mr. baseball's memorial patch

here's another post to document one of the memorial patches worn during the 2025 season. today, memorial day, i'll share the card that represents the patch that the brewers wore in honor of bob uecker in my collection.

uecker was an army veteran - he reached the rank of corporal prior to his baseball career - and while that is not the focus of memorial day (hopefully we've all taken some time to recognize those who gave their lives in service to our armed forces) i figured i'd make this post today.

this 2026 topps heritage sal frelick card shows the patch the best

of all of the 2026 cards i have seen. here's an even closer look at the patch

uecker started his big league career in milwaukee with the braves, and returned to wisconsin to call brewers games in 1971 - their second season as the brewers. he was behind the microphone for their games for 54 consecutive seasons prior to his passing in january of 2025.

there's another card i purchased because of the patch (and one other reason) that i will show in a future post.

in other brewers memorial patch news, i have replaced the card i used to have in my collection for the ironworkers memorial patch from 1999 with this 2000 pacific prism geoff jenkins holographic gold parallel

you can read about that patch and the meaning behind it here.

i can't say i ever listened to any brewer broadcasts, but i read uecker's book "catcher in the wry" back when i was in junior high or high school, watched "mr. belvedere", and saw his miller lite commercials and appearances in the "major league" movies so i was well aware of his stature as an ambassador for baseball, not just the brew crew.

mail call

i've received a couple of envelopes from longtime bloggers and trade partners recently. first, jon of penny sleeves fame reached out (again!) asking if i was in need of a particular card. this time, it was a signed card that carl erskine would send out to fans. i said yes, and soon this card was in my mailbox.

i told jon that i thought is was a different hue than the one that i already had, but it turned out i was confusing the ink color with the filter of the image. here's the one that oisk sent me back in 2009

the backs are the same as well. 

thanks jon - i am happy to have another example of this card in my collection, and please let me (and the rest of the blogging community) know if there is anything specific you are chasing these days.

the other envelope came from rod of padrographs, who seemingly continues to rip packs and then distribute the cards among his trading partners. he sent me some mega box mojo refractors of prospects inserts from 2023 bowman chrome.  

brooks lee

is a name i recognized, but yasser mercedes and hendry chivilli

are a couple that i haven't heard of.  it looks like mercedes is playing for the twins in fort myers, and chivilli has been converted from an infielder to a pitcher although he doesn't have any 2026 stats yet. they are 21 and 20, respectively, so perhaps they will advance to the show in the future.

the other card rod sent was a nice black & white parallel of luke keaschall's 2025 topps stadium club card

you can't contain the flow!

thanks jon and rod - the cards and thoughtfulness are much appreciated!

last word on the pete rose memorial patch

i've been keeping an eye out for memorial patches on late year 2025 and 2026 card releases since there were a number of teams that wore patches during the 2025 campaign. i've already shared the card that represents the dodgers' fernando valenzuela patch in my collection, and this post will do the same for the reds' pete rose patch.

perhaps if my 2026 topps heritage hunter greene black border parallel hadn't been damaged (still waiting on a replacement card from topps) it would have been the one to represent the black circular patch with rose's number 14 in white, but instead, i am using elly de la cruz' 2025 topps allen & ginter card

topps photoshopped out the kroger patch that the reds wore below rose's tribute, which is odd to me since they haven't done that on any flagship cards that i've seen.

rose passed away in september of 2024, and i wrote some thoughts here. i was glad to see the reds recognize his passing with a patch, which seemed like a no-brainer but you never know when it comes to charlie hustle.

hornets! hornets!

the los angeles lakers were back-to-back nba champions when i went away to college. i had followed them fairly closely during my high school years thanks to friends being fans and the showtime era of lakers basketball. my favorite player was kareem, whose 1977-78 topps card i had pulled from the very first pack of basketball cards i ever purchased. i wish i still had that card but i sold it in the early days of ebay.

anyway, while at college in southern california, some friends and i decided that we should go to a laker game. for me, the chance to see kareem before he retired (he had announced that the 1988-89 season would be his last) was the primary motivator. i had never been to an nba game before, although i had been to many hockey games at the fabulous forum where the lakers played.

we went to the local ticketmaster outlet for tickets, and the only game for which tickets remained for sale was a game against the expansion charlotte hornets. in the rafters. yes, the lakers were a hot ticket back then for sure. we bought the tickets and wound up heading up to inglewood on january 27, 1989 to see the game.

