triple crowning achievements

a couple of decades ago, as i began assembling my topps "sampler sets", i paused to admire the 1967 league leader cards. my m.o. in regards to my sampler sets was to have at least one example of a league leader card for each year, but the '67 set piqued my interest for a couple of reasons.

first, they represented sandy koufax's only appearances in the set. second, frank robinson's 1966 triple crown meant that he was in the first position on the three american league offensive leader cards. similarly, koufax ended his career with a triple crown feat of his own and was likewise placed on the national league pitching leader cards.

i made the decision back then to complete the league leader card subsets that celebrated these triple crown achievements to include in my sampler set. when i disassembled those sets around 2014 to focus on completing my topps dodger team sets from the 1950's (still working on '52 and '53) and 1960's, the koufax cards went into my dodger collection and the robinson cards languished in a monster box.

sometime last year, i made the decision to reinstate the sampler sets. having completed the 1955 bowman set and realizing that it would be the last vintage set i would complete, i wanted to have the cards from the topps sets i didn't have completed represented in my collection. so, i dusted off what i had kept from 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1966, 1967, 1968, and 1969. when i got to the 1967 cards, i again paused at the sight of the league leader cards.

after thinking about it for a bit, i decided to complete the full league leader subset and keep it with some other subsets of cards i have completed. so, let's (finally) see some cards!

here is sandy koufax's triple crown in card form

and the backs:

i've always wondered why it was "pitching leaders" on the front and "victory leaders" on the back of these cards. anyway, sandy's line was 27 wins, a 1.73 era, and 317 strikeouts. it was a runaway triple crown, really. koufax won the cy young award unanimously, and remember, this was when there was just one award for all of major league baseball. he also received more first place votes for the national league mvp award than the winner, roberto clemente, just missing his second such accolade.

not to be undone, here is frank robinson's triple crown in card form:

and the backs:

the twins gave robby a good challenge, but he also ran away with the triple crown with a .316 average, 49 home runs, and 122 rbi. robinson unanimously won the mvp as you would have expected with a season like that, leading the orioles to the pennant to boot. and yes, i know that they won the world series, too, but that wouldn't have factored in to the mvp voting.

here are the american league pitching leader cards

and their backs

interesting to me to not see many oriole pitchers place highly in these categories.

here are the national league batting leader cards

and their backs

clemente had a great year, and so did richie allen, hank aaron, and the alou brothers. felipe alou actually received two first place votes in the mvp voting, with allen getting one of his own.

after all that, i picked up a couple more of these cards because i reinstated my sampler sets late last year. i'll have some posts up at some point this summer to share them. i've also added some more modern league leader cards to my dodger collection recently.

2023 topps national league batting leaders gold parallel

2024 topps national league batting leaders royal blue parallel

2022 topps national league pitching leaders gold star parallels

lots of dodger representation there. note that i am still a fan of a single league leader card that shows the leader for each league on the same card, but that's because i grew up on the 1978 topps set and that's how it was that year.  i'll also note that i decided not to pick up all of the league leader cards for carl yastrzemski's triple crown (nor miguel cabrera's for that matter), but i do have clayton kershaw's in my dodger team set.

daves to be different

i happened to be adding cards to my sportlots inventory, and it's a pain when the new cards are of older stature. i have to go into the monster boxes on the bottom of my stack to get them in the right place, knowing full well that the likelihood of someone actually buying a card from 1990 topps is pretty low.

all was not lost, however, as i took some time to peruse some of the other cards already in my inventory and found a couple of anomalies worth a few words here. first up is dave dravecky's 1990 score card

this is, at face value, an interesting card because the photo shows dravecky waving his cap with his arm in a sling. for those of us who remember, dravecky broke his arm during a game following recovery from surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. so, the photo is to be respected as a record of that and not just a random photo of him pitching in a game. what really sets the card apart from the rest of the set, however, is the back

rather than a portrait shot like every other card, score used a photo of dravecky warming up before making his first start after surgery, and even captioned the photo for us. this sort of willingness to vary from the norm should be appreciated, applauded, and replicated on more cards to this day.

the card also opted for more text than stats in order to explain the challenges that dravecky faced. unfortunately, he did not return to the majors in 1990, so the card is effectively a final tribute for him.

the other card i pulled to scan is dave clark's 1989 fleer card

it is the only card i am aware of in the set (to be fair, i have not completed this set nor seen every card in the set) that lists "rookie" as part of an individual player card. the designation does not appear on the back

i didn't bother to peruse comc's library to see if there are others like this in 1989 fleer. even if there are, it's fun to find some anomalies among the monotony of junk wax era sets.

chrome doesn't like me much

it's not a rock in my trick or treating pillowcase, but it still stinks to get this "card"

in a pack of cards. specifically, this came from a pack of 2025 topps chrome update that was included in a mega box that i purchased directly from topps. just a blank refractor which i suppose you could use to create your own art card. i understand that these are printing blanks and are (obviously) not supposed to be sent out in the packs, but it has happened the last couple of years.

the mega box was the last bit of chrome update i purchased, but i had bought a lot of it prior to that order, and in all sorts of distribution methods. as a result, i wound up with a bunch of the different guaranteed parallels, like sepia

xfractor

and topps logo 

refractors. the nick kurtz sepia refractor is nice, and i would have preferred to find his xfractor and topps logo refractor instead of willie maciver's but here we are. overall, my purchases seemed to be american league west heavy. here are some of the other sepias i found:

ben williamson

gunner hoglund

and yusei kikuchi

i'll stick with the al west theme to share some of the other cards i found, such as all-star game inserts of brent rooker

and bobby witt jr

night terrors insert of cam smith

power players inserts of kurtz

wyatt langford

and cal raleigh

plus refractor parallels of jacob wilson

blaine crim

and eugenio suarez

suarez also appeared in raywave refractor form

as did ben williamson

while denzel clarke

was one of the prism refractors i found

i came across a very small number of numbered parallels, but one was a purple raywave refractor of hoglund

numbered to 250.

to complete the card type tour via the al west, here's a base card belonging to kurtz

the only other card types i found that i couldn't represent using a player from the angels, astros, rangers, mariners, or athletics were the fortune 15 inserts (here's rafael devers)

and the aqua wave refractor rookie auto card i found in a hanger pack. it's omar cruz

and i would have preferred a different nl west team be represented.

that cruz card is a sticker auto, but not all of the signed cards in this set are like that. the card i wanted most from this release sure isn't. a week or two before chrome update was released, steve garvey made this post on the socials

i am slowing down in my additions of new garvey cards, but a chrome auto is a must have!

sadly, this is the only dodger card i found in all of my sealed product purchases - hyeseong kim's rookie debut base card

to complete the team set, i went to sportlots and bought the cards of will smith

jack dreyer

and dalton rushing

which left me a roki sasaki card short of the team set.

i added some parallels and inserts to these orders as best (and cheaply) as i could. i wound up with a prism refractor of smith

plus his all-star game insert

as well as that of clayton kershaw

and freddie freeman 1990

and power players inserts

plus the mookie betts power players insert

as well.

it's no surprise that i had to go to ebay to find the garvey legends auto, and i was successful fairly early on. the "base" versions are numbered to 50, and that's what i have

on card beauty!  here's the back:

i've seen some other variations sell for silly prices, including the 1/1. i am content to have this singular version. in fact, i would likely purchase one of orel hershiser's cards from this release before i targeted a garvey parallel.

in all, i would have had more success for my collection had i purchased a team break slot for the dodgers and seek out the garvey card as i did rather than buy as much sealed product. but where's the fun in that?