big d, pee wee, and other dodger autographs

i don't know how realistic it is of me to think that i might one day have a jackie robinson and a roy campanella autographed card, but those are the only two current members of the dodger retired number club for whom i lack signed cards.  i've shown tommy lasorda, duke snider, jim gilliam, don sutton, walt alston, and sandy koufax signed cards previously, and now, i have a 1993 nabisco don drysdale certified auto card

and a 1991 topps archives 1953 pee wee reese in person autographed card

to show.

i am guessing that this is about as far as that collection will get.

here are some more (certified) dodger autos - a 2004 upper deck legends timeless teams ron cey card

and a dave lopes card from the same set

this tommy john sticker auto card

comes from 2005 donruss greats

and this eric gagne signed card

is from 2006 upper deck sp authentic.

i was very happy to pick up this last card - a 2014 panini immaculate collection steve garvey signed card

numbered to 49.  it looks like he signed a piece from a watercoloring paper.  it's nice.  i'm pretty sure he tried to add his number 6 at the end (not an exclamation point), which in my mind should also be retired by the dodgers.  however, i recognize my bias and after considering the fact that the yankees are running out of numbers, i think the dodgers' hall of fame requirement (except in the case of jim gilliam) is probably a pretty good one.

when your postman brings a package from jaybarkerfan's junk

yes, the joy that sandy koufax is displaying on his 2013 topps update postseason heroes card is pretty much how i want to react if i were to be home when the postman drops off a package from wes at jaybarkerfan's junk.  as it is, i am left to feel the excitement when i open the mailbox after a day at work and there is nobody around to exclaim my happiness to.

the result is a trade post that doesn't really do the cards, or thoughtfulness of wes, justice.  here are some of the other goodies i received.

2013 topps heritage then and now koufax and clayton kershaw

koufax led the league in era for five straight seasons, while kershaw has a streak of four era titles in a row.  other than that, he's matched sandy in cy youngs (3 in four years) and mvp awards.  now he just needs those four world series titles...

another kershaw - 2012 topps chrome orange parallel

and a 2009 upper deck spectrum card of another all-time pitching great who once (twice) toiled for the dodgers, greg maddux

maddux won 4 cy young awards, by the way.

here's a 1982 donruss bob welch card

welch was the dodgers' number 1 pick in 1977, and he has the highest career war of any of the dodgers' first round picks in history.  his 44.2 war is higher than rick rhoden (35.9), rick sutcliffe (34.3), paul konerko (28.1), and mike scioscia (26.0), who are third through sixth on the list.  in 2015, welch will be passed by kershaw, whose war through 2014 is 41.1.

how cool are pitcher's bat cards?  pretty cool.  this is a 2005 donruss champions tommy john bat relic card

that wes included in the package.

it wasn't all pitchers, though.  here's a 2013 topps heritage matt kemp new age performers insert

he'll be doing his new age performing for the padres, unfortunately.

i had not seen a 2006 upper deck special f/x card in person before receiving this jayson werth card from wes

what is most shocking about the card is that you can see jayson's cheeks, which haven't seen the light of day since he left the dodgers for the east coast.

last but not least is this 1994 topps archives 1954 card that should have been prospects card of roberto clemente

there's a nearly identical card in the 1995 topps brooklyn dodger archives set, so you have to look closely at the back to figure out which set these cards come from.  how cool would it have been for jackie robinson and roberto clemente (who was taken by the pirates in the 1954 rule v draft) to have been teammates?  at least as cool as this trade package, but not much more.  and, as cool as this trade package was, i received another one with a fantastic piece from wes not more than a week or so later.  i'll get a trade post for that one up in the near future.

thanks wes!

rhoden and john and hough

i consider don sutton to have been the ace of the team of my youth, but the dodgers of the mid to late 1970's had a pretty strong staff.  i got kind of tired of seeing doug rau pitch seemingly every time we trekked to dodger stadium, but it wasn't because he was a bad pitcher - i just would have rather have seen tommy john or rick rhoden or burt hooton more often.  anyway, it's boxing day and things are slow and i don't have any good post ideas, so here are some non-dodger cards of three members of the dodger pitching staff from the team of my youth.

