the k is for kershaw kountdown concludes - baseball immortality unlocked edition!

clayton kershaw made his ninth appearance of the 2025 season wednesday night against the white sox at dodger stadium, just three strikeouts shy of the 3,000 mark. i am pleased to be able to post the final edition of the k is for kershaw kountdown as he recorded his 3,000th strikeout on his 100th (and last) pitch of the night in front of a hometown crowd filled with dodger faithful!

in honor of his performance and achievement, here are three cards (not seen on this blog before) from my collection to represent strikeouts number 2,998 through 3,000.

2,998 - 2021 topps museum collection single player primary pieces quad relics copper parallel #/75

this is actually the newest kershaw card in my collection, as i picked it up at one of the local card shops on monday. i had noticed it when i stopped in a couple of days prior but didn't pull the trigger. but, since the shop is close to my work, i made a pit stop to grab it because of the red patch and the comparatively low price.

2,999 - 2022 panini chronicles spectra colorgraphs auto

i bought this card at that same lcs during my weekend stop. it is the least amount of money i have paid for any kershaw autograph, and that is because the design and execution of the card is terrible. the paint pen that kershaw was given to use is too dark against the faux brick background and so the signature is difficult to see. still, it's an on card auto and the price was more than right.

3,000 - 2025 topps k-zone insert

as soon as i saw these inserts in 2025 topps series 2, i knew that this would be the card to represent strikeout number 3,000. there is a backwards k version which would have been more appropriate, but is currently cost prohibitive. still, if you scan the back of this card

the k is backwards. 

i had figured that strikeout number 3,000 would come against old friend miguel vargas the second time through the lineup. instead, kershaw struck out vargas the second time around for his first k of the night, then got lenyn sosa swinging to end the fifth and vinny capra looking to become the 20th pitcher (and fourth lefty) to reach 3,000 regular season strikeouts in a career.

the broadcast made a big deal about kershaw being the "third" pitcher to do it with one team (walter johnson and bob gibson - the first two to reach 3,000) are the others they were referencing. however, john smoltz recorded the first 3,011 strikeouts of his career with the braves before splitting his final season with the red sox and cardinals (and no, i don't consider smoltz's minor league time in the tigers' organization to have any bearing on his major league career in this regard). if kershaw does, in fact, remain a "dodger for life", then he will join johnson and gibson as the only members of the 3,000 strikeout club to have only pitched for one franchise in their career, but let's not cheat braves fans of their 3,000 strikeout guy.

as for the game itself, the first thing i noticed was how full the stadium was for the first pitch. it was packed which is rarely the case at the start of a game at dodger stadium. everyone knew what was likely going to happen, and they knew that it could happen as quickly as the first inning, even though it wound up taking six.  kershaw allowed four runs in those six innings of work, but he didn't figure in the decision as the dodgers mounted a 9th inning comeback to walk off the white sox 5-4. he walked one, and allowed nine hits - one of which was a two-run homer by austin slater. his next start should come on the road in milwaukee, and if he hadn't reached 3,000 on wednesday, i would have definitely made the trip into wisconsin to be there in person.

as it is, i am happy to have been able to see him pitch in person a couple of times, including one of the best performances of his career. what a time it has been to be a dodger fan, even though neither the franchise nor the personnel structure of the game are the same as it was when i first started following the club.

here are some more kershaw cards because it's his achievement that this post in the kountdown is all about, and these particular cards seemed appropriate.

2015 topps tribute relic

2015 topps stadium club gold foil parallel

2022 topps stadium club chrome

2023 topps heritage high numbers now & then

2023 topps stadium club red foil parallel

2023 topps stadium club sepia parallel

certainly worth a tip of the cap!

kershaw is still in 20th place on the all-time leader board, and he will remain there unless he passes john smoltz (or is himself passed). smoltz has a career strikeout total of 3,084 and so kershaw is now 84 k's behind smoltz, with exactly 3,000 for his career.

what an achievement, and what a career. thanks for kounting down with me and congratulations to clayton kershaw!

the triumphant return of the mall show

i don't recall all of the details as it's been about four months, but back in february i went to a card show held in one of the many suburban twin cities malls. these locations have largely become depressing shells of their past glory, so i don't get to malls too often. the last time i was in a mall before this show, it was the mall of america in october for dinner at the twin city grill. that's good stuff and i highly recommend it if you ever venture to bloomington and the site of the twins' former ballpark.

i had been to shows at this particular mall before over the years, including recent incarnations even though the last few years have been disappointing as there seems to be more of a focus on other types of collectables (sport and non-sport) from the vendors who set up. this time, it was like the days of yore with a lot of card dealers from near and far. i recognized a couple of them and they admitted that they hadn't been to this location for a while, but they thought timing was right and they had hoped that the current status of the hobby would bring out the customers. 

