my retired number collection - 26

this is the 26th post in a series that shares the cards i have in my retired number mini-collection. you can find the links to the previous posts down at the bottom of this post. if you're eager to learn more right now, you can check out the full list of retired numbers along with what this collection will entail over at my want list site.

without further ado, here are the four people for whom number 26 has been retired, although only three are in my collection:

billy williams (retired by the cubs in 1987) 1972 topps

using williams' 1972 topps in action card is appropriate because not only does it show his number clearly, it also comes from the year that he led the national league with a .333 batting average. williams began wearing number 26 for the cubs in 1961, the same year that he was named the national league's rookie of the year. he never won the mvp award, but did finish as the runner up in both 1970 and 1972.

with the cubs, williams hit 392 home runs and was a six-time all-star. also during his tenure with the cubs, he set the national league record for consecutive games played (1,117) which stood until steve garvey passed him in 1983. he is among the greatest hitters the cubs have ever had, and sits near the top of the team's all-time leader boards in many offensive categories. he was elected to the hall of fame in 1987 in what was his sixth year on the ballot, and the cubs retired his number on august 13, 1987, shortly after he was formally inducted in cooperstown.

johnny oates (retired by the rangers in 2005) 2001 topps

oates, who played for tommy lasorda's dodgers (among other managers and teams) managed the orioles for four seasons in the early 1990's, took over the rangers coming out of the players' strike in 1995. he managed the club for six full seasons before giving up the reins early in 2001 after a slow start to the season. he led the rangers to three american league west titles during his tenure which gave them their first postseason berths in franchise history. oates shared the manager of the year award in 1996 with joe torre, whose yankees beat the rangers in the alds that year.

when oates stepped down, he was the second winningest manager in club history behind bobby valentine, but both have since been passed by ron washington. sadly, a few months after ending his managerial career, oates was diagnosed with cancer and passed away in 2004. the rangers retired his number on august 5, 2005 with oates being the last ranger to wear the number on the field. his 2001 topps card doesn't show the number, but my choices are limited for a card to represent oates in this collection.

wade boggs (retired by the red sox in 2016) 1992 upper deck

the red sox retired boggs' number on may 26, 2016, almost 11 years after he was inducted into the hall of fame. boggs began his career with the red sox in 1982, hitting .349 in 103 games.  he was even better in 1983, winning the american league batting title with a .361 average. it was the first of five batting titles he would win with boston to go along with six silver slugger awards and eight all-star berths.

i saw a note about ichiro a few weeks ago. it stated that his career average never dipped below .300 after his 10th big league at bat, and it made me curious about boggs, who hit for such a high average as a rookie and finished his career with a .328 average, just a hair better than rod carew. it turns out that boggs hit the .300 mark to stay with a single in his 45th at bat. i can't really argue with his 1992 upper deck card above that identifies him as the "best hitter", although tony gwynn has a case.

i mentioned up top that there are four people for whom number 26 is retired, and the fourth is gene autry. the angels retired number 26 for their owner (their "26th player") on august 3, 1982. there is an angels police card featuring autry that mentions the number retirement on the back, but i am limiting this collection to field personnel only, so the singing cowboy is out.

i am tracking a few things as we go, even though the information is already available elsewhere.

retired numbers by team (through the 25 posts so far):

yankees - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 20, 21, 23, 42

giants - 3, 4, 11, 20, 22, 24, 25, 42

pirates - 1, 4, 8, 9, 11, 20, 21, 42

guardians - 3, 5, 14, 18, 19, 20, 21, 25, 42, 455

red sox - 1, 4, 6, 8, 9, 14, 26, 42

phillies - 1, 14, 15, 20, 42

cardinals - 1, 2, 6, 9, 10, 14, 17, 20, 23, 24, 42, 85

reds - 1, 5, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 18, 20, 24, 42

braves - 3, 6, 10, 21, 25, 42

astros - 5, 7, 24, 25, 42

mets - 14, 16, 17, 18, 24, 42

orioles - 4, 5, 8, 20, 22, 42

dodgers - 1, 2, 4, 14, 19, 20, 24, 42

twins - 3, 6, 7, 10, 14, 42

white sox - 2, 3, 4, 9, 11, 14, 16, 19, 42, 72

brewers - 1, 4, 19, 42

tigers - 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 11, 16, 23, 42

cubs - 10, 14, 23, 26, 42

royals - 5, 10, 20, 42

padres - 6, 19, 42

athletics - 9, 24, 42

angels - 11, 26, 42

expos - 8, 10, 42

rangers - 7, 10, 26, 42

major league baseball - 42

rays - 12, 42, 66

diamondbacks - 20, 42

blue jays - 42

rockies - 17, 42

mariners - 11, 24, 42

nationals - 11, 42

marlins - 42

retired number frequency:

