let's remember some guys

it's almost the new year and time for auld lang syne, which, if harry burns and sally albright are to be believed, encourages us to remember that we've forgotten some people. while i haven't forgotten the people in this post, clearing out some cards from my scanned folder gives me an opportunity to remember them.

here are don drysdale, roy campanella, and don newcombe

on their respective 1985 tcma award winners cards. i bought these cards to complete the team set - nick had sent me the maury wills card at some point - but failed to post them during the postseason awards announcements.

1996 topps mystery finest mike piazza

i remember pulling a few of these cards from packs back in '96. while the card front was covered, you could figure out who was featured by looking at the images on the back

as the card fronts were slightly embossed.

1997 fleer ex 2000 raul mondesi

obligatory "rauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuul"

2000 topps gold label shawn green the treasury insert

fitting for green to be on a currency themed insert

2004 donruss team heroes eric gagne

game over!

2004 topps darren dreifort gold parallel

i saw dreifort pitch in person in 1997 and he was throwing darts. injuries suck.

2004 topps cracker jack edwin jackson variation and mini

modeling a forgetful jersey from the davey johnson and jim tracy eras

2007 bowman orange matt kemp

kemp isn't getting any love from the bbwa, not that he belongs in the hof, but i thought he might get a vote or two

2008 topps chrome derek lowe xfractor

quick - who was the last dodger to lead the league in wins prior to clayton kershaw doing so?

2013 topps randy choate gold parallel

acquired by the dodgers as part of the hanley ramirez trade, choate led the national league in appearances in 2012, combining his time with the marlins and dodgers. no dodger has led the league in that category since.

2015 topps juan uribe rainbow foil

two-time world series champion!

2015 topps heritage dee gordon retail foil

i think this was the only time prior to this year that there were foil parallels in heritage

2016 topps chrome kenta maeda refractor

he hit a home run in his second big league at bat

2021 topps edwin rios gold parallel

not sure why i scanned the back, but here you go

now i remember - rios hit the first two-run homer to lead off an inning in major league history as a result of the 2020 extra inning rules.

2022 topps tribute albert pujols

one of the goats, and i'm glad he played part of a season for the dodgers.

good golly mr. molly

this is a story that begins with junk wax but ends with a case hit. actually, i will go ahead and show the case hit in question first. it's a 2002 donruss originals paul molitor what if? 78 card

this is a key card - one of two molitor cards - i need(ed) for my insert set build, and i had forgotten that i was its owner since 2002. how i came to be reminded of that fact is what began with junk wax.

my sister in law has a good friend who i knew had a card collection. she is a yankee fan and i understood that she had some decent yankee cards from the 1960's. a few years ago, i was asked about the collection and how best to sell it. i suggested she contact one of the local card shops that i would take my cards to if i were looking to sell. fast forward a few years and i was contacted again about the collection. this time, i was asked if i wanted it.

it turns out that the collection i was being asked about was the junk wax part - not the vintage yankees part. i am guessing that she sold those but wasn't offered anything for these other cards. my sister in law sent me photos of 1989 donruss and fleer in sheets and i really wasn't too interested. she persisted, however, and i said i would take the cards. 

well, there weren't any bill ripken cards in the 1989 fleer that she had, but i did find a few cards that i needed from the rest of the junk - this 1990 fleer sticker insert

and these 1991 fleer sticker inserts

were all welcome variants that i would not have chased otherwise.

there were a few random cards from 1997 pacific crown collection mixed in, and this eddie perez card

fits within my lurker collection thanks to the appearance of rauuuuuuuul mondesi.

some other sets that were represented were classic junk wax era - 1989 score, 1989 topps, 1990 donruss, etc. there were also two boxes that touted complete sets, one of them being 1996 topps. upon closer inspection, the set was missing one card - glenn dishman of all people - but that was easy enough to remedy

his is card number 410 and there were two 418s so i am guessing that poor eyesight/small card numbers led to the omission of the padre lefty.

the other set was 1999 topps series 1. it was missing one card as well - the mark mcgwire #220. that's the card that has 70 different versions, one for each home run he hit in 1998. i thought that i might have one of these cards with my mothballed player collections, so i headed to the basement to check.

