clearing out the scanned folder - miscellany edition

not every card that i scan is a dodger card, which makes sense because my collection has a fair share of cards featuring players from other teams.  sometimes, however, i get ahead of myself and scan some stuff without a specific post in mind. other times, i do have a post in mind, but it never comes together.  and then there are some cards i scan because they fit into one of my mini collections.  there are some of each in this post.

2000 skybox dominion scott rolen

i believe that i figured out a long time ago that the dodger catcher lurking on this card is angel pena, so i'll go with that.

1975 sspc elias sosa

sosa was a brave just before he became a dodger. he was part of the deal that brought lee lacy back to la for mike marshall.

1995 upper deck mike blowers

here's another future dodger, as blowers played for the dodgers later in the 90's.  thanks to this card, we know that blowers once caught a foul ball at tiger stadium at 2:55 (or is it 2:56?) in the afternoon.

1997 bowman vladimir guerrero

one of my last remaining player collections.  it was good to see vladdy in this year's archives release.

2001 topps archives jack morris

and 2001 topps archives lou whitaker

both cards are part of my 1978 topps master set.  still waiting for the design to be used in the revitalized archives release.

2002 topps 206 mike piazza team 206 insert

still working on this set

2008 upper deck timeline brandon jones

still working on this set, too.

2014 topps stadium club albert pujols

pujols just recently passed steve garvey on the all-time hits list. i scanned this card because it fits in my 'nob' collection, should i decide to make it an official collection.

1992 megacards babe ruth babe's farewell

this card also belongs in that collection.  it features a cropped version of nat fein's pulitzer prize winning photo, and is a great card to have. i'm glad i scanned it.

a more than just so-so trade

back in a game i was watching in the late 1990's, vin scully commented while the dodgers were playing the cubs that the white sox must have thought a certain player to be only so-so, when in fact, it turned out that he was sosa!  a corny joke, but vin gets a lot of leeway from me.  anyway, i recently received a card of that so-so player in the mail from p-town tom at waiting 'til next year.

it comes from 2002 topps 206, and is a series 2 team 206 insert.  i'm working on the base and insert set, which is why i was sent the card.  it is much appreciated.  tom included another card - this 1975 (some say 1976) sspc card of dodger hitting instructor mickey vernon

vernon was a two-time batting champion for the washington senators, and happened to be the favorite ballplayer of president dwight david eisenhower.  after retiring as a player, he coached for a few teams, with the dodgers being one of them.

i wasn't expecting the vernon card, so it was a nice surprise.  it makes me wish even more that topps would produce cards of coaches again, and that donruss had included some of the dodger coaches in their early 1980 sets that had a few other teams' coaches in them.

i also received my return pwe from topher at crackin' wax.  for a one cent donation, i was able to choose some cards from his 'take my cards' page.  i wound up with a couple of dodgers from 1978 1987 2014 donruss.

adrian gonzalez

and zack greinke

i grabbed a couple other cards for trade bait/trade fodder, and i'll be checking back to see what other cards topher has for me to take.

jose canseco final tributes

i am not ashamed to say that i was, and still am to a degree, a jose canseco fan.  as any good card collector in 1986, i tried for as many of his rookie cards as i could, and i followed his home run and stolen base exploits with quite a bit of interest.  you may recall that i had adopted the a's as my american league team with the arrival of rickey henderson and billy ball in 1980, quickly and shamelessly abandoning the excitement over the angels and don baylor that i had felt in 1979.  so, i still had a soft spot for oakland in the mid-80's, and was glad to see canseco making them relevant again.

even as i joined the 'ste-roids' chant from the right field pavilion at dodger stadium during game 1 of the 1988 world series, i marveled at the grand slam canseco had hit in the first inning.  it is still one of the top 3 hardest hit balls i have ever seen in person (willie mccovey and willie stargell hit the other two, with albert belle and carlos delgado not far behind).  anyway, i was always willing to give canseco the benefit of the doubt even as there became no doubt.  i was annoyed when the yankees claimed him on waivers in 2000 just to block another team from picking him up as i knew it would be difficult for canseco to sign on with another team in 2001.  as luck would have it, the angels signed him just before spring training, but then released him in march (although topps still put out cards of him in 2001 in the angels' uni).  i thought that that may have been it, but to his credit, canseco went to the independent league and played minor league ball until the white sox came calling at mid-season.

thanks to canseco's perseverance and the fact that frank thomas was lost for the season, we were treated to some non-yankee (and angel) final tributes in 2002.  i've got a lot of them.

2002 donruss

with full career stats on the back

2002 donruss fan club

perhaps the 'bulkiest' photo of canseco on any card, and also with complete career stats on the back

2002 fleer maximum

the back of which gives a closer look at the travels of canseco towards the end of his career

he came oh-so-close to another 30/30 season while with the blue jays in 1998.  i believe he also hit the longest home run in skydome history that year as well.

