postcards from paradise

a funny thing happened on the way to this post.  i misplaced all of my dodger postcards.  i had scanned them, some of which are shown below, but i had planned to further investigate and try to determine the exact years that they were issued using the information on their backs and some of the very scattered data available on the interwebs.  oh well, i'll have to tackle that task another time.  in the meantime, it's summer, and i assume some traveling folks are still sending postcards to the poor saps that are stuck back at home working.  in that vein, here are some dodger postcards that i will classify as 1962 (circa) to 1971 (circa) dodger team issue postcards.

big d!

i chose 1962 because that is the season that dodger stadium opened, and beautiful chavez ravine is the backdrop for many of these.  some, including the don drysdale postcard above, the ron perranoski postcard below,

this larry sherry postcard

and this maury wills postcard

all feature the three sisters palm trees closed up as they were first installed.

these next two are certainly from 1967, as that was the only season that ron hunt

and gene michael suited up for the dodgers.

plus, the palm trees have opened up!

i figure that these wes parker

and jeff torborg postcards

are from 1966, but that's only based on the relative youthfulness of torborg and this website.

sadly, the postcards moved out of dodger stadium later in the decade to what i assume to be vero beach.  these al ferrara

and bill singer postcards

are assumed to be from 1968 based on the fact that the singer photo is essentially the same as this mudcat grant photo

and this zoilo versalles postcard (i think) has the same info on the back

i wish i could find these things to confirm.  anyway, grant and versalles were only dodgers in 1968, so it's pretty easy to figure those, just like the hunt and michael.  same goes for these next couple - maybe - as long as the dodgers didn't wait to use these photos several years after they were taken.

billy grabarkewitz

and bill sudakis

are both wearing the mlb 100th anniversary patch from 1969, so i figure these to be 1970 postcards, although they could also be 1969 items if the dodgers were really on the ball and published these right after the photos were taken during spring training.

i'm not quite as sure of this tom haller postcard

since he was a dodger from 1968 through 1971, but this dick/richie allen postcard is certainly from 1971 (his lone year with the team)

and it's back in paradise - dodger stadium.

i may get back there yet this season, and if i do, maybe i'll drop a postcard in the mail...

sunday morning target dodgers - mr. ebbets would like a word with you

another sunday, another sheet of 15 cards from the 1990 target dodger 100th anniversary set.  this one features a wide range of folks, including one of their owners, who gets a card because he also managed the team for part of a season.

charlie ebbets

an architect by trade, ebbets was also a member of brooklyn's city council who went to work for the brooklyn baseball franchise when they were still a member of the american association.  by the time the bridegrooms joined the national league in 1890, ebbets was a shareholder of the team.  he took over the operations of the club in the 1890's and installed himself as the team's manager for the latter part of the 1898 season.  the team finished 10th, and ned hanlon, who had purchased an interest in the club, took over managerial duties in an attempt to turn things around.  hanlon did just that, and brooklyn won the pennant in 1899 and 1900.  ebbets bought hanlon out in 1902 in an effort to keep the team in brooklyn, and in 1912, ebbets went a step further by selling shares in the team to help finance what would become ebbets field.  he continued to own the team with the mckeever brothers until his death in 1925.

jack banta

banta spent four seasons at the big league level, all with the dodgers.  he pitched in a total of 69 games from 1947-1950, posting a record of 14-12 with a 3.78 era.  banta appeared in 3 games during the 1949 world series, unfortunately they were all games that the dodgers lost.

lu blue

beginning with his debut with the tigers in 1921 through his release by the white sox prior to the 1933 season (he also played for the browns), blue had been his team's primary first baseman - averaging 134 games each season and hitting at a clip near .300 most years while drawing a lot of walks.  the dodgers signed him for the 1933 campaign following his release from chicago, but something happened and he had only one plate appearance for the club.  after making an out in that lone at bat, the dodgers released blue and his big league career came to an end.

alta cohen

cohen went 2 for 3 in his big league debut as a robin in 1931, so he entered the 1932 season with a .667 career batting average.  however, he hit just .156 in 9 games for the dodgers that year, and he found himself with the phillies for the 1933 season as a result.

nick cullop

cullop's nickname (according to baseball-reference) was 'tomato face'.  based on the photo that target used for his card, i suppose i could see the nickname making sense - he's looking a bit ruddy.  anyway, cullop played for the robins in 1929, one season of his five spent in the majors.  cullop had debuted for the 1926 yankees, but there was no room for him on murderer's row, so he was sent to the senators.  cullop also played for cleveland prior to joining brooklyn, where he hit .195.  following the 1929 season, cullop played for the reds as he finished out his big league career in cincinnati in 1931.

