a smattering of dodger cards

it is time again for a post of random dodger cards from my collection, and more importantly, from my scanned file.  we'll start with darryl strawberry on a 1974 topps design from 1992 sports collector's digest

prior to archives or heritage, this was the only way we saw the stars (or disappointments) of today on the designs of yesterday.

1993 topps stadium club dodgers pedro martinez

and mike sharperson

with the dodgers playing the rangers, and delino deshields jr being on the rangers, vin scully told a story about the pedro martinez/delino deshields trade last night during the telecast.  he noted that when traveling secretary billy delury (who passed away earlier this year) called deshields to tell him he was now a dodger, his congratulatory remarks were met with a baby crying in the background and deshields saying "even the baby thinks it was a bad trade".  vin finished the story by noting that the crying baby was delino deshields jr, and so i miss regularly hearing vin call games even more.

1999 upper deck chan ho park

1999 was an off year for park - his era was well over 5 - but he still managed 13 wins.  he was only 25, and i thought he would eventually be the team's ace.  i was wrong.

2000 pacific invincible eric gagne

my favorite pacific release ever.  crazy cards and inserts.

2001 topps tom goodwin

from his second stint with the dodgers

2002 upper deck ultimate collection gary sheffield

just when you get comfortable with sheff on your favorite team thanks to his .998 ops over four years, he demands a trade.

2003 bowman chrome eric riggs

not to be confused with late 90's prospect adam riggs.  this riggs didn't make it to the majors, unfortunately.

2003 upper deck honor roll kazuhisa ishii

ishii had an era under 4 in 2003 despite a whip over 1.50 and a walks allowed total of 101 in 147 innings.  he had similar whip and walk totals the previous year, when his era was 4.27.  those kinds of numbers usually don't earn you a spot on the honor roll.

2003 topps retired signature tom lasorda

manager cards with inset photos are tough, because there just isn't much variation in managerial photographs.  here, topps opted for similar poses, but the inset picture comes from an earlier point in tommy's time as the club's manager. on a side note, anytime topps wants to bring this set back, i'm in, although i don't think they can issue a set featuring solely non-active players anymore.  too bad for us.

a boxscore from the team of my youth and other cards from hsca

there were plenty of cards to like in the package that brian from highly subjective and completely arbitrary sent my way as part of his group trade break, even before getting to the trade break bounty.  i've shown some of them already, but there are more.  like this card, which comes from the 2004 topps world series highlights insert set

that's dusty baker pounding a home run in game one of the 1978 world series against the yankees.   the back is even better, as it shows the box score from the game.

it's great to see that lineup on the card.  it's a bit different than the batting order i remember from my youth because of the designated hitter, but the starting lineup of lopes, russell, smith, garvey, cey, monday, baker, and yeager is the lineup that i consider to be the definitive lineup of the team of my youth.  as an aside, davey lopes should have been featured thanks to his two home runs in this game.  it's still hard to believe that the dodgers won this game and game 2 (thanks bobby welch), but then lost four in a row to lose the series.

on to the group trade break stuff - 1996 pinnacle tim wallach

and ramon martinez

i like ramon's card a lot.

here's his brother, pedro, on a 2002 topps gallery heritage insert

plus a couple of base cards of shawn green

and hideo nomo

from the set.  the nomo card makes it look like he's a giant standing in a farmer's field near the coast.

paul loduca is definitely in dodger stadium on his 2003 topps stadium club card

while franklin gutierrez is in vero beach's holman stadium on his

that's a gold parallel, by the way, as is this sean pierce card

pierce never made it out of the minors, but gutierrez went on to win a gold glove and set a record for errorless chances in the outfield for the mariners in 2010.  after missing the 2014 season due to illness, gutierrez is currently in triple-a for the m's trying to work his way back to the bigs.

here are a couple more cards that weren't part of the trade break, but they are shiny so they get some time on the blog.

