sunday morning target dodgers - featuring giants, astros, and yankees, too

let's get right to this week's 15 cards from a sheet in the 1990 target dodgers giveaway set.

bob bailor

bailor was part of the return the dodgers received when they sent sid fernandez to the mets prior to the 1984 season.  he spent two years in los angeles, hitting .261 in 139 games as a utility player.  his final appearance in the big leagues came in the 1985 nlcs against the cardinals.

billy bean

bean (who is a different billy bean(e) than the a's general manager) played in 51 games as a dodger in 1989. he hit only .197 and spent the next two seasons in albuquerque.  he was picked up by the angels, but didn't return to the majors until 1993 when he was with the padres.  he retired from baseball in 1995, and a few years after that acknowledged that he is gay.  bean was recently selected by commissioner bud selig to lead major league baseball's efforts towards inclusion, providing guidance and training to help combat prejudice, homophobia, and sexism in baseball.

al campanis

campanis appeared in 7 games for the 1943 brooklyn dodgers, getting 2 hits in 20 at bats.  the photo used for his card, however, comes from his time as the team's general manager, a position he held from 1969 into 1987 when he was essentially forced to resign following an appearance on 'nightline' in which he stated that african americans "may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager" when asked why there were so few minority managers in the big leagues 40 years after jackie robinson broke the color barrier as a player.  as the dodgers' gm, campanis oversaw the teams that won four pennants and a world series, and even traded his own son to kansas city early in his tenure.

hank deberry

deberry was a catcher for the robins from 1922 through 1930, having been acquired from the new orleans pelicans in the same deal that brought dazzy vance to the robins.  he never appeared in more than 85 games in a season, but he became vance's personal catcher.  as such, he caught vance's no-hitter in 1925, and helped vance lead the league in strikeouts for seven straight seasons.  overall, deberry hit .267 in 608 games for the robins and later moved on to coaching, joining the new york giants in 1934 (hence the uniform he is wearing in the photo used on his card above).  he was a manager in the giants' organization in 1938, and then scouted for the giants until his passing in 1951.

alan foster

in his first 7 big league games (which included 5 starts and spanned the 1967 and 1968 seasons), foster was 1-2 for the dodgers despite an era of 1.95, a whip of 0.804, and a strikeout to walk ratio of 5.  over the next two seasons, foster was 13-22 in 57 games with a 4.30 era and a whip of 1.424, and his ratio was a mere 1.29.  he was traded to the indians in the duke sims deal prior to the 1971 season, and may be best remembered as the pitcher who served up the first home run to be hit out of dodger stadium (willie stargell accomplished the feat against foster in 1969).

merwin jacobson

jacobson was an outfielder who had a couple of short stints in the majors with the giants and the cubs in 1915 and 1916, respectively before resurfacing with the robins in 1926. he played in 110 games that season, hitting .247, but went hitless in 11 games (7 plate appearances) for brooklyn in 1927.  jacobson did his best work in between his major league seasons, playing mostly for baltimore of the international league from 1917 to 1925.  he hit over .300 every season between 1919 and 1925, including a .404 clip in 1920.  he is a member of the international league hall of fame.

bob lillis

lillis was signed by the brooklyn dodgers as a 21-year old in 1951, but he didn't make it to the big leagues until the age of 28 when he suited up for the 1958 los angeles dodgers.  as a shortstop, lillis saw  limited playing time, but hit .391 in the 20 games in which he did play that first year.  he continued to see a little bit of playing time in 1959 and 1960 (he did not appear in the 1959 world series), and after just 19 appearances in 1961, lillis was traded to the cardinals for daryl spencer.  after that season ended, he was drafted by the colt .45's in the expansion draft and finished his career in houston.  he retired as a player in 1967 and became an astro coach, a role he returned to in the early 1970's following a few years as a scout.  in the early 1980's lillis managed the club for a few seasons before joining roger craig's coaching staff in san francisco.

jim lyttle

lyttle had been released by the expos in july of 1976 after three-plus seasons in montreal that followed time with the yankees and white sox.  the dodgers were in need of an outfielder since reggie smith was injured in early august, and so they picked lyttle up to fill the void.  he wound up appearing in 23 games as a dodger over the remainder of the 1976 season, replacing both smith and later dusty baker in the outfield.  he hit .221 with no home runs and wound up finding great success in the japan league beginning in 1977.

mike marshall

there are only six pitchers who have every pitched in 90 games or more in a single season, and mike marshall (along with kent tekulve) has done it 3 times.  marshall, however, is the only pitcher to have pitched in over 100 games, having thrown in 106 contests during the 1974 season.  he won the national league cy young award that year, and helped the dodgers reach the world series for the first time since 1966 as well.  marshall broke his own record of 92 games, set the previous season when he was with the expos.  he is a doctor of kinesiology, and today provides training to pitchers in the hopes of reducing strain and injury through what are considered to be untraditional pitching motions.

joe mulvey

in 1895, mulvey appeared in 13 games for the brooklyn grooms, hitting .306 in the process.  that season marked the end of a 12-year big league career, spent mostly in philadelphia.

