old friend todd zeile makes an appearance in a trade package

i was noticing the other day that i've only featured todd zeile dodger cards three times on this blog since its inception in the fall of 2008.  that's too bad, because i liked the guy.  he joined the dodgers for the 1997 season and promptly hit 31 home runs - more home runs than any other dodger third baseman except pedro guerrero (a teammate of zeile's with the 1990 cardinals) who hit 32 in 1983.  of course, adrian beltre came along and hit 48 in 2004, but that's beside the point.

i was lucky to have tj from the junior junkie include some cards of zeile in his recent trade package, so here's his 1998 fleer tradition card.

zeile was traded away in the mike piazza deal with the marlins, and so was replaced at third by bobby bonilla.  beltre came along in 1999, however, and held the spot until he bolted after his huge offensive year mentioned above.  zeile went on and eventually rejoined piazza in new york, helping the mets get to the world series.  he hit .368 with a series best 8 rbi in the nlcs, and then hit .400 against the yankees in a losing cause.  here's his 1998 topps finest card to boot.

somewhere i have a dodger scorecard that features a todd zeile autograph.  he was signing in the concourse at dodger stadium before a game in '97, and i partook.  i remember the lady in line in front of me asked him if he knew steve sax.  saxy hadn't been a dodger since 1988, and he hadn't played in the majors since 1994.  zeile was taken aback by the question, and i think he was still trying to wrap his head around it while he was signing my scorecard.  i was more impressed that he was a teammate of mike piazza's.

the strongest man in socal was also among the cards tj sent - here's a 1996 score select piazza lineup leaders card

this is not an insert, just another way to have more than one piazza card in the base set.

oddball time! this is a 1996 scoreboard all sport ppf (i don't know what ppf means) card of roger cedeno

there sure were a lot of roger cedeno cards in the late 1990's. he was traded to the mets in 1998 with charles johnson for todd hundley.

here's a 2000 upper deck ovation eric gagne card

it says 'world premiere' on the side of the card, in case you were wondering.  i don't think that really makes sense, just like the world series isn't really the world series, if you know what i mean.

relic time!  2003 leaf certified materials joe thurston mirror red game-worn jersey

thurston only played in 8 games during the 2002 season - all in september. i didn't think that the dodgers wore their blue alternates in an official major league game (as the back of the card attests) that late in the season, but i could be wrong.  or maybe a spring training game is considered an official major league game.

there were a few more non-dodger/double play cards that need to be shown in the package, such as this 2014 topps update chris taylor card

and two from 2015 topps - javier baez

and logan forsythe

great stuff from a very generous source. thanks tj!  keep an eye on your mailbox...

what can nick do for you?

obviously, the title up there is a play on the slogan for ups - what can brown do for you.  nick, in this case, is everyone's favorite dime box digger, and proprietor of the blog that got my vote for blog of the year last year.  and what he can do for you is send you some great cards that you didn't even know that you needed.  including some cards of, you guessed it, kevin brown.  so my play on words doesn't really work, but it's late at night and i need to get this trade post cranked out and scheduled.

this here is a 1999 fleer mystique card

that nick found for me in what i assume to be a dime box.  or maybe it's a flea market find.  or a yard sale pickup.  who knows.  this next one looks like he had to go into the matrix to set it free. it's a 2000 topps own the game insert of kevin brown

this same insert appeared in topps chrome and topps limited releases that year.  yes, topps gave us a crossover parallel insert set.  very strange.  the precursor to upper deck's starquest and that yankee history megaset from a few years back.

nick also found a couple of upper deck cards of gary sheffield that used the same photo.  compare this 2000 upper deck ovation superstar theater insert

with this 2000 upper deck ultimate victory card

kind of the 'topps stars' effect, if you know what i mean.

nick located some cards of a great dodger from yesteryear who doesn't get a lot of play from the card companies - tommy davis.  this is a 2001 upper deck sp legendary cuts card

and this one is a 2013 panini golden age card

these go well with the golden age auto i received from too many verlanders recently.

another dodger from the early los angeles days that we don't see too often is john roseboro.  nick found a 2004 upper deck sp legendary cuts card of him, too.

the dodgers had a nice group of players in that set, with the likes of bill russell, dusty baker, tommy lasaorda, reggie smith, and steve garvey joining the usual reese-campy-robinson-drysdale types.

here's a very shiny 2004 bowman's best chin-lung hu card that i had not seen before opening the envelope from nick

at first i thought is was a chin-feng chen card because it seemed more like a late 1990's bowman's best  card.  of course, chen was still with the dodgers in 2004, while hu was just in his first year of a ball.

