a quarter century for 42

a month from today marks the 75th anniversary of jackie robinson's major league debut. that means it will also be the 25th anniversary of major league baseball retiring number 42 in perpetuity to honor the trailblazer. it's one of my favorite days of the baseball calendar. 

on what would have been jackie's 102nd birthday back in january of 2021, the mlb network replayed the april 15, 1997 game between the dodgers and mets at which bud selig made the announcement of the number retirement. it was interesting to watch and listen to the speeches that selig, jackie's widow rachel robinson, and president bill clinton made about jackie, baseball, and the progress (and lack thereof) made since that day in 1947.  twentyfive years later, there is still work to be done. and yes, i started this post back in january of 2021.   

here are a few jackie cards that i've had in my scanned folder for a while

1993 topps archives ultimate 1953

crazy that i owned jackie's real 1953 topps card before i had this reprint. i am happy to have this one as it completed the dodger team set for me - something i doubt i will ever achieve with the actual 1953 dodgers.

2001 fleer greats of the game

i toyed with the idea of dedicating a blog to this set. it's my favorite retired players set, although my first thought about another set-focused blog was 1999 upper deck century legends. i decided against that one because the set itself tells the story with the sporting news player rankings. as for the gotg set, i am probably not going to follow through with the blog idea.

2009 topps heritage american heroes

jackie had those two cards in the base set, and then another in the heroes of sport insert set

there is a relic version of this card as well.

2010 topps chrome wrapper redemption refractor

i received this card through the wrapper redemption along with a couple other cards - one of which was a buster posey rookie. i think i sent the posey to a giant blog back then.

2017 topps triple threads

this is a gold parallel which looks pretty nice. completely unnecessary, but nice.

i am sure there will be a bevy of jackie robinson cards to find in 2022 and i am looking forward to obtaining some of them!