2015 topps heritage clayton kershaw holofoil

and 1992 upper deck denny's grand slam kal daniels

daniels hit four of his five grand slams as a dodger, and was only 28 when his career ended. if only he had good knees!

thanks brian!

is it possible to complete a 1996 fleer dodger team set from just two packs? and for just 50 cents?

while wallet card and i were at the local card shop, i found some loose packs marked at a quarter apiece. among them were some packs of 1996 fleer dodgers cards.

with 10 cards per pack, and 20 cards in the team set, i wondered - could i complete a team set with just two packs?

here's the checklist of the then defending nl west champions

and here's the back of that card

which is pretty much the same as the front of the logo card

whose back looks like this

the background on those cards kind of reminds me of 1995 fleer in a way.

as for the 18 players in the set, here is what their cards look like

a complete team set, although it took 5 packs to get there.  i think there was a mike blowers card in four of the five packs, and only one hideo nomo card.  for some reason, todd worrell was also tough to come by in my small sample size.  still, a team set for $1.25 is not too shabby.

hand me downs that fit my collection perfectly

i used to receive hand me down clothes from my cousins in the late 1970's.  that was a dangerous time for hand me downs due to the many strange fashions of the time. these days, my hand me downs come in the way of cards, and night owl's unwanted cards are among the ones i appreciate the most.

thanks to the large number of folks who send cards to night owl, he accumulates lots of cool dodger doubles, and so i wind up with some nice hand me downs. should i say hand me downs again, or just show some cards?  right.

2011 topps roy campanella cognac parallel

the mustache was not a good look for campy.  my favorite thing about these retired player short print cards in 2011 was the dirty/aged baseball topps used behind the logo.  it was a nice touch.

2011 topps jonathan broxton diamond anniversary parallel

i must have missed the trade last year that sent broxton from cincinnati to milwaukee.  it's good to see his k/9 ratio is back up with the brew crew, but so is his era, unfortunately.

2008 topps chrome andruw jones xfractor

even andruw jones dodger cards are welcome.  i'm not entirely sure night owl had a double of this one - he may just have wanted andruw out of his house.

2011 bowman platinum prospects allen webster xfractor

webster was part of the big 2012 trade between the dodgers and the red sox. he started 18 games for boston over the 2013 and 2014 seasons, and is now in the diamondbacks organization.

it's not all parallels and shiny stuff that comes from night owl - there are other cool cards like this 1989 jj nissen superstars orel hershiser oddball

jj nissen is a bread company, by the way.

i even accept junk (or is this just trash) cards like this 1995 fleer ramon martinez card

it's still a dodger card, and it might just be one that i need.

here's a 1998 fleer metal universe card of catcher henry blanco

actually, blanco never caught for the dodgers.  he made his big league debut with the dodgers in 1997 and hit a single in his first at bat and a home run in his third, and played third base and first - not catcher.  he spent 1998 in the minors and then began a ten-team journey through the major leagues that lasted through the 2013 season.

here's another backstop who actually did catch for the dodgers - todd hundley on a 1999 upper deck victory card

hundley had two stints with the dodgers, the second of which was pretty bad.

2003 donruss diamond kings odalis perez silver foil parallel

perez was actually worthy of being a diamond king following the 2002 season. he posted the best numbers of his career, winning 15 games with an era of 3.00 and a whip of 0.99.  he also gave us a ball during a game in anaheim in 2006.

2002 topps roy campanella 1952 reprints

and so the post comes full circle, although this is a clean shaven campy.

i've got more night owl hand me downs to show some other time, and i'm pulling together some of my own to send back his way.  thanks greg!

sunday morning target dodgers

let's dive right into another sheet of 15 dodger cards from the 1990 target 100th anniversary giveaway set.  actually, only 14 cards. i found another dodger double dipper.

del bissonette

i am guessing that bissonette is wearing a portland pilots uniform. that was the team that he managed in his home state of maine in the late 1940's. before that, however, he was a ballplayer touted as a babe ruth type talent, largely because he was both a left-handed pitcher and a skilled batter.  he hurt his arm at some point before signing with brooklyn, and so focused solely on hitting.  as a rookie for the robins in 1928, bissonette played in a league-leading 155 games, and hit .320 with 25 home runs and 106 rbi.  he was the robins' first baseman for the next three seasons as well, and after his first four years in the majors, bissonette owned a .308 career batting average with a .376 on-base percentage and a ops of .870. not ruthian, but not bad, either.  unfortunately, bissonette severed his achilles tendon in a spring training volleyball mishap in 1932, and he missed the entire season. he was back in 1933, but underperformed and was traded away.  he failed in his attempts to return to the majors, and eventually went into managing - both at the minor and major league level.

