dean of the dodgers

it wasn't too long after justin dean was involved in a memorable play in the 2025 world series that he was waived by the dodgers and picked up by the giants. i recall thinking that there was no chance we would see dean in a dodger uniform on 2026 topps cardboard as a result.

a couple months after that, he was picked up by the cubs. so, i was surprised that 2026 topps heritage came out with dean featured as a dodger on one of the four-in-one rookie cards. then topps series 2 was released, and dean was featured as a cub. i was hopeful that his golden mirror card would be a dodger card with an image from his "hands up" play against the blue jays in game 6 of the world series, similar to how the nationals' darren baker's golden mirror card last year was a giants card from his bat boy experience during the 2002 world series. however, dean's golden mirror card identifites him as a cub.

i still bought the card, however, since he is pictured walking through the lower levels of dodger stadium, past the gold gloves that dodgers have won in the past. it's a unique look at a part of dodger stadium that fits into my dodger stadium background mini collection. i am 99% sure that the glove on the top shelf at the far right of the card is davey lopes', and the one that would be immediately to the right of that (cropped out from the original photo) is steve garvey's

the back is the same as his regular card, except for the gold coloring

later, topps chrome was released, and i was again surprised - but then again, not, given the time that is needed to print and have cards signed - to see dean as a dodger in the autograph insert set

i made adding this card a high priority and eventually found one for a very low price. here's the back

which has all the same information as his flagship card, except for the team affiliation and transaction information around his arrival in chicago.

of course, the title "dean of the dodgers" makes me think of bill russell, thanks to the 1986 topps card 

that applied that moniker to him on the back.

i picked up a new to me russell card a few months back - a 2017 topps rediscover topps buyback of his 1985 topps card

it's a silver foil version, which sort of conflicts with all of the gold that preceded it in this post, but oh well.

hit it cc

well, i am not sure why it didn't happen last year following his induction into the hall of fame, but tonight the yankees are retiring cc sabathia's number 52. 

there aren't a lot of yankee cards that show his number, largely due to the fact that the yankees only have the number on the backs of their jerseys, so i was happy to find this 2017 topps card

for my retired numbers collection.

sabathia's is the 22nd number retired by the yankees. those 22 numbers recognize 24 individuals, with number 8 being retired for both yogi berra and bill dickey, and 42 being retired for mariano rivera and jackie robinson. sabathia is the first player for whom any team has retired number 52.

in sort of related news, i've added a couple more cards to my retired numbers collection in the "header" category. these are cards that show retired numbers in the background or celebrate number retirement ceremonies. the cards i've added are 

one of the cards from the 2001 upper deck pinstripe exclusives joe dimaggio insert set

a 1993 fleer ultra pat mahomes card (featuring the angels' retired number for gene autry)

1993 mother's cookies california angels john orton (showing nolan ryan's retired number over his right shoulder)

1993 topps mark whiten (showing not quite half of bob feller's placard)

a 1997 donruss troy percival card

(which shows rod carew's number 29 in it's entirety if you combine the front and back images)

barry bonds' 2000 ud spx card featuring carl hubbell's retired number placard

carl crawford's 2005 topps opening day card which shows billy martin, reggie jackson, and don mattingly numbers

derek jeter's 2003 topps opening day card featuring gil hodges, an obscured 41 for tom seaver, and half of jackie robinson's number

and javier baez's 2020 topps big league orange parallel card giving glimpses of red schoendients, jack buck, stan musial, and enos slaughter

the flagship version of the crawford and jeter cards, as well as the base of the baez card, are already in my collection as they either represent those respective sets in my "topps flagship through the years" mini-collection or my favorite non-dodger card of the year. now i have versions of them with my retired numbers mini-collection, as it was the retired numbers in the background that drew me to the cards originally. the dimaggio and bonds cards were ones that i came across while looking through my defunct player collections that got boxed up in 2002.

the yankees easily have the highest number of retired numbers in any sport and i wonder if we will see triple digit uniform numbers in my lifetime. certainly, number 99 is well on its way to being retired by the yankees, but i don't know that there are any others in line for the honor at this point. time will tell.

the k is for kershaw kountdown continues - rocky mountain high edition!

clayton kershaw made his eighth appearance of the 2025 season thursday afternoon against the rockies at coors field, so i am pleased to be able to post another edition of the k is for kershaw kountdown as we track his progress to the 3,000 strikeout milestone.

kershaw continues to post solid outings after a couple of shakier starts to begin his season. agains the rockies, he went six innings and gave up just two hits and one walk. one of those hits was a solo home run, but that was the only run he allowed. as for strikeouts, kershaw k'd five batters, and those 5 k's he recorded bring his season strikeout total to 29, and his career total to 2,997.

in honor of his performance, here are five cards (not seen on this blog before) from my collection to represent strikeouts number 2,993 through 2,997.

