a couple of crazy canadians

zane smith isn't really canadian - he hails from georgia (the state, not the country in the former soviet union) - but he pitched for the montreal expos for a few years.  his 1990 upper deck card saw him sporting the expos' colorful uniforms in colorful dodger stadium.  

that made for a card that i needed to own, and bo at baseball cards come to life came through for me.  i am pretty sure i have a complete set of 1990 upper deck back at my parents' house, so i had most likely seen this card 22 years ago.  if so, i was reminded of it by a post at baseball card bust and i quickly added it to my bonus card list on the nefarious 9.  thanks bo!

bo also sent me a frank robinson autographed card that was issued by canadian club whiskey in 1996

too bad the photo is from his cincy years, and not his lone year in dodger blue.  this is the first frobby auto that i own.  i would like to get him to sign his 1973 topps card, but probably won't ever bother to pay the price to do so.

i don't own any mark grudzielanek signed cards, either, but i doubt he signs his full name anyway.  maybe he does like billy grabarkewitz and just goes with the last initial.

that's a nice 2000 topps stadium club card there with just a touch of the old field level scoreboard in view.  grudzy's 2002 topps heritage card is a little less appealing.

i think someday will venture down to vero beach and see if i can find those trees that have been on more dodger cards throughout the years than i care to count.

i'm showing the back of this 60 years of topps reprint from 2011 topps because i actually do not care for the front at all.

you see, i was so looking forward to 1994 topps specifically for the mike piazza card.  when it came out, i was pretty peeved that topps used almost the exact same photo they had put on his 1993 topps traded card.  and the color seemed washed out, too.  so disappointed.  very little effort there by topps.  the strongest man in socal deserved better, and so did i, dammit!

moving on to a 2008 topps opening day card of andy laroche.

i might like the opening day cards better than the flagship.  and i don't care for the opening day cards at all.  2008 topps may be the worst looking topps set ever.  don't worry, though, i'll leave the ranking of the sets to others.

i'll finish up with a couple of cards from 2007 fleer ultra.  here's jason schmidt

schmidt tried his best, but was able to make only 6 starts for the dodgers in 2007.  he won his first start and also pitched well in his fourth start (which came after a stint on the dl), but the rest were not too good.  he missed all of 2008 and came back to go 2-2 in 4 starts during the 2009 season.  the last pitch he threw as a major leaguer hit craig counsell to force in a run.  that's not how anybody wants to go out.

here's andre ethier's card from 2007 ultra

with his spring training number.  i think matt kemp was 65 for a while in the spring.  once ethier made the team, he took number 16 to continue the asu/dodger tradition.

as you can guess, this has been a thinly veiled trade post - all of the cards shown here were provided by bo.  thanks for another great trade!