calm before the next round

the dodgers passed the first test of the 2025 postseason, as did the tigers, cubs, and yankees. they did so in not quite as exciting a fashion as the 2021 club who used a chris taylor walk-off home run to advance from the wild card (game, not round, back then). here's a 2022 topps green foil parallel that celebrates that moment

interestingly enough, taylor did not get a card of his own in flagship in 2022 - just this one which is actually a checklist. he did get a relic card though

and was featured in some of the other topps sets so he wasn't totally forgotten about. no chris taylor card in update this year, at least not that i saw when i perused the checklist.

the dodgers dispatched the reds in the first round, saying hello and goodbye to old friend gavin lux in the process. here's a 2021 topps big league rainbow foil parallel of lux

that i meant to post prior to the series.

now the dodgers go on to face a somewhat familiar postseason foe - the phillies. it's a matchup straight out of my childhood (as well as 2008 and 2009), although not in the nlcs this year. there are a couple of familiar faces on the other side of the matchup that we will see - trea turner

featured there on a 2022 topps significant statistics insert. today i learned what "bolts" are. i've had this card in my collection and my scanned folder (as well as the uk edition version) for a couple of years and never bothered to look at the stat that topps deemed significant. bottom line is that turner is fast and scores runs.

walker buehler is another phillie. here are his 2022 topps chrome refractor parallel

and his 2021 topps 1986 chrome silver pack 

cards. i wonder if he will get a playoff share from the red sox, too. i'll be honest; when the red sox released him i hoped that the dodgers would bring him back.

i mentioned that the tigers are moving on, and here's a 2024 topps heritage high number card of andre lipcius

i show it because lipcius' only major league experience came with the tigers in 2023. topps was highly speculative when they included him in the checklist for 2024 heritage high numbers, and it didn't match up with the dodgers' roster decisions. these days it looks like he is in the white sox organization. 

now i figure i should show some actual dodgers who will participate in the series against the phillies. here's mookie betts on a 2020 topps of the class card

freddie freeman on a 2022 topps 582 montgomery card, 

and shohei ohtani on a 2025 topps 2024 all topps team insert

ohtani will pitch in the series, and i am looking forward to seeing him match up against kyle schwarber among others. no baseball tonight but plenty of action starting tomorrow!

the k is for kershaw kountdown continues - giant slayer edition!

clayton kershaw made his sixth appearance of the 2025 season saturday night against the giants at dodger stadium, 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.

coming off his best start of the season, kershaw registered another solid outing, going seven innings without allowing a run (matching the best outing by a dodger starter this season) and striking out five giants in the process. those 5 nocal's he k'd bring his season strikeout total to 20, and his career total to 2,988.

in honor of his performance, here are five cards (not seen on this blog before) from my collection to represent strikeouts number 2,984 through 2,988.

2,984 - 2024 topps finest

2,985 - 2014 topps wins leaders walmart blue parallel

2,986 - 2018 topps big league nl whip leaders gold parallel

2,987 - 2019 topps heritage 1970 scratchoff

2,988 - 2019 topps high tek

kershaw's night included allowing only three hits and just one walk to go with his five strikeouts. he faced the minimum number of batters through the first two innings (thanks to a walk-canceling double play) and then registered a strikeout in each of his last five frames. it was a low stress outing, as the dodgers piled on the runs early, and the giants did not mount any sort of rally against kershaw whatsoever.

kershaw's performance saturday night also reclaimed solo possession of first place in the national league west for the dodgers after they lost the series opener to the giants on friday and fell into a tie with their division rivals. it's worth noting that kershaw has struck out more players pitching against the giants than any other team, although that's not really a surprise given the old unbalanced schedules that teams would play.

here are some non-kershaw cards - starting with a 2007 topps moments & milestones russell (russ) martin card

martin was the catcher for kershaw's debut back in 2008. i would like to see kershaw asked to name the starters who were behind him that day because i sure as heck didn't recall a dodger named luis maza who started that game at second base.