some may recall that i've mentioned having had a large number of player collections at one time. after the 2002 season, i curtailed most of them and put the cards in monster boxes. mcgwire was one of the players, but when i looked through the cards of his i had, the 1999 card was not among them. for fun, i kept digging in the row of the box that big mac was in and pulled some of my molitor cards. there, lo and behold, was the what if? card.

it makes sense to me that i had picked up that card back then, even though i don't recall doing so. molitor was my favorite non-dodger for several years, and one of my favorite players period. i just wish i had picked up his other card from the set back then. who knows how long i would have gone without moving the molitor card to my set build if it hadn't been for junk wax?!

i did pick up a version of the mcgwire card to complete the set. it's home run number 38

hit off of hall of famer billy wagner. i already had the 1999 topps set completed (both series) but couldn't let this one sit one card shy.

in other what if? news, i've made a bit more progress on the 1978 set, adding dave winfield's card

earlier this year. i also picked up a what if? 1984 rated rookie card of eric davis

how fantastic (and highly sought after) would this have been back then? i ultimately decided to purchase the card because pete rose is there in the background, making it another great addition to my lurker collection!

i suppose the lesson here is to not turn your back on junk wax.

the almost daily dodger - mike piazza

the last one of these posts featured eric karros, so it only makes sense to follow up with mike piazza. piazza followed in karros' footsteps, winning the national league rookie of the year award in 1993 after karros took home the hardware in 1992.

this is piazza's 1996 panini sticker

his 1996 topps classic confrontations insert

his 1997 upper deck memorable moments die-cut insert

and his 1996 fleer update soaring star insert

things are looking up!

all of these cards were languishing in my scanned folder, which was the impetus for this "almost daily dodger" series. piazza remains the player in third place in my tcdb collection, behind steve garvey and clayton kershaw with 722 cards in the collection (710 unique). that's just outside the top 20 of all collectors on the site. looks like i have some work to do, and there seems to be no end to the piazza dodger cards from the 90's.

original back, my arse

i've seen maybe 3 or 4 authentic 1952 topps mickey mantle cards in person during my lifetime. most have been at card shows in southern california, but one was at the smithsonian museum in washington dc. that was back around 2006 or so when the american history museum was being renovated and a bunch of stuff from that building was in the air & space museum. 

i will never own a 1952 topps mantle (unless i find $12.6 million somehow), so i figured i should add a reprint to my collection as it is one of the most iconic cards there is.  that is how i wound up purchasing this card

at the monthly twin cities card show back in august.  it's a 2010 topps cards your mother threw out original back reprint/insert/parallel.  here's the back:

it cost me $4, but even so i was a bit annoyed when i got home and noticed damage to the bottom edge of the card (right edge in the above image). annoyed in the sense that i wish i had pointed it out to get the price down - i was still happy to have the card and check one off the mental want list for my "meaningful and just because" mini-collection.

then i actually looked at the back, and was more than annoyed - this time with topps.  read through the text on the back with me:

"switch hitting mickley...."  mickley?! why have i never heard about his name being misspelled on the back of the most iconic postwar card?! 

let's keep going.  "...is heralded as joe dimaggio's successor. he alternated between the yankees and kansas city during '51 - batting in 50 runs in 1 month for the american independance, batting .313 in 89 games."  i know baseball was played during the civil war, but it wasn't around for the revolutionary war. besides, that's not how independence is spelled and the sentence runs on in a very strange way.  at this point i went looking for an actual image of the 1952 card back.  here it is:

first of all - no "mickley". second, he drove in those 50 runs for the "american association club". and "at 17, mickey broke in as shortstop for independence, batting .313 in 89 games." that makes way more sense.  topps essentially skipped a line of text on a recreation of their most famous card. but wait - there's more! in 2010, topps said that "the yanks brought him up from joplin after he hit 25 hr's and led the league with a .282 batting average in 1950".  a coherent sentence except that the real card notes that his batting average was .383 for joplin in 1950 - a stat that is matched by baseball reference.  another minor note, they left off the double asterisk that clarifies his "lifetime" stats to be his minor league totals to date, but i am more appalled by the text errors.

