2025 brings balance to the franchise

i was pondering the upcoming 2025 baseball season last winter and did some quick math in my head regarding some dodger milestones. it will be the 70th anniversary of the team's first world series title and the 60th anniversary of their fourth. it will also be the 135th anniversary of their inaugural season as a member of the national league. as you likely already know, while the team existed for a few years prior, brooklyn officially joined the national league in 1890 and later moved to los angeles following the 1957 season. 

partly inspired by the fact that the a's were heading to sacramento after having been in oakland longer than they were in philadelphia, i pondered the dodgers' multi-city status and realized that with this being their 136th season in the major leagues, 2025 will mark their 68th season as the los angeles dodgers, matching the 68 that they played in brooklyn. franchise symmetry! (note that the giants still have seven years to go to reach this franchise fulcrum, as they began play as a national league team in 1883).

in 1957, topps gave us this team card of the brooklyn dodgers

but despite '57 being their final season in brooklyn, we got one more brooklyn dodger team card in 1958

since these were always "last year's" team photos. topps left off the city for the dodgers (and the giants) which was out of step with the other team cards. seeing roy campanella on the card makes me even more disappointed that topps did not give him a proper final tribute. finally, it's worth noting that topps not being able to color the numbers on the front of the dodger jerseys correctly is not a new phenomenon.

in 1959, topps gave us the first los angeles dodgers team card

and they got the red numbers right!

the last single player brooklyn dodger topps card belonged to don elston in 1957

and the first los angeles dodger topps card belonged to charley neal in 1958

around the first of the year, i took the opportunity to complete a couple of sets that span both cities. first, the 1980 tcma all-time dodgers

which features more brooklyn folks than los angeles ones. this 1991 line drive set

reverses that trend. i had a few of the tcma cards previously, as well as the garvey from the line drive set, but found it easier to buy the sets than piecemeal the missing cards.

i have plenty of other cards from my scanned folder to show today that play on this theme, including a couple gil hodges cards

that's a 1949 bowman reprint (chromified) from 2001 bowman chrome, and this is a 2002 topps 1952 world series insert

while hodges played for the dodgers in both brooklyn and los angeles, he's representing brooklyn in each of his cards in this post.

here's hodges' teammate in both brooklyn and la, duke snider, on a 2005 upper deck sp legendary cuts legendary lineage insert

duke has his brooklyn hat on here, but is repping los angeles in the all-time dodger set above.

another dodger who played in both cities is jim gilliam, seen on a 2023 panini donruss pennants insert

his helmet has no logo, but the card makes it obvious that he is representing the brooklyn dodgers here. the brooklyn dodgers won nine pennants, but just one world series.

one great who didn't make the trip to los angeles with the club is jackie robinson. here he is on a few cards - 2024 topps mega box 1989 all-star

2024 topps allen & ginter mini chrome parallel

and 2023 topps archives 1969 single player foil insert

that really makes the case for brooklyn.

don drysdale, seen here on a 2008 donruss threads baseball americana insert

pitches for brooklyn, but the big d shown here on a 2022 topps gypsy queen short print

pitches for los angeles.

here's another sandy koufax card, this one from 2024 topps

it's another mega box exclusive parallel. koufax, of course, also spanned the franchise's time in brooklyn and los angeles, and he's wearing the latter on his chest here. he led the club to three world series titles in the first 10 years of their existence on the west coast and is still revered by the dodger faithful today.

once the 1970's arrived (represented here on a 2020 topps update decades' best blue parallel)

the club won three pennants, but lost each of the world series in which they played. the card above features a photo from the 1978 world series, which was especially heartbreaking for young gcrl who assumed that the dodgers would win since they lost in 1977. it was their turn!

the 1978 season did cement steve garvey as my favorite player, and i was far from alone in that regard. here's the garv on a 2024 topps allen & ginter gold mini parallel

while the perennial all-star didn't lead the dodgers back to the postseason in 1979, the 1980's brought two pennants and two championships to los angeles, represented by this 1989 mother's dodgers card

but then came some lean years. there were some bright spots, as a number of rookies of the year, including mike piazza seen on a 1994 ultra pro card

gave us hope. that hope petered out with two postseason sweepings in the middle of the 1990s. then came the jim tracy years. here's tracy on a 2004 topps gold parallel

his tenure included the dodgers' only postseason single game win since 1988, but also included a number of interesting player personnel decisions. one solid player who was there for part of the tracy era was shawn green, seen here on a 2005 donruss classics team colors insert

that is most decidedly "la".

another highlight of those years was "game over". eric gagne's prowess at saving games was highlighted on this 2006 upper deck epic epic events insert

gagne won the cy young award in 2003, and the dodgers didn't have a pitcher win another until clayton kershaw came along.

