frankendodger sheet 58 (cards 514-522) - 22% canadian...

here's sheet number 58 of my dodger frankenset - cards numbered 514-522:

and the back:

these cards are:

514. 1967 topps john werhas
515. 1973 o-pee-chee andy messersmith
516. 1994 topps kevin gross
517. 2002 upper deck kazuhisa ishii
518. 1988 fleer orel hershiser
519. 1971 o-pee-chee willie crawford
520. 1994 upper deck chan ho park
521. 1980 topps ken brett
522. 1972 topps dodgers team

the "no brainer" of the day:

that would be george brett's older brother's card - the only dodger card of ken brett issued during his playing days.

about the cards:

this duplicate of john werhas's 1967 topps card has a big ol' crease running across it. that's ok - it is a frankenset, after all.  the card is from the 6th series, but for some reason does not list werhas as a member of the california angels - the team to which he was traded to in may of '67.

the first of two o-pee-chee cards on the page is andy messersmith's 1973 card. if you look closely at the back,

you will see that while bill remains bill, and mike remains mike, andy translates to "andy" in french.

kevin gross is up next with his 1994 topps card. i think 1994 topps is one of their better releases of that decade. i didn't think much of it at the time, but that had a lot to do with the excessive glossiness of the cards.  i think with a couple of tweaks (the card stock and the font of the players' names), the design could be pretty solid, and i do like the backs.

kaz ishii was supposed to be a lefty hideo nomo, but wound up being more like a lefty hideki irabu.  that's probably not entirely fair, but he did walk a bunch of people.  i like this 2002 upper deck card because it showcases dodger stadium, complete with the retired number outfield wall murals (that's tommy lasorda to ishii's left), in the background.

the red, white, and blue design of 2002 upper deck is not as gaudy as that of 1988 fleer.  putting cards of orel hershiser from 1988 into the set just feels right, regardless of the card design.

now here's the second canadian card of the page - a 1971 o-pee-chee willie crawford card.  it's a little rough, but it's a dupe, and i am a fan of the yellow backs and the starburst head shot that makes these cards different from their topps counterparts.  and, in case you are wondering, willie is just willie in french - no quotations marks.

this chan ho park card is from the 'diamond debuts' subset in 1994 upper deck.  i assumed that the silhouette on the front was just a generic pitcher, but comparing the photo of park on the back to it, i now believe it is actually park. that's a level of effort that upper deck stopped aspiring to in their last few years producing baseball cards.

and now we have ken brett's 1980 topps card.  he was a good hitter, and he actually hit for himself in a game for the white sox during the 1976 season, rather than give way to a designated hitter.  the chisox also used him as a pinch-hitter a number of times.  i always thought that tommy lasorda should have used terry forster as a pinch-hitter more often, but i guess he had a couple of pinch-hitting specialists (manny mota and vic davalillo) on the roster already.  at any rate, the dodgers did not use brett as a pinch-hitter at all, although he was 3 for 11 at the plate during his time with them in 1979.

one of the things that i like about the 1972 topps dodger team card is that the photo looks like it was taken from the top of the 3rd base dugout at dodger stadium. you can see the low right field railing giving way to the bullpen in the background, and the dirt in front of the dugout in the foreground. it also looks like the visiting team is on the field and taking batting practice. it all makes for a more interesting card than the other team cards that followed with the more organized or staged photos taken in the outfield.

cards that didn't make the cut:

1983 donruss mark belanger at number 514, 1976 topps steve yeager at number 515, 1991 topps stadium club ramon martinez at number 516, 1992 bowman orel hershiser at number 517, 2003 upper deck 40 man hideo nomo at number 518. 1984 donruss dave sax

at number 519, 1994 fleer mike piazza at number 520, 1961 topps brother battery (norm and larry sherry)

at number 521, and 1961 dick farrell

at number 522.

my favorite card on the page:

the card i keep going back to here is the kaz ishii card. i just really like seeing the dodger stadium outfield pavilions and murals on cardboard, i guess.

final thoughts:

did you notice how much better topps had become at airbrushing the interlocking la logo onto hats between 1973

and 1980?

that is great progress!

frankendodger sheet 40 (cards 352-360) - bookended by a pair of 31 hall of famers...

i've updated this page since the original post ran.

here's sheet number 40 of my dodger frankenset - cards numbered 352-360:

and the back:

here's what the page originally looked like:

these cards are:

