a certified legend

on friday night, ron cey will be inducted into the "legends of dodger baseball" club. this acknowledgement is akin to what many other teams call their "hall of fame" (like the twins). it is a step below number retirement, but still a way to recognize players who were important to the franchise during their careers.

the penguin certainly deserves it, as he left the dodgers as the all-time los angeles dodger leader in home runs to go along with his contributions to four pennants and the 1981 world championship! here is his 2002 topps archives autograph card

that i purchased not too long after i found another auto of his in a bargain box at a card show. some other recent cey additions to my collection include a 2005 playoff prestige xtra bases red parallel

numbered to 150

always nice to see the infield name checked on a baseball card!

last year, dusty baker joined previous legends of dodger baseball inductees don newcombe, steve garvey, fernando valenzuela, maury wills, kirk gibson, orel hershiser, and manny mota. that's a great group, but i would think that there is room for others such as willie davis. the group started in 2019 with three inductees (newk, garvey, and fernando), but it has seen only one inductee in each of the past two seasons.

i haven't been to dodger stadium since baker was inducted, and i am curious to see how both he and cey are represented - are they still using baseball cards or have they retooled the monuments - as well as whether or not fernando is still a part of this group since he had his uniform number retired in 2023. it's a good reason to get out west to the ballpark!

the almost daily dodger - rickey henderson

i originally planned and wrote this post a couple of weeks before today, obviously not knowing that rickey henderson would pass away prior to its posting. 2024 has been a rough year for players that i followed closely as a young baseball fan, and henderson's death is still very surreal to me. 

it's still weird to me that rickey henderson played for the dodgers. however, it happened and like hoyt wilhelm and juan marichal before him, los angeles was his final stop before cooperstown. several months ago i picked up this 2005 playoff prestige prestigious pros blue parallel card

that features rickey as a dodger. his dodger cards seem to be fairly popular with collectors i've noticed, so i was pleased to find this one for cheap. the card is numbered to 900, which is a lot compared to this next one.

this is one of two 2004 playoff prime cuts rickey cards that i picked up twenty years ago

i'm showing it here because it is a true rickey henderson birthday card, numbered 12/25

for the christmas kid.

today would have been henderson's 66th birthday, but instead we are left to mourn the former dodger and remember how much of a revolutionary player he was. i am glad to have seen him play in person and been able to have followed his entire career. rest in peace, rickey.

west are the champions

in my lifetime, the national league west champion has been the bearer of the pennant 16 times, assuming i did my analysis correctly starting with the 1971 postseason. this does not count wild card teams coming out of the west to win the pennant, nor does it count the 1981 los angeles dodgers who were winning the west at the time of the strike, but did not win the west overall.

one member of that team (which did win the pennant and the world series) was steve garvey, and i was finally able to acquire his 2005 playoff prestige national league west division champions parallel card earlier this month!

garvey himself was part of four national league west champion teams - the 1974, 1977, and 1978 dodgers, and the 1984 padres. each one of those teams went on to the world series. 

this card has been a bit of a white whale for me and my steve garvey collection for quite some time. i coveted it because it represents the division in which garvey played his entire career, and it has a print run of just 18!

as you may recall, this was a redemption card as explained in this post. finding this card posted for sale with a very low buy it now has been one of the highlights of my collecting year so far! and, with the regular season kicking off tomorrow for every team other than the two garvey played for, i am hopeful for another nl west title for the dodgers in 2024.

the bell can't be unrung

the dodgers have produced 18 rookies of the year. of the first 17, only jackie robinson, jim gilliam, and jim lefebvre spent their entire mlb playing careers with the franchise, so it was pretty much inevitable that the club's most recent winner of the award, cody bellinger, would wind up playing somewhere else. in fact, it wasn't even a surprise that the dodgers did not sign him after the 2022 season, given how poorly he had fared at the plate since his 2019 mvp campaign even though he was heading in to his year 27 season. and, now that the decision was made and the dust has settled a bit, there is bound to be some second guessing as bellinger is playing well for the cubs. however, there is no going back - you can't unring that bell(inger).

i recently added a 2022 topps allen & ginter chrome gold parallel bellinger autograph card

to my collection. i picked up the card because i realized that i did not have a bellinger auto in my collection, and even though this one is on card and numbered to 50, it wasn't very expensive. that surprised me a bit given the resurgence bellinger is experiencing in 2023 with the cubs, but i am not complaining.

