gone daddy a-gon

2013 panini triple threads is about to make its first appearance on this blog! ready? here we go:

this adrian gonzalez all-star card is an insert, and it feels like a "real" card on cardstock as opposed to the slicker feel of the base set. i actually like the 2013 version of triple play with the more cartoonish images of players more than i liked the 2012 release. i am not sure i would have recognized this image as adrian gonzalez, however.

gonzalez recently announced his retirement formally, although it seems like it was understood as he hadn't played in the big leagues since 2018 when he was a met. i think it was unfortunate that gonzalez was injured in the 2017 season and so missed out on the dodgers pennant win. it was odd that he wasn't around the team during the postseason as i recall, as he had been a big part of the team since he was acquired in a 2012 trade with the red sox.

i am on record as saying that that trade was the end of the dodgers as i knew them. even with the kevin brown signing, i resisted the urge to think of the dodgers as the "yankees west", but the trade of james loney, ivan dejesus jr, and a couple of others for gonzalez, josh beckett, carl crawford, and nick punto was something that bowie kuhn would have likely disallowed. it was a huge salary dump by the red sox, essentially, and there were few teams that could take on that salary. not to mention the fact that crawford was hurt at the time of the deal.

i happened to be at dodger stadium the day the dodgers claimed gonzalez on waivers and i figured it was just a move to block someone else from acquiring him. never did i think that he would become a dodger, but he did. he played well, too, leading the national league in rbi in 2014 which probably would have been a bigger deal to me had matt kemp not done the same in 2011, becoming the first dodger in my lifetime (and only second los angeles dodger) to lead the league in that category. speaking of kemp, the dodgers traded gonzalez to the braves after the 2017 season in the deal that brought kemp back to los angeles.

anyway, i wish gonzalez well in his retirement, and i wonder if he will ever show up in future releases like archives.

red sox of giza

i was seven when i started opening packs of 1978 topps baseball cards. each and every card was an opportunity to learn something new about the game and its players. most of those cards are burned in to my brain, even though many did not feature very memorable images. dwight evans' card is not one of those, however.

when i first saw a 1978 topps dwight evans card

i first noticed the patch. i remember asking my dad about these things, like the patch on wayne garrett's card that he identified as having to do with the 1976 olympics, and i wondered why the dodgers didn't have some sort of patch on their jerseys, too.  thanks to my young eyes (and maybe my grandma's magnifying glass) i saw that the patch celebrated massachusetts' bicentennial. i didn't think twice, although there were no states 200 years prior to 1978. i guess massachusetts jumped on the nation's bicentennial celebration and decided that their existence began in 1775, as they started wearing the patch in 1975. more info is here via this link. 

like i said, i didn't think twice about the patch, however, i did do a double take with the background of the photo and thought that perhaps the red sox had played a game in egypt. the two sets of palm trees in the plus the sandstone colored structure at the right side of the card had me thinking that evans was standing somewhere near a pyramid. to this day, i still don't know what that is. the red sox were training in florida during evans' career and i didn't think there was anything that high above ground level in the state back then.

i guess i am still not sure that he wasn't in giza.

baller package from hyun-jin ryu

i was surprised to open a recent package and find a card from former dodger pitcher hyun-jin ryu!

that's a 2019 topps holiday relic, with a gift tag from the current blue jays ace/co-ace.  nice work by topps to make a plain white swatch look interesting for a change.

in all seriousness, that card and all of these to follow came from fuji - master commenter and friend to all blogs.

here's a 2001 pacific private stock game gear jersey card of shawn green

this is the "away" version - there's also a "home" version. these cards were the bomb back when they were released. i bought a pack for $20 at twinsfest that year and found a juan gonzalez bat card in my pack. such a novelty at the time!

now we get to the baller part of the package - a couple of 2020 topps chrome ben baller cards. max muncy

and corey seager

both showing their home run strokes.

fuji has a soft spot in his collection for steve garvey, and he shared a 1984 donruss action all-star card with me

it's oversized and is one of several similar donruss releases from the 1980's.

the most unusual (but not unexpected as mark had made a comment on a previous post about sending these cards) were several 1977 topps star wars cards:

these were sent because i had noted that i didn't have any star wars cards in my tatooine collection, ironically. by definition, these are all tatooine cards in that they feature scenes from the movie that were set on that planet. i would really like to find a stormtrooper on tatooine card, since that was the reference point i shared with my brother the first time we saw the 1971 topps brooks robinson world series highlight card back around 1978 - "it looks like he is searching for droids on tatooine" i told him, and an eventual mini-collection was born.

