and you shall know them by their yellow backs

i caught myself by surprise a couple of years ago when i realized that i had a complete dodger team set of 1970 o-pee-chee cards.  i am not really sure how that happened, but it did.  one day i was cross checking lists with my early 70's dodger binder and there they were - all the gray bordered dodger goodness that o-pee-chee bothered to issue.  helped, of course, by the fact that there are six fewer dodgers in the o-pee-chee set than the topps - no canadian versions of jim lefebvre, maury wills, tom haller, don sutton, jim brewer or al mcbean.

i didn't have the same luck with 1971 o-pee-chee at the time, but i did pick up a large lot of dodger cards from the set a year or so ago, plus a few of the high numbers here and there since then to help me get closer to knocking another team set off the want list.

i'll show the lower numbered cards first...

claude osteen

everytime i see a '71 osteen, i wonder what the heck is going on in the background.  here's the back of osteen's card - it's yellow, but of course you already knew that because you followed along as i posted all about o-pee-chee over at oh my o-pee-chee, right?

it's been well over a year since things wrapped up over there, and i kind of miss posting and learning about the variations.  i'm not starting another blog though, especially since timeless teams is floundering.

here's sandy vance

the 'lesser' sandy, if you will

i really like the 'sunburst' behind the photos on the back.  it's different from the rectangular insert photo on the backs of the 1971 topps cards, and in my opinion, better.

von joshua

it's worth noting that on these cards, the french text comes first.

joshua was a dodger double dipper, by the way.

billy grabarkewitz

good to see the holman stadium seats in the background there.  jerry stephenson is hanging out, too, but i don't know who the seated dodger is.

it's too bad that grabarkewitz and mark grudzielanek played three decades apart.  harry caray wouldn't have known what to do if they were involved in a double play turn.

manny mota

this is a photo from shea stadium, like so many other cards in the 1971 set

the back of mota's card notes that he is 'a good hitter' who topped .300 in 4 of the previous 5 years.  he hit over .300 in 1971, too, as well as 1972 and 1973.

bill singer

if only the photographer had snapped the picture a moment earlier, i wouldn't be wondering who is walking behind singer.

no surprise that the back of the card mentions singer's no hitter thrown in july of 1970.  a joule sans coups, as it were.

duke sims

yankee stadium on a dodger card?  yes, thanks to the power of the o-pee-chee team variation!

nice to read that he was a yankee killer, too.

al downing

another team (and text) variation, which features a first year brewers uniform. 

downing would go on to have the best season of his career in 1971.

bob valentine/mike strahler

both guys had some big league stats prior to 1971, but topps still went with the minor league numbers on the back.

valentine and strahler (and grabarkewitz and singer as well) would be traded to the angels after the 1972 season with frank robinson in exchange for andy messersmith and ken mcmullen.

alan foster

i'm somewhat on the fence about including this card with my team set for obvious reasons.  foster was the guy traded to the indians for duke sims.

andy kosco was the player traded to the brewers for al downing, but his card came in a later series, so topps already had him as a brewer with a magic hat thus eliminating the need for an o-pee-chee variation.

bill russell

still an outfielder on the card, russell's conversion to the infield began in 1971

he actually played more second base than any other position in '71, but was moved to shortstop in 1972.

bill sudakis

it's too bad sudakis had bad knees.  on the other hand, had he been healthy, would steve garvey and later ron cey have been given a shot at third?  or joe ferguson behind the plate?  the mind boggles.

sudakis' co-mvp in the 1968 texas league was jim spencer who was the first player ever drafted by the california angels.

joe moeller

moeller was in his second stint with the dodgers when this card was issued

he was one of the few players on the team that had been a teammate of duke snider's.

jeff torborg

with danny ozark hitting fungoes behind him

singer's no hitter gets mentioned again, as does sandy koufax, as torborg was the catcher for sandy's perfect game as well as singer's masterpiece.    he later caught nolan ryan's first no hitter.

steve garvey

canadian rookie goodness!

and what's with all the black batting gloves?

don sutton

still pre-perm

and it still bothers me that he was released by the dodgers in august of 1988.

i'll show the rest of my 1971 o-pee-chee dodgers in a post later on today...