a moment for fernando valenzuela

i woke up this morning to the news that fernando valenzuela had passed away. it was surprising but not surprising at the same time, as the dodgers had announced late in the season that fernando was stepping away from his role with the club for health reasons, and the last time i saw him on screen (at dusty baker's legends of dodger baseball induction in august) he did not look well.

there have already been so many tribute pieces written and video compilations published so i won't say much other than fernando was one of those players that made me happy to be a dodger fan. growing up where i did i think it was perhaps the first time i saw the power of representation, without understanding what that meant.

i am glad i was able to see him pitch in person a couple of times, and i will never forget nearly running into him in the concourse at dodger stadium as he was being escorted to one of the pregame autograph tables in the early 1980's. as for my collection, he is one of the few dodgers not included in the 1978 topps set of whom i seek out their non-dodger cards, and there are a few of his cards that are also in my "favorite cards of the year" minicollection. his 1981 fleer card

is one of them. that card, along with his 1981 topps rookie card

were such hot commodities in my neighborhood that even the neighbors who were giant and yankee fans were coveting them.

i had these two 1982 o-pee-chee stickers 

in my scanned folder, and this is the newest valenzuela card in my collection

that is a 2017 panini donruss masters of the game insert that sluggo sent to me in our most recent trade.

rest in peace, fernando, but viva fernandomania!

christmas in august

like many of you, i was both surprised and excited to see an email from david at tribecards a few weeks ago. he let me know that my cards from his christmas 2020 giveaway were shipping! about a week later, i had a 660 count box in my mailbox!

now, i had forgotten about this giveaway, and so i went back to see what it was all about. after all, this was not the first time that david hosted a huge card giveaway. for this one, he had asked us to choose our top 3 teams and top 3 players. i didn't see any cards featuring the players that i most likely identified, but i recognized the three teams for sure.

the dodgers were team number one for me, of course, and while there weren't a lot of boys in blue, the best thing in the box related to them was this 1997 donruss vxp 1.0 mike piazza thing

that's the front of a booklet that contained this

which is a rectangular cd-rom. i did not know that donruss was in the cd-rom game, but they were. here are the instructions

i did not try the item out before putting it in my 1997 dodgers binder, so i don't know if it is windows 10 compatible or not. what a great oddball for my collection!

the other two teams i identified are represented by the oldest and newest cards in the box

a 1977 topps dan ford twins card and a 2024 topps heritage george springer blue jays card. the oldest blue jays card was this 1978 topps jesse jefferson

and holy smokes i love getting 1978 topps cards in the mail!

there were a couple of outliers in my box, including a 1980 topps rusty staub card

i certainly didn't mind seeing le grand orange, and this card and the other 1980 topps cards gave me some serious flashbacks to neighborhood pack ripping.

here are some of the other cards that caught my eye. 

from the dodger stack, this 1988 score mini great moments in baseball insert was new to me

it's all about the end of don drysdale's scoreless innings streak

i always knew drysdale's streak as 58 and two-thirds innings, but at some point, elias changed it to just 58 innings which is the number on the back of the card. i recall drysdale not being in favor of losing two outs from the streak (although that last out was a sac fly). it was all made moot when orel hershiser went 59 innings without allowing a run at the end of the 1988 season.

here's a 1982 topps derrel thomas card

that made me do a double take. it's not blackless as it has the border around the photo and the facsimile signature, but the color is definitely not all there.

another printer anomaly was this 1991 topps mike scioscia

which had some printing plates off register - but not as badly as some that jon shared recently!

another 1991 card david included was this jose gonzalez card

which really features a photo of billy bean. bean passed away recently, and will be remembered as a bit of a trailblazer in the sport.

not a dodger card, but here's the guy who was drafted immediately after alex rodriguez

little d had flashes of dominance, but it just didn't work out in the end.

most of the cards i received (like last time) were twins cards. i've no issue with that, as these cards included some gems like this 1995 topps embossed golden idols kirby puckett card

i had probably not thought of or looked at darrell jackson's 1981 fleer card

for over 40 years, but there it was in the box i received and i immediately thought back to me and my friends wondering why an american league pitcher was holding a bat.

the cards also reminded me that shane mack must have had a clause that his cards needed to show him sliding into third base

i don't think i had ever seen randy bush's 1989 fleer card before (i stopped set collecting fleer after 1987)

but his teammates were nicer to him than bill ripken's teammates were to ol' duckface. for what it's worth, i don't think that bush is holding his bat in the photo.

there were some recent twins cards, including these 2024 bowman inserts (paper and chrome)

of brooks lee. lee is from near where i grew up so he has potential to become my favorite non-dodger.

one more twins card - a 2021 topps allen & ginter ryan jeffers auto card

it's more like an initialed card, but it's still pretty sweet.

as for the blue jays, here's a roger clemens base card

from that donruss vxp 1.0 release.

i have a weird affinity for buybacks, and i received these two from 2017

the 1999 topps jose cruz jr is a silver foil version, while the 1988 topps jose nunez is bronze. i remember being shocked when the mariners traded cruz to the blue jays during his rookie campaign as he was a highly touted prospect.