1988 score rick rhoden

and tommy john

rhoden and tj were reunited on the yankees, although this was john's second time around with the club. here's the back of john's 1981 topps card

for no other reason than to show the 'on disabled list' text that defined his 1975 season and his legacy as well.

here's the back of rhoden's 1988 topps big card for no other reason than to note that rhoden was a fan of both bob gibson and hulk hogan

'his' comment in the ping pong cartoon is not entirely true - rhoden did get to hit as the yankees' dh in a game during the 1988 season.  here's the front of that topps big card, by the way

rhoden sports the same mustache on his 1988 leaf card

which is so much better than 1988 donruss.

here's a 1988 fleer superstars card of rhoden

i wonder what he's got in that gatorade cup.

rhoden finished out his career with the astros in 1989.  here's his 1989 fleer update card

tommy john, meanwhile, began his career in cleveland.  here's a 2003 topps retired signature card showing him in indians' attire.

and let's not forget about charlie hough, who was actually the dodgers' closer in 1977, saving 22 games for the nl champs.  he moved on to texas where he became a starter and found some success.  this is a 1987 donruss all-stars card of the knuckleballer

who finished his career with stints with the white sox and then the marlins.  this is a 1993 topps finest card of hough with the fish

as are these 1994 bowman

and 1994 topps stadium club cards

that last one being the rainbow foil parallel.

i did a 'torchbearer' post for sutton, so i'll do something similar for these guys.  i won't go into too much detail, but if you're wondering, the last batter rick rhoden faced in the majors was joe oliver (who hit into a double play). oliver doubled off of jorge julio in his last at bat; julio hit jorge cantu with his last pitch, cantu fouled out against rex brothers for his final appearance in the majots, so brothers (who was still pitching for the rockies in 2014) is carrying rhoden's torch.

john, meanwhile, allowed a single to devon white just before walking off the mound for the last time.  white singled off of albie lopez his last time up; lopez gave up a single to torii hunter with his last pitch, and hunter just signed with the twins for the 2015 season, so he'll continue to be tommy john's torchbearer for one more year.

finally, hough's last big league pitch resulted in a single to kim batiste, who later grounded out against darren holmes in his last big league at bat. with his final pitch, holmes gave up a single to marlon byrd, who is signed to play for the phillies once again in 2015.

there you have it. three pitchers from the team of my youth wearing other teams' uniforms and their torhbearers.  can you tell i'm running out of ideas for posts?

christmas cards?

i didn't really want to post that 2001 pacific vladimir guerrero ornament card again, but i struggled to find some cards appropriate for today.  then i thought about red and green - those are christmas colors! so, this 1963 topps john roseboro card must be a christmas card, right?

 plus, it's the 25th, so that means a tommy john card makes sense, like this 1994 ted williams card

that shows (most of) his jersey number.  plus, the number is in red!

and then there's rickey henderson, who just happens to have been born on december 25th (happy 56th, rickey!).  unfortunately, i only have cards showing the man of steal as an oakland athletic scanned and heretofore unseen on this blog, so an a's card will have to suffice.  here's a 1991 topps stadium club charter member card

plus rickey's 1998 fleer ultra card

which is ridiculously colorful enough to have been an ornament card from pacific.  so there you go - full circle with the ornament cards.

merry christmas, everybody.

rivalry week?

well, ucla played usc this past weekend, but even though that was the college football rivalry i knew growing up, around these parts it's rivalry week when the golden gophers take on the badgers.  minnesota and wisconsin play this upcoming weekend, so i decided to wait until now to show a few cards i've obtained from the 2013 panini hometown heroes rivalry insert set.

the concept is similar to the topps 'who would have thought' series in the 2001 and 2002 traded sets, except these card focus on players who have played on both sides of a specific rivalry.  like dusty baker, who played for the dodgers and giants

i believe that both photos come from his dodger days, by the way.  in his lone season with the no-cals (1984), baker hit .276 against the dodgers.  during his time with the braves and dodgers, he hit .283 against the giants.

tommy john pitched for both the dodgers and the yankees

he faced the bronx bombers in the 1977 and 1978 world series.  he took the loss in game 3 of the '77 fall classic, but won game 1 in 1978 and also pitched well in game 4 that year.  unfortunately, the dodgers fell to the yankees both times.  john jumped to the yankees for the 1979 season, and wound up pitching against the dodgers in the 1981 world series.  he shut them out for 7 innings in his game 2 win, and then threw two more scoreless innings for the yankees as a reliever in game 4.  john got the start a few days later in game 6, but was prematurely pulled from the game for a pinch-hitter after allowing just one run in 4 innings of work.  bobby murcer flew out to end the yankee's half of the fourth, and the dodgers went on to win the game and the series.

like baker, orel hershiser wore both dodger blue (twice) and giant orange

the bulldog spent the 1998 season with san fran, and was 2-1 against the dodgers.  they were the only team against whom he had more than one victory.  over the rest of his career (which includes a season with the mets and three with the indians in addition to his dodger years), hershiser was 22-9 against the giants.  that's the highest victory total he posted against any opponent, which is nice.

i knew that there wouldn't be a steve garvey card in this insert set (the padres don't rank as a rival for the dodgers), but i did sort of hope for a duke snider card since he finished his career as a giant.  other possibilities included reggie smith (he also finished as a giant), juan marichal (he finished his career as a dodger), and if panini really wanted to be a bit out of the ordinary with the checklist, moose skowron (he helped the dodgers sweep his former yankee teammates in the 1963 world series).

good luck to the gophers this weekend - they are going to need it.

more from the garvey oddball binder - 1984 union oil dodgers most memorable moments sheets

here are some more sheets from my steve garvey oddball binder.  these come from the 1984 union oil dodgers most memorable moments set.  similar to the 1982 volpe portraits, these were available at your local southland 76 station (murph was the proprieter in the commercials, i believe).  there are some good moments captured in these sheets, including bob welch's strikeout of reggie jackson in game 2 of the 1978 world series and roy campanella night at the coliseum in 1959.  

garvey shows up on 5 of the 16 sheets in the set, and those are the ones in the binder.

