heroes by pwe

this post consists of six cards that i received from jeff at 2x3 heroes the other day. they were stuffed inside a pwe with even more cards.  i sense that the volley of pwe's between us has been renewed.

2014 topps chrome clayton kershaw chrome connection die-cut

2014 topps heritage yasiel puig new age performers

i think puig replaced matt kemp in the new age performer insert set last year.  i wonder how long he'll last on the checklist.

2014 panini golden age tommy lasorda

1982 kmart steve garvey

which reminds me that i should get wallet card out a bit more often.

there were some other cards in the envelope for my mini collections - double plays and tatooine cards mostly.  these two cards, however, are tatooine wannabes.  if only upper deck had cropped out the grass on these 2008 cards of michael young and curtis granderson

nice cards nonetheless.  thanks jeff.  i'll give you some time to digest the package i sent and start peppering you with some pwe's of my own.

here's the next installment of sheet from the steve garvey binders

here are sheets 8 and 9 of the first of two main steve garvey binders keep us in his los angeles years, but just barely.  here's sheet 8:

these cards are:

1. 1981 o-pee-chee
2. 1981 permagraphic
3. 1981 squirt
4. 1981 topps
5. 1981 topps scratch-off
6. 1982 donruss (diamond king)
7. 1982 donruss
8. 1982 drake's
9. 1982 fleer

here are the backs:

the 'oddballs' on this sheet - permagraphics, squirt, and drake's - all have some topps influence to them.  the photo on the permagraphics card is the same on garvey's 1981 topps (and o-pee-chee) cards; the 'dodgers' text on the squirt card is the same as the 'dodgers' text on 1978 topps cards with the back being a firm reproduction of 1981 topps; and the back of the drake's card is clearly the same design as 1982 topps.

one thing to note - i maintain that garvey was not included in the team photo that appears on the 1981 topps dodger checklist/tom lasorda card.  so, i don't have that card in the garvey binder.  if anyone can prove me wrong, i'd be happy to add it.

sheet 9 looks like this:

those cards are:

1. 1982 kmart
2. 1982 kellogg's
3. 1982 louisville slugger
4. 1982 o-pee-chee
5. 1982 o-pee-chee (in action)
6. 1982 permagraphic
7. 1982 topps
8. 1982 topps (in action)
9. 1983 donruss

and here are the backs:

the louisville slugger card came attached to a baseball glove. it may be from 1981 (or 1980 even - garvey is wearing the 1980 all-star game patch in the photo as he is in the o-pee-chee and topps cards), but i put it here in 1982 since beckett lists these things as '1982-89 louisville slugger' tags.  there's one of the garv in padres gear, too, which we'll see in a future post..  i know i am missing the 1982 permagraphic gold card that would go on this page, bumping 1983 donruss to the next.  maybe someday.

maurice morning wills, dodger double dipper

as of june 24, 1962, dodger shortstop maury wills had 39 stolen bases on the season.  he went on to steal a then record 104 bags and win the mvp award in the process.  today, june 24, 2014, dee gordon has 39 stolen bases to his credit so far this season.  will dee steal 104 bases?  will he win the mvp award?  will he eventually leave the dodgers, only to return a few seasons later as wills did?  only time will tell.  in the meantime, here's a dodger double dipper post.

[this is the seventythird installment in the double dippers posts.  here are the previous posts - brett butler, omar daal, eric young, nick willhite, chris gwynn, mickey hatcher, dave anderson, don zimmer, rafael landestoy, dave hansen, jose vizcaino, hideo nomo, greg maddux, mike maddux, jon garland, chan ho park, vicente romo, gene mauch, denny lewallyn, von joshua, joe moeller, dioner navarro, rudy seanez, bart shirley, randy wolf, ismael valdes, bobby castillo, mike devereaux, pete richert, jay johnstone, jesse orosco, lee lacy, giovanni carrara, jeff weaver, ted sizemore,  orel hershiser, tom goodwin, joe ferguson, eddie murray, matt luke, ken mcmullen, tim wallach, jerry grote, don sutton, ralph branca, todd hundley, elmer dessens, guillermo mota, joe beckwith, jamie hoffmann, babe herman, joe medwick, juan castro, ron perranoski, clyde king, paul waner, hughie jennings, ron negray, broadway aleck smith, george smith, johnny cooney, jim fairey, frenchy bordagaray, doc casey, waite hoyt, luis olmo, clyde sukeforth, willie keeler,  harry howell, germany smith, johnny allen, marv rackley, and bobo newsom.]

maury wills debuted for the dodgers in 1959.  his first card is arguably the 1960 topps 1959 world series game 5 recap card 'luis swipes base', a card i addressed here.  he would have a few cards manufactured by other companies before appearing on a topps card again.  here's one of them - a 1962 post card

and another - a 1963 jello card

both cards note wills' prowess as a base stealer - he led the league in that category each season from 1960 through 1965.  the jello card references the old stolen base record set by ty cobb of 96 steals in 154 games.  actually, cobb played in 156 games during his record setting 1915 season, and although wills stole his 104 bags over a record 165 games, he made sure to steal two bags in game 156 to bring his running total to 97.  this was the year after roger maris broke babe ruth's single season home run record, and i would imagine that baseball purists and ty cobb fans would have demanded an asterisk had wills fallen short of 96 steals after 156 games.  i guess it's worth noting that wills had 100 steals after 162 games, but twelve and twenty years later, it wouldn't matter as lou brock had 118 steals in 1974 when the cardinals played only 161 games, and rickey henderson set his record 130 steals in 1982 when the a's also played 161 (henderson only appeared in 149 games that year!).

