these cards maeda my day

he may not pitch for the dodgers any longer, but i can still get excited about adding kenta maeda cards to my collection. i recently added two numbered parallels, in fact, including this very nice 2016 topps finest gold card

and this red parallel 2016 donruss optic card

from kevin aka the diamond king. he also threw in a pink wave refractor of craig kimbrel

from 2022 topps chrome update, which i was also happy to accept. these cards were in return for me sending a couple of 2016 topps julio urias cards kevin's way, and i think he may have overcompensated me!

earlier in the spring, i received a text from mr. haverkamp letting me know that there would be something showing up in my mailbox around opening day. here is what he sent:

you have likely seen these cards if you do any player searches on ebay. it's an aceo card by edward vela, and there are a few garveys out there. here's the back:

i've never pulled the trigger on any of these, but i am happy to have one. jim reported that he came across a seller at a show that had quite a few for sale. thanks for thinking of me, jim!

before that even, i received some cards from nachos grande as part of his "not so secret santa" project. i was happy to find a couple of 1995 score summit dodgers that i needed

among the stack of cards that were sent. so happy, in fact, that i went out and picked up billy ashley's card

to complete the team set

chris also sent a trio of vlads that i needed

hailing from 1999 pacific, 1999 topps opening day, and 2000 topps stars. merry belated christmas!

bo at baseball cards come to life reached out to me earlier this year to see if i wanted some 2006 bowman chrome dodgers that he had found. i sure did!

there was also one from 2007

and all were needs that i was able to check off the want list. thanks bo!

more recently, jon at penny sleeves held a ridiculous giveaway that many of us benefitted from. i claimed a few cards, including this 2012 panini cooperstown

insert that extolls the virtues of don drysdale's career.  jon also sent me a 2017 topps silver pack jackie robinson card

so much generosity out there in the blogosphere - thanks to all for contributing to my collection!

more of my favorite stadium on stadium club

a week ago i showed vladimir guerrero's 2022 topps stadium club card and wrote about the photo used being from a game at dodger stadium. it wasn't the only card in this year's stadium club release to catch my eye for that reason, however.

i touted this andruw jones card

as a possibility for my favorite card of 2022 (it wasn't, but it was close). i am always pumped to see the old dodger murals show up on cards (this is the second 2022 card i am aware of to feature these turn of the century murals) and even though eric gagne has been getting a bit of attention from topps in recent years, it's nice to see his oversized image on a card. 

the image used comes from the 2004 season, which is when the mural on the outfield wall showcased dodger cy young award winners. gagne was the newest dodger in the club, having won the award in 2003. thanks to topps' relationship with getty images, the photo was easy to find. cropped out of the image on the card is jones' teammate (and fellow future dodger) j.d. drew, 

along with gagne's portrait.

jones held on to the ball, by the way, which was hit by jayson werth - one of jim tracy's collection of ja(y)sons back then.

another dodger stadium background is provided on darryl strawberry's card

another future dodger. and, we get one more thanks to will clark's card

thankfully, clark did not go on to join the dodgers, although another giant clark (jack) somehow became their hitting coach at one point.

another giant card i picked up for a mini-collection is brandon crawford's

thanks to the double play turn.

stadium club is usually good for some lurkers, and they didn't disappoint this year. willie mays gets an uncredited appearance on hank aaron's card

as does cal ripken jr on eddie murray's

along with rod carew on jose berrios' card

there's a johan santana sighting there, too, if you are interested.

the first cards i targeted were, of course, the steve garvey autographs. this is the second year in a row topps has included the garv on the autograph checklist, but it is going to be very tough for him to ever crack the base checklist as we will see in a moment. anyway, here's the base auto:

the black foil parallel auto

and the red foil parallel auto

the red on the dodger logo didn't scan as well as the other red foil parallel i picked up

but that's ok. i do appreciate the additional design elements that the foil is applied to. it makes these parallels look a little better in my opinion.

on to the base dodgers!

freddie freeman:

pensive at the bat rack.

trea turner

i wonder who the next dodger to wear number 6 will be?

julio urias and cody bellinger

looks like brusdar wants to kick the old soccer ball around. and, this may be the last cody bellinger dodger card i pick up. he signed with the cubs early enough for all the photoshopping to occur before the 2023 stuff comes out, although i guess there are still a few remaining 2022 releases scheduled.

