the k is for kershaw kountdown continues - giant slayer edition!

clayton kershaw made his sixth appearance of the 2025 season saturday night against the giants at dodger stadium, so i am pleased to be able to post another edition of the k is for kershaw kountdown as we track his progress to the 3,000 strikeout milestone.

coming off his best start of the season, kershaw registered another solid outing, going seven innings without allowing a run (matching the best outing by a dodger starter this season) and striking out five giants in the process. those 5 nocal's he k'd bring his season strikeout total to 20, and his career total to 2,988.

in honor of his performance, here are five cards (not seen on this blog before) from my collection to represent strikeouts number 2,984 through 2,988.

2,984 - 2024 topps finest

2,985 - 2014 topps wins leaders walmart blue parallel

2,986 - 2018 topps big league nl whip leaders gold parallel

2,987 - 2019 topps heritage 1970 scratchoff

2,988 - 2019 topps high tek

kershaw's night included allowing only three hits and just one walk to go with his five strikeouts. he faced the minimum number of batters through the first two innings (thanks to a walk-canceling double play) and then registered a strikeout in each of his last five frames. it was a low stress outing, as the dodgers piled on the runs early, and the giants did not mount any sort of rally against kershaw whatsoever.

kershaw's performance saturday night also reclaimed solo possession of first place in the national league west for the dodgers after they lost the series opener to the giants on friday and fell into a tie with their division rivals. it's worth noting that kershaw has struck out more players pitching against the giants than any other team, although that's not really a surprise given the old unbalanced schedules that teams would play.

here are some non-kershaw cards - starting with a 2007 topps moments & milestones russell (russ) martin card

martin was the catcher for kershaw's debut back in 2008. i would like to see kershaw asked to name the starters who were behind him that day because i sure as heck didn't recall a dodger named luis maza who started that game at second base.

seeing the 2019 topps heritage insert above referring to kershaw as "team captain" got me thinking about austin barnes. i recently read a quote from mookie betts - it may have been on a card back - that barnes (who served as kershaw's unofficial personal catcher for a few seasons) was the team captain of late. of course, he was recently released by the club. here's a 2021 topps big league rainbow foil parallel that features barnes and company as they celebrate the 2020 world series win

that is barnes, of course, in the catcher's gear. he is part of a very short list of dodger catchers (john roseboro, rick dempsey, and will smith are the others) to catch the final out of a dodger world series victory.

of course, you can't mention dodger catchers and kershaw without thinking of a.j. ellis. here is his 2013 topps gold parallel card

that features kershaw prominently.

kershaw is still in 20th place on the all-time leader board, and he will remain there unless he passes john smoltz (or is himself passed). smoltz has a career strikeout total of 3,084 and so kershaw is now 96 k's behind smoltz, but just 12 away from the 3,000 milestone. for what it's worth, he has moved past smoltz on the all-time wins leaderboard and is now tied with mark buehrle and rick reuschel with 214.

kershaw should be back on the mound later this week against the padres. know that when he makes his next start, i will be back to update the kountdown soon thereafter. stay tuned! 

the almost daily dodger - chone figgins

today is usually the day that i post something about game 1 of the 1988 world series, but instead i have another almost daily dodger post. enjoy the change, or use the links to peruse past years posts if you like.

chone figgins is one of a few players that are angels to me despite having played for the dodgers. here he is on a target red border parallel from 2014 topps update

wearing bill russell's number, figgins was appearing in his fifth game as a dodger on april 8, 2014, with each appearance coming as a pinch hitter. for the third time in those appearances, he drew a walk with this one being a 10th inning lead off pass courtesy of tiger pitcher joba chamberlain. a couple of batters later, carl crawford doubled and figgins came home with the winning run.

the card shows a couple of dodgers of note in the background. i am pretty sure that's clayton kershaw running towards home in the pullover, but there is no doubt about aj ellis in the catcher gear or manager don mattingly hanging out behind the dugout railing.

 here's a bonus target red border card from 2014 topps of juan uribe - a former "almost daily dodger" subject

this card shows uribe as he scores from first base on a double by tim fedorowicz on june 11, 2013. he was the insurance run in a 5-3 dodger win over the dbacks that night.

i bought you back

when i shared my first thoughts on 2024 topps heritage a while back, i ended the post with a look at my boxtopper - willie crawford's 1975 topps card bought back and stamped

and since then i've picked up some others. 

my primary focus since 2019 has been to track down buybacks of the infield, and i've had mixed results. in 2019 (1970), only bill russell had a card and i found one easily. in 2020 (1971) i only found russell's card and i am not sure that there are any buybacks of steve garvey's rookie. in 2021 (1972) i found exactly none of the cards as russell, garvey, and ron cey all had high numbered cards in the psychedelic tombstone set. in 2022 (1973), i found russell and garvey, but not cey or davey lopes who were both featured on three-player rookie cards. finally, last year (1974) i was able to collect buybacks for each of the infielders, although garvey's card was only available as a "mvp autograph" buyback.

this year, i've seen exactly one steve garvey base card offered in buyback form and it went for about triple what i paid for his 1973 buyback two years ago. i did pick up his other two cards from the set - the mvp

and nlcs

subset cards - for what were decent prices. ron cey's card

set me back more than i had hoped, but there were others i saw offered that went for much more so i am not complaining.

bill russell's card

was the first i obtained, and was the cheapest of them all. here's davey lopes' card

to round out the infield. next year lopes will have three cards that could be offered as buybacks - his base, record breaker, and league leader cards - and i will take a shot at all of them.

