garvey, you're a star

it gets less and less weird to see steve garvey in a padres uniform as the days go by.  he is often included in modern sets wearing the brown and yellow, so it's not like i can forget.  back in 1984, however, i was still having trouble adjusting.  that's when star put out a 36 card set of nothing but garvey.  it celebrated his status as 'baseball's ironman' and included cards covering his entire career (to date) at that point.  it also included photos from both his first season as a padre, and his previous 14 with the dodgers.  over the next few weeks, i'll show the entire set.

it came in 12 panels with 3 cards each.  star made these sorts of sets for a number of players over the course of a few different years.  anyway, here we go with garvey's set.

the first three cards, unfortunately, show the garv in padres gear

we get the yellow bp jersey on the checklist card, the white home jerseys on his regular season career stats card, and the brown away top on the all-star stat card.  here are the backs.

garvey would play for three more seasons, and appear in one more all-star game.

the next three cards focus on his status on the all-time dodger leaderboard, and he is appropriately shown wearing dodger blue.

these are los angeles dodger club records, as we can see by the absence of duke snider (among others) from the backs

these days, mike piazza sits atop that batting average list, and eric karros leads in home runs, but garvey still has the most rbi of any la dodger. he's still second in hits, first in doubles, and i'm not sure about triples.  i would guess that folks like steve sax and brett butler have passed him (sax tied him, butler passed him).  no change to his status on the games or at bats list, and i believe he is still just behind wills in runs, too.

the third panel is all dodger goodness again, with a fourth card of dodger leader stats, along with garvey's world series stats and post season stats cards

and here are those stats

garvey is still second among la dodgers in total bases, but eric karros has edged past him on the extra base hit list.  the last two cards there are also out of date, thanks to the fact that garvey helped to lead the padres to their first postseason berth in 1984.  his career world series record now shows a .319 batting average (thanks to his .200 clip in the 1984 fall classic), but his .400 average and game winning/series saving home run against the cubs in the 1984 nlcs would bolster the text and stats on the last card of the panel.

there aren't too many more cards in the set that feature garvey as a dodger, but i will show them all anyway.  stay tuned.