now this was o-pee-chee...

back in my day, being an o-pee-chee card meant something dang-gummit! we were shown in our old team's uniforms and we liked it! well, i did anyway. after being disappointed with upper deck's resurrection of the o-pee-chee brand, let's renew our love of the variation, shall we?

1979 tommy john.

this card was unfathomable to me. a dodger on the yankees? no way. of course, it worked both ways, as andy messersmith and gary thomasson were yankees on the dodgers in this set. john had the same bad luck don sutton did in regards to the world series, although he at least appeared in the 1981 matchup. he was famously removed from game 6 early, and the dodgers went on to beat the yankees.

1980 joe morgan. the big red machine was almost completely dis-assembled after morgan returned to the astros. the astros released him a year later, which set the stage for him to go to the giants where he would eventually destroy my hopes for the 1982 season.

speaking of 1982, here's mark belanger.the defensive specialist was displaced in baltimore by cal ripken jr, and brought his gold gloves to the dodgers for a year. he made an uncharacteristic 4 errors in 86 chances at short, and retired after the 1982 season.

1985 rickey henderson. who would have thought that rickey would leave oakland? i was a big fan of 'billy-ball' and so had quite an interest in henderson, dwayne murphy, mike norris and the others. so i was surprised when rickey was traded to the yankees for jose rijo and a few other players, including eric plunk. in 1989, the yankees would trade him back to oakland for some players, including eric plunk.

1986 steve yeager.

aside from bill russell, yeager was the last of the dodgers from the 1978 team that i was so connected to. interestingly enough, he was a 'sign and trade' free agent, as the dodgers signed him and traded him a couple weeks later to the mariners for ed vandeberg. yeageer got to seattle just in time to play in roger clemens' first 20-k game. he only struck out once, though, out of two at-bats.

1987 greg brock. man, did i not care for greg brock. simply because he was garvey's replacement. it wasn't his fault, although he didn't do much of anything in the postseason the way garvey did. brock had his best season in 1987 for the brewers, where he had the pressure of replacing cecil cooper! if only greg had followed joe shlabotnik instead of two franchise favorites, he might not have had all the pressure.

i've enjoyed this trip down o-pee-chee memory lane, and i have a bunch more variations that i'll post in the future.