352. 2001 topps archives hoyt wilhelm
353. 1992 classic best ken huckaby 1994 pinnacle ramon martinez
354. 2005 donruss diamond kings kazuhisa ishii
355. 1994 upper deck orel hershiser
356. 1989 score jesse orosco
357. 2012 topps aaron harang
358. 1962 topps tommy davis
359. 2003 topps chrome dave roberts
360. 1996 upper deck mike piazza

the "no brainer" of the day:

hoyt wilhelm has just one card from his playing days as a dodger, and it's his 1972 topps card.  this reprint of that card issued as part of the 2001 topps archives set was a no brainer to make the set.

about the cards:

another thing about the wilhelm card, his 1972 topps card was numbered 777 (as you can see in the above scan) which puts it outside the parameters of this set.  so, i was happy that the archives reprint numbered it at 352.  i won't blow up the back of the card to show you the number as i did with the 1952 jackie robinson reprint from the same set - you'll just have to trust me.  wilhelm made his debut in 1952 against the dodgers, facing pee wee reese, billy cox, roy campanella, jackie robinson, and duke snider in his initial inning of work, and finished his hall of fame career as a dodger 20 years later. in between, he appeared in a record 1,070 games as a pitcher. as implied by the title of this post, wilhelm wore number 31 during his stint as a dodger.

ken huckaby was a dodger catching prospect who was in the dodger organization through the 1997 season. he didn't make his big league debut until 2001, nine years after this 1992 classic best minor league card was issued.  he never suited up for the dodgers, but i like this card and the holman stadium seats in the background.  really, the only criteria for a card being eligible for this set is that its number is less than 727 and it be considered a dodger card.  huckaby's card meets both.

ken huckaby's 1992 classic best card has given way to ramon martinez's 1994 pinnacle card. aside from being a major league card of a player that actually played for the dodgers, it features a fairly unique photo of martinez studying a slide. it also makes the top two rows of the sheet an exclusively pitcher's zone.

kaz ishii was no longer with the dodgers when this 2005 diamond kings card came out, having been traded to the mets for jason phillips straight up.  ishii went 13-8 in 2004, his third season with the dodgers, but his era had jumped almost a full run to 4.71, and his k/9 ratio had gone from just under 9 to just over 5.  it was time to cut bait.

while ishii was banished to flushing meadows, the 1994 upper deck set banished players to the phantom zone with the skewed photo on the side bar.  bowman used a similar technique in their 1995 set, but upper deck does it better.  i liked this set a lot and it was the first upper deck set that i set out to complete.  it was also the smallest upper deck set to date.  anyway, i really like the hershiser card here because it features the old corrugated fiberglass walls of the dodger stadium bullpens that my brother and i used to stand above and watch the likes of don sutton, burt hooton, and (far too often) doug rau warm up before games.  i mean that it seemed like rau was the starting pitcher for a lot of the games we attended, not that he was used too often.

speaking of being used often, jesse orosco who appears here on a 1989 score card currently holds the record for most games pitched at 1,252.  he wasn't the one who broke wilhelm's record (that was dennis eckersley who pitched in 1,071 games), but he sure did pass it. the closest active pitcher is francisco rodriguez, who has appeared in 887 games.  aaron harang appeared in only 387 games during his career which may or may not have ended last season, and only 6 of those appearances were in relief.  we were given this 2012 topps card during his 10-10 season with the dodgers in 2011 (his only season with the dodgers).  in his second start for the club, harang set a dodger record by striking out 9 consecutive batters. he k'd 13 total that night, and dodger pitchers tied a team record for a ninie inning game by striking out their opponent 18 times.  of course, they almost lost the game.

tommy davis's 1962 topps card is one of my favorite dodgers from the set, due in large part to the way his pose fits the image space.  speaking of which, he's got the same pose as gino cimoli had on his 1958 topps card, but topps let davis keep his bat.  as an aside, i am ashamed to mention how long it took me to really look at the 1962 design and see that it was supposed to reflect a rectangular photo posted on a piece of wood (fence?). i had not noticed the curl as part of the image until the late 1990's.

the page's penultimate card features the current dodger manager not looking at his base coach while running on a 2003 topps chrome card.  that's ok because it looks like the play is in front of him, and we all know that dave roberts was ok on the basepaths.  the final card features one of this year's hall of fame inductees taking a cut on his 1996 upper deck card.  again, as the title of the post implies, mike piazza wore the same number as hoyt wilhelm, 31.  this is not the first time that two hall of famers wore the same number for the dodgers (both frank robinson and greg maddux wore number 36, for example), but the number still won't be retired by the club until joc pederson gets voted in to the hall.  hey, it could happen.

cards that didn't make the cut:

