sunday morning target dodgers - an mvp and - hey, isn't that the cartoon rooster?

this sheet of cards from the 1990 target dodger 100th anniversary giveaway set features a good mix of players from throughout the franchise's history.  have a look.

don bessent

the dodgers took bessent from the yankees in the early 1950's, and he made his big league debut for brooklyn in 1955.  he was 8-1 with a 2.70 era in 24 games (22 of which were relief appearances) for the dodgers that year, and then pitched in 3 world series games against the yankees, and sported a perfect era while doing so.  in 1956, bessent lowered his regular season era to 2.50 over 38 games, all as a reliever.  he again pitched in the fall classic against the yankees, and was the winning pitcher in game 2.  bessent moved to los angeles with the team, but 1958 was his final season in the big leagues due to a shoulder injury.

bruce caldwell

caldwell played in 18 games for the 1928 cleveland indians (he's a member of the indians in the photo used for his card), and next appeared in the majors for the 1932 brooklyn dodgers.  he played in only 7 games for the dodgers, and had just one hit in 13 plate appearances for the club.

jake daubert

daubert played for the superbas/dodgers/robins from 1910 through 1918, and was the team's first baseman in each of those seasons.  in 1913, daubert led the national league with a .350 average, and was voted the league's most valuable player as a result. he led the league with a .329 average the following year, and his .316 average in 1916 was the second highest in the league. that year, daubert helped the robins win the pennant, although he hit only .176 in the world series against babe ruth and the red sox (he was 0 for 5 against ruth in game 2).  daubert left brooklyn for cincinnati in 1919, and won a world series ring with the reds that year thanks in part to the black sox scandal.

tim flood

flood spent two seasons with the superbas - 1902 and 1903 - during which he hit .231 over 221 games. i do not believe that he played ball in his suit and tie.

mike garman

garman was a reliever on the team of my youth. acquired in the rick monday trade, garman pitched for the dodgers in 1977 and part of 1978 (before he was traded to montreal).  he had a 2.73 era with 12 saves during the 1977 regular season, and then threw 5.1 scoreless innings over four games in the 1977 postseason, earning a save in the nlcs game 3 'black friday' game against the phillies.

tim leary

in 1987, leary's first season with the dodgers, he posted a record of 3-11. in 1988, leary again had 11 losses, but this time, he also had 17 wins. used almost exclusively as a starter in '88, leary responded with a 2.91 era, 9 complete games, and 6 shutouts.  it was enough for him to be named the sporting news' comeback player of the year in the national league.  leary also won the silver slugger award that year, due in part to his .269 batting average, as well as his key 11th-inning walk-off pinch-hit single against the giants on august 13, 1988.  leary was bumped from the starting rotation once the world series rolled around due in large part to orel hershiser pitching on short rest, but he did relieve in two fall classic games, including a stellar scoreless three innings in game 1.

danny mcdevitt

mcdevitt pitched for the dodgers from 1957 through 1960.  he was originally used primarily as a starter, but the team eventually came to use him more in relief towards the end of his tenure with them. in 1959, mcdevitt won 10 games, but he did not pitch in the world series against the white sox that year.

bernie neis

neis was a rookie with the robins in 1920 when they won the pennant.  he had hit .253 during the regular season, but was 0 for 5 in the world series.  neis remained with the robins through the 1924 season before going on to play for the braves, indians, and white sox.

ivy olson

olson was the robins' shortstop on both of their pennant winning teams - 1916 and 1920. he was acquired by the club late in the 1915 season, and he remained with them through the 1924 campaign. in between, he played in 1053 games for brooklyn, and had 1100 hits as well. his 164 hits in 1919, in fact, led the league. olson hit .250 in the 1916 world series (he was 1 for 2 with a walk, a strikeout, and two sacrifices against babe ruth) and .320 in the 1920 fall classic.

claude osteen

what a great shot of osteen in dodger stadium, with the left field pavilion and old (pre-diamond vision) scoreboard.  osteen came to the dodgers from the senators in the frank howard trade, and he remained until he was dealt to houston for jimmy wynn after the 1973 season. during those 9 seasons with the dodgers, osteen posted a record of 147-126 during the regular season, with three all-star selections and two 20-win seasons.  he threw a shutout in the 1965 world series against the twins, and took a hard luck loss in the 1966 world series against the orioles, allowing just a solo home run to paul blair that allowed the o's to win the game 1-0.