my brother and i collected these star wars sets when they were first released. looking at them now, i think it's odd that c3po is called see-threepio and r2d2 is artoo-detoo. i get "threepio" as a nickname of sorts. back then, i think this matched the action figure packaging so it wasn't weird to us.

thanks fuji! always appreciate your comments and cards!

is this the worst baseball card ever?

i can't imagine i've pulled a worse card than this one

from a pack. i mean, kudos to fleer trying to make the checklists in their 2003 tradition release a bit more interesting, but i would rather have an all text checklist card than a card centered on a player's crotch. i have another checklist card that pairs up with the one above to create 2/9 of the full image

here's what the backs look like

i also have checklist cards featuring a knee and upper body of barry bonds:

here are the backs of the bonds' cards:

i wasn't sure who that player up top was when i first found those cards in packs - i would have guessed magglio ordonez - but i recently discovered, thanks to comc, that it's derek jeter! 

yeah jeets!

i am curious if others have opinions on what might be a worse card to pull in terms of imagery?

he's championship material

if you had told me back in 2005 that the dodgers would win the world series in 2020 and there would be world champion relic cards issued the following year, i would have told you that i would own several of those cards. the truth, however, is that i own none. a big part of that is how irrelevant i find most relic cards to be these days. back in 2005 i was still intrigued by them.

i used to buy a couple of boxes of each series of topps flagship each year, and my guaranteed hit in one of my 2005 series 2 boxes was this world champions bat card of dave roberts

roberts began the 2004 season as a dodger but was traded to the red sox at the july 31 deadline. he had stolen 33 bases up to that point of the season and been caught only once. he had worked with maury wills since becoming a dodger to improve his base stealing skills, and said that maury once told him that there would come a time where he would have to steal a base even though everyone in the stadium knew he was going to run.

that moment came for roberts in game 4 the 2004 alcs against the yankees.

the card back spills the beans, but roberts did, in fact, steal a base in that game. it came in the bottom of the 9th, with the red sox down 3 games to none and facing elimination. leading the red sox by a run, mariano rivera walked kevin millar to open the inning and roberts was sent in to pinch run. he stole second on rivera's first pitch to bill mueller and scored on mueller's single on the next pitch. that tied the game and set the stage for david ortiz to walk the yankees off in extra innings.

you know all that, of course, but i can't look at this card without reliving such an exciting half inning that gave lots of fans a glimmer of hope that the yankees would be denied another trip to the world series.

roberts, of course, was the dodger manager when they won it all in 2020, and even though he doesn't have a card in the 2021 topps world champions relic insert set, i suppose i should probably look for a card of a different dodger for the memories it would trigger down the road.

the worst you can do

when i was (assistant) coaching travel ball (and even before that when i would just talk with my son), i would say the worst thing you could do at the plate was to hit in to a triple play. however, the likelihood of that happening was nil. same went for hitting in to a double play (at least at the lower age groups of travel ball), which is the second worst thing you can do at the plate. my point was that to strike out looking was really the worst thing they could do at the plate. 

i wanted the players to give themselves a chance to put the ball in play, and most importantly have the confidence to swing the bat. sure they would strike out sometimes. and sometimes they would strike out looking. but you might be surprised how many kids were so worried about failing that they would fail to swing the bat.  it's different at the big league level, although i would still contend that you can't worry about hitting in to double or triple plays to the point where you are not aggressive in the strike zone.  

having said that, clarence mitchell should have kept the bat on his shoulder.

as the 1991 conlon collection card notes, mitchell was the batter involved in an unassisted triple play on october 10, 1920. in the world series, no less!

in fact, not only did mitchell hit in to a triple play shortly after relieving dodger (really, robin) starter burleigh grimes, he hit in to a double play in his next at bat! that's five outs he created in two at bats. pretty bad as far as batter outcomes go. eight years later, mitchell appeared in another world series game, this time as a cardinal against the yankees. he came to bat with a runner on first and one out in his first plate appaearance, but only popped out, likely to the relief of his teammates and manager.

