is this retro?

steve garvey turns 73 years old today. he last played in the major leagues 34 years ago, which is certainly enough time for him to be consider "retro". that's how panini presented him in this year's donruss optic and national treasures releases.

garvey was included on the "retro series signature" checklist in optic, getting a base

and prizm card

here's the back, with some commentary on the guy who made me think more highly of hits than home runs

there is also a gold parallel

numbered to 10

which i was happy to acquire. i have no thoughts of buying the other versions - black finite 1/1 and gold vinyl 1/1 (both of which are on ebay now with ridiculous and high buy-it-nows, respectively) - in what was a surprisingly minimalistic parallel effort from panini.

as for national treasures, garvey was featured on a relic-only card, called "retro materials". i only have the base version

which is numbered to 99. there are a couple of parallels of this one - holo gold, holo silver, platinum blue 1/1, and printing plates - but i am content with one variety. of course the parallels aren't necessarily plain white swatches (i've seen a holo gold that looks like it had a piece of his warmup jacket that panini has been using for the last few years and a printing plate that had a bat piece) so never say never.

happy birthday to the garv! better to be considered retro than not considered at all, i guess.

tony oliva is in my hall of famer collection

i know quite a few twins fans that were very happy to hear that tony oliva was voted in to the hall of fame by the golden days committee earlier this month.  i had prepared for the possibility by picking up a certified autograph card of him for my hall of famer collection:

that's a 2000 fleer greats of the game autograph card. here's the back:

one twins executive noted that he doubted there was a baseball fan in the state of minnesota that didn't have at least two tony oliva autographs thanks to his propensity for signing and interacting with fans as a team ambassador. that assessment was true for me - i have three or four items signed by him - but i didn't have a certified auto.

one of the non-certified autographs in our home is in one of my son's team yearbooks. we were at twins' spring training in 2008, and i pointed oliva out. my son approached him to sign the yearbook and i think oliva thought i sent him on my behalf. even so, he signed the book and tapped my son on the head. since then i've seen oliva at a number of team events and most recently had him sign a 1978 topps twins team card for my half-hearted attempt at a signed set of that release.

oliva's career concluded before i began following baseball, but i had his 1974 topps card early on in my collecting days and was impressed with the text on the back that noted "led al in batting three times; led al in basehits five times; led al in doubles four times". oliva never did lead the league in any categories again, although he took advantage of the newly created designated hitter position to extend a career that was going to be cut short due to knee problems.

longtime teammate (and now fellow hall of famer) bert blyleven had long been an advocate of oliva's regarding his being deserving of recognition for the hall of fame, even to the point of annoying voters who were deciding blyleven's fate if i recall correctly. i could appreciate that risk on blyleven's part, and it made me take a closer look at oliva's numbers. i am glad that the committee did as well!

by the way, i've updated my hall of famer collection on my want site - i decided not to show it in its entirety as part of these posts anymore.

unity relics, unite!

i don't recall what i was looking for on ebay a few months back when i stumbled upon a 2011 topps triple threads andre ethier relic card

whatever it was i was searching for, it took a back seat to this card, and i quickly searched for other dodgers from the same set. it turns out that the above card is a "unity" relic, and features a nice background shot of dodger stadium behind ethier.  there are a few other dodgers included in the subset (including a second ethier), and since it is triple threads, they all have the usual parallels. 

what is most interesting to me, however, is that different players (or different photos of the same player, in andre ethier's case) have one of three stadium backgrounds, which allowed me to do this:

duke snider and left field, with an emerald parallel of center field ethier and a sepia parallel of right field ethier completes the "unity" and gives a pretty solid dodger stadium background. super cool (to me, anyway).  these three cards are for the dodger collection, but i put the first ethier in my dodger stadium collection even though i don't have a double of that print run in my team collection. i'm playing fast and loose with my rules these days.

memorial patches for don sutton and tommy lasorda

i was watching a clip from trevor bauer's introductory press conference this past spring and noticed the two patches on the jersey he was wearing - one for tommy lasorda and one for don sutton. i was pleased to see that, as the patches matched the design used for don newcombe's memorial patch worn by the club in 2019, and avoided the combination of memorials as they had done for roy campanella and don drysdale who passed away within a couple of weeks of each other back in 1993.

for the majority of the season, the dodgers wore these patches stacked - tommy's on top - on their right sleeves.

thanks, 2021 topps fire albert pujols!

during their first home series against the nationals (april 9-11), the patches were worn side by side, with the 2020 world champions patch being worn below them. you can see this on clayton kershaw's topps now card

although lasorda's patch is not fully visible. 

i was a little surprised that the braves didn't include a memorial for sutton, but they had two bigger legends to remember in hank aaron and phil niekro. in my opinion, they didn't do enough as i mentioned in a previous post.

of the nearly 100 former major leaguers who passed away in 2021, many wore dodger blue at one time - it wasn't just lasorda and sutton that the franchise lost. from cy young award winner mike marshall to personal favorite joe beckwith to willard hunter, who appeared in just one game for the dodgers, they all are missed.

no ranting, just raving.

ok, maybe just one rant

but other than that 1999 skybox thunder angel pena rant parallel, 

this post is all about me raving about cards received from dime boxes earlier this fall, and probably even some that came before that! nick is one of my favorite trading partners because of his eclectic collection, which sometimes overlaps with mine.  let's see just some of the goodness that he's sent my way in recent months.

i've long since completed my dodger team collections of 1970 and 1971 fleer laughlin world series cards, but these were needs in their own right

because they are from fleer's 1980 laughlin stickers release!  here are the backs:

i recall buying just a few of these packs and actually not thinking much of them as a 9-year old. shame on me.

