as a younger fan and collector of cards back in the early 1980's, i certainly thought that the dodger infield of steve garvey, ron cey, bill russell, and davey lopes was worthy of a record breaker or highlights card in 1982 given that they played together for as long as they did - longer than any other foursome. of course, russell missed much of the 1975 season due to injury, and lopes missed about half of the 1981 season with injuries as well, but they still played together for over eight years - from june 23, 1973 until the final out of the 1981 world series. it turned out that i had to create my own custom card about 30 years later.
not much had changed in the card landscape since my post over 11 years ago lamenting how close some cards had been to featuring all four of these guys together. so, when i saw the 2021 leaf lumber checklist, i was gobsmacked. there was going to be a card of the four infielders as part of the "bat rack four" subset! my excitement was slightly tempered by the fact that it was leaf producing these cards, but still!
i wound up trying to complete the rainbow. i am currently short of that goal, but i do have these to show off - first the bronze (base) version:
that's one for the garvey collection, and this is one for the team collection:
the numbering falls off pretty quickly, with the purple /9 being the next most common version:
next is red /7
and then platinum /6
and then pewter /4
i am missing the emerald version which is numbered to 4 (or maybe 3), but i do have the navy blue version which is numbered to 3
there is also a silver parallel that is numbered to 2 which i am missing, but i do have the gold 1/1:
seven out of nine isn't bad!
here's the back:
i do enjoy this piece of history, thank you very much! now let's get a card with a photo of the four together - i'm thinking 2022 topps heritage would be a great place to start with a baseball flashbacks card taking us back to that fateful day in june of 1973.
long live the infield!
Pewter is better than platinum? Huh?
ReplyDeleteNot much sense in that. Donruss was similar in the mid 2000s.
DeleteAmazing collection! I think it would have been cool if the different versions were numbered to their jersey numbers.
ReplyDeleteNot sure why it posted my comment 3 times. Sorry about that.
Deletethanks! it's happened to me before, too.
DeleteFor a Leaf product, this doesn't look half bad. I don't know about those parallels though, seems like one "base" card would've been just fine, but I know, everything HAS to have a gajillion parallels these days. What would collectors do if there weren't?
ReplyDeletefor the other cards from leaf, i definitely only look for one of each design (if that) and don't worry about parallels. for this one, given the subject matter, i went for the whole run.
DeleteIt's weird to me that Russell's uniform is home white, and the other four are all grey. Seems to me that all the same or two and two would work better.
ReplyDeletei think these are the actual jerseys that leaf has in their inventory for chopping up in to little pieces so they are limited to their stock in that case. but yeah, it would be nice if they were all the whites, with the names on the backs!
DeleteI got tired of chasing these, not that I won't still pick up a few. I went from needing all versions of every card to maybe 1 version per design. I have at least a couple different. I'll check and see if i have one you don't. I know they have mostly dried up on the secondary market, as most of the new issues do eventually, then finding anything you need becomes a bit of a bugger.
ReplyDeletei doubt i will go for any in 2022 unless they really change things up. outside of this particular card, leaf has been very repetitive with the multi-player designs
DeleteI think they got the idea from your other blog and mixed up the names to try and disguise that they stole it from you.
ReplyDeleteif i had that kind of influence, archives would have included a bunch of cards that should have been by now. but thanks!
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