here's kershaw on a 2009 topps unique red parallel card

kershaw's arrival coincided with a run of team success. in fact, in kershaw's 17 seasons, the dodgers have missed the postseason only three times. here's a 2015 topps limited edition dodger team card

showing the 2014 squad celebrating their regular season success.

it wasn't until the dodgers added mookie betts, however, that their postseason fortunes changed. here's betts on a 2021 topps 70 years of topps insert

betts led the dodgers to the world series title in 2020, and he was aided four years later by freddie freeman and shohei ohtani (shown on his 2024 topps archives card)

who went 50/50 during the regular season.

of course, perhaps the greatest dodger and the real bridge between the franchise's time in brooklyn and los angeles, was vin scully. here's a 2013 panini cooperstown matrix parallel

of the longtime broadcaster.

i am excited to watch this team as it reaches its equilibrium this year and as it tips the scales to los angeles in years to come. i am very happy that the stateside opening day is tomorrow!

maybe they do exist

i am five, well, really six, cards short of a complete dodger team set of 2015 topps 1978 buybacks. while it wasn't the first time that topps included buybacks in packs of flagship, for some reason the foil stamp used on the 2015 version appealed to me and i went about trying to amass dodgers from every year.

from what i could find, topps included all flagship years from 1957 through 1980, except for 1964 and 1965. i assume those two years were omitted due to the need for buybacks in the then current and "on deck" heritage releases. another anomaly is that only the first 10 or so cards of the 1980 set were included in the buyback release. of course, manny mota had a record breaker card at the top of the set, so the dodgers were represented.

i did pretty well with this effort, with right around 200 of the 2015 buyback dodgers, ranging from a 1957 don bessent card 

to the aforementioned manny mota card 

from 1980.

as the hunt went on, i realized that i was close to a complete team set of my favorite release - 1978. and, while tcdb only lists 16 dodger cards as 2015 buybacks, i was able to track down 23 of the 29 cards that make up the dodger team set from that release. now, i am almost certain that topps did not include any of the 4-in-1 rookie cards in the buybacks released in 2015, so i am not counting lance rautzhan's card in my quest. however, i would find it difficult to dismiss the others that i am missing from existence.

one of them, elias sosa, i am certain exists because i saw it on ebay - after it had sold for a pittance. so, there is at least one of those. the other four i am missing i have never seen. those four are tommy john, dusty baker, terry forster and tom lasorda.

comc shows a record of these buybacks for john's 1973, 1974, and 1977 cards, and i have the 1973 and 1974 but not the '77.  i have also seen baker's cards show up from 1973 through 1976 (when he was a brave), and i own a buyback of his 1979 card, but i haven't seen the '77 or '78. topps did issue a buyback version of dusty's 1978 card in 2017, but i don't own it. and one more note on sosa - i haven't seen his 1977 card as a 2015 buyback either. his non-dodger cards seem to show up from time to time, however.

forster's pre-1978 cards, along with his 1979 card (which i have), all have shown up in 2015 buyback form, but i've never seen his 1978 card. topps did issue it in 2016 as a buyback, and i added the blue foil version to my collection

so at least there is that. i do have his 1979 card and 1975 league leader card as part of my collection, 

since he shares space with dodger mike marshall, but i would really like to find that missing '78.

as for lasorda, i have his 1978 card in 2014 topps buyback form

but not 2015. in fact, in addition to not ever seeing his 1978 card as a 2015 "original", i don't recall ever seeing the dodger team cards for 1977 or 1979 in 2015 buyback form. both of those cards identify lasorda as the dodger skipper. i do have the 1978 topps dodger team card with the 2015 foil stamp though. curious.

in related buyback news, i added a 2016 buyback of steve garvey a while back. it's the silver foil version of his 1982 card

which is one of the more abundant garvey as a dodger buyback cards around. topps held some of these cards to include in their archives signature series release that same year, and here's my copy

that the seller removed from the magnetic case for some reason. this card continues to show up in subsequent archives signature series releases in varying numbers.

baker and john have also been showing up in topps' archive signature releases, but i don't think topps is holding back a bunch of elias sosa or terry forster cards for future signed releases, so i am left to wonder what happened back in 2015. maybe those cards, along with the others, do exist in reasonable quantities and someday my diligence will be rewarded. maybe. and if not with the 2015 buybacks, then hopefully in 2027 when i will try to assemble the team set with heritage buybacks. stay tuned!

the last of the 57s - a countdown

i am happy to say and pleased to report that i completed my 1957 topps set last month!

that's the image that goes on the set binder's spine.

it took a while - i first pondered going after the set in 2011, and decided to go all in on the set back in early 2015 as i recall. i was down to a couple dozen cards earlier this year and so decided to finish before the clock struck 2023. and so i did!

to celebrate, i'll rank the last 15 cards that i needed using no real criteria other than how i am feeling now as i write the post. here we go....