2,993 - 2017 topps rainbow foil parallel

2,994 - 2021 topps 1986 35th anniversary all-star insert blue parallel

2,995 - 2022 topps update rainbow gold parallel

2,996 - 2023 topps chrome platinum anniversary prism refractor parallel

2,997 - 2024 topps 1989 35th anniversary all-star insert

i gave serious consideration to heading out to colorado for this game. i think if kershaw had been within five strikeouts of 3,000 going in, i would have done it.

kershaw won his fourth decision in a row, as the dodgers beat the rockies 3-1. he is now 4-0 on the season, and he lowered his era to 3.03 on the season.as well. the outing was better than usual for kershaw at coors field, although he did throw a shutout there once. overall, his colorado era is well over 4 in a not so small sample size (28 games pitched). still, the rockies are one of the six teams that passed on kershaw (as well as max scherzer and tim lincecum) in the 2006 draft, and i am sure they would have been ok with how he turned out had they known at the time.

here is a non-kershaw card - it's a 2022 topps 582 montgomery (set 2) mookie betts card

betts had two hits - an rbi single and a double - and scored the dodgers' second run of the game. i am hopeful that he gets on a streak over the next couple of weeks as he hasn't been quite the mookie we are used to this year after starting the season out with a pretty serious illness.

kershaw is still in 20th place on the all-time leader board, and he will remain there unless he passes john smoltz (or is himself passed). smoltz has a career strikeout total of 3,084 and so kershaw is now 87 k's behind smoltz, but just 3 away from the 3,000 milestone. for what it's worth, he now has 216 career wins, which puts him in a tie for 87th place overall with curt schilling, wilbur cooper, and old friends max scherzer and charlie hough.

kershaw should be back on the mound next week against the white sox at dodger stadium. the ravine will be packed, no doubt, but i won't be there. i don't think it's a stretch to say that he will get to 3k during that start as the white sox batters strike out about 27% of the time, and only six teams have more strikeouts as hitters than the southsiders. regardless, know that when he makes his next start, i will be back to update the kountdown soon thereafter. stay tuned! 

card shop chain stop

a couple of weeks ago i made a stop at one of the local card shops. it had been a while since i had made it to a card show, and the big show that i was looking forward to in april was going to be a miss for me as well due to some last minute travel. this particular shop i've written about before, but this was the first time i visited this particular location. 

they had two brick and mortar shops in the twin cities pre-pandemic, but were down to one at one point soon thereafter. they've since opened up a new second location in the north metro near where their closed location was, and while i was there i heard them say that they were going to open a third location in the west suburbs. not since shinders have the cities seen a multi-location hobby shop, and this one focuses solely on cards where shinders was really an overgrown newstand that had branched out into comics and cards. and adult magazines.

anyway, this shop had a few bargain boxes sitting out which was nice to see given their penchant for online card inventory in the past. i took a look at the quarter box and found just a few cards to take. i moved on to the pricier boxes and began building a stack.

i wasn't going to pass on a blue parallel of tommy lasorda

that one comes from 2022 topps chrome platinum anniversary, and is the blue mini diamond parallel numbered to 199.

my favorite card of the day was this 2024 topps stadium club gold foil jackie robinson parallel

that i thought was underpriced but i went with it

there were quite a few autographs in the boxes, and i took this 2017 topps 1987 30th anniversary rob segedin one

home with me. as you will recall, topps reset the anniversary inserts the following year, so in 2022 we got 1987 all over again. this is evidenced by the shawn green 1987 35th anniversary autograph black parallel card

that i purchased. being the black parallel, it is numbered to 199 on the back

although i believe that non-auto black parallels are numbered to 299. at least currently.

that wasn't the only shawn green auto i snagged - here's a 2023 topps finest blue parallel auto 

it's numbered to 150 up in the left hand corner.

there were two other autograph cards that i set aside, but i only wound up buying one of them. the one i put back was a 2004 upper deck legends timeless teams chet lemon card. you just don't see those out in the wild, but i already owned one of them and didn't see a reason to pick up a second. i did wind up buying this 2022 topps gypsy queen steve garvey autograph

even though i already have one in the pc. it's the missing nameplate version, so it's not as common as the regular version. here's the back

this one will go in my dodger collection.