jackie robinson, chris taylor, will smith, and justin turner

robinson is the lone retired dodger in the set, which means topps cut sandy koufax and roy campanella in favor of others, like chris taylor who got left out of flagship (aside from a combo type card). garvey is never getting in if it means having to leapfrog over dodger hall of famers and higher profile players like mike piazza.

craig kimbrel and max muncy

here's hoping there are no more kimbrel dodger cards.

mookie betts, clayton kershaw, andre jackson, and walker buehler

when i first saw the mookie betts card on the sell sheet, i thought it was maury wills. a closer look, of course, revealed that it was not. however, it is very similar to the photo of wills that was used on his 1999 fleer sports illustrated card. i feel like i have seen a wider cropped version of that image, but i can't find it now. maybe someday topps will give us a stadium club card of wills playing the banjo next to milton berle. that's the beauty of stadium club - there are always photos that stand out, like andruw jones jumping in to eric gagne.

it's high time

i've mentioned many times that i am a big fan of the replacements - the band, not the movie - as well as lead sinder paul westerberg's solo stuff (plus bassist tommy stinson's non-gnr material). one of westerberg's solo songs is called "high time" in which he sings that "it's high time that i let you slide". i can't really say that it's time for me to let topps slide with more shenanigans, but perhaps it's time for me to just accept the fact that they aren't going to put a lot of effort in to their products.

we've waited all year to get clayton kershaw's 2022 topps heritage card, and now we have it courtesy of the high numbers set

it's a short print, of course, and features the green screened background to boot. now that we are in the era of action shots on cards, i am disappointed to not see a photo of that ilk on kershaw's card. however, to be fair, topps didn't use an in game action shot for a dodger pitcher on a base card until 1974 when they gave claude osteen the treatment. before that, only osteen's 1972 "in action" subset card showed a dodger pitcher actually pitching on cardboard.

anyway, i picked up the dodgers' team set, which does feature a couple of pitchers on the actual bump

i will need to find dupes of the justin bruihl and hanser alberto cards for the dodger stadium mini-collection. any card that shows the unocal logo gets automatic entry! all of these cards work in terms of 1973 topps, with the tony gonsolin portrait and the action on the bruihl, alberto, trea turner and craig kimbrel cards. kershaw's spring training pose - one fit for a panini card - is not one that was featured in the 1973 set, but i guess i need to let that slide.

it strikes me as odd that we had to wait for both kershaw and trea turner heritage cards, although turner did get a parallel in the initial heritage release, with a different image used. another oddity is seen when you compare kershaw's base card to the oversized boxtopper

topps left the all-star game patch on the photo for the boxtopper, but scrubbed it from the base card. having the patch helps bring some color to the card, and there was no reason to remove the patch from a 2022 card. i didn't even get it back in 2020 when the game was cancelled. even then, it was reality. the players wore an all-star game patch during spring training. i don't know why it needed to be removed then and certainly not now.

one more bit of strangeness is that topps used max muncy as the subject for another boxtopper

i find this strange because muncy was in the initial heritage release, and surely there were other players that could have been used that better tie the card to the high numbers issue. i doubt any muncy super collectors were snapping up boxes trying to find this card.  i get why topps didn't include freddie freeman in high numbers - he was already featured in the initial release, and high numbers is not an update set in that regard - but they still could have used him as a boxtopper. i will admit i was sort of hoping for a freddie freeman card in the style of steve garvey's 1973 topps card with muncy greeting him at home plate a la wes parker.

my team set came with a kershaw clubhouse collection relic

which at least features a different image from his base card and the initial heritage clubhouse collection card of his. the green screen background is the same, however.

with the high numbers set in hand, i should have the initial heritage team set taken care of as well, but i don't. i did grab the cody bellinger short print

along with the joe kelly

but i still haven't received the matt beaty card. that's ok - it's on its way and it features a lackluster pose similar to kelly's with the same background as kelly's card.

seriously, would it have been too difficult for the photographer to ask the dodger pitchers to pose in their follow through which was the custom back in the early 1970's? even don sutton gave up his traditional "suttoning" pose to match the position logo

and don't get me started on what a 50th anniversary means, because that buyback ain't it.

