in the club

so, now that clayton kershaw has a most valuable player award to his name, he and don newcombe and  sandy koufax can tip their caps to each other as members of a pretty exclusive club as pitchers to have won the cy young award and the league mvp.  only the tigers have had as many pitchers achieve the same feat (denny mclain, willie hernandez, and justin verlander), while the a's have had two (vida blue and dennis eckersley).

so, let's see some new cards from 2014 topps stadium club.  here's kershaw

and here's koufax

they have the same number of cy young awards and mvp awards to their names, but kershaw trails sandy in the no-hit department by 3.  koufax also has those four world series rings…

jackie robinson

and duke snider

with photos that made me want to buy the team set.  once i saw the snider and jackie on ebay, i was sold.  those two, along with the roberto clemente card, are my favorite cards in the set.  so nice to see some new photos being used of these legends.  so, i went off to sportlots and filled my cart with dodgers (and a few others) from the set.

here are some of the modern dodgers - yasiel puig

carl crawford

adrian gonzalez

hanley ramirez

zack greinke

hyun-jin ryu

matt kemp

conspicuous by his absence in the set is andre ethier.  there's a mike piazza card that i failed to add to my sportlots purchase, but i think night owl is going to help me out in that regard.  it's nice to have a bunch of other dodger collectors in the blogosphere.

of course, i collect more than just dodgers, so here are a couple of double plays that i added to my haul after seeing them posted elsewhere:

jose altuve

ian desmond

and an autographed card of luis sardinas

and i also decided to add mariano rivera's card to my final tribute collection

topps used a nice photo for the final tribute, however, in typical stadium club fashion, the back is short on stats.

on a whim, i added one more card to my purchase.  i am sure that i have mentioned somewhere on this blog over the last 6+ years that lou gehrig may well be my favorite non-dodger of all-time.  i've got the iron horse, ty cobb, and rogers hornsby on the short list, anyway.  so, i grabbed gehrig's card from the set, not knowing what the photo topps used looked like

come on topps.  can't gehrig stand on his own without having to give the babe some screen time?  yes, they were teammates for 12 years and ruth took the yanks to the world series a couple of times before gehrig arrived, but the yankees didn't win the title until 1923 - gehrig's rookie year.  sure, gehrig didn't play much that season while ruth was the league's mvp, but still…  besides, ruth has his own card in the set.

now if there were a don drysdale card in the set that happened to have sandy koufax standing next to him, let the record show that i would take it without complaint, which is pretty much how i take all my dodger cards.