the mother's lode

many moons ago, mr. haverkamp commented on a blog post somewhere that he had access to a purveyor of mother's cookies cards.  issued in team sets as stadium giveaways in the 1980's and 1990's, these card sets are good (and sometimes the only) ways to get cards of lesser known players in your favorite team's uniform, provided that your favorite team was one of the subjects of these sets.  for the dodgers, they weren't included until 1987, but had sets produced from then through 1998.  keebler picked up the production in 1999, and issued sets through 2003 as far as i can tell.  

anyway, i inquired with mr. haverkamp, and knowing that i already had the 1989 set, commissioned him to pick up as many of the other sets as he could.  he delivered. 

those are ten of the twelve sets issued from 1987 through 1998 - the aforementioned 1989 set and the 1996 set were the only ones missing.

the 1987 set came with a nice surprise - a card featuring dodger stadium.

that makes sense - it was the stadium's 25th anniversary in 1987.

the sets were consistent in their inclusion of a manager card, even as topps seemingly vacillated about their inclusion in the '90's.  here's tommy lasorda's card from the 1987 set.

the cards also feature photos almost exclusively taken inside chavez ravine, which is nice.

the sets also gave some love to the coaches, which is fantastic.  here we have tommy's 1987 staff

mark cresse, ron perranoski, don macmahon (who died during the season), the recently retired bill russell, joey amalfitano, and manny mota.

here's tommy in 1988

on the way to winning his fourth pennant and second championship, 

in 1990

with an effective slim-fast diet,

in 1991

with the three sisters in the background,

in 1992

with what is for these sets a rare non-dodger stadium photo,

in 1993

wearing the tim crews memorial patch,

in 1994

before the strike kept the first place dodgers from reaching the postseason for the first time since 1988,

and in 1995

in his final full season as the dodger skipper which resulted in a postseason bid as the nl west champs.

as i mentioned above, mr. haverkamp couldn't get his hands on a '96 set which features tommy for the last time.  in 1997, bill russell took over the manager's card.

and the sets lost their full bleed photo design.  that's ok, i'm just happy that the shortstop of the team of my youth actually had a manager card made by someone.

i'll show a bunch more of these mother's cards throughout the day.  they're great.

thanks for the help with these sets, mr. haverkamp - you (along with arpsmith and matt r) are giving giant fans a good name in these parts!