another 2022 topps gypsy queen card for the team collection is this albert pujols sepia parallel

numbered to 99.

i hemmed and hawed about this next one - a 2022 sportkings volume 3 dusty baker relic card

because i've avoided it a few times in the past. the price was right on this occasion, and i have another johnnie b. baker card in my collection.

one more dodger to show - it's a 2021 topps chrome will smith negative refractor

and it's probably the least favorite card i picked up on this visit.

after finishing with the boxes, i asked for a couple of packs of the newly released 2024 topps heritage high numbers. they were nice enough to break open a box (juan soto oversized box topper) and hand me a couple. i found a nick lodolo short print

a rangers combo insert

and two base dodgers - landon knack

and teoscar hernandez

the cards looked a lot better to me than the first heritage release, and so i decided to buy a blaster as well. i picked wisely, as the dodgers were frequent in the blaster packs. in all, i found six more

including a cavan biggio dodger card which i was not expecting at all.

i also found two of the key rookies

with their complementary lemon-lime borders.

a couple more short prints - eloy jimenez

and ben brown

plus a bob gibson insert

interesting to note that he made his big league debut exactly 12 years after jackie robinson first played for the dodgers. that wasn't long ago at all. i will say that i appreciate topps recognizing gibson, harmon killebrew, and juan marichal as all-time greats who retired during or following the 1975 season, but i would rather see them get cards with the 1976 design.

i found one chrome parallel, and it's a refractor to boot. 

but it's brayan bello.

the blaster advertised three exclusive green parallels which confused me since many of the regular borders are green  i think what they meant was white letter name parallels. here are the three that i found

another dodger success with james paxton, plus tanner scott who is now a dodger.

i found one more parallel, and it was forrest whitley's aqua border parallel. it's shown here with his base card

that was also in the blaster. i have to say, i've seen forrest whitley cards for so long i can't believe that 2024 was his rookie year designation.

one more card from the blaster, and it's the padres quad insert

i was really happy to see this because i knew someone who was looking for it. i shipped it off to rod at padrographs, and it should be in his collection by the time this posts. 

the last card i took from the store was a 2023 topps international trading day adley rutschman card

they had a stack at the register so these aren't rare, but it serves as a reminder to get to the card shop once in a while. it's easier to do when they have multiple locations!

that's not necessarily a relief

coming into the 2024 season, kiké hernandez had a career era of 81.00 thanks to an appearance in 2018 in which he surrendered three runs and recorded only one out. over the course of the 2024 campaign, hernandez lowered his era to 9.64 by appearing in four games and allowing two runs over 4 and a third innings of work.  in one of those games, hernandez was 3 for 4 with a couple of rbis and so became the dodgers' best two-way player of the season. i expect that to change next year.

seeing kiké on the mound multiple times in 2024 reminded me of russell martin who also made four relief appearances for the dodgers in a single season (2019). it also made me wonder who the first dodger position player to take the mound might have been.

i looked back at player rosters on baseball reference and found that danny heep, one of the "stuntmen", pitched in relief for the dodgers in 1988. in honor of that achievement, i added a 2017 topps buyback card of heep to my collection

it is the silver version of the "rediscover topps" buybacks in case you were wondering. in his lone relief appearance as a dodger (he would take the mound again in 1990 for the red sox), heep pitched two innings and gave up a two-run home run to ken caminiti in one of them.

i kept looking, and i believe that the first los angeles dodger position player to make a relief appearance (and the only one prior to heep), was jim hickman. hickman has a card as a dodger in the 1967 topps set, but i decided to share this recent pickup instead

that's his 2004 upper deck legends timeless teams silver autograph card, which i have happily added to my partial master set. i keep pecking away at the auto and numbered parallels even though i have no illusions of ever completing any of the parallel sets.

anyway, after hitting for dick egan in the 7th, hickman was called upon to pitch the 8th and 9th innings in a june game against the giants back in '67, even though the dodgers were only down by five. he gave up two hits and one run in his two innings of work - the one run coming on a willie mays home run - and even got a single in the bottom of the 9th for good measure.

it will be interesting to see what comes of 2025 with shohei ohtani due to resume his role as a pitcher every fifth day. how much time off will the dodgers give ohtani and at what cost to their offense? and with kiké becoming a free agent, who will be dave roberts' first call from the bench to take the mound at the end of the lopsided games?