seeing the 2019 topps heritage insert above referring to kershaw as "team captain" got me thinking about austin barnes. i recently read a quote from mookie betts - it may have been on a card back - that barnes (who served as kershaw's unofficial personal catcher for a few seasons) was the team captain of late. of course, he was recently released by the club. here's a 2021 topps big league rainbow foil parallel that features barnes and company as they celebrate the 2020 world series win

that is barnes, of course, in the catcher's gear. he is part of a very short list of dodger catchers (john roseboro, rick dempsey, and will smith are the others) to catch the final out of a dodger world series victory.

of course, you can't mention dodger catchers and kershaw without thinking of a.j. ellis. here is his 2013 topps gold parallel card

that features kershaw prominently.

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 96 k's behind smoltz, but just 12 away from the 3,000 milestone. for what it's worth, he has moved past smoltz on the all-time wins leaderboard and is now tied with mark buehrle and rick reuschel with 214.

kershaw should be back on the mound later this week against the padres. know that when he makes his next start, i will be back to update the kountdown soon thereafter. stay tuned! 

a tale of two crops

i like to think that topps gave some thought to the use of the teoscar hernandez photo on his 2024 topps update 1989 35th anniversary insert

hernandez pointing to the sky becomes him being acutely aware of the border in which he is trapped. of course, his left foot is cut off at the bottom, but it's less noticeable because of the card's design.

in that same release, topps gave us this card

that's cody bellinger's autumn tales insert, and it recounts his home run robbery of fernando tatis jr in the 2020 postseason. unfortunately, topps chose to crop the photo such that bellinger's glove is not fully visible even as he breaks the bonds of the interior border of the card.

just three years prior, topps gave us a card with the same photo in their 2021 topps big league release

that's the blue parallel, and while it is more tightly cropped than the 2024 update insert, we are still given the full view of bellinger and his glovework.

i think topps could have easily given us both the wider shot and the full photo by not centering bellinger's body horizontally on the 2024 card, instead moving it to the right and down a bit. so maybe they don't give thought to photos, borders, and crops after all.

all in a week

i went to a card show on april 15 - jackie robinson day - and my favorite purchase of the day was this 2022 topps on-demand rookie of the year 75th anniversary set card of the first rookie of the year

this show was not the regular monthly show, but rather the bi-annual show that the owner of one of the local card shops organizes in a church gymnasium. fittingly, i wore my dodger jackie robinson t-shirt

that i bought at dodger stadium back on opening day in 1997. 

the show was the end of a baseball card themed week for me, in that i stopped in at two local card shops on a couple of the days prior to the show.  on tuesday, an appointment got me close to a shop in the southwest part of the twin cities, so i stopped in for some supplies and to dig through a couple of their monster boxes of singles.

this is the card shop with a bunch of those boxes, but they are stored in such a way as to be difficult to access. the shop is so cluttered that there is really nowhere to put the boxes. it is mildly frustrating, but i still like to look through them so it isn't bad enough to keep me away. i picked out a couple of 2023 topps heritage purple refractors

and a 1994 signature rookies draft picks bonus signature jed hansen card

for the double play collection. most of the cards i pulled were for others, but these three are keepers. i picked up another double play card

but wound up selling it. it is a fairly rare "auction" card from 1998 topps gallery. it wound up covering my outlay for all of the cards i bought from this shop.

a couple of days later, i found myself near another card shop, and stopped in to see what they had to offer. this is the shop whose inventory of singles are either in display cases or part of an online inventory. the last time i was in, i heard one of the workers say that they were considering setting out some dime boxes, and sure enough, i saw some on a table. it turned out that they were quarter boxes, but still worth looking through.

it was a mish-mash of all sports, but i found a few for me and a few for others, including this 1997 fleer flair showcase row 0 brett butler

and a 2015-16 upper deck hockey card of luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuc robitaille

the big story here is that i also bought a box of 2023 topps big league. i was undecided about this product when i first saw images of the cards at cardboard connection, but nick at dime boxes sent me a couple of singles, and so i figured i would add more of the cards to my collection. i had originally hoped to find singles at the aforementioned card show that was coming up later in the week, but this shop had boxes priced at $50 so i went ahead and pulled the trigger.