billy earle

earle was an early version of craig biggio for the 1894 brooklyn grooms.  he played both catcher and second base (and had played outfield and other infield positions for teams earlier in his career) while hitting .340 in 50 at bats.  although he was just 26 when the season ended, and he owned a .286 lifetime average in addition to his positional flexibility, earle did not continue to play in the majors after his brooklyn experience.  some believe that this was due to his penchant for studying things such as hypnosis which made his teammates uncomfortable.

duke farrell

farrell was a member of the brooklyn superbas for four of his 18 years in the big leagues, playing for them from 1899-1902.  he helped the superbas win the pennant in 1899 and 1900, and then played for the first world champions in 1903 - the boston pilgrims.

freddie fitzsimmons

fitzsimmons finished his 19-year career with 7 in  brooklyn.  he pitched for the dodgers from midway in the 1937 season through 1943, amassing a record of 47-32 in that time.  his best season by far was 1940 when he was 16-2 with a save in 20 appearances (18 starts), finishing fifth in the league mvp voting.  the following season, fitzsimmons helped the dodgers return to the world series for the first time since 1920, and earned a no-decision in game 3 of the fall classic despite pitching 7 scoreless innings against the yankees.

joe gallagher

gallagher joined the dodgers during the 1940 season, and played in 57 games for them.  he hit .264 with 3 homers and 16 rbi during that time.  when 1941 rolled around, gallagher enlisted in the armed forces rather than return to the diamond.  he did return to baseball following world war ii, and roomed with jackie robinson at montreal in 1946.

jay howell

howell was obtained by the dodgers prior to the 1988 season, and he formed a closer tandem with jesse orosco in their championship season.  unlike orosco, howell remained with the team for a few seasons, saving a total of 85 games for the dodgers from '88 through 1992.

bill lohrman

lohrman was a dodger for less than a calendar year. he was obtained in a trade with the new york giants in july of 1943 and dealt to the reds in may of 1944.  in between, lohrman pitched in 9 games for the dodgers, going 0-2 with 2 complete games in 2 starts.

lew malone

you know what those checkered uniforms mean...yes, malone was a member of the 1917 brooklyn robins.  he appeared in only one game that season (as a pinch-runner), but returned in 1919 to play in 51 games for the robins.

buck marrow

marrow pitched for the dodger in 1937 and 1938.  in 21 appearances, he had a cumulative record of 1-3 with a 5.50 era.

teddy martinez

martinez was a member of the team of my youth, playing for the dodgers from 1977 through 1979. he played 3 of the four infield positions (no first base for teddy), and spelled ron cey, bill russell, and davey lopes for a total of 202 games during his tenure with the dodgers. a veteran of two postseasons prior to joining the dodgers, martinez did not appear in either the 1977 or 1978 playoffs or world series.

al nixon

nixon played in 21 games for the robins over the 1915, 1916, and 1918 seasons. he hit .333 over those games, but didn't play in the majors again until 1921 when he was a member of the boston braves.

jorge orta

orta joined the dodgers prior to the 1982 season in the deal that sent rick sutcliffe to cleveland, and the dodgers traded him to the mets for pat zachry a little over a year later. in his lone season in los angeles, orta hit .217 in 86 games.  despite what his card above says, orta played zero games for the dodgers as an infielder.

willie ramsdell

ramsdell was a knuckleball pitcher (hence his nickame - willie the knuck) who debuted for the dodgers as a 31-year old rookie in 1947.  he was 1-1 that season in two games, and then went 4-4 for the dodgers in 1948 while appearing in 27 games.  he had a cumulative era of 5.26 over those two seasons, but when he returned to the majors in 1950, he posted an era of 2.84 in his five apparances for the dodgers.  ramsdell later pitched for the reds and cubs, and in june of 1952, he pitched the last 6.2 innings for the cubbies in a game against the dodgers in which carl erskine threw a no-hitter.  oisk missed a perfect game by walking one batter in the third inning.  that batter was willie ramsdell.

mike sandlock

sandlock played for the dodgers in 1945 and 1946.  he appeared in a career high 80 games in 1945, playing primarily at catcher and, of all places, shortstop.  he hit .282 that season, but just .147 the next, and didn't appear in the majors again until 1953 when he was with the pirates.  sandlock is currently 99 years old, and is quite possibly the oldest living major leaguer.

the 15th player from the sheet will show up a bit later today.  stay tuned.