15. cleveland indians team card

team cards in this set are pretty blurry across the board. even though this one features bob feller in his only appearance in the set, the team's logo ensures it as the worst of the last 15 cards i needed. sorry not sorry wahoo.

14. white sox team

again, a blurry team card is tough to get too excited about, although this one does have me wondering why some players cast shadows and others don't, and whether or not minnie minoso really was in the very back behind larry doby or if he was added to the image later.

13. billy o'dell

some leading man looks with his faraway eyes, but the shading of the background has me scratching my head. are there "pink tint" variations in 1957 topps? i like the ornithologically correct logo on the hat, though.

12. bobby richardson

well, i was right. the richardson was the last card i needed for the set, and the most expensive of these final fifteen. however, the youngster posing in front of an industrial/medical complex instead of inside the house that ruth built leaves me disappointed with this card.

11. chico fernandez

at least chico is inside a stadium, however, the crop on the shot is a bit too tight for me on this card. what really dooms the card in my opinion is the drab sky that blends with his away jersey. 

10. mickey mcdermott

not the mickey m. card you wanted to pull back in '57, that's for sure. the portrait shot with the dark background is antithetical to the best cards in the set that show more of the player and some sweet stadium backgrounds. however, the bright colors of the card text make this one stand out.

9. ned garver

ned's jersey and the sky behind him are the same color, but unlike chico above, ned's image includes a pose that fills out the frame a bit better and some other colors to help out. the card text gets a bit washed out, but i appreciate seeing some of the team name on his jersey.

8. harvey haddix

poor harvey here is looking fairly optimistic. little does he realize that in a couple of years he will throw 12.2 perfect innings in a game and lose to a guy who gave up 12 hits. i like the color on this card - a nice red phillies hat - but the background is too washed out. maybe if topps had used the infield stands as a background instead of the ebbets field outfield, this tight crop would have ranked higher. also, different colors for the card text, such as a color scheme like his teammate's above would have worked, i think.

7. rene valdes

lots of color here, and a pose similar to garver's above. the colors are better, though. i assume this was a spring training shot (the text on the back is about valdes' performance in spring training prior to the 1957 season), but i don't know if topps went to florida back then. i don't know of any trees around ebbets field, but maybe the photographer found a spot for valdes to pose. if that's not a tree behind him, i don't know what it is.

6. billy goodman

this is a decent example of what i like in the '57 set, although it doesn't have the strongest background. the distinct colors of the photo and card text help the card on this countdown for sure.

5. jackie collum

here we have collum posing in ebbets field. having the colorful mennen and michaels & co signs in left field behind him are a plus for the card. however, the grass isn't too green, and his teammate has been decapitated by the crop. plus, this card suffers from the slanted horizon.

4. andy carey

a yankee at the bat rack is a pretty solid performer on this countdown. i think this is one of the better yankee cards in the entire set even though the background is monotone.

3. sam jones

mr. jones is standing with the ebbets field stands behind him, and the color of the upper deck works nicely as an accent. the card text is in contrast to the colors of his uniform, and we get a good look at the old "cardinals" script.  the only improvement i would have made here was to reduce the crop so as to get his glove in the frame, but perhaps then the card text wouldn't "pop" as much.

2. darrell johnson

this is great. the future mariners manager is shown crouching in ebbets field with the right center field backdrop. i recognize the van heusen shirts sign (it's red) and the bulova timepieces sign to its right. the photo was likely taken on the day of the cross-town mayor's trophy game that used to occur in new york. in 1957, the game was played on may 23 between the yankees and dodgers in brooklyn. there was no game in 1956, and johnson wasn't on the yankee roster for the 1956 world series. i suppose he could have been there in a non-roster role, but i like the idea of this photo being taken prior to the in-season exhibition game. 

1. wes covington

what a gorgeous card. there is so much color here that i apologize for ever thinking that this set was unattractive. back in 2006, it seemed like heritage purposely washed out the colors and at that time, i didn't have too many real 1957 cards in my collection. once i started adding dodger cards from the set in earnest, i realized just how colorful the set is. anyway, we have covington in ebbets field, with the outfield billboards in all their glory behind him. the only negative here is that the sky isn't blue. we have green grass, brown dirt, white chalk, all the colors of the signage, and covington's braves uniform with the accent piping. it's a great looking card - one of my favorites in the set, not just of these last fifteen that i needed for completion.

so, my 1957 topps set is complete. that means i have completed the topps flagship sets from 1957, 1965, and 1970-2010. i don't really have plans to chase another one, but never say never.