1 - retired by 9 teams

2 - retired by 5 teams

3 - retired by 7 teams

4 - retired by 8 teams

5 - retired by 7 teams

6 - retired by 7 teams

7 - retired by 4 teams

8 - retired by 6 teams (retired by yankees for two players)

9 - retired by 6 teams

10 - retired by 9 teams (retired by expos for two players)

11 - retired by 8 teams

12 - retired by 1 team

13 - retired by 1 team

14 - retired by 10 teams (retired by mets and dodgers for same person)

15 - retired by 2 teams

16 - retired by 4 teams 

17 - retired by 3 teams

18 - retired by 3 teams (includes mets who will formally retire the number in 2024) 

19 - retired by 5 teams

20 - retired by 11 teams (retired by orioles, reds, and guardians for same person)

21 - retired by 4 teams

22 - retired by 2 teams

23 - retired by 4 teams

24 - retired by 8 teams (retired by giants and mets for same person)

25 - retired by 4 teams

26 - retired by 4 teams

42 - retired by 30 teams (retired by cardinals and yankees for individuals in addition to jackie robinson)

66 - retired by 1 team

72 - retired by 1 team

85 - retired by 1 team

455 - retired by 1 team

unnumbered players - 12 players recognized by 4 teams

running total of unique hall of famers (including those without numbers): 115

running total of non-hall of famers: 44

bob lemon is in my hall of famer collection

i recently decided to add bob lemon to my hall of famer collection, and i added this card as his entry:

that's a 1994 front row premium all-time greats signature series card. here's the back:

and here's the coa that accompanies the 5-card set

in this case, my set is number 537 of the 2,000 that included a signed card. i am keeping the full set together, and here are the other four:

pretty much any of those other cards would have been better suited to hold the certified autograph, in my opinion.

the decision to add lemon came a few weeks ago when i was putting together my post about those who have had the number 21 retired for them. lemon had his number retired by the cleveland franchise and i was reminded that he was elected to the hall of fame as a player in 1976. when i first put the collection together, one automatic qualification was inclusion in the 1978 topps set. i dismissed managers who appeared in that set for the primary reason that i wanted to focus on hall of fame players and not managers.

i didn't pay a lot of attention to his 1978 topps card, but it does show him as a player thanks to the "then and now" design. i did pay attention to him by the time the postseason came around, as lemon started the year managing the white sox but ended it as the yankee skipper, and he led the yankees to the world series title over my beloved dodgers. three years later he had the yankees back in the fall classic against the dodgers, but this time the dodgers took home the hardware.

the fact that lemon is a hall of fame player while also appearing in the 1978 topps set had me looking for a certified auto to add. there are plenty of cut auto cards out there, but i wanted a hard signed one and this is one of the only, if not the only, options out there. maybe someday i will look for certified autograph cards of the other managers from that set that went on to be enshrined in cooperstown - earl weaver, tommy lasorda, sparky anderson, dick williams, whitey herzog, bobby cox, and joe torre. i already have autos of lasorda and anderson, but they are part of my dodger collection and 2004 upper deck legends timeless teams partial autograph set build, respectively, and i have rules!

as a reminder, you can see lemon and the other members of my hall of famer collection here!

the almost daily dodger - todd worrell

when i started following the dodgers, charlie hough was their "closer" with 22 saves. that wasn't something i understood at the time, but looking back now it's pretty crazy to think of a knuckleballer closing out games a la hoyt wilhelm. soon it was terry forster who was the closer (he matched hough's total in 1978), and then steve howe came onto the scene and i had a better understanding of bullpen hierarchy. still, the 22 saves that hough and forster registered tied jim brewer for second on the team's single season leaderboard. brewer was also on top of that list with 24 saves in 1970. it wasn't until 1989 when jay howell passed them to set a new team record with 28 saves.

where i am going with this is that there were no dodger relievers with more than 28 saves in any season until todd worrell joined the club and recorded 32 saves in 1995. i've had his 1998 score artist proof parallel

scanned for quite some time. it's such a fancy parallel!

worrell also had three 30 save seasons for the cardinals before joining the dodgers, who were the last franchise to reach that mark other than the rockies who were just in their third year of existence. even the marlins (who entered the league with the rockies in 1993) had a 30 save season before the dodgers.  

worrell also had the dodgers' first 40 save season when he recorded 44 in 1996. he followed that up with 35 in 1997 which turned out to be his final year in the majors. only kenley jansen and eric gagne have saved more games in a single season for the dodgers than worrell, and i am thinking it may be awhile before there is another dodger who reaches 40 saves given the way dave roberts is managing the bullpen.

