the almost daily dodger - ramon martinez

as i was preparing the next retired number post, i was reminded that there are no mlb teams who have retired number 48. to me, 48 belongs to ramon martinez, who wore the number well over the course of his 11 seasons with the dodgers.

a while back i picked up his 1992 leaf black gold parallel

to complete my team set of those cards. ramon's number is front and center on the card, which looks pretty sharp overall in my opinion. 

i also had his 1997 fleer si card in my scanned folder

but i am still in need of three more cards to finish that team set.

one of my favorite ramon martinez memories is of his big league debut. he started a game against the giants in august of 1988 and pitched into the 8th inning, allowing just one run. it's really a ramon martinez adjacent memory because it was the game that tim leary won with a pinch-hit single in the bottom of the 11th inning. i was watching the game at a house party with a bunch of people and it was a tremendous shared experience with some longtime friends and teammates.

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.

orel, historian

yesterday morning i saw an article on mlb.com that referenced orel hershiser's 1994 topps stadium club card. 

my first thought was that, for some reason, this card was the latest to be commanding ridiculous prices on the market.  however, when i read the article, the author noted that the card could be had for $0.99 on ebay. whew.

later in the day i was thinking that i wanted to post some hershiser cards that represent his run as my favorite dodger from "my favorite dodger through the years" mini-collection. i thought that the article and the story that he shared explaining the reason behind the appearance of sod in a shopping cart on a baseball card would make a nice lead-in for those cards.

i started typing the post in the early afternoon, and was surprised to find that in the 12+ years i've been blogging, i've apparently never scanned that card. so, i went to ebay to steal an image. of course, i then found out that there was a run on the card, and one copy had sold earlier in the day for $19.99.  i went downstairs and pulled a dupe from my sportlots inventory to scan. in the time that it took me to do that, the sportlots inventory for the card had gone from over 30 to just 21. 

anyway, once steve sax left the dodgers after the 1988 world series, orel became my new favorite dodger, and remained so until early in the 1994 season when he was supplanted by raul mondesi.  here are the cards that represent his tenure in my collection.

1989: upper deck (world series)

1990: donruss baseball's best

1991: topps

1992: leaf black gold

1993: donruss diamond kings

i suppose that had my fandom extended through the 1994 season, i might have added that stadium club card to this collection. it's too late now anyway, i sold my dupe for $6 plus shipping yesterday afternoon. these are crazy times.