the almost daily dodger - jose offerman

before dave roberts and after maury wills, jose offerman wore number 30 for the dodgers. of course, there were lots of other guys between wills and roberts, like derrel thomas and wilton guerrero. thomas, in fact, was the first dodger player to wear the number after wills, which leads me to think maybe the dodgers were thinking that wills had a shot at the hall of fame. anyway, i am getting way off topic.

i've added a couple of offerman parallels to my collection, and they've sat in my scanned folder just waiting for one of these "almost daily dodger posts" so here we go.

1994 upper deck collector's choice silver signature parallel

this is one of the craziest baseball cards out there in terms of three stooges scenarios. offerman, jody reed, and a met meet at second base. chaos ensues. nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

1992 leaf black gold parallel

this was the second to last card i needed for my team set, and i think i added ramon martinez to one of the orders sitting in my sportlots box at the moment. i like that offerman is shown bunting for a hit, as he was supposed to always be trying to put the ball on the ground. it was quite possibly a disservice to him and his career when he hit a home run off of dennis martinez in his first big league at bat, although he did put together some pretty decent offensive seasons in terms of batting average.

both cards give a glimpse of the number 30, which may well wind up retired by the franchise if roberts keeps his job and the dodgers win at least one more championship. maybe then they will pull a dual retirement and include wills, just like the cubs did with greg maddux and fergie jenkins.