i suppose i shouldn't be surprised, but this is pretty bad even for topps.  keep in mind that they had been reprinting mantle's card since the 1980's.  here's the back of the 1996 topps mickey mantle commemorative reprint insert set's version of the 1952 card:

looks good!

here's the back of a version that was released last year as part of something called 2021 topps x mickey mantle collection (according to comc)

aside from inexplicably misspelling "heralded" in the first sentence, it's a match. and, it's a big step forward from what they put out there in 2010.

i mentioned they had reprinted this card in the 1980's. that would have been as part of the 1983 topps 1952 reprint series. that was the card i decided to target for my collection once i saw how poorly the 2010 card recreated the original, and here it is:

with the back:

the only nit i can pick with this is the lack of a period after his eye color. however, i am suspicious that i have a reprint of a reprint. something feels a bit off with this card but i don't have any others to compare it to. no matter - it serves its purpose in my collection and i am ok with whatever it is because it is as close to the original as topps has been.

i also added a non-topps mantle card to my collection - this 1989 cmc card

fits nicely in my 'name/number on the back" mini-collection. it's good to have number 7 represented!

i saw what tony gwynn was talking about

proving that you should always read the backs of cards, i was happy back in 1996 to see the text on the back of this 1996 topps hideo nomo profiles insert

it features commentary from tony gwynn that focuses on the two times the padres faced nomo during his rookie of the year campaign

i don't include this card in my "cards featuring games i've seen" mini-collection, although maybe i should. i was at the game that featured nomo's second appearance against the padres, and gwynn was right - he struck out 11 batters in eight innings. he had first faced the padres the week before and only had two strikeouts in five innings. i can understand how gwynn thought they might have better luck the second time around.

anyway, that second meeting occurred on september 30, 1995 in san diego. thanks to the strike and cancelled 1994 postseason, 1995 was the first year that the wild card would be in play for the postseason. the dodgers were only a game up on the second place rockies, but because of the tiebreaker between the two teams, they could clinch the division with a win on what was the penultimate day of the strike-shortened season. here's my ticket stub from the game:

it was my first time seeing nomo pitch in person, but for me, the main attraction was still mike piazza

we were sitting along the left field line and had a good view of the dodgers during warmups. here are piazza and brett butler walking back from a sprint to center field.

you can see behind them steve garvey's retired jersey number near the spot where he hit his walk-off home run in the 1984 nlcs. here's a better shot of it:

between two palms.

once the game started, i was excited to watch nomo pitch. here's him in his windup with the first pitch:

he struck out steve finley to start the game, and then retired jody reed on a groundout. that brought up tony gwynn

who promptly tripled. note that gwynn didn't mention that on the back of the card up above. with gwynn on third

he was immediately driven in by a ken caminiti single to give the pads an early lead. in the top of the second, however, delino deshields doubled

and then scored on an error to tie the game at 1. i took that picture of deshields largely because both he and reed are in the frame, and those two guys are forever linked in dodger lore as the reason for and the return received in the pedro martinez trade.

the game remained tied for a while until raul mondesi went deep in the top of the 7th

and an inning later, mike piazza padded the lead with a two-run homer of his own

that's dustin hermanson walking dejectedly on the mound - he had been brought in to the game to face piazza.

a few outs later (here's a link to video of the last out), the dodgers were celebrating their first division title since 1988, and the celebrating began with piazza, todd worrell, and tim wallach

and then came the rest of the guys

jose offerman, who seemed to be on the outs, was the last player to reach the celebration, and he definitely took his time getting out there

finally, tommy lasorda ran out to join the players.

it was great to see the dodgers clinch a division title in person - it's just too bad that they got swept in the nlds by the reds.

on a not really related note, chris gwynn was on the dodgers' roster in 1995, and was in uniform that night but didn't appear in the game. i recently found that i had a parallel version of this 1992 upper deck card

of the gwynn brothers in my dupes box. it's a gold hologram parallel

and so now it is in my 1992 dodger team binder. i don't plan to find another for the dodger stadium collection - the regular hologram will do just fine there - but it is one of my favorite dodger stadium cards. 

while i was very happy to witness the dodgers clinch the division in '95, i would have really enjoyed to see it happen in chavez ravine.