dynasty fantasy

just over three years ago i rolled the dice on a box of 2018 topps five star. it was the most i had ever spent on a box, eclipsing what i had paid for a box of 2001 topps tribute. i totally struck out with the purchase. the card shop guy was excited to have me open the box in the store and i know he felt badly for me when the forgettable contents were revealed.

fast forward to today, and what i spent on that box seems like chump change when you look at releases like topps transcendent and topps dynasty.  that got me wondering: what if i were to buy a box of 2021 topps dynasty?

according to cardboard connection, the "best price" on these things right now (right now being early january when i wrote this post) is $625. each box contains just one card, and that card is numbered to no greater than /10.  underneath the cover sleeve shown above lies a plain white box:

lifting the lid on the box reveals a padded foam interior:

now what if i were to purchase a box of 2021 topps dynasty and find a player that aligns perfectly with my collection? what if i were to purchase a box of 2021 topps dynasty and find an autographed patch card of steve garvey?

what if i remove the foam insert to reveal the card inside:

steve garvey dynasty autograph patch card! with a red dodger jersey number patch! huzzah!

now to be clear, i did not buy an unopened box of 2021 topps dynasty. instead, i purchased an opened box that contained this card

i wanted no roll of the dice this time around! nor did i want to pay the full retail price that the box is commanding. still, even though i spent less than the cost of an unopened box, i spent a significant amount of money on this card. i considered this my christmas gift to myself.

removed from the box, it looks like this:

here's the back:

ebay 1/1 bonus - it's his jersey number:

this card is also numbered as "dap-sg1", and it looks like there are three versions of garvey cards from this release out there, so that means that there are two other 06/10 (in addition to other levels of manufactured scarcity) cards in existence. 

i was also able to pick up a "dap-sg3" version (numbered 07/10)

which features a photo of garvey from 1980 rather than mid-70s garvey on the one i have. the "dap-sg2" version uses a photo of a younger garvey, circa 1972 or so as far as i can tell.

kudos to topps for changing the text on the back of the card:

it does mention his 1974 mvp win again, but also gives props for his annual hit totals which were a big deal to me as i followed his performance each year.

these two cards, but the first one in particular, instantly become pillars of my garvey collection. that first one is right up there with the 2001 leaf certified materials 6/6 card, the bat barrel cards, and a couple others that i haven't shown yet. i am pretty happy to have it in my collection!

is he worthy?

one of the players who received a fair amount of coverage during the last couple months of 2020 regarding hall of fame voting was andruw jones. it sure seems like his prospects for induction are looking up with his vote total hitting 41.4% in his fifth year of eligibility.  if he is inducted, he joins the likes of jim bunning, frank robinson, gary carter, and jim thome as hall of famers who had a somewhat random mid-career stint with the dodgers.

there is cardboard proof of this:

that card is a 2008 topps chrome xfractor that i found among my dodger dupes. jones joined the dodgers for the 2008 season - his first as a non-brave. it did not go well. jones was out of shape and was injured during a good portion of the season. he had the worst year of his career (his ops was .505!) and the dodgers released him prior to the 2009 season.

he continued to play, and had some success in the ensuing years with the rangers, white sox, and yankees, respectively, but he was obviously not the player he had been for 11+ years with atlanta.  with the braves, he won 10 straight gold gloves in center field, and is likely the best defensive centerfielder in the history of the game. his dwar is off the charts, anyway. he also hit 368 homers during his tenure with the braves, and 434 overall. he ranks pretty well amongst other hall of fame center fielders, but then again, so does kenny lofton (another random dodger!).

after tracking down a hoyt wilhelm autograph for my hall of famer collection, i thought about jones and the fact that he may one day be enshrined in cooperstown. as a result, i decided to pick up an autographed card for my dodger collection - this 2021 topps archives signature series 2008 topps allen & ginter card:

i should probably do the same for bunning (he is the only modern dodger player in the hall of fame for whom i don't have a certified autograph card, although i do have a couple of ttm successes from him). here's the back:

if jones does get the call, i would most likely track down a card featuring him with the braves for my hall of famer collection, should i choose to add him. at this point, i am not sure that i would just because i can't get the memory of his performance as a dodger out of my mind.

how much screen time is there?

i realize that junior ortiz' 1984 fleer card

features a photo taken in the dugout at montreal's olympic stadium, but the pure green background now makes me think about the "green screen" technology used in cgi and other special effects efforts in media.