up next is a 2003 upper deck play ball dolph camilli reprint

this is a reprint of the 1941 play ball issue, and i believe the photo is the same one used for camilli's 1961 fleer card.  it is interesting to me that the world's fair patch was 'removed' in both the original and this reprint play ball release.  of course, it may not be the same photo, and this could just be camilli's signature pose.  kind of like how don sutton 'suttons'.

last, but not least, nick found me a card from the 1977-80 tcma the war years set.  it's the first one of these in my collection, too.  this is lewis riggs

riggs was a third baseman who joined the dodgers in 1941 after a few successful seasons in cincinnati (he was part of their 1940 world championship club), and he helped the dodgers reach the fall classic that year.  in 1942, riggs joined the armed forces and served for three years during world war ii.  he returned to the dodgers in 1946, appearing in just one game before the team released him.   i knew none of this before i saw this card and looked riggs up.

so, that's what nick can do for you - find a bunch of cool cards that inspire you to learn about history.  i can't wait for my next lesson.  thanks for the cards nick!

johngy's beat-down on the nefarious 9

hey! you might have noticed some changes to the nefarious 9 over there on the right side of the blog.  those are my most wanted cards (within reason), and johngy recently sent me a couple that had been there for a while.

he also sent a bunch of cards from 2000 which was pretty cool.  here are a few of eric karros' cards issued by pacific that year.  first we have crown collection

next is just plain pacific

and this is paramount

not much variation in the photo selection there.

here's another karros card from crown collection - this one has the team checklist on the back

i do believe fabio is 'suttoning' there!

on to the nefarious 9 needs.  first up was a 1985 fleer steve sax card

not sure why i needed this but i did.  overlapping team sets and player collections wreak havoc on want lists.

the other most wanted card that johngy sent was this 1993 o-pee-chee premier jody reed card

yay.

back to the 2000's - that was the year that the shawn green proliferation began, and it started while he was still in blue jays attire.  here's his 2000 pacific crown collection card

his 2000 pacific paramount card

and his 2000 upper deck ovation card

2000 also meant kevin brown cards, so, like green, here are his pacific crown collection

paramount

and upper deck ovation cards.

i've mentioned before that i really like all the 2000 dodger cards because they often show the heroes patch that each player wore.  brown is wearing the koufax patch that was kept out of wide circulation.

darren dreifort, shown here on his 2000 fleer tradition card,

wore the drysdale patch, but it's really hard to make out on the card, unfortunately.

these next few are better - 2000 pacific crown collection gary sheffield (jackie robinson)

2000 pacific crown collection devon white (jackie robinson)

and 2000 upper deck adrian beltre (ron cey)

thanks john, and be sure to check out johngy's beat!

the evolution of the ace, part 3

here's the third installment in the evolution of the dodgers' ace.  that's ace as defined by me.

orel hershiser (1985, 1987-1989)

bulldog burst on the scene with a 19-3 record in 1985.  he finished 3rd in the cy young voting that year, and followed it up with a couple of .500 campaigns.  in 1987, however, his 16-16 record also came with a  3.06 era and a league leading 264.2 innings pitched.  it also netted him a fourth place showing in the cy young vote.  then, in 1988, the stars aligned and hershiser won 23 games, broke don drysdale's scoreless innings streak, led the league in wins (tied with danny jackson), innings pitched, complete games and shutouts, and won the cy young and the nlcs and world series mvp awards.  not bad.  in 1989, hershiser fell back to .500 with a 15-15 record, but had a tidy 2.31 era and led the league in innings pitched for the third straight year.  he also finished fourth in the cy young vote.  of course, all that work caught up to him, and he missed most of the following season due to injury.

ramon martinez (1990-1991, 1994)

mike morgan, bob ojeda and tim belcher had better eras in 1991, as did hershiser and gross in 1994, but i give the nod to martinez in those years.  1990 was a no-brainer, though, as ramon won 20 games for the only time in his career, going 20-6 with a 2.92 era and 12 complete games.  he also had 3 shutouts that year, including one against the braves in which he struck out 18 batters.  he won 17 games in 1991, and then posted 12 victories in 1994, leading the staff both times.  what made him the ace in those years, in my mind anyway, was that he led the team in starts, and shutouts, and nearly led in complete games and innings pitched.