as for wills, he remained the dodgers' shortstop through the 1966 postseason, after which he was traded to the pirates to be their third baseman in 1967.  it was that year that he finally signed with topps and received a regular 1967 topps base card of his own, although it's a more scarce high number.  i showed my beat up copy in this post, along with a bunch of his cards that should have been that i created.

here's a 1969 topps deckle edge card of wills in a pirates uniform

although the 'p' on the hat has been removed because wills became a member of the expansion montreal expos following his two seasons in pittsburgh.  he has the distinction of being the expos' first shortstop and the first expo ever to bat.  really, the first expo ever to appear in a game, as montreal opened their inaugural season in new york against tom seaver and the mets.  he was also the first expo to strike out, the second one to double, the third one to score a run, the first to record a put out, the first to record an assist, and, fittingly, the first to steal a base.  wills only stole 15 bases for the expos in 1969, mostly because he was traded back to the dodgers in early june.

wills reclaimed his shortstop position upon his return to the dodgers, moving eventual rookie of the year ted sizemore to second base.  he eventually gave way to bill russell, and his career came to an end with the close of the 1972 season.  here's wills' 1972 o-pee-chee card

to document his second go-around with the dodgers at the major league level.  i state it like that because wills had actually left and returned to the dodger organization a couple of times before.  after signing with the club in 1951, he was claimed by the reds in the 1956 minor league draft and spent 1957 with their minor league affiliate in seattle.  wills was returned to the dodgers after the 1957 season, but then was sent to the tigers a year later.  they returned him to los angeles just before the 1959 season began, and the rest is dodger history.  to clarify, wills is still only a double dipper because i only consider those players who played as a dodger at the major league level before leaving the franchise and then eventually returned and played as a dodger in the big leagues again. sorry ted lilly, shane victorino, scott proctor, etc.

i included that link up above to the post featuring the 1959-1967 wills cards that i had created.  i should give credit to topps for creating the 1962 wills card that should have been.  they first used it in their 1975 sets as part of the mvp subset, the mini version of which i showed in this post.  it showed up again in the 1982 kmart set

and again in 1987 topps as part of the 'turn back the clock' subset.  the kmart set was released a year after there were some other maury wills cards issued by fleer and topps, except those showed him in a seattle mariners uniform. he managed the m's in the latter part of the 1980 season and also for a month or so to begin the 1981 campaign, becoming just the third african-american to manage in the major leagues.  since then, wills has been a coach or baserunning instructor for about half of the major league teams, although i am glad that the last few years seem to have been spent primarily with the dodgers and the likes of dee gordon.  let's see what dee can do this year!

here's to you maury, a dodger double dipper and maybe, just maybe, a hall of famer, too.

what's a wallach worth?

let's consult the expert on the subject, corey at the tim wallach blog.  i sent him a few timmy cards, and he sent some dodgers in return.

 

the hands down best card of the bunch was this 1989 starting lineup baseball greats don drysdale card

i say best because it was one i had not seen before.  i did some quick digging and found that the card was featured in this starting lineup two-pack

big d and reggie are indeed two baseball greats, but other than that, they have nothing in common.  they never faced each other, anyway.

as you might well know, you can't have drysdale without koufax.  corey included a 1982 kmart sandy in the package

there was another pitcher with ties to drysdale - orel hershiser - on an oddball of his own - a 1989 kaybee superstars of baseball card

hershiser, of course, broke drysdale's scoreless innings streak in 1988 en route to all kinds of hardware. 

here's a 1988 topps big mike scioscia card

big head mike likes the way little mike looks in the gear.

i'll end with a card from more recent times - a 2011 topps heritage dodgers dandies card

featuring matt kemp and andre ethier.  i would tie this all together with a reference back to drysdale as dandy don, but he was a football player.  let it suffice to say that a few tim wallach cards are worth a dandy package of dodger cards in return.  now you know.

cards from the hot corner

i am, once again, woefully behind on trade posts. here are some cards that i received from hot corner cards.  i have completed several trades with pat, and he always sends good stuff.  here is but a small part of the most recent package.

1982 kmart steve garvey

this was the first retail box set i can remember buying.  i wasn't sure at the time what the 20th anniversary was about. i guess it was kmart's 20th, but to me, the local kmart looked like it opened in 1940 and hadn't been updated since.  this set was also the second time i had seen 'cards that should have been' as it used the 1962 topps maury wills card that had been created for the 1975 topps mvp subset.

garvey's was one of four dodger cards in the set; the others being wills, sandy koufax (1963), and a don drysdale highlight

not all cards need to be of mvp's or boyhood heroes - so here's a 1986 fleer ken howell card

 and a 1993 fleer ultra mike sharperson card

that's two days in a row that i've shown sharpy on the blog.  as a guy who played all over the infield myself, i appreciated his versatility.

now we've entered the new and shiny and/or parallel part of the haul.  from 2013 topps, pat sent me the chris capuano emerald parallel

 and the target red parallel

plus clayton kershaw's target red parallel

 and aj ellis's as well, with kershaw in the foreground

as i understand it, the dodgers have a standing dare for someone to approach kershaw in the dugout during one of his starts and ask him an oddball question, such as 'was the end of inception a dream'.  maybe that's what is being discussed in this photo.

here's andre ethier's 2013 topps heritage chrome parallel

is this the last heritage release that will feature ethier as a dodger?  we should know in about 8 weeks.

the last couple of cards i will show are double play turns.  this one is from 2010 topps pro debut

and yes, i will consider this a turn even though i can't see the second base bag or a runner sliding in.  it's my prerogative.  goins is in aaa this year, by the way, but didn't get a call up when jose reyes was injured.

here's a no-doubter - 2012 topps opening day erick aybar

thanks for the cards pat!