sunday morning target dodgers

here are 15 more players from a sheet of cards that is part of the 1990 target dodger 100th anniversary set.

ray benge

ray benge knows what you did last summer, and i don't think he approves.  aside from having a disconcerting glare, i also know (thanks to baseball-reference) that benge pitched for the dodgers for three years - 1933 through 1935 - and amassed a record of 33-38 during that time.

ralph birkofer

birkofer joined the dodgers (along with cookie lavagetto) in a december, 1936 trade.  he pitched for brooklyn in 11 games (one as a starter) during the 1937 season, losing twice.

bruce brubaker

brubaker was a rule v draftee by the dodgers in november of 1966, and he made his big league debut with the club on april 15, 1967.  he replaced joe moeller with two outs in the 7th inning and struck out phil gagliano to end the inning.  pitching in the big leagues was just that easy!  not so fast - when bru came back out for the 8th inning, he allowed a double and a single, followed by a one-out, three-run lou brock home run.  he did strike out curt flood immediately after the homer, though.  that one appearance was the sum total of brubaker's dodger career, and he didn't return to the majors until he was with the brewers in 1970.

john douglas

here's a guy with two first names, plus a middle name of franklin.  douglas was 0 for 9 with 2 walks in his big league career, with all of his at bats coming in the 1945 season with the dodgers.

rube ehrhardt

ehrhardt spent the first five years of his career pitching for the robins from 1924-1928. he was used primarily as a reliever, although he did complete 21 of his 41 starts for brooklyn. overall, his record as a robin was 21-32 in 169 games pitched.

woody english

english was the shortstop on a couple of cub world series teams in the 1920's (he was also a bench player on the 1935 pennant winning cubs team) before joining the dodgers for the 1937 and 1938 seasons.  he was the dodgers' primary shortstop in 1937, hitting .238 in 129 games, but saw more action at third base than short in 1938.

gus felix

like john douglas above, this guy would have two first names if anyone named their kid felix these days.  felix played for the robins in 1926 and 1927, the last two seasons of his 5-year big league career.  he hit .273 in 264 games for brooklyn in that span.

pat hanifin

if you're looking for hanifin on baseball-reference, he's actually pat hannivan.  either way, he was a member of the 1897 brooklyn bridegrooms, for whom he hit .250 over 10 games. i thought that he may well have been one of the first canadian big leaguers (he was born in nova scotia), but closer inspection shows that there were over 50 canucks who appeared in the major leagues before him.

hugh hearne

hearne hit .283 for the superbas from 1901 through 1903. he was traded to baltimore during the 1903 season along with another hugh (jennings), but couldn't make it back out of the eastern league after that.

enos kirkpatrick

kirkpatrick broke into the majors with the dodgers in 1912, and played for them (the superbas, actually) again in 1913.  with brooklyn regardless of the team nickname, kirkpatrick hit .219 in a total of 80 games.  prior to the 1914 season, he moved to baltimore of the federal league and played there for two seasons.

ralph mauriello

there's no doubt which team nickname was being used when mauriello suited up for the franchise.  he was a member of the 1958 dodgers, earning a september call-up during their first season on the west coast. he pitched in three games that month, going 1-1 in his two starts, and having no decision in his lone relief appearance.  he remained in the minors after that before pulling the plug on his baseball career to put his electrical engineering degree from usc to use.  the 'pulling the plug' pun was intended, by the way.

kit mckenna

mckenna was 2-8 for the 1898 brooklyn bridegrooms, pitching 100.2 innings over 14 appearances. he pitched for baltimore in 1899, and thus finished his 2-year big league career.

art parks

not quite as good as rick waits or dave lopes, but parks' name does form a complete sentence.  he played for the dodgers in 1937 and 1939, but is better known as one of the players that was sent to the red sox in 1940 in the deal that secured pee wee reese for the franchise.

oscar roettger

roettger was the older brother of the more successful wally roettger, an outfielder with the 1931 world champion cardinals.  yet another example of the dodgers having (or keeping) the wrong brothers, the sax brothers excluded.  anyway, oscar played for the dodgers during the 1927 season, getting to the plate 6 times and reaching base twice - once on balls and the other by being hit by a pitch.