i think we all agree that the tier system topps applied to this set (similar to what panini has done with their select release) is dumb and annoying for a product like this. it does, however, allow for nice pulls like this:

red foil adley rutschman rookie!

my blue foil sp was jose altuve, so i will just keep going with an example of the regular foil short prints by showing this corbin burnes card

with opening day out of the picture, big league is your one-stop shop for bad photoshopping:

i would much prefer to have seen these guys as dodgers in the set. even if that meant not getting a jd martinez dodger card yet.

there's jd's card along with a few other dodger base cards.

as for non-dodgers, here's ketel marte turning two

and then there are the inserts...

i am not necessarily a fan of the idea of the city connect uniforms, but i do like some of them, including colorado's

the dodgers wore their city connect stuff in a game last weekend, although it was a mashup. they wore the blue "los dodgers" jerseys, but white pants, and the hat was not the "los dodgers" hat but rather a blue hat with the white interlocking "la" but with a black bill. it didn't look good.

bo jackson looks good on modern cardboard, though, and i was happy to find his 8 bit ballers

and roll call

cards among my inserts.

i found two of the three dodger big leaguers inserts

as well.

and then on saturday was the card show. i wound up purchasing cards from four different dealers. the first dealer was one that i had bought from at a previous show, and i was looking forward to looking through his 50 cent box.  it wasn't as fun as the last time, but i still picked out 23 cards that i got for $10.

here are some of the dodgers i pulled

that's a pretty bland batch of cards now that i look at it, but i was happy to find a few parallels and that chrome decades' best jackie robinson card.

here are some non-dodgers that were among the 23 cards i found

i guess i actually bought 24 cards because the roses were in the same penny sleeve and i didn't notice until i got home. i was really just after the framed parallel.

and yes, that is a basketball card in the scan. in fact, it's a 2021-22 panini donruss optic anthony davis insert

i had been looking at some articles about the nba play-in games earlier in the week and noticed that all players were wearing a memorial patch for bill russell (the celtics great, not the dodgers' shortstop of the team of my youth) and figured i would keep an eye out for a card showing that patch. instead, i found the davis card that shows the black band worn for former commissioner david stern, and the circular patch that the lakers wore for kobe bryant. i figured i would add it to the few non-baseball cards in my memorial collection.

the next dealer was another guy i had bought from in the past, but he was more organized this time with higher prices on his singles. i wound up buying a $10 grab bag and the jackie robinson card at the top of this post for a total of $10. the grab bag was mostly inserts and rookies, and i was guaranteed either an auto or a relic. i got a relic 

from 2017 topps tribute of xander bogaerts. i thought maybe it was a black parallel, but no, it looks like this is jus the base. i had to remind myself that i was at the show to buy cards that i could see rather than packs or bags like this. hopefully future gcrl remembers this.

next up was a dealer i hadn't seen before who had four monster boxes with cards set at 50 cents plus other dollar boxes. i wound up with 32 cards from the 50 cent boxes and 6 from the dollar boxes. he gave me a slight discount and i got them all for $20. i'll just show a couple of the more unusual cards, like this 2021 topps x mickey mantle collection card

it really looks like it is homemade. i think they tried to print it as if it were vintage but it doesn't look right. i can't believe it is a fake, but who knows.

i had never seen npb cards at a show, but this guy had a few. this is a 2021 topps npb card of former yankee zelous wheeler

it's a blue parallel, actually.

the last dealer was one that i had bought from before and provided some pretty good deals with their bargain boxes. this could have been due to some math errors since the person tracking things was keeping track of costs on a post-it note. this time, however, i think any math errors were not in my favor. 

i wound up with 52 cards from the 50 cent boxes (all came in semi-rigid holders so bonus), plus 42 cards from the 7/$1 boxes and then 29 other cards that varied in cost from 25 cents to $3 each. i spent $50 for the 113 cards so i am not really complaining.

it was nice to finally see some 2021 topps chrome platinum anniversary cards in the bargain boxes, and i was able to add a few dodger base cards that i needed

the zach mckinstry parallel was not in the 7/$1 box, but was only 50 cents so still a bargain.  