johnny peacock

peacock was acquired by the dodgers during the 1945 season from the phillies in exchange for ben chapman (who would later manage the phillies and berate jackie robinson during the 1947 season). peacock was needed due to mickey owen having joined the navy in may of '45.  peacock played in 48 games for the dodgers that year, hitting .255.  it was the last big league action of peacock's career.

goody rosen

goody rosen played for the dodgers for 5-plus seasons, garnering some mvp votes in 1945 (he finished 10th).  there's a little more to rosen's story, but i'll save that for a future post.

john shelby

t-bone was traded to the dodgers early in the 1987 season as the team needed a center fielder. kenny landreaux had moved to one of the corner spots, and mike ramsey, who had started the season in center, was hitting just .232 after 38 games.  shelby showed up and hit .277 with 21 home runs in 120 games for the dodgers over the remainder of the season. in 1988, he cooled off a bit, hitting .263 with 10 home runs, but he solidified the position enough to help the club win the world series, and the second ring of his career.

gordon windhorn

this guy makes me think of the looney toons cartoon rooster, but the rooster's name is foghorn leghorn, not gordon windhorn.  besides, i know about windhorn because he's got a card in the 1962 topps set that lists him as a member of the kansas city a's while showing him in dodger duds.  those duds, by the way, are more suited to a baseball card than the shirt he's wearing above.  and what exactly is he doing in that photo - talking into his dick tracy wristwatch communicator?  it's curious that this was the best photo available considering that windhorn spent the majority of the 1960 and 1961 seasons in the dodger minor league system, as well as 34 games at the big league level with the dodgers in 1961.  during that time, windhorn hit .242 and slugged his only two career home runs - the first of which was an 11th-inning walk-off pinch-hit job against the phillies.

pete wojey

wojey pitched in 14 games for the 1954 dodgers. he was 1-1 with a save in those appearances, with a decent 3.25 era.  he spent all of 1955, however, in the minors and was traded to detroit after the season ended.  he had been 34 when he finally made his big league debut with the dodgers, and he was 37 in 1957 when he pitched in his fourth and final game for the tigers.

a partial run through the 1998 mother's cookies dodger set

earlier today i posted some cards from the 1997 mother's cookies dodger team set.  it was the first year that the set went away from full-bleed photos, and the 1998 set followed suit.  here's glenn hoffman's lone card as the dodger skipper.

tripp cromer gets a dodger card

thanks to this set - one of two cromer as a dodger cards that i have (the other comes from the 1999 keebler dodgers set)

mark guthrie

joined the dodgers in the 1995 trade that sent ron coomer to the twins and brought kevin tapani to los angeles. he pitched for the dodgers in 205 games over 4 seasons, but the only cards i have of him in a dodger uniform come from this set, the 1996 leaf signature series set, and the 1998 pacific online set.

the same goes for darren hall

who pitched in 83 games for the dodgers over 3 years, and trenidad hubbard

except that his dodger cards are limited to this set, the '99 keebler set, and the '98 pacific online release.

scott radinsky shows up in these sets, plus the pacific online set as a dodger, and he

almost had a 1999 fleer card as a dodger, but i had to settle for a cardinal wearing a dodger uniform.

i'll end this post with the coaches

john shelby replaced reggie smith as the first base coach, but charlie hough took over for dave wallace, so the number of players from the team of my youth on the staff remains the same.  mickey hatcher shows up in place of longtime coach mark cresse although he was the hitting coach.  1998 was cresse's last year as the bullpen coach, but he didn't make the card for some reason.  rick dempsey took over for cresse as the bullpen coach in 1999.

lurkers are lurking - sometimes in plain sight

one doesn't need to look very far or hard to find the dodger making his way onto joe mccarthy's 1993 conlon collection tsn card

dodger manager burleigh grimes gets some foreground respect in the photo from 1938.  not sure when/where this would have been taken, as mccarthy's yankees faced (and beat) the cubs in the '38 fall classic.

grimes gets a mention on the back of that particular card, but that is usually not the case with lurkers.  take this 1999 fleer ultra jeff bagwell card, for example

tom prince is just as much of the card as is bagwell, but he gets no acknowledgement which is as it should be.

