defense

prior to this past weekend, only twice in my lifetime the dodgers had won back-to-back national league pennants - 1977-78 and 2017-18. neither of those instances presented an opportunity for the franchise to repeat as world series champions - in fact, the dodgers lost all four of those world series matchups. the franchise has only had two opportunities previously to repeat as world series champions - 1955-56 and 1965-66 - but fell short each time. this year, the dodgers will once again truly be able to defend their title and perhaps join a short list of franchises who have successfully done so.

the yankees, of course, but also the blue jays, reds, a's, and red sox have repeated as world series champions, and in the divisional era, you can remove boston from that list. 

anyway, on saturday morning i looked through my scanned folder to see how many dodger cards i had showing people playing defense. non-pitcher dodgers, as subject of the card, wearing a fielding glove, basically. out of 199 scanned cards, these are the ones that fit the criteria (save 1 or 2 that will show up in future posts with specific topics)

2013 topps chrome yasiel puig refractor

sure, the game's over, but puig has his glove

2021 topps cody bellinger 1986 all-star

2020 world series excitement from cody!

2021 topps mookie betts 1952 redux chrome

mookie is actually making a defensive play!

2022 topps tribute justin turner

third base defense in action!

2023 topps big league mookie betts wrapper redemption

one of the five tools on display from mookie!

2023 topps flagship collection max muncy

another actual defensive play on cardboard

2023 topps x j-rod mike piazza

definitely playing defense here

2024 leaf press pass premium retro base reflector prismatic blue

could be a shot from between innings warmups, but still. this one is numbered to 20

which is a high print run for leaf releases these days.

2024 topps chrome mookie betts all-etch

another mookie card brings us to the grand total of ten cards. that is fewer than i expected, but hey, chicks dig the long ball and card companies prefer swings.

the world series starts on friday, and i am sure i will have another post or two before then. but just in case, here's a 2003 topps tribute world series edition steve garvey gold parallel

i picked up recently. it's one for the dodger collection, meaning i now own 2% of the print run

63 is not meaningful in terms of garvey, but it is a year that the dodgers won the world series (by sweeping the yankees). a couple of weeks from now we will know if the dodgers were able to defend their title successfully or not!