the game was memorable to me as it featured former laker kurt rambis getting his championship ring before the game, and kareem scored a season high (up to that point) 19 points. magic johnson had a triple double and still sat out pretty much the entire second half. and, since it was the only visit the hornets paid to the lakers' home court, i figured i would see if i could find some cards featuring images from that game after i picked up a card from another nba game that i attended in person.

i was pretty happy to see that rambis' 1989-90 nba hoops card

featured a photo of him going up against the lakers' mychal thompson. rambis had 19 points and 9 rebounds in the game. and rambis' card wasn't the only one!

dell curry (who recently had his number retired by the hornets - or is it the bobcats franchise that retired the number?) is shown with either magic or kareem behind him, and mark macnamara makes an appearance on his own card (with dave hoppen) as well as tim kempton's. i don't recall mark mcnamara, and i don't recall paying much attention to who was on the court once magic, james worthy, and a.c. green checked out of the game. byron scott didn't play, giving michael cooper a chance to start along with those other three and kareem. 

i dug through my ticket stubs to find the one from this game

and i found some photos that i took. remember, i was in the nosebleeds so i was using a zoom lens, it was the 80's, and the lighting wasn't super bright.

this is the pregame ceremony where kareem presented rambis with his ring

and this is shortly thereafter when the rest of the lakers greeted rambis

note that i do not believe jack nicholson was at this game, but i don'r really recall.

here are a couple of game action shots - magic passing the ball to kareem posted up

and the skyhook!

the eggs were chilling....

here's the scoreboard at the end of the game

taking a picture like this is something i did because of my dad. he always did it and i've found it to be a nice way to remember the game, or even identify it if a stub is lost. i can't say that i do this every time i go to a game these days, but sometimes i remember.

finally, it's not from the hornets game, but i also picked up magic's card from the set, on which he is shown as earvin

this one goes in my memorials binder because of the black band he is sporting. it was worn during the 1989 postseason in honor of larry fleisher, a founder of the nba players' association who passed away in may of '89.

after attending this game, i didn't get to another nba game for about 20 years. in all, i would say i've been to a half dozen (ten at the most) nba games. definitely the fewest of the four major sports. still, having cards that represent two of those games is pretty cool. or, as they say about the nba, it's fan-tastic!

a dimebox dozen dodgers from nick

i am happy to report that nick from the dormant dime boxes blog is still participating in the blogosphere through trades. i received a package from him earlier this year, which was the second one he sent me following his "retirement" from active posting. as usual, there were plenty of new-to-me cards from a wide variety of releases. 

1978 dover hall of fame reprints zach wheat

this is a 1911 t205 reprint of the hall of famer, representing the franchise's "superbas" era. here's the back

1988 card collectors 1911 t205 reprints kaiser wilhelm

this is a different reprint set of the 1911 t205, and the card features another superba. here's the back:

you don't see typhoid referenced on a baseball card too often.

more old-timey guys via 1985 big league collectibles

stanley bordagaray was better knows as "frenchy", and clyde sukeforth is probably best known as the dodger manager when jackie robinson made his major league debut.

2025 panini donruss pee wee reese

i no longer add panini checklists to my want lists, but happily accept dodgers, such as reese.

1988 sportflics fernando valenzuela

i am always happy to add a fernando card to the collection! i am down to needing only mike scioscia for the team set. look for scioscia to show up on the nefarious nine at some point.

1991 classic update green travel edition eddie murray

this is the second classic murray card i've received in the mail this year, coming on the heels of one from mark z.

2017 panini diamond kings clayton kershaw

this one wasn't new to me, but i hadn't shown it on the blog before, so here you go.

2025 bowman chrome shohei ohtani

definitely appreciate those who send ohtani cards to me!

there was gold in that thar package - from 2003 topps, 2015 topps update, and 2020 topps

the adam liberatore card got me thinking about being more intentional with the 2015 gold parallels because of the unique border design. more on that in a future post.

in addition to those (and other) dodgers, there was the regular influx of vladimir guerrero cards. several were new-to-me, like this 2001 topps home team advantage parallel

and this smattering of cards

from 2002 donruss diamond kings, 2002 mlb showdown all-star game, and 2003 upper deck finite.

double play cards are something nick and i both collect, so there are always some of those, too. here's a 1997 bowman felix martinez international parallel

plus six others that were new-to-me

some nice cameos there from the likes of david ortiz and trea turner.

i'll finish by making it a baker's dozen of dodger cards - here's a 2025 topps ohtani and mookie betts dynamic duos insert

maybe someday at the national nick and i can recreate this card.

i still go to nick's blog regularly - mainly to use the blogroll to find new posts from other bloggers, but also just in case he's had the itch to start posting again. maybe someday. thanks nick!