speaking of prospects, here's a 2023 bowman sterling prospect autograph of manuel beltre

i think this one actually is just initialed, but with a star added for effect. beltre is currently 20 years old and with the blue jays single-a affiliate in dunedin.

my favorite blue jays card in the box was this black & white parallel

of vladimir guerrero jr's 2019 topps archives snapshots card.

by choosing the dodgers, twin, and blue jays, i was able to handle a lot of cards that i hadn't taken the time to look at for a long time. i was also able to do a comparison of ken landreaux cards from near-opposite ends of the 1980's

fun fact - for a brief time in 1987, the dodgers had half of the players that the angels sent to the twins for rod carew in landreaux and brad havens. i will always remember landreaux for the 1981 season and the fact that he caught the last out of the 1981 world series.

thank you david for your giveaway! your generosity is appreciated!

the almost daily dodger - mike scioscia

today's card plucked from the scanned folder is mike scioscia's 1993 topps gold parallel

it shows the longtime dodger catcher getting knocked about, which was par for the course for the style of play back then - both on scioscia's part and in regards to the game in general.

the card is scioscia's final tribute, as he did not appear in a game after the 1992 season despite taking a shot with the padres in 1993 and rangers in 1994 as injuries prevented him from taking the field with either of those teams. the last game he caught was a 3-hit shutout by pedro astacio which is not a bad way to end a 13-year career spent exclusively behind the dish.

of course, scioscia did wind up spending more years in an angels uniform than he did in dodger duds as he served as their manager for 19 seasons. i thought that the angels would retire his number given the fact that he is the only skipper to lead the team to a world series championship and his longevity in that role is unmatched in team history. however, the angels redistributed number 14 a couple of years ago, so i guess they aren't planning to honor scioscia in that way. that's ok - the dodgers have retired 14 and even though it is in recognition of gil hodges, i think of scioscia too when i see the number on display.

leaf me alone!

it's inevitable, really. 

each year, for the past few years, leaf has put out a couple of relic sets with very similar design and subset themes.  there are no logos. most of the photos are of the backs of jerseys, which i found interesting the first couple of years. i guess i still do, although it is starting to wear on me. and, for the last couple of years, i've figured i won't get sucked in by the repetitive designs and jersey backs.

well, a few months ago leaf released their 2022 lumber set, and i wound up buying some of the offerings. let's have a look.

steve garvey "game used lumber" red parallel #/3

that card is pretty much the "base" card for garvey. as usual, there are a number of parallels of each subset, and i had decided that if i were going to pick up some of these cards, i wouldn't go for the full parallel run.

i failed.

that is the purple parallel, numbered to 12. one of these had a very friendly buy-it-now which enticed me to add it to the collection.

i will say that i have stopped short of chasing multiple parallels of other cards, limiting myself  to just one example. so, this is the card that i have from the "historical home runs" subset featuring garvey:

it's the green parallel numbered to 4. i suppose garvey never hit a historical home run for the dodgers, so it's nice to see card companies recognizing his 1984 nlcs home run over the last couple of years.

there have been some historical dodger home runs, however, and leaf celebrated them thusly:

kirk gibson

rick monday

it's a coincidence that both of these are the purple parallels. i remember exactly where i was when each of these home runs were hit. for the gibson home run in the 1988 world series, i was in dodger stadium, standing in the right field pavilion. it was glorious.  for monday's home run, i was on the playground at my elementary school huddled in a group of kids surrounding one of the teachers who had a coke bottle transistor radio tuned in to the broadcast. we jumped around quite a bit when monday's homer was announced.

of course, i bought a second gibson card

for my "cards featuring games that i attended" mini-collection.

it was just last year when leaf included a "bat rack" card featuring the dodger infield of my youth. this year, they went with a trio of dodgers from that team, including garvey, monday, and ron cey

this is the platinum version, numbered to 6. i have successfully avoided buying any other versions.  i did purchase a similar card, however

although that one - featuring duke snider and roy campanella along with garvey and cey - comes with giants on the back

willie mays, willie mccovey, orlando cepeda, and barry bonds are the four featured. of the four, i am least familiar with cepeda as a "rival" to the dodgers, but that is on me since he was a giant from 1958 to 1966.

another familiar design is the "team 8's" and leaf included them again this year. garvey is on three cards - two dodger versions:

and a padre version. i haven't bothered with the padre version. i do like the two versions of the dodgers, though. the second card would be even better, in my opinion, if gibson and piazza were swapped out for reggie smith and steve yeager. at least the card features garvey, cey, russell, and lopes! both cey and lopes have other cards in the set, but i've not bothered to track any of those down.

seeing john roseboro represented on the first team 8's card is pretty cool, but i did see his bat knob card for sale and the number on the knob didn't match a jersey number that he wore during his career as far as i could find. it certainly didn't have number 8 on it. i guess we don't really know whose bat pieces these are and i am probably too trusting.

garvey is included in a couple of other subsets, including the "sultans of swing", of which i have one. 

