another legend of dodger baseball

last weekend was an exciting one at dodger stadium. the team swept the pirates and it was alumni weekend to boot.

on friday night, the team inducted dusty baker into their "legends of dodger baseball" fraternity. coincidentally, i just added this 2013 panini hometown heroes state parallel 

of the left fielder for the team of my youth to my collection. dusty was there in person, of course, as were some of his old teammates like steve garvey (a fellow "lodb") and reggie smith, both of whom spoke during the ceremony honoring baker. other members of the "lodb" group were there, including orel hershiser, manny mota, kirk gibson, and fernando valenzuela. sandy koufax, who is a member of the ring of honor (along with valenzuela) was also there. each of those guys, along with baker and garvey, also received their dodger blue blazers which is now a thing like at the masters or the nfl hall of fame.

on saturday night, the team added former owner walter o'malley to the ring of honor, which is the retired number display. vin scully and jaime jarrin are the only other non-field personnel honored (with microphones rather than numbers), so i was curious to see how the team would recognize o'malley. they basically did what the giants started doing over 40 years ago and used o'malley's name and the team logo.

that's ann meyers drysdale (don's widow), erin scully (vin's daughter), and laura lasorda (tom's daughter) unveiling the logo. time will tell if this unlocks the tributes for brooklyn greats like zack wheat. i've thought it made sense for a big ol' brooklyn "b" for wheat since i first saw the placards for mel ott and others on the fence at candlestick back in the early 1980s.

there were a ton of former players on hand for o'malley's ceremony including the aforementioned players as well as bill russell, ron cey, steve yeager, mickey hatcher, rick dempsey, hideo nomo, shawn green, eric gagne, james loney, nomar garciaparra, andre ethier and many more. i think i even spotted jim lefebvre there. peter o'malley spoke about his father and was also given one of the dodger blue blazers.

on sunday, it was matt kemp day. my former favorite dodger signed one of those ceremonial one-day contracts so he could retire as a dodger. he was also recognized in a pregame ceremony during which clayton kershaw told him that he was "da real mvp" in 2011. here's a 2013 topps museum collection copper parallel of kemp

that i added to my collection recently. juan pierre checked in via a recorded message (wearing a vintage "beast mode" t-shirt) as did dee gordon (from a farm somewhere) and a few others. it wouldn't surprise me to see kemp added to the legends of dodger baseball list someday.

it would have been a good weekend to be back in socal, but i couldn't swing it. i will have to get back there sometime soon to see what cards are representing baker and hershiser (he was inducted after my most recent visit to the ravine) on their legends of dodger baseball displays.