had i not received crawford's card in my box, i probably wouldn't have allowed myself to purchase any other dodger. but i did and so i did. to date, i've added al downing

von joshua

andy messersmith

manny mota

tom paciorek

and world series game 2

featuring joe ferguson returning to the dugout after his home run. it's worth noting that garvey was just a few feet behind the dodger outfielder when the photo was taken as he was on first base when ferguson took vida blue deep.

that does it for buybacks, for now. i am keeping an eye out for another garvey and i was watching a don sutton card but the seller wouldn't budge from their high buy it now price. i did pick up sutton's "other" box topper - the oversized one

because it features a certain dodger first baseman lurking in the background.

in non-boxtopper news, i've completed the dodger team set, non-sp edition. here are some of the latecomers to my collection - joe kelly

shohei ohtani, who inexplicably does not get the bobby murcer all-star treatment

mookie betts

freddie freeman

walker buehler

bobby miller

and will smith

miller's card seems to have the background filter applied less liberally than the others, and looks more like clayton kershaw's short print highlights card

i still need freddie freeman's short print highlights card, but i did pick up his blue sparkle chrome parallel

along with that of emmet sheehan

and kershaw

i went a bit further with kershaw, addiing his chrome refractor

chrome base and chrome hot box purple refractor

as well. i don't understand why topps decided to shoehorn the serial numbering onto the front of the card this year. it doesn't fit. 

here's another hot box parallel of sheehan

and betts

for good measure.

this is our 25th year of heritage, and each year i look forward to the "then & now" inserts. it used to be because of the dodgers of the 50's and 60's, but now we are getting into the timeline where "my guys" might show up. until they do, there are two dodger cards to collect and i've added them both. 

shohei ohtani shares the card with fred lynn

celebrating the american league slugging percentage leaders

and he also appears with mike schmidt

on a card that recognizes the 1975 national league home run leaders and the 2023 american league home run leaders. reggie jackson led the al in '75 and matt olson led the nl in '23, so not sure why this card exists in this fashion. in fact, both cards celebrate feats achieved by ohtani as an angel so i am even less certain as to why he is shown as a dodger.

a couple more inserts i picked up include betts

and kershaw

mirroring each other as new age performers.

i already showed the dusty baker mini card i picked up, and it came with kershaw's

although i have no desire to complete the team set.

bringing the post back to buybacks, here's a 2014 topps 75th anniversary buyback of jimmie hall's 1966 topps card

i am really looking forward to the buybacks in 2027, but as i mentioned previously there will be some nice ones to chase next year as well.

the second show successes

last saturday, i wrote about the choices i had in card shows the previous weekend. i ended the post with a note that i was heading to the second show of the day - the monthly club show. i didn't bother going to the third show option i had (the mall show), but did find some cards to take home at the club show. take a look...

i had mentioned that the church show wasn't too crowded, and the attendance in terms of both sellers and buyers was down at this show as well., and there were some regular sellers that i didn't see at either show. one guy who was at this one was the guy who always has a couple of dime boxes under his super disorganized table. he's the guy who also sells a dime box for a friend, so you have to keep the cards separate, but he doesn't tell you this until the end. anyway, this time his friend's box was a quarter box so i guess it was at least distinguishable from the dime boxes. i wound up with 17 cards for $2.

the dime box focus was rookies, and i found a 2018 panini donruss optic walker buehler holo prizm parallel

for the dodger collection plus a variety of other rookie cards, including these nine

the quarter box had a hall of famer theme, and i took a burleigh grimes card and this cal ripken jr oddball

home with me. this card is from a 1996 classic cal ripken jr baseball's all-time ironman set. it's the certifcate of limited edition card, to be exact, and it certifies that "only" 21,310 sets were made

and i am just learning that the "king of collectibles" was the chairman and ceo of the score board.

i continued around the room and stopped at a table that had a few dollar boxes out. the seller was chatty, in a good way, so i went through the boxes and wound up with 53 cards for $45. only nine cards were dodgers, but they were all needs

ranging from a rainbow foil parallel of joc pederson's 2015 topps rookie card to a 2023 topps black & white james outman rookie card. as you can tell, there was a lot of online product in these boxes. i wound up with more than dodgers

and of course there is a color background parallel in a black & white set. the outlier there is the topps tribute sixto sanchez green parallel, and it represents a number of numbered parallels that were available. one of the first i came across was this 2020 topps uk nick castellanos purple parallel

which is numbered to 50. the lowest number i saw in the boxes was 25 which is not bad for a dollar box. i also grabbed some sort of george brett oddball

i believe spot-bilt is now saucony, but i could be wrong. it's shoes, anyway.

the next stop i made was at a table that was staffed by a younger seller who i recognized from years of attending these shows. he has gone from a collector at the shows to having tables of his own, which is something. anyway, he had dollar boxes or 10 for $8 and i decided to take a look. then i saw buybacks.

topps heritage buybacks

topps 75th anniversary buybacks

topps originals buybacks

topps 65th anniversary buybacks

and rediscover topps buybacks

i had actually hoped to find some 2024 topps heritage buybacks at the show, but i really didn't see any new heritage product. however, with this array of buybacks, i was so certain i was going to stumble across a 2015 topps originals 1978 elias sosa or terry forster or tommy lasorda buyback that i couldn't get through the boxes fast enough. i didn't find any of those most wanted buybacks, but i did find a bunch of others that i liked.

for some reason, i dig stamped buybacks. in all, i took 54 cards from this seller for $45. 43 were buybacks, and the other 11 included a variety of stuff like 2014 topps future stars short print variations.

good stuff.

the last purchase at the club show was a lot of six 1955 bowman cards for $13. one of the cards was earl torgeson

who is trying to figure out how to get out of tv land.

what a fun way to spend a saturday morning! i think next weekend i'll tell you about the huge show i went to last weekend. stay tuned!