many baseball photographs are taken during spring training in front of screens like this (or solid color screens, anyway) to make it easier for the photos to translate to jumbotrons or other franchise media using variable backgrounds and graphics. i don't know for sure, but i tend to believe that topps has used some of these photos and inserted a different background on to cards in recent years. the most recent cards that made me think this are the 2021 topps heritage cards of aj pollock

and julio urias

dodger heritage cards, like those for other teams, have been similar for many years. for the dodgers, there is a dusk background on many cards, but there does seem to be some time lapse and variation of where the player is standing relative to the background.  these two cards, however, show a sky and cloud background that seems to be identical in terms of cloud shapes. the background is in a slightly different position relative to the card design, but these photos would have had to have been taken fairly quickly for them to both look like this. 

i took a quick look at getty to see if these photos were in their inventory, but i couldn't find them. anyone have any thoughts about this? just think of the places 1984 junior ortiz could have gone with a green screen like that behind him!

i guess i'm on a rickey kick

i haven't had too many mailings hit my mailbox in recent weeks, but a couple of them had something in common. i picked up a former most wanted non-dodger card from sportlots - a 2019 topps stadium club rickey henderson card

that features fellow future-dodger eddie murray. it's a perfect fit for my lurker collection.

a couple of weeks or so later, jon from penny sleeves for your thoughts sent me a 2004 upper deck play ball rickey henderson home run heroics insert

the card celebrates the 81st lead off home run of rickey's career. it was also the last home run of rickey's career. i really appreciate rickey henderson dodger cards - thanks jon!

in between receiving these cards, i went to the monthly card show two weeks ago and spent about an hour going through the club vp's 5/$1 boxes that were absent from last month's show. i didn't bother to visit any other tables as i was on a time crunch.  i wound up taking a bunch of rickey cards home with me...

of those first 54 cards, 16 are rickeys. i was happy to find a new double play card - the 1997 marquette bank 1987 twins 10th anniversary steve lombardozzi card just before the nolan ryan cards in the last scan. i realized after i scanned these cards that the two cards from that set were actually 1997 cards and not 1987 cards. that's why they are out of order. i don't know why the four nolan ryan cards were scanned with cards that i thought were from the 1980's.

the last card above, along with these nine

make a complete set of the 1990 upper deck reggie jackson baseball heroes insert set, minus the autograph card.

there were quite a few holograms in the boxes, so i grabbed a few as you will see in this next batch of cards

only 7 rickeys in that batch of cards. a few vladdys for the collection, as well as a couple of dodger needs and some cardinal/brave trade bait refills. but wait, there's more!

a rickey as an angel parallel and more vladdys...

i hadn't seen those "you crash the game" cards before. it looked like the guy had a couple of sets - i assume they were redemption sets.

the randy johnson card in this next group somehow escaped my knowledge until that morning. it features the dodger stadium murals from 1998, and ron cey in particular. i'm now looking for the bowman chrome refractor version

that's a nice 1999 topps stadium club frank thomas for my "name/number on the back" collection (post coming soon).

rickey as a met, among other cards:

there were a whole slew of 2001 topps archives cards in one box. i know i have a near complete set, but i didn't have a list with me so i just grabbed a couple ryans and a jackie.

more cards:

the 2009 upper deck update barack obama card goes in my lurker collection, thanks to the presence of albert pujols. i couldn't leave those 2010 topps target throwbacks in the box even though i really only wanted the ebbett's field card, and some of the "yo momma" cards are original backs. i didn't expect to find any buster posey rookie cards, but there they were. also, rip jeremy giambi there on the "the flip" card.

next up might be the best find of the show for me, a 2010 topps blank "you sketch it" card:

although the purple refractor of hiroki kuroda from 2010 topps chrome was a nice find, too.

i wrote a post recently that featured a couple of 2011 topps diamond anniversary parallels, and the prevailing feedback i received was that folks liked these parallels and they are tough to pass up when they show up in dime (or two-dime) boxes. case in point:

this next scan features a 2011 andre ethier card that i had never seen before - it was a target exclusive i guess:

i couldn't pass up the 2018 topps update ohtani/trout in a golf cart cards. i guess that was 251 cards but i told the guy i had 250 - oops. that would be $50 but he said $40 and threw in a 300 count box. nice. i guess that means i was digging through a bunch of 16-cent boxes.

not too much rickey there in the last half, but still some fun cards. like i said, some of these are already on their way to trading partners, but let me know if there is something that you might be interested in.