30-home run quartet

in 1977, garvey, dusty baker, reggie smith, and ron cey became the first four teammates to hit 30 home runs in the same season.  topps didn't make a card (so i did), but seven years later, union oil came through with a sheet.

1977 nlcs

garvey shares space with teammates cey, baker, bill russell, davey lopes, vic davalillo, tommy john, manny mota, and don sutton.  cey is front and center on the sheet, but dusty baker was the series mvp with 2 homers and 8 rbi.  the majority of the text on the back pertains to game 3 of the series (black friday as it's known in philadelphia) wherein the dodgers used a bunt single by davalillo, a double by manny mota, and an infield single by davey lopes to tie the score, all with two outs.  an error and a bill russell single later, and the dodgers had taken a two games to one lead in the series.

the 10th player

this sheet is a tribute to dodger fans, with garvey, cey, sutton, mota, jerry reuss, and joe ferguson appearing on the front.  the fan tribute is centered around the end of the 1980 season when the dodgers were three games out of first with three to play.  as luck would have it, the astros were coming to town. the dodgers swept the series behind some big home runs by ferguson, garvey, and cey, but lost game 163 as the astros advanced to the postseason for the first time.

1981 world championship

garvey shows up on this one as part of the three-steves celebration - jumping in the air after the dodgers' game 6 win with steves howe and yeager.  also appearing on the sheet are series co-mvp's cey, yeager, and pedro guerrero.  tommy lasorda and nlcs hero rick monday round out the sheet commemorating the dodgers' first world championship since 1965, and first reached by beating the yankees since 1963.

record setting infield

this is, quite obviously, my favorite sheet.  it's all about the infield.

more garvey goodness to come; stay tuned.

1990 topps cards that should have been of 1978 topps dodgers

there was only one, as far as i can tell.  i couldn't come up with any reason, even remotely, that there should have been a steve garvey card issued by topps in the 1990 set, except perhaps as part of the turn back the clock subset.  hmmmmm.

anyway, here's the card i missed the most from the 1990 topps set - the tommy john final tribute card that should have been!

here's the back with lots of tiny text

john finished his career with a start in new york just a couple days after his 46th birthday.  he went 5.1 innings that day, allowing 5 runs, and didn't factor into the decision.  he fell 12 wins short of 300, but amassed 164 of his 288 victories after returning from his landmark surgery.  there are only 7 men who started more games at pitcher than john, although only one of them (nolan ryan) pitched in as many or more seasons than did john.

furthermore, only two pitchers have won more games than john in the modern era without being elected to the hall of fame, and i would imagine that eventually roger clemens and randy johnson (who will be eligible for the first time next year) get in, leaving john as the winningest non-hall of famer of the modern era. it was a heckuva career.

all i see are all-stars

with the all-star game tonight, it seems appropriate to show this 1992 trak auto sheet of stamps that honors every dodger all-star from 1962 through 1992

as you can see, it was available for purchase at trak auto stores, either on its own or with a case of valvoline motor oil.

the full sheet of stamps is in one of my steve garvey binders, because i can't find this particular stamp all by its lonesome

1977 was a big year for dodger all-stars, but not as big as 1962, 1975, or 1978 when the dodgers had seven players on the national league squad, or even a few years when they sent 6 players.  garvey represented the dodgers in eight straight all-star games, and was the mvp of the 1974 and 1978 contests.  here is a better look at the stamps for the stretch of games in which garvey, as a dodger, was the starter for the national league at first base.

you may have noticed that the only dodger to get his mug shown twice on the whole sheet is tommy lasorda.

as a member of the padres, garvey returned to the all-star game in 1984 and 1985 as the first base starter for the national league, making his final all-star appearance in the '85 midsummer classic, which was the last time the all-star game was held in minneapolis.  here's a 1986 donruss all-stars pop up card which commemorates his appearance in that game, complete with underside of the metrodome's roof in view

garvey, at age 37, was a participant in the home run derby prior to that all-star game - the first home run derby prior to the all-star game - and hit 2 out.  dave parker won the derby with 6.  it wasn't the same back then.

anyway, happy all-star game day!