can see the stadium giveaway towel in the lower left corner, as a fan was using it to cover their head in the shadeless seats.

as for shaw, he came in and pitched a scoreless ninth inning for the save. the fact that the bunting is in place on shaw's card with him pitching in a day game is what led me to the opinion that the photo used comes from the game i attended.

shaw wasn't alone in the cards that bo sent - there were a bunch of other cards with dodger stadium in the background that i've added to that collection:

the above cards are pretty standard for recent issues as far as dodger stadium backgrounds go. this 2008 topps gary matthews card is a bit different

in that it features the outfield wall, with part of the universal studios ad which said "play in our park" in view.

bo sent me this 2007 topps matt kemp card

because of the background, but it actually goes in to the team binder because...

red letter text on the back variation! what a lame variation that was.

bo sent some other mini-collection hits, such as these for the double play collection:

2002 topps miguel tejada

2002 topps damion easley

2002 topps felipe lopez

2006 topps felipe lopez 

the guy knew how to turn two!

2006 topps opening day julio lugo si for kids max action insert

and 2006 topps marcus giles

that last one actually went in to the tatooine collection, along with these others:

the indians had a bunch of tatooine cards in 2006 and 2007 for some reason.  this last one is from 2008 topps, and features joey gathright

it sort of looks like it could be an intrasquad game with all of the blue, but i am guessing it is probably not.

thanks bo!

a blogger's impact

trading is not the only way for bloggers to impact another's collection. by simply doing what we do - posting about cards - we can increase other's awareness of the vast multitude of cards that exist.  case in point, nick at dime boxes recently showed a couple of cards as part of his second frankenset that i had not seen before.

one was this 2000 fleer impact edgar martinez card

and the other was this 2003 donruss team heroes mark ellis card

both cards were missing from my collection - the edgar is a sweet dodger stadium card, and the ellis is a double play turn - so i thanked nick and headed to sportlots to acquire these new found gems.

now, anyone who has shopped on sportlots knows that there is a temptation to maximize the return and add cards to the shopping cart to optimize the shipping costs.  even with the "box" option, many sellers offer decent shipping costs for multiple cards.  so, i decided to try to finish up a team set or two.

i settled on 1999 fleer tradition, and added the dodgers that i was missing from my setl

kevin brown

not a padre anymore.

antonio osuna

angel pena

jeff shaw

gary sheffield

and devon white

even with these cards, i still had room in my cart for a couple more without increasing the shipping cost.  so, i went to comc to browse images from the set, thinking that there may be a dodger stadium or double play card or two from another team that i could add.

one of the cards i came across was this charles johnson card

cj is an oriole in name only - he's wearing dodger blue, so i added it to the purchase.

i knew already that there were quite a few cards in the set that featured images taken in dodger stadium. because i needed a few dodgers, i filtered my search at comc by team to see if any of those cards featured a dodger stadium shot.  as a result, i picked up another copy of jeff shaw's card, but not gary sheffield's. that's because i didn't turn the card over until it arrived,

so it wasn't until then that i saw the '1965' behind him from the world championships mural. oh well.  i did pick up a second copy of eric gagne's update card for my dodger stadium collection

as well as a second card of eric weaver from the base set

i found a few other dodger stadium cards featuring players from visiting teams, like chris peters

masato yoshii

larry walker

the gagne card actually shows the 1999 murals in the background which were based on the heroes patches that the players wore that year. the weaver, peters, and yoshii cards show the 1959 championship in the background, with don drysdale appearing towards the edge of yoshii's card (the murals also included retired numbers). walker's card shows sandy koufax on the wall.

the murals weren't the only part of dodger stadium on display. here's jon lieber 

and jay powell

at the dugout rail. i always appreciate seeing a dodger usher in the background like on that lieber card.  interestingly enough, i already had the warning track parallel of the powell card in my collection, but not the base.

here's dante bichette

chillin' and maxin' in the golf cart he spent all day waxin', hanging out in front of the old dugout level seats.

and here's future dodger hitting coach turner ward

bringing good gum game to chavez ravine as a player.

i know that i will likely never have all of the dodger fleer ultra inserts, so that is a good place for me to look when i am adding cards to the collection. i wound up grabbing two copies of roger cedeno's 1996 golden prospects card.

one for the team set, and one for the dodger stadium mini-collection. i like the aerial view on the front.

so now we are getting to the double play portion of the post. 1999 fleer tradition did not disappoint as i was able to add a few new cards to my collection.

unfortunately, sportlots does not usually have images, especially for 20-year old base.  so, while i ordered a nm copy of abraham nunez's card, i received this jacked up version

it's miscut and suffers from offset printing. maybe i'll try to flip it and pick up a better version. i know some folks out there collect these sorts of printing errors.

other new-to-me double plays included this alex gonzalez card

plus a couple featuring miguel tejada - his card

and that of darren lewis

next up are a couple of tatooine cards - brant brown

and andres galarraga

i think galarraga's name is a good anagram for a star wars character.  how about sendar ralagraga? sounds right to me.

finally, i added this mark loretta card to my card.

the future dodger is shown in front of jackie robinson's retired number, which makes it a great add to my mini-collection.

in all, i picked up around 30 cards with this sportlots purchase that was spurred on by just a couple of cards nick posted. it was not the first time and won't be the last time that another blogger impacts my collection in this way, so thank you to everyone posting about their cards and collections! i never know what i might find to add to my collection as a result.