remembering fernando still

one year ago today fernando valenzuela passed away. the dodgers have continued to honor him with a jersey patch throughout the 2025 season, rather than just wearing it during last year's world series (like they did with jim gilliam back in 1978). i think it was a nice touch by the franchise that benefited so much from fernandomania.

this card

from 2024 topps black & white might have been my favorite dodger card of 2024 had i picked it up last year. instead, i came across it early in 2025. it's still a fantastic card showing the stages of fernando's signature windup (at least from the stretch).

that is not the only card of his that i have added this year. here he is at another stage of his windup on his 1994 donruss card

it's fun to find cards of fernando as an oriole. here's his 1994 topps stadium club 1st day issue parallel

and here's another parallel - a 1995 upper deck electric diamond card

that not only shows him as a phillie, but also at the plate! he won a couple of silver slugger awards during his career.

most of his non-dodger cards come from his time with the padres, and that is due in large part to the proliferation of card manufacturers in the latter part of the 1990s. here are some more parallels from that era - 1996 upper deck collector's choice gold signature

1997 fleer ultra gold medallion edition

1997 pinnacle museum collection

he's been showing up in more and more modern releases as well. this is a 2017 topps new era version of a 1987 all-star card

that is similar to what was included in 2017 topps series 2, but the 30th anniversary stamp is not foil and i believe this was only available with a hat purchase.

here's another card from last year - 2024 topps archives black foil

i will always appreciate more fernando dodger cards, but couldn't topps issue at least one showing him during his (very) short stint as an angel?

it's also fun to add some oddballs from his playing days, like i did with this 1985 all-star program "insert"

it's hard to believe that it has been a year.

tattoo you

yesterday was national tattoo day, and so david wells' 1994 topps stadium club golden rainbow parallel card gets some air time

that tattoo, of wells' son brandon, was new for the 1994 season and i guess the topps photographer thought that it was novel enough to warrant being a focal point of their shot. today, i don't think a portrait tattoo would garner much attention.

matt kemp's 2014 topps stadium club rainbow foil shows off just a portion of his tattooing

and jonathan india's tattoo sleeve is similarly visible on his 2024 topps big league card

in each of the three cards shown, the tattoos are on the non-throwing arm. wells' career predates the "miller rule" (named after the late reliever justin miller) which required pitchers to cover their tattoos with long sleeves, at least on their throwing arm. the dodgers' bobby miller has tattoos on his left forearm but not his right - perhaps because of this rule.

as for me, i have no tattoos although i have considered it at a couple of points in my life. it's probably too late for me to convince myself that it makes sense, but i think i understand the appeal.

knuckles

there are lots of examples of cards - both specific subsets and cards featuring posed shots - that highlight different pitch grips. it's not as easy typically to find action shots with visible pitch grips, except maybe those that show the knuckleball.

when it comes to pitchers who threw the knuckleball, the dodgers have had their share, including tom candiotti.

that 1996 fleer e-motion xl card is one that i added via sportlots last year to help fill out an order and get me one card closer to a complete team set. i didn't know ahead of time that the grip would be featured.

this next candiotti card also came from sportlots, and actually completed a team set.

that 1994 fleer flair card shows candiotti with two different grips. i recall a couple of post-game interviews that he gave where he would talk about being a pitcher first and a knuckleballer second. perhaps he was frustrated being pigeonholed as a knuckleballer instead of being seen as a starting pitcher with a greater repertoire of pitches.

the first knuckleball pitcher i was aware of was charlie hough. his 1994 topps stadium club card shows him in his later years but still with the grip

i am never surprised to see the knuckleball grip on cards of candiotti, hough, niekro and the like, but i was surprised to see this john stuper card from 1985 fleer

i don't recall knowing stuper threw a knuckleball. perhaps he was experimenting or goofing off like i did in babe ruth and high school. i never did summon up the courage to throw one in a real game.

and then there is a gem like this 1996 topps stadium club kirby puckett card

puck is definitely messing around here, just like me and my teammates did while warming up, although i never did so in the skydome.

some cards i acquired all of a sodden

i've been pretty steady with ordering cards from sportlots for the last 10 years or so. it is fairly rare that i don't have an order in the works, in fact. just recently, i ordered some cards from a couple of sellers - nothing special, but still cards that i was able to remove from my want list.

cards like this 2021 topps mookie betts 52 redux

and a cody bellinger from the same insert set

i've mentioned before that clayton kershaw is my first go-to when i need to fill out a sportlots order to maximize my shipping value. i did just that when i picked up this 2018 panini donruss green holo parallel

of kershaw's 1984 design card in the set, as well as this blue holo parallel

of kershaw's 2021 panini donruss card.