2024 topps heritage thoughts and squirrel!

i mentioned the other day that i picked up some 2024 topps heritage last thursday. after the quick post to share the shortcomings of the fred lynn (and jim rice) baseball flashback card, i am here with some additional th---------squirrel!

this card or sticker, i guess, was in the hanger box i bought at walmart. i didn't really know what it was until i turned it over and saw jeff mcneil's name. i then remembered that these are the zoo's who stickers that represent real life animals used in baseball nicknames. 

i later found the cubs' sticker

in a blaster pack. it stinks that there is no bulldog in the set for orel hershiser, but there is a basset hound for fred mcgriff, whose nickname was crime dog. that seems a bit of a stretch to me, since mcgriff's nickname is really a play on mcgruff the crime dog.

ok. first card i saw was this joey meneses offering

which is ok, i guess. the nationals weren't around in 1975 and i know that others with more expertise (e.g. night owl) are addressing the color combinations of these cards, so i won't bother.

i found a few short prints, including nathan eovaldi

and giancarlo stanton

cards. what is with topps' reluctance to put the player's name on the front of these cards? every one of the players featured highlight cards in the 1975 set had at least their last name mentioned. as for the short printing, i suppose topps is trying to make it harder for set collectors to ignore the short prints by putting them at the beginning of the set. i know 2002 topps traded has been cited as an example of this same approach, and it is, but i remember reading back then that it was a mistake and that topps intended for the rookie cards to be short printed and not the veterans. true? who knows.

i did notice right away thanks to orlando arcia's card

as well as corey seager's

that topps isn't trying to replicate the design choices from the original 1975 set. the all-star cards back then used yellow and red.

that's the same color combination that juan soto received

just reversed. 

i probably should have scanned kyle gibson's card as a better (or at least more obvious) example, but topps did some (digital) airbrushing just like they did back in 1975, including on jonny deluca's card

it's actually not too bad.

ready for some silliness? 1975 topps does not look good with white borders

even though white borders were the norm in the three years leading up to the design. maybe it's the bright color of the team name on gary sanchez's card that makes it look bad.

here's some more silliness - individual manager cards

not only were there no individual manager cards back in the 1975 set, yogi berra wasn't affiliated with the yankees back then. he began the 1975 season managing the mets, and was included on their team card as their manager. to make things more confusing, berra is included as an oversized boxtopper subject, and he is shown as a met. other headscratchers surrounding these manager cards include dusty baker getting a card, and the embarrassment that is red schoendienst's card.

as for whitey herzog (whom topps thinks looks like schoendienst), he was the skipper of the royals for the latter part of the 1975 season, but it looks like topps couldn't find a color picture of him from his days in kansas city, and put his colorized head and neck on a photo of dick howser or some other team member. 

that brings up my biggest issue with this set. it seems like there is some sort of filter or diffuser applied to most of the cards - backgrounds in particular. it also happened the last time we saw the 1975 design with 2019 archives, at least with some of the cards (including catfish hunter's)

miguel amaya looks like he is playing in a low lying fog

but that's not the case

i don't understand why the backgrounds are being filtered like that. one of the only cards i found that didn't seem to have a blurred or diffused background was marco luciano's card

which is actually a bit of a throwback to recent years of heritage with a studio photo presented with a generic spring training field background. so, even that card has a modified background.

here are a couple more giants cards

i scanned them because they give a good view of the vida blue and gaylord perry memorial patches, including their side-by-side display that began after the giants added their advertising patch. both of these cards will go in my memorial patch collection, bumping patrick bailey out.

as annoyed as i was at the backgrounds, i was ecstatic when i found this card in an early pack

that is, until i also pulled a 1959 mvp card that was not a short print or variation. then i went looking and found that topps did not include all of the mvp years from 1975 through 2023, instead choosing a few and also repeating a few from the 1975 set. still, it's nice to see george brett, mike schmidt, and others

who have won the award over the years since 1975 topps was released. i decided to go ahead and complete the subset, but i'm not as excited about it as i was initially.

it looks like topps did ok with the league leader cards

but the postseason cards? not so much. i don't really care that the nlcs card shows a single player

rather than a play from the series that shows both teams in the field (looks like the alcs also went with the single player approach), but it does bother me that the title of the card is "nl champions" and not "nl championship". but, then again, if they went the single player route than maybe it makes sense to just focus the card title on the winning team. however, the text at the bottom is about a player - not a team or a series - so there is really no way to redeem topps on this one.

