07 December 2012

why acquire aguirre?

hank aguirre was traded to the dodgers in april of 1968.  he had pitched for the tigers for 10 seasons before heading west to los angeles, and led the american league in era in 1962.  aguirre was the victime of bad timing when it came to the postseason, as he broke in to the big leagues with cleveland in 1955, one year after they had been in the world series, and his departure from detroit came in the spring before they would win the fall classic against the cardinals.  

he spent one year with the dodgers and was featured on a 1969 topps card still wearing detroit duds. 
topps took the easy way out and airbrushed out the 'd' on aguirre's hat, but they didn't bother to remove the one on his chest.  aguirre pitched well for the dodgers in '68; he had a 0.69 era in 39 innings of work, but they released him at the end of the season anyway. he wound up pitching for the cubs in 1969 and 1970.  but, because the text at the bottom of his card says 'dodgers', this is a card i will keep.  even if it's a cub in tigers' clothing.

aguirre wasn't the only dodger in 1969 to be caught wearing american league threads.  take andy kosco, for example.  he's wearing yankee pinstripes on his 1969 topps card
this is not as bad as the aguirre, though, as kosco was traded to the dodgers in december of 1968, so he hadn't worn the dodger uniform prior to this card being released.

both the aguirre and the kosco came to me recently via tim wallach.  not the dodgers' third base coach, but rather corey who is trying to collect all of tim wallach's baseball cards.  not just one of each, but all of them.

he also included a 2010 topps heritage hiroki kuroda relic
and a couple of 1974 topps set for my set.
as well as this 2012 topps cut above insert of matt kemp
i think i will take a page out of corey's playbook and ask that people send me their matt kemp cards.  all of them.

thanks for the trade corey!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Glad they got there.