eddie dent

dent pitched for the superbas in 1909, and then was back with the dodgers in 1911 and 1912.  he was 4-5 with a 4.46 era in 12 appearances for the franchise, which is 6 times the number of appearances the next guy in the post had.

john duffie

duffie could be a poster boy for hard luck pitchers.  he made two appearances in the big leagues - both as a starting pitcher for the 1967 dodgers - and he has a career 0-2 record.  his career era is a nice 2.79, but the dodgers scored only two runs in his debut and just one in his final game.  in duffie's first game, he was facing the mets' rookie sensation tom seaver, and he allowed the first run to score thanks to his own error.  however, the mets scored two more unearned runs and beat duffie and the dodgers 7-2.  duffie's second and final start was at home against the phillies, and he allowed a lead-off home run to cookie rojas and a second run in the fifth inning, and the 1967 dodgers weren't going to come back from that kind of deficit.

jeff fischer

i do not recall fischer as a dodger, largely because he only pitched in two games for them at the tail end of the forgettable 1989 season after being acquired in a trade with the expos in which the dodgers gave up gilberto reyes.  fischer's first appearance for the blue was a disaster - five earned runs allowed in 1.1 innings of work against the astros - but his second (and last) was almost perfect.  after allowing a leadoff double to the padres' roberto alomar on september 23, 1989, fischer retired the next 6 padres he faced, including a couple by strikeout.  it would turn out to be his final big league appearance.

sid gautreaux

with a name like that, you know that gautreaux was from louisiana, and sure enough, he hailed from schriever, la.  gautreaux played for the dodgers in 1936 and 1937, appearing in a total of 86 games and putting up a .247 average.  other than that, all of gautreaux's time was spent in the minor leagues where he played until he was 40 and then spent a few seasons as a manager.

billy grabarkewitz

poor grabarkewitz has the misfortune of getting his name spelled incorrectly by the folks at target.  billy g was a utility infielder for the dodgers from 1969 through 1972, although he was the team's primary third baseman in 1970.  that year, grabs played in 156 games (95 starts at third) and earned a spot on the national league all-star team thanks to a hefty .341 batting average at the break.  unfortunately, he hit just .232 in the second half, and finished the season with a .289 average.  grabarkewitz was traded to the angels in the frank robinson for andy messersmith deal prior to the 1973 season.

shawn hillegas

hillegas was still active when this set was released, although he was pitching for the white sox at the time.  he had the misfortune of being traded by the dodgers to the chisox at the end of august, 1988 for ricky horton. as such, hillegas missed the chance to be a part of the dodgers' world series run.  he had been the dodgers' first round pick in the 1984 secondary draft, and debuted for the club in 1987.  he pitched in 23 games for the dodgers, posting an era of 3.85 with the club.

fred kipp

kipp moved west with the dodgers in 1958. having appeared in one game for the 1957 brooklyn club, he pitched in 40 games for the 1958 los angeles dodgers.  he was 6-6 that year and wound up appearing in just two games the following season for the eventual world champs, although he did not appear in the world series.  kipp was traded to the yankees prior to the 1960 campaign, and he finished his big league career that year with the pennant winning bronx bombers, although he again missed the world series.

ernie koy

koy was one of those guys whose rookie year turned out to be his best year.  in 1938, as a 28 year old rookie outfielder for the dodgers, koy appeared in 142 games, hitting .299 with 11 homers and 76 rbi.  he also scored 78 runs, stole 15 bases, and had 156 hits, 13 of which were triples.  all of those numbers except the batting average (he hit .301 in 1940) turned out to be career highs for koy.  he played in 125 games for the 1939 dodgers, but was traded to the cardinals during the 1940 season in the deal that brought joe medwick to brooklyn.  koy also played for the reds and phillies, and he lived to be 97 years old, passing away on new year's day, 2007.

bill mccarren

mccarren's lone season of big league experience came as a member of the 1923 brooklyn robins.  playing mostly third base, mccarren appeared in 69 games that season, hitting .245.  mccarren later became a scout for the red sox. 