triple crowning achievements

a couple of decades ago, as i began assembling my topps "sampler sets", i paused to admire the 1967 league leader cards. my m.o. in regards to my sampler sets was to have at least one example of a league leader card for each year, but the '67 set piqued my interest for a couple of reasons.

first, they represented sandy koufax's only appearances in the set. second, frank robinson's 1966 triple crown meant that he was in the first position on the three american league offensive leader cards. similarly, koufax ended his career with a triple crown feat of his own and was likewise placed on the national league pitching leader cards.

i made the decision back then to complete the league leader card subsets that celebrated these triple crown achievements to include in my sampler set. when i disassembled those sets around 2014 to focus on completing my topps dodger team sets from the 1950's (still working on '52 and '53) and 1960's, the koufax cards went into my dodger collection and the robinson cards languished in a monster box.

sometime last year, i made the decision to reinstate the sampler sets. having completed the 1955 bowman set and realizing that it would be the last vintage set i would complete, i wanted to have the cards from the topps sets i didn't have completed represented in my collection. so, i dusted off what i had kept from 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1966, 1967, 1968, and 1969. when i got to the 1967 cards, i again paused at the sight of the league leader cards.

after thinking about it for a bit, i decided to complete the full league leader subset and keep it with some other subsets of cards i have completed. so, let's (finally) see some cards!

here is sandy koufax's triple crown in card form

and the backs:

i've always wondered why it was "pitching leaders" on the front and "victory leaders" on the back of these cards. anyway, sandy's line was 27 wins, a 1.73 era, and 317 strikeouts. it was a runaway triple crown, really. koufax won the cy young award unanimously, and remember, this was when there was just one award for all of major league baseball. he also received more first place votes for the national league mvp award than the winner, roberto clemente, just missing his second such accolade.

not to be undone, here is frank robinson's triple crown in card form:

and the backs:

the twins gave robby a good challenge, but he also ran away with the triple crown with a .316 average, 49 home runs, and 122 rbi. robinson unanimously won the mvp as you would have expected with a season like that, leading the orioles to the pennant to boot. and yes, i know that they won the world series, too, but that wouldn't have factored in to the mvp voting.

here are the american league pitching leader cards

and their backs

interesting to me to not see many oriole pitchers place highly in these categories.

here are the national league batting leader cards

and their backs

clemente had a great year, and so did richie allen, hank aaron, and the alou brothers. felipe alou actually received two first place votes in the mvp voting, with allen getting one of his own.

after all that, i picked up a couple more of these cards because i reinstated my sampler sets late last year. i'll have some posts up at some point this summer to share them. i've also added some more modern league leader cards to my dodger collection recently.

2023 topps national league batting leaders gold parallel

2024 topps national league batting leaders royal blue parallel

2022 topps national league pitching leaders gold star parallels

lots of dodger representation there. note that i am still a fan of a single league leader card that shows the leader for each league on the same card, but that's because i grew up on the 1978 topps set and that's how it was that year.  i'll also note that i decided not to pick up all of the league leader cards for carl yastrzemski's triple crown (nor miguel cabrera's for that matter), but i do have clayton kershaw's in my dodger team set.

daves to be different

i happened to be adding cards to my sportlots inventory, and it's a pain when the new cards are of older stature. i have to go into the monster boxes on the bottom of my stack to get them in the right place, knowing full well that the likelihood of someone actually buying a card from 1990 topps is pretty low.

all was not lost, however, as i took some time to peruse some of the other cards already in my inventory and found a couple of anomalies worth a few words here. first up is dave dravecky's 1990 score card

this is, at face value, an interesting card because the photo shows dravecky waving his cap with his arm in a sling. for those of us who remember, dravecky broke his arm during a game following recovery from surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. so, the photo is to be respected as a record of that and not just a random photo of him pitching in a game. what really sets the card apart from the rest of the set, however, is the back

rather than a portrait shot like every other card, score used a photo of dravecky warming up before making his first start after surgery, and even captioned the photo for us. this sort of willingness to vary from the norm should be appreciated, applauded, and replicated on more cards to this day.

the card also opted for more text than stats in order to explain the challenges that dravecky faced. unfortunately, he did not return to the majors in 1990, so the card is effectively a final tribute for him.

the other card i pulled to scan is dave clark's 1989 fleer card

it is the only card i am aware of in the set (to be fair, i have not completed this set nor seen every card in the set) that lists "rookie" as part of an individual player card. the designation does not appear on the back

i didn't bother to peruse comc's library to see if there are others like this in 1989 fleer. even if there are, it's fun to find some anomalies among the monotony of junk wax era sets.