i also found some 2022 topps chrome sonic parallels in the fifty cent box, including a black and white ray wave refractor of albert pujols

i wrote a short post about this set the other day. it is definitely not a necessary set, but i do like the refractor parallels.  here's a purple and yellow refractor of jorge soler

that was also just 50 cents.

this seller also had some cheap relics and autos. i found a 2020 panini chronicles classic autographs card of dodger legend terrance gore

gore appeared in 2 games for the dodgers. he played half an inning on defense in one appearance and pinch ran in the other. he doesn't have too many dodger cards as a result, although he did appear in 2020 topps update. i don't chase these sorts of autos (certified as a dodger when they were a dodger) like wrigley wax does with his cubs, but i was pretty happy to find even a sticker auto of an obscure dodger!

however, perhaps my favorite find from this dealer was this card from 2021 topps big league

it's one of those ssp home team tradition cards (the dodger dog was featured for us dodger fans), and i know bernie brewer's slide is a fairly popular thing. not a bad find for a quarter.

this post is already too long so i won't show any of the other cards i picked up. all in all, it was a good week on the card front.

and then there was the hotel show i went to this past friday.........

these garveys are gravy

i do not know what the delay was that kept 2021 topps chrome platinum anniversary from hitting the market in a more timely manner, but i am happy that it was resolved. for the first time in a long time (19 or 20 years depending on whether you count release years or actual years), steve garvey got the chrome treatment in a base set. the last time was 2002 topps chrome traded when he was given a "who would have thought" card.

anyway, here's his base card from the 2021 release:

and here's the back:

i am happy he was featured in the set as a dodger and more grateful after seeing that the yearly stat lines on the back are all from his padre tenure. it would have been easy for topps to put him in his taco bell uniform for sure.

of course, we know that this set offers a ton of parallels and i didn't shy away from them.  here's the base refractor:

the aqua wave refractor:

the prism refractor:

the blue prism refractor:

the xfractor:

the black & white mini diamonds refractor:

the blue mini diamonds refractor numbered to 199:

the red atomic refractor numbered to 100:

the green/yellow 70th anniversary refractor numbered to 99 for some reason instead of 70:

and the rose gold mini diamond refractor numbered to 75:

by my count there are six more refractor parallels that i do not own, including the superfractor 1/1.

while i am pleased to see garvey in this set, i wish topps had chosen a different photo. this is a zoomed in version of the photo that was used on his 1972 topps card, and we saw it again in 2016 on the 1979 design as a short print in that years' archives release. that said, a young garvey works well with the 1952 design.

back to the cards i picked up, which include the autographs, of course. here's the base:

and its back:

i also have the refractor auto, but i guess i didn't scan it.

here's the aqua refractor:

numbered to 150:

this is the blue prism refractor:

numbered to 99:

and here is the gold refractor:

numbered to 50:

i am missing six of the autograph parallels, including a 70th anniversary version that is, in fact, numbered to 70.

while i don't know why that set was delayed, i do know that 2021 topps big league was held up due to the action figures that accompanied some hobby boxes.  once the set was released, it was revealed that garvey was featured in the autograph subset.

i have only seen four or five of these hit the secondary market, and none of the supposed parallels. i was happy to snag the second one i saw for just less than what the first one went for.  and speaking of scarce, the 2021 topps chrome black garvey autographs are tough to come by, too.

i added that green parallel (numbered to 99) from comc a while back. it came without its case which was disappointing (and not noted by comc). all they said when i asked them about it was that they post images of all cards. i guess i should have noticed that it wasn't in its case.  according to the checklist, garvey has an unnumbered base auto in this set along with one numbered to 150. i have seen neither of those nor the versions numbered to 50, 5, or 1. i do also have the orange parallel numbered to 25 though.

each of these cards are ones that i count myself fortunate to own given the issues that surrounded their release or availability. they are great additions to my collection of my favorite player who just happens to turn 74 tomorrow. happy birthday to the nl iron man!