one of these sellers i recognized had a nickel box of vintage-ish commons, including a bunch of miscuts. i remember buying a gloriously miscut 1977 topps davey lopes card from him several years ago. this time, i took this 1975 topps mini ken mcmullen card

that is slightly miscut and diamond cut. i will note that the mcmullen was the least miscut of the 15 miscuts i grabbed! 

the 1975 topps mini bob oliver

and 1975 topps (regular?) joe lis

are progressively worse, and then there is the star of the show - a 1980 topps larry biittner and kent tekulve mashup card

that is just ridiculous. i get vertigo just looking at that thing.

i even grabbed four football cards - three from 1973 and one from my lost love 1978 - that were fantastically miscut

the charley young card shares space with a checklist, while ed budde has the bills' dick cunningham encroaching in his neutral zone. bruce gossett's card features another kicker, or punter, actually, in bobby walden from the steelers. it's charlie harraway's card that really gets me, because that's jack younblood showing up. as a rams fan growing up, youngblood was one of my three favorite players. stud.

just before i found the seller with the miscuts, i visited a dealer who stuck to his guns and charged me $9 for 9 cards from his dollar box.

i asked him, "even austin barnes?", and he shrugged. i suggested that i should stop buying gavin lux cards and he agreed with me, but i persisted.

dollar boxes were the theme for the most part, but at least there was the opportunity to haggle, or in the case of one of the dealers the dollar (and two dollar) boxes were proactively marked as "50% off". i found some decent dodger parallels including a prism refractor

and a regular refractor

of mookie betts from the two most recent topps chrome platinum anniversary releases. i wonder if topps decided to take a break in 2024 and restart this set in 2025 with a true 70 year anniversary for the 1955 design.

these shows are a good way to pick up cards left over (i assume?) from card shop activities, like a couple of hobby rip night dodgers - yoshinobu yamamoto and shohei ohtani

this would have been one of ohtani's first dodger cards? or maybe these were series 2 rip night cards. i don't follow these sorts of things anymore.

my favorite pick up from this dealer was this 2008 upper deck yankee stadium legacy card

it's not just a roger maris 1961 season card from that expansive set, it's from his 61st home run game!

imagine the odds of pulling the card for this specific game from a pack. and then throwing the card in a $2 box and selling it for a buck.

the next seller was a guy whose tables were straining under the weight of a massive number of monster boxes with all sorts of cards jammed in them. i grabbed mostly cheap autos and relics like these four dodger autos

(that came from 2017 bowman high tek, 2017 topps finest, 2020 panini prizm, and 2023 bowman platinum, respectively), and this yankee relic from 2021 topps allen & ginter

yankee relics with a pinstripe will always make me take notice. as for luke voit, he's currently playing in mexico.

now we've made our way to cards from the first dealer i stopped at (and spent most of my time with). he had a couple of 1 and 2 dollar boxes in a corner of the second level walkway. the boxes had some good variety, and i wound up buying my very first 1965 topps embossed insert.

is that tommy davis? who knows. i had always avoided these things, even as i built the 1965 set. i may now look to track down the other dodgers now that i have a start.

2020 topps chrome dustin may refractor parallels

are sort of boring, but team collectors are slaves to the machine.

i like seeing shiny cards of players from my youth, so i picked out this 2022 panini mosaic george brett

green mosaic prizm and this 2023 panini prizm green ice prizm card

of willie stargell.

i will also happily purchase legend variation cards, such as this 2022 topps update christy mathewson

i tell you what, i would collect the heck out of a set that looked like this in its entirety. the simple 2022 flagship design works really well with tobacco card type images.

from clean and sharp to cluttered and nonsense, here are some 2024 topps parallels that i bought. this first one is the aforementioned (and recently released) austin barnes

he's got beach chairs and umbrellas behind him (reminds me of a day i spent at siesta key a couple of years ago). this series 2 holiday foil design is numbered to 50. here's the back:

jackie robinson number sighting!

i found three other, non-numbered holiday parallels, too

hot dog!

beach chairs and umbrellas, plus hot dogs? sounds like a summer cookout, and with the fourth of july in a couple of days now is the time!

happy (2021 panini donruss bo jackson) independence day (parallel)!

be safe!