jose offerman finds his way onto kurt stillwell's 1993 donruss card

and eric karros (with a cloud of dust) enhances kevin higgins' 1994 topps card

i don't consider the stillwell card to be a double play turn because i can't verify it as such, even though it looks like it might be one.  offerman didn't get on base a whole lot against the padres in 1992, and when he did, he was often sacrificed to second with stillwell covering first.

now here's a blurry lurker.

that's dodger first base coach john shelby in the background on miguel batista's 2003 topps card.  i wish there were more cards like this featuring manny mota or, these days, davey lopes.

here are a couple of hall of fame lurkers - eddie murray shows up on scott stahoviak's 1996 score card

and we get half of cal ripken jr on rickey henderson's 1983 topps record breaker card

this card would have qualified as a 'classic combo' by topps' 2007 standards.

guess what's back?

today marks the long postponed return of the timeless teams blog.  i am embarrassed that i am two years into the thing and i still haven't finished posting the base set.

here are some non-base cards from my collection to mark the occasion.

this is a gold parallel of steve yeager

gold parallels, as you might recall, are numbered to 5 copies

now here's a dual autograph of steve garvey and davey lopes

this one is numbered to 150

the rest of the autos (except for the 1/1's) are unnumbered and have different print runs.

here's al downing's card

the certified autos have the certification statement on the back in place of the stats and text that appears on the unsigned versions

here's pedro guerrero

certified!

and mickey hatcher, too.

also certified

and we're back to steve yeager, basking in the glow of his co-mvp status in the 1981 world series

all the dodger cards have the same dodger stadium scene on the back

same goes for other teams - the stadium scene for each individual franchise doesn't change.  i believe these same images were used in the 2004 upper deck flagship set.

i haven't yet got to the 1988 dodger team on the blog, so we haven't seen the base version of this john shelby card yet

how many sets have certified john shelby autos in them anyway?

the post that re-kicks things off in a few hours focuses on the 1986 california angels.  this former dodger is featured

he pitched in the big a (seen below) during the 1986 season,

but could have (should have!) been featured in the set with the 1980 or 1981 dodgers, too.  be sure to stop by later today.  there are still a handful of teams that i need to post, but i hope to be done with them by opening day.

the evolution of the center fielder, part 2

here's part 1, if you want to catch up.  with rudy law in tommy's doghouse, the dodgers were in need of a new center fielder for the 1981 season.  so, they sent mickey hatcher and a couple of minor leaguers to the twins right at the end of spring training to get...

ken landreaux (1981-1985)

landreaux, shown here on his 1984 topps card, had previously been traded for rod carew (with 3 other players).  he arrived in los angeles and was firmly entrenched in center for the next 5 seasons.  in 1981, he hit only .251 but did not make an error all season (219 total chances in center).  his hitting woes followed him into the postseason, and by the end of the nlcs against the expos, landreaux had lost his position to pedro guerrero and derrel thomas.  he would still enter most games as a late inning defensive replacement, and his most memorable play of the year was his catch of bob watson's flyball to end the 1981 world series.

despite the postseason setback, landreaux was still the dodgers' guy in center.  over the next 4 seasons, he hit .271 and averaged 138 games played.  in the 1985 nlcs against the cardinals, landreaux hit .389 with an ops of .977.  he remained with the dodgers through the 1987 season, but gave way as their primary center fielder to reggie williams in 1986.

reggie williams (1986)

williams (shown on his 1987 donruss card which includes the dodger stadium pavilion in the background)gained a roster spot when pedro guerrero went down with an injured knee as the result of a slide gone bad in spring training.  he wound up making 64 starts in center to landreaux's 62.  overall, williams played in 128 games (landreaux appeared in 103) and hit .277 with 4 homers and 32 rbi.  the dodgers were actively looking for a long term replacement in center, and finally landed one when they acquired john shelby from the orioles

john shelby (1987-1989)

the dodgers started the 1987 season with mike ramsey in center.  reggie williams was still around, but he was hitting well below .200 in a part-time role.  so, in may of '87, the dodgers sent tom niedenfuer to baltimore in exchange for t-bone, shown on his 1989 upper deck card.  i recall at the time shelby was surprised to be handed the dodgers' center field job right away, but he earned it in a hurry.  in 120 games, shelby hit 21 home runs and drove in 69 runs.  that turned out to be his career year, but he still managed to hold on to the job through 1989 (although he made only 86 starts in center in '89).  after his poor '89 season, the dodgers moved shelby in early 1990 to detroit and as a result, had a center field by committee, headed by an unlikely outfielder

