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al oliver is one of the better baseball players to not be in the hall of fame.  according to baseball-reference, his top comparable is steve garvey which automatically makes my initial statement valid in my mind.  

oliver played in all of 35 games as a dodger in the early part of the 1985 season before being traded to toronto, but topps kept him as a dodger in the traded set that year.  that was one of the cards i sent to oliver recently (along with a small donation) in the hopes that he would sign and return them to me.  he did just that.

the other card i sent was, of course, a 1978 topps card

which features one of the more melancholy poses you'll find on a baseball card (the 1994 ud collector's choice charlie hayes card comes to mind).  he may well be pondering the fact that he's wearing pajamas and sporting the number 16 instead of the 0 (or was it an "o"?) that he wore as a dodger.

oliver retired following the 1985 season with a batting title, an rbi title, and a world series ring, but he garnered less than 5% of the vote in his first appearance on the hall of fame ballot.  maybe that's what he's pondering.

thanks for signing my cards scoop!