i assume that the dodgers struggled with the decision last offseason to sign or not sign bellinger, but even now as he is playing well, i don't disagree with the decision that they made. here's a comparison from august 21 between james outman - the guy who has, for the most part, taken over for bellinger in center field - and bellinger:

you can see how well bellinger is playing (when he plays) in 2023. in fact, at this point in the season, bellinger could have gone 0 for 4 in each of the cubs' remaining 40 games and he would have still hit what he hit for the dodgers in 2022. however, what is not shown are the salaries - $722,500 for outman in 2023 and $17,500,000 for bellinger in 2023. sure, bellinger has the better statistics (in fewer games played), but over $16,000,000 for another 1.7 war isn't worth it, especially with the dodgers once again running away in the nl west. besides, there will be a bigger payday for bellinger on the other side of this season which carries a bit of a risk.

anyway, i have some bellinger cards that have been languishing in my scanned folder for a while, so here you go:

his status as an elite player on a high profile team meant that bellinger was included in a bunch of online sets, like topps' throwback thursday line. this one is from 2020

i would say it is about time that topps included an mvp subset in flagship again.

here's a 2022 topps 582 montgomery card

from "set 2". it gives off some 1992 topps vibes to me.

this is easily one of the oddest bellinger cards i have in my collection

it's from the 2019 topps direct 360 gary vee set, and is a "wine pairings" card. i guess cannibalizing bellinger would best be paired with a german wine.

he was also included in a bunch of insert sets, like this 2020 topps warriors of the diamond card

that celebrates his 2019 mvp campaign - 9.0 war. wow.

and here's a 2020 topps gypsy queen tarot of the diamond insert

which anoints bellinger as "the star"

he also got some prime real estate on team cards, like this 2022 topps factory set gold star parallel

not the most flattering photo.

panini didn't avoid bellinger either, as evidenced by this "eyes on the prize" mosaic parallel insert form 2021 mosaic

giving some screen time to aj pollock as well

and then there are the regular old base cards, like this 2021 topps gallery card

i am guessing that we will see a boatload of bellinger cards in the near future as the cubs are likely going to return to the postseason. i'm not sure what uniform bellinger will be wearing in 2024, but we will definitely see plenty of it on cardboard.

this situation reminds me a bit of what happened with adrian beltre after the 2004 season. however, the circumstances were completely opposite. while bellinger struggled in his walk year, beltre put together a career year for the ages, leading the national league in home runs, as noted by this 2005 playoff prestige card

the dodgers decided not to resign him, and he went on to create for himself a hall of fame career while the third base turnstyle continued to spin at dodger stadium. i get it - it's tough being a gm.

as for bellinger, i am guessing that we will see a boatload of his cards in the near future as the cubs are likely going to return to the postseason. i'm not sure what uniform bellinger will be wearing in 2024, but we will definitely see plenty of it on cardboard. i will tip my cap to him, just like he is doing on this 2018 topps 1983 all-star card

and be happy for his success, as long as he still swings at those back foot breaking balls against the dodgers in the postseason.

green grow the cards

here is a somewhat meta card - this 2003 fleer platinum card

is a very green shawn green card! i had a teammate back in high school whose last name was black. he thought it was weird to have a last name that was also a color, and he refused to wear black. names are weird in general, i think.

moving on, here's a green non-green card

that card, from 2005 playoff prestige, is the purple parallel. 

and another, from 2001 fleer authority:

i stumbled upon this one in my dodger dupes box and noticed that the dodger stadium murals (hi, pee wee!) are visible behind green despite the best efforts of fleer's card designers. to the dodger stadium binder it goes!

i do have some other non-green green cards to show that have entered my collection over the last couple of years.  here's a 2020 panini diamond kings jackie robinson all-time diamond king card

that is green by design.

i stumbled upon this retail green parallel of a 2019 topps sandy koufax decades' best card

in a target or walgreens somewhere back in 2019, and this 2018 topps gypsy queen chris taylor green parallel card

was a sportlots order filler.

green green green! happy st. patrick's day!

championship prestige

the dodgers' 2021 postseason begins (and possibly ends) tonight, so i've got a postseason themed post for your perusal.  five times in steve garvey's career, and five times in eleven seasons, he was part of a team that could call itself the national league champion.  in 2005, playoff included parallels celebrating the different levels of postseason access in their prestige release, and i recently acquired the nl champ garvey card:

these cards were found in special factory sets that were only available via exchange with a winning playoff champions combos insert card, like this one

that would have paid off had the dodgers won the world series. i took that image from comc. here's the back:

you can see back then we were still dealing with hard mail-in redemptions and exchanges. the nice thing is that playoff gave collectors until april 15, 2006 (jackie robinson day!) to redeem their cards, so you knew whether or not your card was a winner before mailing it in.