more duke snider  - first with a 2008 donruss sports legends card

back when they didn't care that they weren't licensed by the teams!

and here's a 2012 topps archives matt kemp 3d insert

that features the memorial patch for snider on kemp's right sleeve.

just like that first sticker up above, here's a card that celebrates the dodgers' 1955 world series championship, and it's from a release that was much closer in time to that event:

that's a 1961 nu-cards baseball scoops johnny podres card. as al ferrara once told me in a note he sent my way "remember johnny podres!". dodger fans will never forget his name, i don't think.

another player from the boys of summer was represented in a card issued 60 years after that podres:

that's jackie robinson's 2021 panini diamond kings card. kudos for panini for not colorizing the photo and messing up the color of the number on the back like topps did in this year's stadium club.

i'm showing these two cards side by side - a 1989 woolworth kirk gibson card and a card of cody bellinger from 2019 topps heritage high numbers

because they feature dodger world champions captured swinging in the same batter's box just about 30.5 years apart.

a few more that stood out - a 1988 starting lineup pedro guerrero card

i think i would enjoy seeing some new pedro guerrero cards in archives

1995 national packtime pinnacle hideo nomo

not sure how i didn't have this card already, but happy to have it now!

2017 bowman platinum gavin lux

are we sure that is lux in the photo?

2020 topps allen & ginter shawn green

technically a short print but i don't think these are as scarce as they were in earlier ginter runs. also, when did topps give up and change the card set from "allen & ginter's" to what everyone has called it since day one - "allen & ginter"? looks like maybe 2015?

2021 topps opening day dodgers opening day insert

two of these six guys won't be dodgers on 2022's opening day, assuming that day comes. 

one of nick's many mini-collections features pitchers with a bat. he must have had a double of this 1995 score tom candiotti gold rush parallel

because it's mine now! note that candiotti's hands are not as large as johnny bench's as he looks to be only carrying three balls in his right hand.

i mentioned up top that nick's collection overlaps with mine in a couple of spots, and we've reached the overlap of the venn diagram part of the post. here are some vladimir guerrero cards

spanning from 1998 to 2008. i especially enjoy the 2002-03 upper deck superstars card there on the bottom left. that was a fun set as i was still a pretty big hockey fan at that time.

finally, it's rare that i get a package from nick that doesn't contain some double play cards, and so here we go:

1996 upper deck collector's choice john patterson

with a lurking tony gwynn!

2000 topps opening day barry larkin

with a sliding giant that is not barry bonds!

2021 topps opening day carlos correa

2021 topps stadium club gleyber torres

and i'll end this cavalcade of cards with a couple of 2010 grandstand kane county cougar minor leaguers turning two

neither one of these guys made it to the majors, but at least they have some nice cards that i am happy to add to my double play collection.

thanks nick! can't wait to see what our future trades consist of!

baseball in the sky(dome)

i've seen games in skydome twice. actually, it was skydome the first time and rogers centre the other.  it was the seventh different stadium i had seen a game in, and i have this 1992 donruss triple play card in my "stadiums i've seen games in" mini-collection.

here's my ticket stub from the first game:

and here's my eticket from the second:

it looks like my photos from the first game have not been scanned, but i recall a few things from the game. the roof was closed, the upper deck where we sat seemed very steep and far from the action (even compared to the metrodome), roy halladay pitched, and the mariners had a high powered offense even without ken griffey jr. i had been a fan of halladay's since watching his near no-hitter on the last day of the 1998 season. however, he and the toronto bullpen were no match for edgar martinez, alex rodriguez, john olerud, and mark mclemore who combined for 10 runs and 11 rbi between them.

with the 2016 game being more recent, i do have photos to share.  this first one is from the top of the fourth inning, with ra dickey on the mound

you can see that the roof is open, and with that plus the full dirt basepaths, it certainly felt more like a baseball stadium than the first time i had visited. dickey had a no-hitter going at this point, although it was not in any way looking to be sustainable. still, dickey made it through 5 and a third no-hit innings before mookie betts hit a triple.

this next photo is from the bottom of the 5th, and it shows jose bautista about to cross home plate

bautista just kicked off the scoring with a two-run homer off of david price. the fans were in to it for sure - it was a fun atmosphere. the game wound up going in to extra innings with the red sox winning 5-3.

i'll give a nod to the photo on the triple play card with this one showing the cn tower rising above the stadium behind me

in fact, we headed up in to the tower after the game and took some photos of the field below

i do plan to get back to toronto at some point - it's such a great city. and when i do, i will very likely visit this stadium again.

this post is the last in a series covering the stadiums i've seen regular season major league baseball games in. my goal is to get to a new stadium next year, and try to do that until i've hit them all. time will tell!

making time for a different timeless team

about two years ago, i completed a dodger team set of relics from 2001 upper deck vintage. some of the relic cards from that set were among the first that i owned, but one had eluded me for quite some time.

yay. a bat relic card that celebrates the 1955 brooklyn dodgers with hall of famers jackie robinson and roy campanella and now gil hodges! plus hall of very good member don newcombe!

it's numbered to 100, and i could not afford what it was selling for 20 years ago. since then, it's been somewhat hard to find, but one came up in a true auction (while another sat on ebay with a large buy-it-now price) and i was able to come away the winner.

it's been just over 66 years since these four players celebrated together on the field at yankee stadium as they helped the dodgers to their first world series championship. in the decisive game 7, hodges drove in both runs, with campy scoring the first of them, and that was enough for johnny podres.  neither jackie nor newk made an appearance in game 7 as podres pitched a complete game and don hoak took over at third for jackie, who had hit just .182 in the first six games.

i am very happy to have added this card to my collection - the 1955 dodgers have really proven to be one of the most memorable - timeless, if you will - teams of the 20th century.