denny sothern

sothern finished his 5-year career with the robins in the latter part of the 1931 season.  he appeared in 19 games for brooklyn, hitting just .161 before calling it quits.

it's a good bet i'll be back next sunday with another sheet from this set. stay tuned...

sunday morning target dodgers

more cards from the impossible to store 1990 target dodger set.  unless you separate the individual cards, the sheets are not of a size that can be stored in plastic sheets and binders.  my set is in a box.  anyway, these guys all appear on the same panel as triple dipper hughie jennings, and many of them are short-timers.

pat ankenman

ankenman played in a total of 14 games for the dodgers over the course of the 1943 and 1944 seasons.  he also played in 1 game for the cardinals in 1936, meaning his big league career consisted of just 15 appearances.

tom catterson

catterson's career consisted of just a few more games than ankenman's - he appeared in 28 games for the superbas over the 1908 and 1909 seasons.  he was only 35 when he died in 1920.

paul chervinko

chervinko's big league career was longer, in terms of games played, than either of ankenman's or catterson's - we're making some progress.  yes, chervinko was a dodger for a little over a year - from may of 1937 when he was acquired from the cardinals until july of 1938 when he was sent to montreal of the international league.  during that time, he appeared in 42 games and hit .147.  after retiring as a player, chervinko managed in the dodger farm system for 8 seasons.

phil douglas

douglas spent just a portion of one season with the brooklyn franchise.  they were known as the robins in 1915 when douglas sandwiched his dodger tenure between time with the reds and the cubs.  he was 5-5 in 20 appearances for the robins and 7-11 on the season as a whole.  he later went on to pitch for the new york giants and led the league in era in 1922, a year after helping the giants beat the yankees in the world series.

al humphrey

humphrey was a dodger in 1911, and his career consisted of just 8 appearances that year.  it's a wonder there's a photo of him playing ball, although did spend a couple of seasons in the minors in addition to his brief big league stay.

maury kent

kent played for the dodgers in 1912 and the superbas in 1913.  his entire career consisted of the 23 games in which he appeared over the course of those two seasons, finishing his career with a 5-5 lifetime record.  he later went on to coach baseball for a few different big 10 schools.

billy mullen

mullen was a brooklyn robin in 1923.  he had 12 plate appearances in four games, going 3 for 11 with a sacrifice.  he also played for the browns and tigers, as you could tell by the uniform he is wearing on his card.

dennis powell

finally a modern player!  and, a shot of someone in dodger stadium!  powell appeared in a whopping 43 games as a dodger during the 1985 and 1986 seasons.  he was traded to seattle for matt young following the '86 campaign, and continued to pitch in the majors through 1993.

tot pressnell

tot's first name was forest, in case you were wondering.  he pitched for the dodgers for three seasons - 1938, 1939, and 1940.  during that time, he appeared in 98 games and amassed a record of 26-26.  he later pitched for the cubs.

doc reisling

doc's first name was frank, and he may or may not have been a dentist.  he pitched for the superbas in 1904 and 1905, and was 3-5 in his 9 appearances.  he later pitched for the washington senators as a teammate of walter johnson.

gilberto reyes

reyes made his debut for the dodgers in 1983, and had cups of coffee with the team in 1984, 1985, 1987, and 1988.  he was, of course, blocked by mike scioscia at the catcher position, so his career dodger totals included 35 games and only 9 starts behind the plate.  he was traded to the expos prior to the 1989 season.

max rosenfeld

rosenfeld's entire big league career was spent with brooklyn, and it spanned three seasons - from 1931 through 1933.  he played in 42 games and hit .298.

butts wagner

some of these cards are pretty harsh.  ol' butts here (first name albert) was a brooklyn bridegroom in 1898.  he had come over from the washington senators on loan towards the end of the season, and hit .237 in 11 games for brooklyn.

rube ward

rube (john) ward had one season of big league service in his career.  it came in 1902 as a superba.  in 13 games, he hit .290, and that's about all we know about him.

a big thanks to baseball reference for all of the information about these players of whom i knew pretty much nothing about, except for powell and reyes.