1983 topps mike scioscia at number 352, 1992 classic best ken huckaby

at number 353, 1996 upper deck ramon martinez at number 354, 2007 upper deck chad billingsley at number 355, 1991 upper deck jose offerman at number 356, 1991 score jim poole

at number 357, 1997 fleer roger cedeno at number 358, 2005 topps chrome jd drew at number 359, and 2005 upper deck jayson werth

at number 360.

my favorite card on the page:

the 1994 upper deck hershiser card wins for this page, thanks to the blue bullpen background and despite the phantom zone card design.

final thoughts:

looking at this sheet now, i am pretty sure that huckaby is not long for the set.  as i mentioned above, pretty much the only requisite to be eligible for this set is to be on a card that is considered a dodger card, and while the huckaby card fits that description as far as i am concerned, there will likely be a change. not that i am opposed to minor league sets - they are part of my dodger collection, after all - but that pinnacle martinez card is a pretty good one.

yep, so good that i've made the switch from huckaby to martinez.

frankendodger sheet 12 (cards 100-108) - the hero number gets updated to avoid an exemption from the earlier rule...

i've updated this page since the original post ran.

here's sheet number 12 of my dodger frankenset - cards numbered 100-108:

and the back:

here's what the page originally looked like:

these cards are:

100. 2013 topps opening day matt kemp 1990 bowman hubie brooks
101. 2013 topps heritage don mattingly
102. 2008 upper deck derek lowe
103. 2003 upper deck mvp kazuhisa ishii
104. 1995 leaf ramón martinez
105. 1963 topps ron fairly
106. 1962 post willie davis
107. 1996 upper deck sp chan ho park
108. 1980 o-pee-chee dave goltz

the "no brainer" of the day:

i love me some o-pee-chee variations, and i really wanted that dave goltz card in the set.

about the cards:

so, it's matt kemp who makes the first repeat appearance in the frankenset at the hero number of 100.

as i mentioned in the "final thoughts" of this original post, i was a bit miffed that i had not used the hubie brooks bowman card at number 100 in order to maintain the diversity of the set.  so, i made the switch from kemp to brooks.  brooks is not really a hero number kind of guy, but i'll have other opportunities to line up big numbers with big players.

i wanted to have at least one card of every manager from alston on up, so the mattingly card fits in nicely here (over alston, actually).

lowe and ishii are convenient fillers, but i can't believe it's taken 12 pages to get to ramon martinez.  i learned about ron fairly early in my baseball following days due to the fact that he used to wear garvey's number, and he was an announcer for the angels on ktla (pretty sure) after he retired.  i like his colorful 1963 topps card, and it looks great in the set as its first representative.

for the second day in a row, there's a davis on the page.  willie shows up on his 1962 post card - the first blank back in the set i believe (it's tough to keep track).  willie doesn't seem to get a lot of hype, even though he is among the career leaders in so many los angeles dodger categories.  i suspect it has to do with the struggles he had following his retirement and his lack of continuous involvement with the team like some other former players.

chan ho park and dave goltz finish off the page.  chan ho never won more than 18 games in a season, while dave was a 21-game winner in 1977.  i know that wins are not the best measure of a pitcher, especially to compare across generations, but i would think that both pitchers disappointed dodger fans to some degree - park never really lived up to his potential, and goltz never got back to his best days.  still, i was pretty excited when goltz signed with the dodgers and caused that fantastic o-pee-chee card to be created.

cards that didn't make the cut:

part of the reason for kemp originally showing up again was the fact that most of the other options at #100 included koufax or snider or nomo or piazza - guys that have already been included in the set.  however, i could have used (and have still can, i suppose) a 1990 bowman hubie brooks card to maintain the diversity of the set.  if anyone cares to send me one, i might consider it.

other cards passed over include walter alston's 1964 topps card at #101,

chin-feng chen's 2001 topps heritage card, also at #101, 1995 topps stadium club paul konerko at #102, 1968 topps don sutton at #103, 1978 topps lee lacy at #104 (in fact, i could have used either a 1978 topps card (lacy), a 1979 topps card (johnny oates), a 1980 topps card (manny mota), or a 1981 topps card (terry forster) at #104 - supporting my theory about checklist perpetuation?), a 1960 topps larry sherry at #105, a 2000 topps stadium club devon white at #106,

a 1988 pacific zoilo versalles at #107, and a 2004 playoff absolute memorabilia rickey henderson at #108.

my favorite card on the page:

it's the goltz card.

final thoughts:

i am a little bit bothered by that hubie brooks omission.  i think i meant to use a different card from 1990 bowman elsewhere in the set (the dodgers are numbered sequentially in that set), but wound up not doing so, and then forgot that it was then available at #100.  this post may get updated at some point...

and so it has.