anyway, what my garvey card shown up above means is that someone out there had an astros combo card that named them as the national league champions, and they successfully redeemed the card for a complete 200-card parallel set. according to donruss, the national league champion set is the rarest of the sets, with only 7 having been issued.  here are all the set print run breakdowns:

al wild card champions: 13 sets
nl wild card champions: 15 sets
al west division champions: 17 sets
al central division champions: 27 sets
al east division champions: 20 sets
nl west division champions: 18 sets
nl central division champions: 21 sets
nl east division champions: 18 sets
al champions: 12 Sets
nl champions: 7 sets
world series champions: 19 sets

the only other garvey parallels i have are from the nl central and al east division 

champion sets, which have the second and third highest print run of all the sets. i would love to find an nl west division champion card as well as a world series champion card for my collection, even though these parallels are not numbered and are somewhat derivative. you know what they say - player collectors gonna collect!

don sutton doesn't always sutton

he was a pitcher, after all.

i recently acquired a big card for my post-dodger don sutton collection showing him in action as an angel

this might have been (it was) the non-dodger sutton card that i coveted the most due to it being from the awesome 2004 upper deck legends timeless teams release and it being an on-card autograph of the dodger double dipper hall of famer suited up for the american league team from orange county.  it's a short print in the set - only 75 copies - and the only one of sutton's four autographs to have that distinction. i am still missing his 1980 card autograph version, however.

i'll request that you take note that sutton is no older than 42 in that photo. 1970's baseball must have been a hard knock life.

in other sutton news, i submitted a post the other day to kevin at the diamond king regarding the hall of fame righty as part of the “take him or leave him” series kevin is hosting. check it out if you haven’t already. 

the cards i showed in that post are mostly recent pick-ups for my sutton collection, including a 2020 topps series 2 decades’ best

the photo topps used is not from the 60’s.

this is a 2005 donruss signature series k force insert

and this is from 2017 panini chronicles

the last card i showed in that post we sutton’s 1986 leaf card

which was one of my “most wanted” for a short time (or was it his 1987 leaf card?)

no matter, i recently added them both to the collection. 

here are a few more sutton cards i’ve added over the last few months:

1985 topps stickers (with mookie wilson)

 

2005 donruss diamond kings hof heroes framed red parallel

2005 playoff prestige prestigious pros red parallel

2005 upper deck classics classic moments

2006 upper deck sp legendary cuts ultimate legendary materials

i also showed a photo of sutton in that post at the diamond king. 

i promised a separate post here in the future that will address that photo and others like it, and i’m working on it. 

stay tuned.

why i enjoy reading baseball card blogs

i've been reading baseball card blogs for over 10 years now, and i still enjoy seeing the various postings of fellow collectors.  sometimes, i will see a post that features a card of my favorite player, like this 2005 playoff prestige steve garvey card

that fuji found at a flea market a while back.  this particular version of the card is the red parallel, numbered to 25; a parallel that i did not have in my collection.  i asked fuji if he would part with it, and he agreed to do so with a blind trade.  that is awesome.

another blog that i read regularly is nick's dime boxes which always features a bunch of random, yet connected, cards.  one card that nick showed off a while back was this 1982 red lobster cubs bump wills card

there's a good chance that the expo on the card is tim raines, with scot thompson being the cubs' left fielder. nick and i both collect cards that show the double play, and so i was inspired to go and find this card to add to my collection.  while i was at it, i added a few more turns at second base, many of which i had seen around the blogosphere but had not gotten around to acquiring yet.

here's a 2015 topps update pete kozma

and the gold parallel version

i wish the dodgers had permanent murals like the cardinals do (and maybe the white sox?).

i always like to check out posts featuring new releases as it is a great way to see a variety of cards that may fit into my collection.  a couple of months ago, jeff at 2x3 heroes showed off a few cards from 2017 topps flagship that he had added to his double play collection, including jace peterson

and tim anderson.

i went over to sportlots and did the same, and i added anderson's 2017 topps opening day card

as well as dee gordon's

a few other double play cards that i've picked up recently include this 2017 topps heritage buster posey game card

along with a pair of 2015 topps original buybacks - 1976 topps bob sheldon

and derrel thomas

and a 2016 panini donruss andrelton simmons 1982 design insert

i'm pretty sure that's kiké hernandez sliding in, which would likely make this a card that features a dp turn from july 21, 2015 (austin barnes followed a hernandez single with a 4-6-3 double play grounder).

i don't recall which blog i saw this next card on, but it was quickly added to my sportlots order

that would be a 2017 panini donruss joe morgan 1983 design card featuring a photo of morgan batting in dodger stadium.  i believe that the catcher's glove most likely belongs to steve yeager, although it could be a host of other dodger backstops as well.

in addition to inspiring me to add cards to my collection, nick recently sent some cards my way, including another dodger stadium background card - 2016 topps stadium club justin turner

plus some other turners - 2016 topps allen & ginter base

and mini

and the same for alex wood

although the wood mini 

shows how topps rotated the image for wood's base card.

last card to show from nick is this 2016 topps holiday kenley jansen card

i would not have known that these snowflake cards existed had it not been for the blogs.  i guess you have to take the good with the bad.