a new era

with 1978 topps being the first set i collected, i missed out by a year seeing davey lopes on a league leader card in real time. i was ever hopeful that a dodger would show up on a league leader card, as well as a record breaker or highlight card, in the annual topps set. in 1980, i got my wish in regards to the record breaker card as manny mota made the cut thanks to his pinch hit mark. a year later, don sutton graced the era league leader card, and for the first time in my collecting days, a dodger was featured.

the next dodger to lead the league in era was alejandro pena in 1984, but topps had stopped giving space to league leaders in their flagship set conveniently enough starting with the 1985 release. league leader cards were back as inserts in 1995, but not the way they were meant to be with representatives from each league on the fronts. 

in 2000, the league leaders returned to the base set, but the leaders were shown one on each side which is dumb. it happened again in 2001, and to show why it is dumb to do it this way, here is kevin brown on a 2001 topps chrome league leader card

brown was the first dodger to lead the national league in era since pena. that card, by the way, is the refractor parallel, or as it was called then the "retrofractor" parallel. the back, of course, is not chromeified even though it features the american league era leader

why brown was given the front of the card when pedro martinez had a lower era (1.74!) makes no sense to me but then again doing league leader cards like this makes no sense to me either. i am glad that topps is back to multiplayer league leader cards (which started in 2008), although i prefer one card with both leagues on it rather than one card (with multiple players) for each league.

here's some bonus content - a dodger pedro martinez card!

that's his 1993 topps gold parallel, and it completed my team set of these early days gold inserts. pedro didn't lead the league in era as a dodger of course, but he did as an expo in 1997 before going to boston and leading the american league on four different occasions. i am of the mind that he deserved some traditional league leader cardboard for his efforts!