kirk gibson (1990)

gibson, featured on this fantastically blue 1990 donruss baseball's best card, was still recovering from injury at the start of the season.  with gibby out, shelby played center until he was traded and then stan javier took over.  jose gonzalez also got some playing time.  the dodgers had kal daniels (acquired during the '89 season) and hubie brooks (a newly signed free agent) at the corner outfield spots, so gibby moved to center when he returned to the lineup in june.  he started 69 games in center and only 11 in his normal stomping grounds of left field. clearly, gibson was not the answer to the center field question, and the search was on once again.

brett butler (1991-1994)

butler, shown here on a 1994 bowman (foil) card, joined the dodgers as a free agent prior to the 1991 season.  both brooks and gibson were gone, but daniels was still in left and darryl strawberry was taking over in right.  there was no question who the center fielder would be - butler played in 161 games and hit .296.  he led the league in runs (112) and walks (108) and finished 7th in the mvp voting.  in his 4 years as the dodgers' center fielder, he missed just 15 games.  his full season averages over that span (remember - 1994 was the strike season) were 99 runs scored, 41 steals and a .303 average.  it had been a long time since the dodgers had that kind of production from their center fielder, and that's why dodger fans were pretty upset when fred claire let him go to the mets as a free agent after the 1994 season.

roberto kelly (1995)

at the beginning of the 1995 season, roberto kelly was a brave.  he was traded to the expos in april and then flipped to the dodgers in may.  that's his 1995 topps traded card shown above.  the dodgers had moved raul mondesi to center to start the season, but put him back in right when kelly was acquired (they sent their right fielder henry rodriguez to montreal in the deal that brought kelly to la).  as a dodger, kelly actually played more left field than center field.  he made 59 starts in left and only 48 in center.  that's because the dodgers re-acquired butler in august, and he reclaimed center and kelly moved to left.  still, kelly's 48 starts qualifies him as the dodgers' primary center fielder in 1995.  with butler back in the fold, the dodgers let kelly walk as a free agent after the season.  however, butler's health problems allowed someone else to claim center field in 1996.  and by someone else, i mean one heck of a committee.  still, one guy made more starts than anyone else and that guy was... 

wayne kirby (1996)

butler started the season back in his familiar center field position, and played through may 1 without missing a game.  he was then diagnosed with cancer, and left the team to seek treatment.  with butler battling cancer, the dodgers turned to chad fonville and then to roger cedeno to fill the void.  that didn't go too well, and, dissatisfied with cedeno's performance, the dodgers selected wayne kirby (seen here on his way cool 1997 fleer ultra card) off of waivers from the indians in june.  kirby wound up making 44 starts as the dodgers center fielder.  butler made 34 starts, including 5 at the end of the season when he returned from treatment, while cedeno had 33.  to round things out, chad curtis made 20 starts in center, rookie of the year todd hollandsworth made 17, and chad fonville made 14. kirby was back with the dodgers in 1997, but in a limited role.  that's because brett butler really did reclaim the center field spot in '97.  sort of.

brett butler (1997)

in what would be his final season, butler played in 105 games, but made only 47 starts in center.  by the end of the season, he had been moved to left.  still, those 47 starts led all dodgers.  the other dodger center fielder starters were otis nixon (41), roger cedeno (39), todd hollandsworth (25), and an assortment of other players like darren lewis had the rest.  butler, shown above on his 1997 upper deck card, was given one last start in center on the last day of the season.  he went 1 for 4 with 2 rbi - his final hit was quite fittingly a triple.

with butler retired, the dodgers once again turned to raul mondesi to fill his shoes in center, just as they had back in 1995.  this time, mondesi stuck, but only after a couple other guys had failed.

raul mondesi (1998)

mondesi, shown on a 1996 bowman's best 'best cuts' insert card, made 94 starts in center to go with his 53 starts in right during the dodgers' 1998 campaign.  trenidad hubbard began the season as the dodgers' center fielder, but was replaced by roger cedeno in late april.  cedeno only lasted until mid-may before mondesi took over.  mondesi finished the season with 30 home runs for the second year in a row, and hit .289 when playing center.  still, he would be put back in right in 1999 as the dodgers' revolving door in center continued to spin.

part 3, coming soon...