1955 bowman complete through 224!

i am back with the next two pages of my 1955 bowman set build. i am getting close to being done with this endeavor, but the cards that remain on my list are all high numbers. ugh.

sheet 27, cards 209-216

some recognizable names on this sheet, with smoky burgess, earl torgeson (and his glasses), plus hall of famer george kell, billy pierce, and preacher roe. note the difference between the oriole logos on the hats of bob kuzava and preacher roe, respectively. more on that in a bit.

here are the backs:

all bios except for jack dittmer (whose biggest thrill was hitting his first major league home run) and bob kuzava (whose most exciting game was his near no-hitter thrown in 1953). the back of roe's card mentions his move to the american league for the 1955 campaign, and bowman was sure to show him as an oriole on the front of the card, although their art department blew the assignment and drew a bird that doesn't match the actual team logo. roe, of course, did not report to the orioles and retired instead. while bowman updated the back of erv palica's card as a result, they did not issue a different version of roe's.

sheet 28, cards 217-224

back to 2x2 teammates for this card, with del crandall, joe adcock, and whitey lockman being the names i recognize the most. 

here are the backs:

once again, there are only two non-bio backs. hector (known as hal) "skinny" brown (who was 6'2" and 182 pounds) counts his biggest thrill as the day he signed his first professional contract. as for russ kemmerer, he humblebrags (as he should!) about a 1 hit shutout of the orioles for his first big league win, but says that his biggest thrill was being in the visitor's dugout at yankee stadium during old-timers day in 1954 and shaking the hands with a number of great ball players of the past. a quick google search shows that the players in attendance that day included jimmie foxx, joe cronin, george sisler, rogers hornsby, paul waner, carl hubbell, bill terry, and joe dimaggio. 91-year old connie mack was also in attendance. i would have wanted to shake those hands, too.

i hope to be back in about a month with some more completed pages to share. stay tuned!

a moment for the cobra

i can't say i was completely surprised to read that dave parker passed away on saturday given his declining health in recent years, but it was still a jolt to the system for me. and, for it to happen a month before he will be enshrined in cooperstown makes it doubly saddening. of course, he at least knew that he would be one of baseball's immortals before he died, unlike his classmate dick allen (or ron santo, for that matter).

to a fan like me, parker was always hall of fame material. i began following baseball in earnest in 1978 which was parker's mvp season. and, because he had led the national league in batting in 1977, he showed up twice in the 1978 topps set which was my statistical introduction to major league baseball. his 1978 solo card is a classic

and one that i was excited to receive back signed by the cobra

in my earliest ttm days about fifteen years ago.

parker solidified himself as a hall of famer in my eyes with that '78 season and the 1979 followup campaign wherein he helped the pirates win the world series, but more memorably to me, dominated the all-star game with his cannon from right field. his outfield assist to nail brian downing at the plate during that game was gloriously replayed in my home every saturday morning during baseball season for the next year or two as it was included in the closing credits of "this week in baseball". 

in 2013, topps reimagined parker's 1978 card with a different photo in their archives release

i like it (and have it in my 1978 topps master set), but it's not the original.

parker is the third national league player with the all-star shield in the 1978 topps set to pass away (joe morgan and don sutton are the others) and it hits close to home when these players that i studied for hours on end leave this mortal coil.

i wrote more about my thoughts on dave parker when i added him to my hall of famer collection back in 2021. i am glad the eras committee corrected the mistake of the baseball writers' association and voted him in to cooperstown. he was a decade great

and an all-time great.

rest in peace, hall of famer.

hey now, did i miss something?

i have mentioned many times that i really look forward to april 15 each year. yes, i am happy to pay my taxes because i enjoy living in a society, but the real reason is that april 15 is jackie robinson day. i am always glad to be reminded of the trailblazer jackie was and of his legacy that continues today. i also like seeing number 42 on all of the players. and on baseball cards.

this year, however, when i went to topps' website on the 16th, only this card was available

now, that is a great example of a jackie robinson day card, and i was happy to purchase it. however, this was the first year that topps didn't produce a "now" card specifically centered on the day. unless i missed something?

in other topps now news, i received my francisco lindor/john mayer card recently

the delivery was delayed (i know this because topps actually sent me an email about it) and i was sort of hoping that meant that i was going to get one of the dual auto cards that were produced. not the case.  here's the back:

i bought this card because i was at the game featured. in fact, i was looking at my pictures again recently and noticed that i took a photo of the jumbotron around the same time the photographer took the photo that was used on the card.

amazin!

i am waiting on another topps now order at the moment - clayton kershaw's card

that marked his ascension into the top 20 on the all-time career strikeout list. of course, you knew he did that because you've been following my "k is for kershaw kountdown" posts.

the other (and first) topps now purchase i've made in 2025 was this mookie betts card

it celebrates his walk-off home run on march 28 against the tigers. the "he's back" part refers to the fact that betts missed the tokyo series and had played in just one game prior to this one. here's the back:

just mookie flyin'.

i wanted the betts card because i wanted to have a card featuring the 2024 world series champions in their golden jerseys. i wouldn't mind seeing them on more cards in the future, by the way.