2002 fleer platinum

more full career stats

did anybody ever look at those graphs on the back of 1987 (and 2002 fleer platinum) cards?  i didn't.  if i had more initiative, i would dig up canseco's 1987 fleer card and compare the graphs between this card and that one.  i just looked his card up on comc, and now recall that the graphs on the back of '87 fleer cards were different than those above.  never mind.

2002 fleer tradition

again with the full career stats, with room to spare at the bottom

202 fleer triple crown

another final tribute with the full career stats, although fleer doesn't care to give individual rows of stats to each team played for in a single season.  advantage donruss and topps.

speaking of which, here's canseco's 2002 topps 206 card

no stats on the back, but a note that canseco became the first man to hit 400 home runs and steal 200 bases in a career

2002 upper deck authentics

here, even though there is just one row of stats on the back, we can see his career totals

and notice that he stole 2 bases on the season to finish with exactly 200 steals.  he was caught one time.

2002 upper deck vintage

this was the most blatant to-date rip off of topps that i recall; upper deck's 2001 decade 1970's set kind of looked like 1975 topps, and their 2001 vintage release looked a lot like 1963 topps.  here, they dropped the text to the bottom of the card and made the backs yellow to look like the late series o-pee-chee cards did in 1971

they weren't ripping off topps, it was o-pee-chee that they were using.  the only problem was that upper deck didn't acquire the rights to o-pee-chee until 2006 if i recall correctly.

perhaps my favorite two final tributes for mr. 40/40 came from topps.  canseco, as he had done in 2001, signed a deal prior to 2002's spring training, this time with the expos.  topps, as it had done in 2001, issued cards featuring canseco his his new uniform.  never mind that he was released again during spring training, we get these final tributes from 2002 topps

full career stats, with league leader designations.  i thank you, topps.

and 2002 topps chrome

with the same info on the back

i also appreciate topps (and fleer platinum) for putting strikeouts on the backs of their cards.  canseco retired with 1942 k's, which at the time was good for second on the all-time list behind only canseco's 1987 a's teammate reggie jackson.  jackson had 101 more homers than canseco, however.

canseco eventually returned to the white sox organization in 2002, appearing in 18 games for their triple-a  affiliate and slugging 5 home runs, but didn't get back to the big leagues.  he has since played in the minors in a few different seasons (2006, 2010-2013), and even had a short (one-day) stint in dodger camp prior to the 2004 season.  it's too bad topps didn't put out a card that year like they did in '01 and '02...

time for 206

12 years in the making, i have finally compiled my want list for the 2002 topps 206 set.  any help is greatly appreciated, and you will be rewarded.

following the release of the inaugural topps heritage set in 2001 (a set which i still am trying to complete - want list coming someday), i was intrigued by the idea of another retro set, and topps hit the right buttons with this one.  first, they made the base cards the standard card size, which i appreciated.  i don't think i would have been interested in an all-mini set.  next, they mixed in current players, prospects (a james loney card in 2002? nice!), first year players, retired stars, and 1909 t206 reprints all in for this next retro set.  finally, there were different variations of some of the cards which i thought was great.  i have since come around to being somewhat annoyed by variations, but in 2002 i was more than tolerant of them.

anyway, let's have a look at some of the cards from this set that i hope to complete, variations and all, someday.

here's gary sheffield

remember that pose

darren dreifort

shawn green

hideo nomo

now, here's sheffield again from one of the later series

painted sets make it easy to change teams.

here's a sheffield variation, too

the set was released in three series, with the third coming out in early 2003.

roberto alomar

something is off with his eyes.

moises alou

this is the 'a' version of alou's card.  there is a varation which shows him in the cubbie pinstripes, but it's not a short print.  not all variations were short prints back then which helped fuel my lack of frustration with them.  the set does have some short prints, however, but that was such a novelty back then that i didn't mind.

craig biggio

bob gibson

duke snider is in the set as one of the retired stars, but he is only featured as a dodger.  nolan ryan has cards of him as an angel and an astro, plus a variation of him as a ranger.  i'm glad duke doesn't have a card of him as a giant.

juan gonzalez

ken griffey jr

vladimir guerrero

that is card number 1 in the set

todd helton

todd hollandsworth

holly as a rockie, holding the bat as if he were right-handed

brian jordan

just like the sheffield card, there is a card of jordan in a later series that uses this same image, but with him in a dodger uniform.  then, there's a variation of that card, too.

mark mulder

chan ho park

eddie plank

here's one of the reprints of the original t206 cards.  not a true reprint like the dover reprints because the size is different, but you get the idea.

jimmy rollins

john smoltz

alfonso soriano

kerry wood

there were the minis, as i mentioned earlier, with different backs of course.  here's a honus wagner

the t206 wagner is reprinted in the set three times as well - each with a different colored background.

here's a larry walker mini

with the base card, too

those are both the purple jersey variation, by the way.

i'll finish up with ichiro.  a mini version

of a variant of this card

of which there is a third version as well.

what seemed fun 12 years ago has become a bit tedious, but i still plan to finish this set.  can you help a blogger out?