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.

some things were not so different five years ago

after having a saved search for a couple of months, i purchased a 2019 topps dodgers factory team set to complete my run from 2006 - 2024 (no sets in 2021). after receiving it, i sort of recalled why i didn't bother picking it up in real time - the cards are all the same save for the logo placement on some of them. let's take a look anyway, shall we?

here's the back of clayton kershaw's card

with the changed numbering and set affiliation.

flagship is on the left, team set on the right.

ld-1 clayton kershaw

complete with the open fly.

ld-2 cody bellinger

ld-3 walker buehler

ld-4 justin turner

ld-5 pedro baez

ld-6 max muncy

ld-7 corey seager

ld-8 enrique hernandez

ld-9 rich hill

ld-10 ross stripling

ld-11 kenta maeda

ld-12 joc pederson

ld-13 chris taylor

ld-14 julio urias

ld-15 david freese

ld-16 kenley jansen

ld-17 austin barnes

some decent photo choices by topps, but i would have liked some variety between the two sets. i think i remember why i didn't bother with this set in 2019.

if you are interested, here's the running list of these posts. 2016 and 2018 are still partial set posts, and i doubt that i will ever go back and complete them. remember that there was no team set issued in 2021. otherwise, click and enjoy!

2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016

2017
2018

2020

2022

2023

2024

what difference does seven years make?

i decided to try to fill in the blanks of my annual comparison posts between the topps flagship dodgers and their cards that are in the factory team set releases. those are the cards that are sold in blister packs and are numbered differently from the flagship sets. sometimes, there are photo (or other) variations, too.

as noted in the 2024 post, for some reason i did not purchase the 2017 team set back when it was released, but i have it now so here we go. remember, it's flagship on the left, team set on the right

lad-1 clayton kershaw

the only difference is the placement of the topps logo. as you will see, the factory set has the logo placed with equal side and top margins. flagship has the logo situated such that it is further from the top of the card than the side. i prefer the factory set format.

and here are the backs - flagship:

and team set:

topps eliminated the personalized twitter handles in favor of their hashtag on the factory set cards.

lad-2 andre ethier

same

lad-3 alex wood

same

lad-4 joc pederson

same

lad-5 scott van slyke

same. it's odd to me that scott van slyke was featured in the set but yasiel puig was not.

lad-6 yasmani grandal

same

lad-7 enrique hernandez

i could have rotated the landscape cards, but why bother? there's no difference between flagship and the factory set here.

lad-8 kenta maeda

same

lad-9 chase utley

same

lad-10 julio urias

same

lad-11 kenley jansen

same

lad-12 trayce thompson

same

lad-13 corey seager

no more rookie cup for seager, who was the 2016 national league rookie of the year. this is going to wind up being the only real difference in the whole set.

lad-14 justin turner

same

lad-15 andrew toles

same

lad-16 rich hill

same

lad-17 adrian gonzalez

same

i think i remember why i didn't bother with this set in 2017.

if you are interested, here's the running list of these posts. 2016 and 2018 are still partial set posts, and i have yet to find the team set from 2019. remember that there was no team set issued in 2021. otherwise, click and enjoy!

2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2018

2020

2022

2023

2024

talkin' about which generation, now?

i realized after going through some 2009 cards recently that there aren't too many new ideas when it comes to card inserts. back in 2007, topps issued some "generation now" inserts in flagship

and chrome

and they also put a "generation now arrives" insert in flagship with a totally different design

for some reason. these inserts are all seared in to my brain.

what i didn't recall was that in 2009, upper deck released a "generation now" insert set and i actually had the josh hamilton card

in a monster box of other forgotten cards. i quickly sought out some dodgers, including russell martin

who also appeared in the 2007 topps insert set as seen up top, and manny ramirez

who was really from a different generation but was still "now" i guess. he could be in any insert set any company wanted him to be in after his 2008 partial season with the dodgers. my goodness. there are at least a dozen players, including martin, who appear in both the 2007 topps and 2009 upper deck sets.

last year topps took another shot at a "generation now" insert set, again in flagship 

and chrome

and update as well. in fact, that bo bichette card is from 2022 topps chrome update.

at least topps waited 15 years before redoing the set - that's a decent amount of time between generations in baseball terms. looking forward to 2037 topps and a new crop of generation now players!