2025 brings balance to the franchise

i was pondering the upcoming 2025 baseball season last winter and did some quick math in my head regarding some dodger milestones. it will be the 70th anniversary of the team's first world series title and the 60th anniversary of their fourth. it will also be the 135th anniversary of their inaugural season as a member of the national league. as you likely already know, while the team existed for a few years prior, brooklyn officially joined the national league in 1890 and later moved to los angeles following the 1957 season. 

partly inspired by the fact that the a's were heading to sacramento after having been in oakland longer than they were in philadelphia, i pondered the dodgers' multi-city status and realized that with this being their 136th season in the major leagues, 2025 will mark their 68th season as the los angeles dodgers, matching the 68 that they played in brooklyn. franchise symmetry! (note that the giants still have seven years to go to reach this franchise fulcrum, as they began play as a national league team in 1883).

in 1957, topps gave us this team card of the brooklyn dodgers

but despite '57 being their final season in brooklyn, we got one more brooklyn dodger team card in 1958

since these were always "last year's" team photos. topps left off the city for the dodgers (and the giants) which was out of step with the other team cards. seeing roy campanella on the card makes me even more disappointed that topps did not give him a proper final tribute. finally, it's worth noting that topps not being able to color the numbers on the front of the dodger jerseys correctly is not a new phenomenon.

in 1959, topps gave us the first los angeles dodgers team card

and they got the red numbers right!

the last single player brooklyn dodger topps card belonged to don elston in 1957

and the first los angeles dodger topps card belonged to charley neal in 1958

around the first of the year, i took the opportunity to complete a couple of sets that span both cities. first, the 1980 tcma all-time dodgers

which features more brooklyn folks than los angeles ones. this 1991 line drive set

reverses that trend. i had a few of the tcma cards previously, as well as the garvey from the line drive set, but found it easier to buy the sets than piecemeal the missing cards.

i have plenty of other cards from my scanned folder to show today that play on this theme, including a couple gil hodges cards

that's a 1949 bowman reprint (chromified) from 2001 bowman chrome, and this is a 2002 topps 1952 world series insert

while hodges played for the dodgers in both brooklyn and los angeles, he's representing brooklyn in each of his cards in this post.

here's hodges' teammate in both brooklyn and la, duke snider, on a 2005 upper deck sp legendary cuts legendary lineage insert

duke has his brooklyn hat on here, but is repping los angeles in the all-time dodger set above.

another dodger who played in both cities is jim gilliam, seen on a 2023 panini donruss pennants insert

his helmet has no logo, but the card makes it obvious that he is representing the brooklyn dodgers here. the brooklyn dodgers won nine pennants, but just one world series.

one great who didn't make the trip to los angeles with the club is jackie robinson. here he is on a few cards - 2024 topps mega box 1989 all-star

2024 topps allen & ginter mini chrome parallel

and 2023 topps archives 1969 single player foil insert

that really makes the case for brooklyn.

don drysdale, seen here on a 2008 donruss threads baseball americana insert

pitches for brooklyn, but the big d shown here on a 2022 topps gypsy queen short print

pitches for los angeles.

here's another sandy koufax card, this one from 2024 topps

it's another mega box exclusive parallel. koufax, of course, also spanned the franchise's time in brooklyn and los angeles, and he's wearing the latter on his chest here. he led the club to three world series titles in the first 10 years of their existence on the west coast and is still revered by the dodger faithful today.

once the 1970's arrived (represented here on a 2020 topps update decades' best blue parallel)

the club won three pennants, but lost each of the world series in which they played. the card above features a photo from the 1978 world series, which was especially heartbreaking for young gcrl who assumed that the dodgers would win since they lost in 1977. it was their turn!

the 1978 season did cement steve garvey as my favorite player, and i was far from alone in that regard. here's the garv on a 2024 topps allen & ginter gold mini parallel

while the perennial all-star didn't lead the dodgers back to the postseason in 1979, the 1980's brought two pennants and two championships to los angeles, represented by this 1989 mother's dodgers card

but then came some lean years. there were some bright spots, as a number of rookies of the year, including mike piazza seen on a 1994 ultra pro card

gave us hope. that hope petered out with two postseason sweepings in the middle of the 1990s. then came the jim tracy years. here's tracy on a 2004 topps gold parallel

his tenure included the dodgers' only postseason single game win since 1988, but also included a number of interesting player personnel decisions. one solid player who was there for part of the tracy era was shawn green, seen here on a 2005 donruss classics team colors insert

that is most decidedly "la".

another highlight of those years was "game over". eric gagne's prowess at saving games was highlighted on this 2006 upper deck epic epic events insert

gagne won the cy young award in 2003, and the dodgers didn't have a pitcher win another until clayton kershaw came along.

here's kershaw on a 2009 topps unique red parallel card

kershaw's arrival coincided with a run of team success. in fact, in kershaw's 17 seasons, the dodgers have missed the postseason only three times. here's a 2015 topps limited edition dodger team card

showing the 2014 squad celebrating their regular season success.

it wasn't until the dodgers added mookie betts, however, that their postseason fortunes changed. here's betts on a 2021 topps 70 years of topps insert

betts led the dodgers to the world series title in 2020, and he was aided four years later by freddie freeman and shohei ohtani (shown on his 2024 topps archives card)

who went 50/50 during the regular season.