with all that said, i really hope to see some better dodger cards in 2023 heritage. at least give me a horizontal card that's not a variation. bonus points if the spectators in the stands are blurry.

an update at the end of the season

well, congratulations to old friend dusty baker for adding a world series championship to his managerial resume. i am very happy for him!

with the astros' win, the 2022 baseball season comes to an end, but there are still a number of key baseball card releases (stadium club and allen & ginter to name a couple) coming up. one of the more recent issues was the annual update series that i have been looking forward to quite some time. the main reason for this is that the 2022 all-star game was held at dodger stadium and i was looking forward to some great looking cards as a result. i wasn't disappointed, although i will hold off on showing those cards for the time being.

when i looked at the checklist a week or so before my box arrived, i saw that clayton kershaw had a highlights card in the set. i was really hoping that the event that the card was focused on was his 7 perfect innings performance in minnesota back in april. that was not the case.

instead, the card celebrates his passing don sutton on the dodgers' all-time strikeout leaderboard. that's a big deal for dodger fans like myself who grew up with sutton as the ace of the staff. i do take some consolation in that this card uses a photo from kershaw's start against the twins, so i will for sure put a duplicate in my "cards featuring games i've attended in person" mini-collection.

similarly, these three twins cards

feature photos from the two games i went to that pitted the twins against the dodgers. i was hoping for a josh winder rookie debut card, since that occurred on april 12 against the dodgers, but topps used a photo from that game on his regular rookie card. chris archer was the twins' starter on april 12 and chirs paddack took the bump against kershaw on the 13th.

those three cards are what update is all about - veterans on new teams and a rookie who spent most of the season with a team. for the dodgers, it was nice to get a card of tyler anderson

even as i was surprised to not see trayce thompson included on the checklist. i guess his double dipper post will have to wait.  here are more of the dodger base cards

guys like dustin may and tony gonsolin have no business being in update. but, with the number of rookies topps puts in series 1 and 2, there isn't any room for the back end of the rotation guys.

combo cards are included, as always, and new dodger freddie freeman makes an appearance on one

as to the angels' mvp duo of shohei ohtani and mike trout

i feel like this has been an annual thing to see these two guys on a card in update since 2018

i showed freddie freeman's base dodger card up above, and i was quick to pick up two of his photo variation card

thanks to the dodger stadium background.  i also sought out his 1987 insert

because it wasn't one of the six in my box. instead, these were the ones that i found:

i am keeping a few base cards for myself, including this tyler mahle card

that shows him pitching in dodger stadium. in a perfect world, mahle would have been in this set as a twin since that's who he pitched for after the trade deadline. i guess the deadline for topps is right after the all-star game for this set.

i found a couple of double play cards, too

and, of course, the bigger name rookies

there were some interesting cards that i've paired up, like these two albert pujols cards:

that base card would have made a fine final tribute card in next year's flagship. i would be shocked if he were not a part of series 1, but stranger things have happened.

here are a couple of checklist/highlight cards in the same vein as the kershaw card up top

100 home runs for these guys.

i found two rainbow foil parallels

and two gold parallels

but no gold foil parallels.

i did get an orange foil parallel

and an independence day parallel 

looks like i got kerry's box.

here are the two black gold inserts i found

and here are the two diamond great die-cuts from my box

i only found one paragons of the postseason insert

there are no dodgers on the checklist for this insert set, although i see a dodger foot in the background behind arozarena.

here's the one generation now insert i found

roansy turns 23 tomorrow

i was promised one hit in the box, and this was it

i had been hoping for an all-star stitches jersey card if i were going to get just a relic card. obviously, that didn't work out.

here are the four cards that were in my silver pack

that black line must be from my scanner. i really hope it's not on the fritz.

i mentioned i was going to wait to show the all-star game cards. that's because i am going to complete the full insert set - or so i thought. there are a few cards, like this jose altuve card

that show all-stars but not at dodger stadium. altuve, yordan alvarez, nolan arenado, and bryce harper all withdrew from the rosters and so didn't show up in los angeles. i won't bother with those cards as a result, since i plan to put all of these in my dodger stadium binder. 

to show you what i mean i guess i will show one of those all-star cards.

it is glorious.