ron perranoski

perranoski was a dodger double dipper, appearing in a total of 457 games as a dodger.  his best season was 1963 when he was 16-3 with a 1.67 era and 21 "saves" while pitching exclusively in relief.  he finished fourth in the league mvp voting that year.

rick rhoden

rhoden was a member of the team of my youth, and was only 25 when the dodgers traded him to the pirates for jerry reuss.  rhoden had a record of 42-24 as a dodger, with a 3.40 era when he was traded following the 1978 world series.  he went on to pitch pretty well for the pirates and later the yankees, but never did make it back to the postseason.  besides being a decent starting pitcher, rhoden could hit - he had a career average of .238 with 9 home runs and 3 silver slugger awards.  he remains to this day the only pitcher to get a start as a designated hitter in a game.  oh, by the way, i am pretty sure that those are steve garvey's legs getting a cameo on the card.

vince sherlock

sherlock's big league career consisted of 9 games played for the 1935 brooklyn dodgers.  in those games, he was 12 for 26 with a walk and 6 rbi, meaning that he boasts a .462 lifetime batting average, and a career on base percentage of .481.  among players with at least 16 plate appearances in their career, sherlock ranks third in batting average behind cliff dapper (another former dodger), and troy mattes, a pitcher for the expos in 2001.

george shuba

shotgun shuba played for the brooklyn dodgers from 1948 through 1955, although he spent the entire 1951 season in the minors.  he may be best remembered for shaking jackie robinson's hand in 1946 when they were teammates at montreal and jackie hit a home run in his first game as a royal.  although he played in the minors for a couple more seasons, shuba's big league career ended with the dodgers' world series victory in 1955.  shuba passed away just three weeks ago at the age of 89.

kemp wicker

wicker was 1-2 with a "save" in 16 games pitched for the 1941 brooklyn dodgers.  he had previously been with the yankees where he was a part of the 1936 and 1937 world championship teams that defeated the new york giants in the world series. after the 1941 season, the dodgers traded wicker to the cardinals, but he did not make it out of their minor league system.

well, that's another sheet of cards accounted for.  more to come next week.

two scoops of baseball tips

there are only about 12 weeks until pitchers and catchers report, so i am going to do my part to help the dodger players get to camp with a strong understanding of the basics.  we will discuss such things as how to prepare physically and mentally, as well as how to properly position oneself and even how to lay down that perfect bunt.  and, we will do all of that by using some cards that came from the backs of cereal boxes.

when i was growing up, we were pretty much a general mills household.  total. cheerios.  that sort of thing.  the only kellogg's brand that regularly found its way into our pantry was rice krispies.  what's worse, we only got the sweet cereals when we went on vacation in our rv and my mom bought the little cereal box variety packs.

so, it goes without saying that i did not collect the 1979 post raisin bran steve garvey's baseball tips cards in real time.  i may not have even known about them in 1979.  i did find out about them in the mid-1990's when i made the move to become a garvey supercollector, though.  i have since collected all 12, just as post told me to do.

here's the first one - the batting stance.

garvey basically says to do your own thing, but also do things the right way.  he notes the need for a firm grip on the bat, although i recall the garv taking his fingers off the bat during his swing preparation.  in fact, his 2001 upper deck minor league centennial card captures that very moment.

i did find this 1984 topps traded bob bailor card

that seems to illustrate what garvey is preaching.

good advice from the 'most hits nl' man!

coming next week - bunting!  get ready to see some brett butler cards!

it would have been cool if bob bailor had worn number 22

that's because bill buckner and brett butler both wore the double deuces.  this bb, however, opted for number 21 - the number he wore with baltimore before the blue jays made him their first pick in the 1976 expansion draft.  i guess that's ok - bob bailey wore 12 and 7 for the dodgers in the late 1960's, bill bean wore number 40 in 1989, and brian barnes was number 52 in his short stint for the dodgers in 1994, so maybe it's not as big of a trend as i thought.  

bailor, seen here on his 1986 topps card that he graciously signed for me through the mail a couple of years ago, 

did not appear in the team's first game, but soon established himself as their regular centerfielder and then their regular shortstop.  after four seasons in toronto, bailor was traded to the mets and eventually was dealt to the dodgers in the sid fernandez deal prior to the 1984 season.

bailor also included a card of his own - a 1984 coke dodgers postcard - that he signed as well.

and, he also signed the 1978 topps card that i had sent along with the '86.

bailor was first featured as a dodger in the 1984 topps traded set, a fact that i find unfortunate.  with the trade between the mets and the dodgers taking place in december of 1983, it's too bad o-pee-chee didn't include bailor in their 1984 set.  if they had, his card would have looked like this:

instead, the dodgers were left without a team/text variation in the set (mike vail was included in the o-pee-chee set, but didn't become a dodger until june).

that 1986 card up top was actually a final tribute, as bailor was released by the dodgers in the spring of 1986.  he singled and drove in a run in his final regular season at bat, but flew out in his final big league at bat which came in the 1985 nlcs.

here's to you bob bailor, and thanks for signing my cards!