of course, perhaps the greatest dodger and the real bridge between the franchise's time in brooklyn and los angeles, was vin scully. here's a 2013 panini cooperstown matrix parallel

of the longtime broadcaster.

i am excited to watch this team as it reaches its equilibrium this year and as it tips the scales to los angeles in years to come. i am very happy that the stateside opening day is tomorrow!

some big garvey gets mean i can see from both ends now

a while back, i posted some bat barrel cards that i have in my steve garvey collection. super cool stuff, at least to me, and i am always keeping an eye out for more of them.  when i saw the 2021 leaf lumber checklist, the card that most interested me was the bat rack card of garvey, cey, russell, lopes. however, i was also hoping to get a crack at either the 1/1 bat knob or the 1/1 off the end of the bat cards.

well....

i am happy to report that i got them both!

that's a scan of the bat knob. the card is so thick and the wood is a bit recessed, so it's blurry. here's a photograph:

and the back:

same goes for the end of the bat card. here's the scan:

and photo:

and the back:

to be honest i thought the end of the bat card would be a bit better. the piece of bat is not as thick as i would have thought it would be, but i am still happy to have the card. especially since it has the psa/dna and jsa stickers attached.

the beauty of the psa/dna sticker on the end of the bat is that i can access the database and find out more information about it - check it out here! i grabbed a couple of the photos

and am confident that both of these cards come from the same bat. you can see in the photo above that it is the knob used on the card for sure! and you can see the other ink (and sticker) from the end of the bat on this photo:

with the photos found at that link, it is clear that both the end and knob come from the same bat, which sold at auction in 2019 for $360. whomever won the auction then took it to jsa to get the signature authenticated and the second sticker applied to the end of the bat that later wound up on the card.  here is the jsa verification.

the bat card that i picked up earlier from this same release - the one that featured an exterior chunk of bat - looks like it came from the same bat as this end and knob which makes complete sense. in fact, i think i can see the part of the bat that my chunk came from

seems legit.

i looked through my garvey collection for cards that showed bat ends the best, and his 1982 fleer card

fits the bill for the one end.   you'd have to zoom in quite a bit, but it does look like his 2008 donruss threads card

includes some markings on the knob.

the bat that leaf cut up likely comes from 1987 since it was signed by garvey in 1988 (assuming the "88" notation under his autograph is meant to denote the date). of course, the bat could be from some point earlier in his career, too.

there was another bat knob garvey card issued this year, and it was from 2021 topps sterling

i did not acquire this card - the asking price was and still is pretty high, so i'll just settle for the card images!

my favorite cards of the year - 2008 edition

i recently introduced my mini collection focusing on my favorite cards from each year that i've been a collector. the basic jist is that i wanted to create a space for the cards that i most appreciated having in my collection in the year that they were released. these were cards that i acquired in the year that they were issued, and that i considered to be my favorites at the time. i have disallowed (most) cards that are already in other mini collections in order to avoid having a mini collection consisting of more steve garvey, double plays, and dodger stadium cards.

2008 was an important year in my collecting experience, as it was the year that i started blogging.  more on that later.  here are my favorite cards from 2008.

favorite non-dodger card: donruss threads pete rose

pete rose was one of my first favorite non-dodger players, and even though he bet on baseball i remained a fan. not an apologist, mind you - he broke a sacred rule of the game (and lied about it) and deserved to be punished - but still a fan of his playing career and accomplishments on the field.  when i first saw cards from this release appearing online, i went and bought some packs looking for steve garvey's card. i found that card as well as this rose and several other decent cards as well.

i hadn't seen a new pete rose card since 1994, and thankfully donruss didn't put much effort in to hiding team logos with this one. at the time, i was still holding out hope that pete would be reinstated and elected to the hall of fame even though he had admitted to betting a few years prior. these days, i don't expect his status to change, but i still get excited to see new cards of him hitting the market.

favorite dodger card: topps update & highlights manny ramirez

sure, if i were doing this today, my favorite dodger card from 2008 might be clayton kershaw's rookie card from this same set, but twelve years ago it was all about manny.  i recall watching the trading deadline special on espn (mlb network did not yet exist) on july 31, 2008 as i tried to do each deadline day. a friend of mine used to joke that opening day and trade deadline day should be holidays, and i was on board. anyway, right at the end of the show as the cameras were pulling away, one of the pundits said something like "did the dodgers get manny ramirez?". that was it, and i spent the next half hour scouring the web to find out if this was, in fact, true. spoiler alert - it was.

manny headed to la and flat out raked. the dodgers were in second place in the nl west when he arrived, and a week later they were in first. they fell back to second but finally ascended to first for good on september 6 when manny homered and drove in five runs against the diamondbacks. i was super excited about this team with manny, plus matt kemp, russell martin, james loney, nomar garciaparra, and kershaw. i was commenting quite often on jon weisman's 'dodger thoughts' website, but that outlet was not enough to express the passion i felt at the time. so, three weeks after manny's big game that propelled the dodgers in to first place to stay, i started blogging at garveyceyrusselllopes.

manny led the dodgers to their first postseason series win and to the nlcs for the first time since 1988, hitting .500 in the nlds with a couple of bombs, and then hit .533 in the nlcs with two more homers. sadly, the dodgers failed to advance to the world series, and it turned out that he was using performance enhancers as he was suspended for 50 games in 2009. still, i couldn't wait to get my hands on his first dodger card back in 2008, and it remains a special card in my collection to this day.