i found some of the world series cards, too

the third one there is the series recap, although you wouldn't really know it because topps kept the ball with the "game 5" text as well as the card title the same as the others instead of making a change like they did in '75.

so, it's not perfect which is fine but some of the mistakes are just really, really bad. i hope they get their act together by 2027 when my beloved 1978 design is due to be featured.

i almost forgot about some of the other inserts, like the 1975 baseball sensations

and the required then &now

and new age performers

i really hope to see some dodgers back in the "then" part of those inserts next year. i guess it all depends on the categories topps uses.

one of the things i bought at walmart came with guaranteed blue sparkle chrome parallels, and the guys i got were ha-seong kim

christopher morel

and christian yelich

i also got a news flashback card

of the alaskan pipeline.

as for dodgers, i didn't do too badly, with six of them showing up for me

it's weird to see a dodger card with a designated hitter position. and look at amed rosario! he gets the 1975 all-star color combo, but of course, that same combo was used for some non-all-stars back then as well.

i scanned the backs of the clayton kershaw and gavin lux cards

because in hand they look like they are different colors of card stock. either way, the card backs in this set are super hard to read without a bright light shining on them. coincidentally, both kershaw and lux are the answers to their own cards' trivia question.

i was happy to find the kershaw mvp card

along with a dodger insert thanks to freddie freeman's new age performers card

so that was the stuff i bought at walmart, and between the hanger box and monster box, i only had a couple duplicates.

on saturday, my hobby box was delivered, and i was super excited when i saw the yellow top/red bottom dodger buyback card on top as i was opening the box

and even though it's not steve garvey, getting willie crawford for the collection is not half bad.

42 for everyone

no surprises today, as i am posting some of the jackie robinson cards that i've added to my collection over the last few months, starting with this 2016 topps mlb debut insert

celebrating that event that occurred 77 years ago today!

2006 upper deck sp legendary cuts when it was a game insert /550

2006 upper deck all-time legends insert

2014 topps triple threads

2015 topps 1st home run gold parallel insert

four of a kind there. i am happy to report that the rest of the cards in this post have unique photos, starting with 2017 topps stadium club black foil parallel

topps' acceptance of black and white photos (for some releases, anyway) has opened the door for some "new" images of jackie to be used. some, like this one in stadium club, works really well. sometimes topps goes for colorization of black & white photos and comes up short as we've seen in another stadium club release where they colored the number on the back of his jersey red instead of blue.

2021 topps 70 years of topps inserts - base

and chrome

the chrome version is really more of a foil, i think. it's interesting to me how difficult it was to find these two cards at a low price, but i managed it.

2022 topps stadium club chrome

i believe that someone, somewhere, figured out what jackie is doing with that paper, but i can't find the post. one of the headlines above where he is holding the pencil says "contest deadlines" so maybe it's some sort of entry form and not the ponies!

2018 topps gallery hall of fame gallery insert

not a bad painting of jackie on that card

2023 topps archives 1979 comics insert

unbelievable here that the "inside baseball" inset shows the date of jackie's debut as april 15, 1945. yes, the text is correct below, but then why was the text above allowed to remain? i mean it looks like someone tried to add some red to the uniform number on the front of his jersey, so why couldn't they have corrected the text? it just boggles my mind at how poorly topps does sometimes.

in other news, the dodgers have issued a comic book about jackie robinson in the past. i think it was in 1997. i used to have one - maybe i still do!

2023 topps 1988 all-star insert

at some point i wonder if topps will leave jackie out of these insert sets. 

2024 topps grand gamers insert

this one finished my team set

2023 panini chronicles - pinnacle

i don't really chase any panini products, but i had wanted this particular card for a while. it's simple, but the design and black and white photo creates a pretty appealing card in my opinion. you almost don't miss the absence of the "b" on his hat.

today all players will wear jackie's number, just like carlos correa here on a 2018 topps salute insert

i haven't picked up any other 42 cards lately, but i'll be checking out topps now releases tomorrow to see what's available.

finally, i want to once again share the story of how i first learned of the meaning of jackie robinson's debut. i was listening to a dodger broadcast with my dad in the late 1970's and one of the announcers (vin scully, jerry doggett, or ross porter) mentioned the fact that jackie broke the color barrier and became the first black player allowed to play major league baseball. i asked my dad if that were true, and to further clarify, asked if there were really a time when dusty baker wouldn't have been able to play in the major leagues. it blew my mind when he said yes.

i wonder if there is a young fan out there that is thinking the same thing today, but about mookie betts

42 really is for everyone.