fan appreciation, dodgers style

i used to love going to the last game of the season at dodger stadium. they would give away a bunch of stuff - airline tickets, union oil auto scripts, even a sailboat that they would parade around the warning track. good times, even though i never won anything.

i do know that they didn't give out baseball cards when i was attending 'fan appreciation' day, and i'm not sure that they do now. i did come across these beauties on ebay a while back, and they were described as 'fan appreciation sga' items, and were included on promotional sheets highlighting some end of season clothing and souvenir sales. sounds good to me.

here are the 1997 cards:

hideo nomoone of approximately 1,402 cards issued of nomo in 1997.

mike piazzawearing his cap as if he were in a tom emanski commercial

and chan ho parkpretty eclectic designs. unlike the first two, park's last name shows up only once, but he gets two photos. plus dodger stadium in the background.

in 1998, they used a singular design:

gary sheffield

aside from bobby bonilla, probably my least favorite dodger

eric karrosfigures - of all the dodgers' mid-90's roys, i liked karros the least and he was the one they kept the longest

raul mondesi triple exposure! for a while, raul was my favorite dodger

in 1999, things got a little retro:

eric karros

him again. notice the bad blue jerseys that i associate with the fox/davey johnson/kevin malone wasted years. the best part about this card is that you can see the hodges tribute patch karros wore that year. i have a garvey and a gibson patch. most players seemed to wear jackie robinson, which makes sense. there was a koufax patch, but i think he asked them to discontinue it since he severed ties with the dodgers during the fox years.

kevin brown
after bonilla and sheffield, possibly my least favorite dodger

adrian beltre
back then, i thought beltre would be our third baseman for the next 15 years. guess not.

in the year 2000, the stars came out

gary sheffield

boo

eric karrosmeh.

shawn greentraded for raul mondesi, both in real life and in my favorite dodger rankings.

the backs of these cards complete a puzzle picture of the team maybe it's just me, but that's a lot of non-uniformed personnel.

in 2001 they went a metal route

gary sheffield seems like they were trying to force feed this guy to the fans as the face of the franchise.

chan ho park not much to say about him. stupid phillies.

paul lo ducaplaschke's heart and soul. what a fraud.

not sure what happened in 2002, but 2003 brought about some black borders!

and, hideo nomo was back in town! not the same pitcher, but still had pockets of brilliance now and then

paul loduca after bonilla, sheffield and brown, possibly my least favorite dodger.

eric gagne'game over' was huuuuuuge in 03 and 04.

so, with this season officially in the books, i salute the dodgers and their attempts at fan appreciation through the production of baseball cards.