bob milliken

milliken spent two seasons pitching in the major leagues (1953 and 1954), but was in the dodger organization from 1947 through 1959 (excluding military service in 1951 and 1952).  he had a big league record of 13-6 with 4 saves (including an 8-4 record in 1953), and he appeared in the 1953 world series, throwing two scoreless innings against the yankees.

that's it for this week - there should be another 15 tales to tell next sunday. stay tuned.

and you shall know them by their yellow backs

i caught myself by surprise a couple of years ago when i realized that i had a complete dodger team set of 1970 o-pee-chee cards.  i am not really sure how that happened, but it did.  one day i was cross checking lists with my early 70's dodger binder and there they were - all the gray bordered dodger goodness that o-pee-chee bothered to issue.  helped, of course, by the fact that there are six fewer dodgers in the o-pee-chee set than the topps - no canadian versions of jim lefebvre, maury wills, tom haller, don sutton, jim brewer or al mcbean.

i didn't have the same luck with 1971 o-pee-chee at the time, but i did pick up a large lot of dodger cards from the set a year or so ago, plus a few of the high numbers here and there since then to help me get closer to knocking another team set off the want list.

i'll show the lower numbered cards first...

claude osteen

everytime i see a '71 osteen, i wonder what the heck is going on in the background.  here's the back of osteen's card - it's yellow, but of course you already knew that because you followed along as i posted all about o-pee-chee over at oh my o-pee-chee, right?

it's been well over a year since things wrapped up over there, and i kind of miss posting and learning about the variations.  i'm not starting another blog though, especially since timeless teams is floundering.

here's sandy vance

the 'lesser' sandy, if you will

i really like the 'sunburst' behind the photos on the back.  it's different from the rectangular insert photo on the backs of the 1971 topps cards, and in my opinion, better.

von joshua

it's worth noting that on these cards, the french text comes first.

joshua was a dodger double dipper, by the way.

billy grabarkewitz

good to see the holman stadium seats in the background there.  jerry stephenson is hanging out, too, but i don't know who the seated dodger is.

it's too bad that grabarkewitz and mark grudzielanek played three decades apart.  harry caray wouldn't have known what to do if they were involved in a double play turn.

manny mota

this is a photo from shea stadium, like so many other cards in the 1971 set

the back of mota's card notes that he is 'a good hitter' who topped .300 in 4 of the previous 5 years.  he hit over .300 in 1971, too, as well as 1972 and 1973.

bill singer

if only the photographer had snapped the picture a moment earlier, i wouldn't be wondering who is walking behind singer.

no surprise that the back of the card mentions singer's no hitter thrown in july of 1970.  a joule sans coups, as it were.

duke sims

yankee stadium on a dodger card?  yes, thanks to the power of the o-pee-chee team variation!

nice to read that he was a yankee killer, too.

al downing

another team (and text) variation, which features a first year brewers uniform. 

downing would go on to have the best season of his career in 1971.

bob valentine/mike strahler

both guys had some big league stats prior to 1971, but topps still went with the minor league numbers on the back.

valentine and strahler (and grabarkewitz and singer as well) would be traded to the angels after the 1972 season with frank robinson in exchange for andy messersmith and ken mcmullen.

alan foster

i'm somewhat on the fence about including this card with my team set for obvious reasons.  foster was the guy traded to the indians for duke sims.

andy kosco was the player traded to the brewers for al downing, but his card came in a later series, so topps already had him as a brewer with a magic hat thus eliminating the need for an o-pee-chee variation.

bill russell

still an outfielder on the card, russell's conversion to the infield began in 1971

he actually played more second base than any other position in '71, but was moved to shortstop in 1972.

bill sudakis

it's too bad sudakis had bad knees.  on the other hand, had he been healthy, would steve garvey and later ron cey have been given a shot at third?  or joe ferguson behind the plate?  the mind boggles.

sudakis' co-mvp in the 1968 texas league was jim spencer who was the first player ever drafted by the california angels.

joe moeller

moeller was in his second stint with the dodgers when this card was issued

he was one of the few players on the team that had been a teammate of duke snider's.

jeff torborg

with danny ozark hitting fungoes behind him

singer's no hitter gets mentioned again, as does sandy koufax, as torborg was the catcher for sandy's perfect game as well as singer's masterpiece.    he later caught nolan ryan's first no hitter.

steve garvey

canadian rookie goodness!

and what's with all the black batting gloves?

don sutton

still pre-perm

and it still bothers me that he was released by the dodgers in august of 1988.

i'll show the rest of my 1971 o-pee-chee dodgers in a post later on today...