tom candiotti (1992-1993)

in between the martinez years, there was tom candiotti.  and some bad dodger teams.  the 1992 team is the worst in la dodger history, winning just 63 games.  candiotti was credited with 11 of them, more than anyone else on the staff.  he also led all starters (who made more than 11 starts) in era with a nice 3.00 mark.  1993 was a bit trickier.  the dodgers improved their record to an even .500, but candiotti was still on the wrong side of breaking even.  he was 8-10 despite a staff leading 3.12 era.  it's because of the era, and the fact that he led the staff in strikeouts that i let him retain his ace status.  i came very near to listing pedro martinez as the ace of the staff, but he made just 2 starts that season and i couldn't bring myself to do it.

hideo nomo (1995-1996)

there was no doubt about who the ace of the staff was in 1995, though.  isn't that a great card, by the way.  nice 2006 upper deck collector's choice featuring a 3-exposure, horizontal, dodger stadium shot.  me likey very much.  nomo was just 13-6 in 28 starts (ramon martinez won 17 games and pitched a no-hitter), but his era was 2.54 and he had a league leading 3 shutouts and 236 strikeouts.  he struck out 234 batters in 1996, and had a record of 16-11 although his era climbed to 3.19.  he also threw the first of two career no-hitters that year, and confused the heck out of bob dole.  it's worth noting as well that nomo finished 4th in the cy young voting each of those two years, which also marked the return of the dodgers to the postseason.

chan ho park (1997-1998, 2001)

nomo's era continued to climb, and so i picked chan ho park as the ace of the team in '97.  it could have just as easily been ismael valdes, but them's the breaks.  park was 14-8 with a 3.38 era and 166 strikeouts.  he also had 2 complete games (both wins) and a much better whip than nomo.  in 1998, park was filthy.  he led the staff in wins (15), innings pitched (220.1) and strikeouts (191).  after a down year in 1999 (era wise), park bounced back to win 18 games in 2000.  however, that team also had kevin brown who was simply a better pitcher than park, despite their records.  park did reclaim the ace title in 2001, however, when brown was injured and park again led the staff in wins (15), innings pitched (234) and strikeouts (218).

kevin brown (1999-2000, 2003)

brown joined the dodgers to be the ace, period.  he should have been the ace for several years given what the team was paying him (just a year after refusing to pay that much for piazza), but that didn't happen.  he did have a very good 1999 season, going 18-9 with a 3.00 era, 1.07 whip, 5 complete games and 221 strikeouts.  in 2000, he led the league with a 2.58 era and 0.99 whip.  his record was only 13-6, but that was more a function of the dodgers than brown.  as mentioned earlier, had brown stayed healthy, he may have held the title in 2001 and 2002, but he did not.  he did return to full strength in 2003 and was 14-9 with a 2.39 era in 32 starts.  he also had 185 k's and a whip of 1.14, numbers which must have made the yankees comfortable enough to trade for him after the season.  bwah-ha-ha!

odalis perez (2002)

despite the triumphant return of hideo nomo, it was odalis perez who earned the title of ace based on his 2002 performance.  odalis was acquired in the 'let's get rid of gary sheffield' trade with the braves, and promptly helped dodger fans forget that sheff was one of the greatest offensive players the team had ever seen.  perez was 15-10 in 2002, with a 3.00 era, a 0.99 whip and a staff-leading 222.1 innings pitched.  he also had the only complete games and shutouts on the staff with 4 and 2, respectively.

i'll finish up the evolution tomorrow.

it's fun to trade cards with fun to trade cards

i just received some cards from jim at fun to trade cards.  i had sent him some o-pee-chee twins, a joe mauer timeline sp and a glen perkins auto and he sent back some cool stuff.  here's a sampling:

three 1971 topps cards off the old wantlist:

reds rookies

clay dalrymple

and 'old friend' frank howard

these cards have seen better days, but when it comes to 1971 and especially the high numbers, i am taking what i can get.

there were some shiny 2000 gary sheffield cards, such as

2000 ud ionix

2000 bowman's best

and 2000 ud ovation

between sheffield, kevin brown, and shawn green there were millions of dodger cards issued in 2000.  millions.  i am sure of it.

here's a 1993 score select eric davis that jim also included.

did you know that davis sucked as a dodger?  i did.  in hindsight i should have scanned the back of the card so you could see his lowly stats, as well as the intricate design he shaved into the side of his head and his 'e' earring.

there were a couple of post 2000 twins as well, like this 2006 topps joe mauer

and my other favorite twinkie, doug mientkiewicz on his 2002 topps card

by the way, where's dougie now?

thanks jim.  i am going to take a closer look at your want lists and see if i can do some more damage.