4 hall of famers, one banned player worthy of the hall of fame, and my guy. also, i can't look at this card without hearing mark knopfler's voice in my head.

i have picked up versions of all 4 of the "the hit kings" cards that he is featured on, however, telling myself that it is ok because garvey's seasonal hit total was something that i always paid attention to during his career.  the seasons that leaf chose to recognize are 1974:

1975:

1977:

1979:

for some reason, the 1977 version was the toughest to come by at anything close to a reasonable price. as a result, i jumped on an affordable purple version rather than try to stick to the bronze theme i had established with the other three. it's kind of weird to see actual people on the 1975 and 1977 cards, but it breaks up the monotony.

the last card i've purchased from this release is the magenta printing plate of the game used lumber card

this thing showed up in my mailbox bent down the middle, and although i was largely able to roll it out using a rolling pin, you can see the remnants of the compressive stresses on the back

thankfully it was the front of the card that was in tension!

so that's that. leaf's subsequent release - pro set - is out and features one of the least attractive garvey solo autographs i have ever seen. actually, it looks a lot better in person!

an actual photo of garvey! with the red number remaining red (take that, panini!).

and now the next leaf set - in the game used (although it is a 2022 product) - is also out and is commanding crazy prices for the cards that i have been watching so far. i did manage to pick up one of the least scarce garvey cards

from the set. he appears in two subsets - one is called "memorabilia madness" and features small bat or jersey swatches from various players in a team vs. team matchup similar to what leaf does in their other releases. this one above is from the "hall of fame caliber" subset. it's numbered to 25 and i assume it is the red parallel, even though the official checklist says that red is numbered to "4 or less". at least leaf used a photo of garvey for the card and not the back of his jersey!

once again, i will tell myself that i will refrain from seeking out cards with the repetitive designs, but i have learned to never say never when it comes to me and this hobby.

completely stuck

for almost 15 years i have had published want lists, and before that i had my binder cards checklist in excel format. at no time did either of those lists include this item as a want or need:

that is a 1982 topps sticker, whose subject is the 1981 national league championship series. it says so on the back:

it is not traditionally included in the dodger team set lists that i was aware of - it is most often categorized as a gary carter item instead. however, when i was entering my dodger haves in to tcdb, i saw that this sticker was tagged as a dodger card, too.  what i thought was a complete team set in my collection was no longer such, and so i decided to buy the sticker to add it to my dodger collection.

and why not? there are more dodgers in the image than expos - that's bill russell sliding in to home plate and i can make out ron cey as one of the dodgers in the olympic stadium dugout in the background. since the dodgers won the series, it was easy for me to add the sticker to my dodger collection - in my binder, spreadsheet, and on tcdb. i will mention, however, that i only have one of the 1975 topps world series cards in my dodger collection since they won only one game that series. i recognize my inconsistency but it's my collection.

in 1985, the dodgers horrifically lost the nlcs to the cardinals after being up 2 games to none, and i was happy that there was no card in the 1986 topps set that would make me relive the cardinal fans being urged to "go crazy". i didn't really pay attention to the stickers that were released that year, either, and so just recently added a dodger sticker that commemmorates the playoff series

it's a pretty benign representation of the series, with bill madlock getting the honors. it makes sense, as he hit 3 home runs in the six games played, although the dodgers lost each of the 3 in which he homered.

that was the only sticker i was going to add to my collection from the nlcs, but then i found this one in a monster box at a card shop last month

i am 99% sure that this is not ozzie smith's walk-off home run from game 5, and with mike scioscia there behind the plate, i figure it is not too dissimilar from the sticker at the top of this post.  there is a third sticker from the set that celebrates the series, but it shows the aftermath of jack clark's home run (first base was open) and only features cardinals, so i passed on it.

i did grab some other dodger stickers from the set

most of the dodgers are matched up with orioles, with the exception being jerry reuss. mike marshall gets paired up with future friend rick dempsey.

it's been a long time since i've added a greg brock item to the collection, but here he is with one of my almost favorite non-dodgers fred lynn

mike scioscia is there with old friend lee lacy, and we get another madlock sticker to round things out. i believe i am only missing the ken howell and orel hershiser stickers now from my team set.  for what it's worth, the guy at the lcs gave me these 1986 stickers for free. huzzah.

back to 1982, i also decided to add a couple of the stickers from that year to my steve garvey collection.  the dodger team received a two-sticker layout celebrating their 1981 world series championship, and the garv is featured on this half

he's there in the second row next to longtime trainer bill buhler.  of course i also added the o-pee-chee version:

it was very strange to me back in '82 when there were no postseason cards in the flagship set. i though 1979 was just an anomaly when topps brought the subset back in 1980 and 1981. i guess maybe they wanted to create a draw to the sticker set by making those items exclusive starting in 1982? if that were the case, it didn't work on me as it took me 40 years to add a couple of these to my collection.

in closing, let's move on to more modern stickers

that is a 2013 topps mlb album sticker (i will just call it a 2013 topps sticker) of andre ethier. it was the last of the 2013 dodgers i needed to complete the team set. a great way to bookend this post. huzzah!