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!

be my be my a-a-angel

i see that the cult is (or at least was) touring with black rebel motorcycle club. that would be a great show. i skipped their twin cities appearance, however, as i have previously seen both bands in concert (each as the headliner) at 1st ave, and i don't think my current aged ears could take the pounding.

lil' devil is a song form the cult's "electric" album, which was a shiny followup to their fantastic album "love". it's a catchy tune in which ian astbury implores his lil' devil to become his lil' angel, and that is where the title of this post comes from. what i am trying to say is that i recently bought a big lot of angel cards.

the reason i did so is sort of dumb (it had to do with combined shipping), but the price was right and i figured i would get some new vladimir guerrero cards out of the deal, which i did.

2005 donruss zenith vladimir guerrero epix orange play

these epix things are pretty neat. this one name checks another former favorite player of mine, don baylor, on the back:

2006 topps stars insert

2008 topps stars insert

so not a whole lot of new vladdy cards, but i did add a few other halos to various other parts of my collection.

for the double play collection a cognac parallel from 2011 topps

a base card from 2006 topps chrome

and a gold parallel from 2011 bowman

for the dodger stadium collection, a pair of parallel cards from 2011 bowman draft picks & prospects

for the name/number on the back collection, a couple of jered weaver cards from 2011 and 2012 topps update

and for the lurker collection, one from 2021 topps

featuring shohei ohtani in the background.

speaking of ohtani, the lot included an insert from 2021 topps big league

but not anything else of his. i am not surprised, although there were a fair number of mike trout cards. one of the more mundane is this 2021 topps update insert

there were a bunch more inserts of various angel players through the years, but there really isn't much of a market for anthony rendon or josh hamilton cards these days. i am glad that i salvaged a few cards from the lot.

i also received some angel cards from nick, who is a fellow vlad collector. he sent me a 2009 topps 206 card

i was all in and completed the 2002 206 set, including all the variations, but was not nearly as interested in the 2009 version.  he also sent a 2022 panini donruss card

that i think would look better if panini had stayed true to the original 1988 design.

my collection overlaps with nick's in other ways, as we both collect double play turns, and he sent along a 2022 panini donruss ryne sandberg card

plus a few others for me to add to my collection

the schoendienst card in the middle top is a sample, if i recall correctly.

and, of course, nick sent some dodgers. here's a mashup between 1988 donruss and 1988 donruss baseball's best featuring will smith

no logo catcher cards are generally the best of the bunch.

i already had this 2001 upper deck legends of new york jackie robinson card

but i wanted to show it to you because i just noticed that upper deck got the month wrong for jackie's debut which is ridiculous. inexcusable, really.

very rarely do i get dodger team issue cards in a trade package, but nick sent along a couple of cards from the 1989 dodgers smokey set 

wally moon and jim lefebvre are a couple of dodgers that i can appreciate for sure. 

finally, in addition to that angels lot i mentioned at the start, i bought a couple of additional large random lots for some reason. there was a lot of panini stuff, and i found a few cards to keep for my collection, including a pair of 2022 panini donruss jose altuve cards

for the double play collection, and a pair of bryce harper cards from the same set

for the name/number on the back collection.

the seller who sold me the angel lot doesn't seem to be selling anymore which is fine as i am trying to stay away from purchases like this now, but who knows if the mood will strike again.

ciao baby!

oh my ohtani!

i wound up only going to four major league games this year, and one of those was in a new-to-me stadium which is always nice.  the first two games were in april as the dodgers visited the twins, and then i saw the white sox and rays in tampa, taking in the amenities of tropicana field for the first time. the fourth game took place near the end of the season and featured the angels of anaheim against the home town twinkies. 

i saw the angels at the twins last year, but neither shohei ohtani nor mike trout appeared in that game. when i saw that ohtani was going to get the start on the mound for one of the games this year, i made sure to buy a ticket to attend:

we got to the stadium early enough to grab the giveaway swag - it wasn't just kid beanie night, it was all person beanie night

and we needed those things as it was chilly and somewhat drizzly.  we sat through the first inning as local kid louie varland pitched to luis rengifo who was followed by mike trout:

who wound up flying out to deep center

ohtani was batting third, and he rolled one over to second (although it was fielded by the shortstop (good riddance to the shift) for the last out

in the bottom of the first, i took a picture of ohtani's first pitch to eventual american league batting champ luis arraez

and then sat back to watch. ohtani hit a batter and walked two in the first but gave up just one run. i figured with the weather he would be lucky to make it to the fifth inning, but his control made it seem that he might not even last that long. fortunately, he found his groove and the angels' offense scored some runs. taylor ward homered to lead off the second inning, and mike trout hit an rbi single in the third to give the angels the lead.

meanwhile, ohtani didn't give up a hit until the bottom of the fifth inning, and had at one time struck out five twins in a row. he was removed from the game in the bottom of the sixth, but left with 7 strikeouts which put him over 200 k's for the season.

i was pretty pleased the next day when topps issued a card to mark that feat:

as you may know, i have a collection featuring cards that represent games i attended in person, and this one certainly made the cut. here's the back:

overall, i had good luck with 3 of the 4 games i attended getting the topps now treatment. and, the only game to not be so feted wound up with some representation in 2022 topps update when some images from the game were used on a couple of twins' cards.

i already have plans to get to dodger stadium in 2023 and am looking for other opportunities to see some notable baseball events and add to this collection.

john smoltz is in my hall of famer collection

with the announcement a week ago regarding former dodger fred mcgriff's election to the national baseball hall of fame, i figured it was time to post about an addition to my hall of famer collection, and i've made a few since i last posted about it.  this one features a teammate of mcgriff's - john smoltz.

smoltz wasn't included in my initial cut of hall of famers to chase for my mini-collection, but i've added him now. here's the card that i have to represent him in that collection:

that's a 2021 topps clearly authentic autograph, numbered 18/99.  here's the back.

getting a good photo of encased acetate cards like this is tough.

although i don't believe i ever saw smoltz pitch in person, i saw him on tv a lot thanks to the superstation and the national world series broadcasts in most years during the 1990s. paired with greg maddux and tom glavine, he mixed things up in the braves' rotation by being the hard throwing righty. i figured that if i had those two guys in my collection, i should have smoltz, too.

additionally, i decided to go for more (but not all) of the guys who have surpassed the 3000 strikeout milestone, and smoltz has that feat on his resume. in fact, smoltz is once again low man on that list as his 3,084 strikeouts as the pitchers who have approached his total since he retired after the 2009 season - cc sabathia, justin verlander, and max scherzer  - have all passed him on the leaderboard. what is different now on that leaderboard is that jim bunning is no longer the pitcher with the most career strikeouts without reaching 3,000. that honor currently belongs to zack greinke who i personally doubt will ever reach the milestone.

as for smoltz and my baseball memories, watching game 7 of the 1991 world series ranks high on the list. he held the twins scoreless through 7 and a third innings before being lifted, but jack morris was doing the same to the braves. when smoltz retired, he was the all-time leader in postseason strikeouts with 199 (since passed by clayton kershaw and verlander) to go along with a tidy 2.67 era in 209 innings pitched. in hindsight, i am glad that smoltz and his teammates got one ring out of their incredible run, even though i was cheering for the indians that particular season.

you can see my full hall of famer collection here.  welcome to the collection, john smoltz!

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!