i also picked up a pink refractor parallel from 2020 topps chrome

and a rainbow foil from 2020 topps update

of the dodger lefty.

i had not added any 2020 topps gallery to my collection (and i'm not complaining), but i did pick up two copies of this card

featuring kershaw and walker buehler - one for the team collection and one for the dodger stadium collection.

the other cards from this particular order were from 1994, such as a score gold rush parallel of darryl strawberry

a topps finest card of jim gott

and a golden rainbow parallel from topps stadium club of rafael bournigal

there was one other card in this haul, and that was this one - the golden rainbow parallel of orel hershiser's stadium club card

i posted a couple of weeks ago about selling my base dupe of this card on ebay. the next day, i followed up on a comment on that post and saw that someone had added this card to sportlots, but at the reasonable and normal 18 cents.  i bought it, along with all of the other cards in this post, with the earnings i made from the regular base version of the hershiser card. in other words, i traded a base card for its parallel version, plus 11 other cards. crazy times.

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.

nefarious needs no more

it's an idea that i stole back in july of 2009 from saints of the cheap seat who took it from the collective troll, and it is an idea that has similarly been adopted by pretty much everyone.  it's a list of most wanted cards posted on the sidebar - i call mine the 'nefarious 9'.  

i had exclusively housed my list over at my first blog, but i've recently added it to the sidebar here at my current digs as well.  and to mark the occasion, i did a near-complete purge of the list thanks to trying out the sportlots box with a large, multi-seller order, along with my preferred method - a trade!

the first two cards on the list have been there for a while, and they are not very common it would seem, and so they remain.  they are a 2007 topps chrome blue refractor takashi saito card, and a 1989 fleer box bottom (white back) orel hershiser card.  the rest were finally added to my collection.

i didn't scan the card that was at number 3 (2017 topps allen & ginter clayton kershaw), so the post begins with number 4 on the old list, 1993 fleer kevin gross.

yeah, that's the back of the card. i like the back because it says 'gross' in really big letters. it also shows the back of kevin's jersey with the 'k. gross' lettering.  the 1992 dodgers were the 'grossest' dodger team in a couple of ways - they lost 99 games, and they also had two pitchers named gross.  kip gross joined kevin on the roster, which begs the questions: why did kevin just have 'k' on the back of his jersey and not 'ke'? what did kip have on the back?

most wanted number 5 was this 1988 fleer award winners pedro guerrero card

guerrero was not the official sporting news comeback player of the year in 1987 (that was the cubs' rick sutcliffe) but guerrero did have a great 1987 campaign following his 1986 season in which he trashed his knee on a very poorly executed spring training slide.

number 6 on the list was cory snyder's 1994 topps stadium club card

like most of the cards that show up on the list, i needed this card to complete my dodger team set.  thanks to the multi-seller and multi-order nature of my sportlots purchase, i now have a double of this card.

the next three were recent additions to the list - 2012 topps chrome andre ethier

completes my set, and 2018 topps andre ethier

was easily my most wanted card out of this year's series 2 release.  this one came from julie at a cracked bat.  you'll see more of this card tomorrow.  thanks julie!

bringing up the rear of the list was kelsey grammer's 2015 topps first pitch insert

i watched cheers and frasier, but don't consider myself a fan of grammer which is probably why his was the last dodger related first pitch card i needed.  i also don't get why grammer gets a card and former dodgers like the infield or steve garvey or vin scully don't.  timing and the celebrity angle, i guess.

i've had a non-dodger 'bonus' card on the list for a while as well, and it was a 2016 panini diamond kings vladimir guerrero card

i am a little annoyed at panini for taking the red out of vladdy's expos uniform but leaving it in on the on-deck batter.

i am pretty sure the cards that the ethiers and grammer replaced on the list were a 2015 topps heritage high number joc pederson rookie performers insert

a 2008 upper deck piece of history andruw jones stadium scenes insert

and a 1999 grandstand san bernardino stampede steve yeager coach card!

those three cards actually came from a comc order earlier in the year.

so, the list has been mostly purged but is now repopulated.  the list is dead, long live the list:

1 - 2007 topps chrome takashi saito blue refractor

2 - 1989 fleer box bottom orel hershiser (white back)

3 - 2003 bowman #39 odalis perez 

4 - 2004 fleer greats #101 babe herman

5 - 1990 topps hills hit men #13 eddie murray

6 - 1995 topps finest #228 hideo nomo

7 - 1988 topps big #154 mike davis

8 - 2001 upper deck mvp #218 kevin brown

9 - 2011 topps opening day superstar celebrations #25 matt kemp

bonus non-dodger cards - 1982 o-pee-chee #305 don sutton

as always, any help is appreciated - you will be rewarded!