it's a big travel day, so 'leave the driving to us'

'leave the driving to us.'  i think that was greyhound's slogan.  maybe it still is - i haven't seen an ad lately.  i have seen lately, however, a complete 1976 heroes on the basepaths booklet produced by greyhound. 

you may recall that i stumbled across a davey lopes portrait card from that issue a while back.  that was a surprise, so i was fairly shocked to find this on ebay with a pretty low price.  let's look inside.

there's joe black, former dodger 'closer' and 1952 rookie of the year.

apparently, it was joe's idea for greyhound to sponsor an award for the league leaders in stolen bases each year. in 1976, that meant bill north and davey lopes won the award.  ron leflore and joe morgan were the runners up and are here just to fill space, i suppose, although they did receive plaques according to the text above.

so there's the lopes 'sliding' panel that i was missing.  here's a closeup.

the dodgers haven't had a player lead the league in steals since 1976.  i'm not sure if having lopes on the staff will change that, but it should help the team's success rate.

safe travels everyone!

a card find so improbable, i left it off my want list

if you are a team collector and you haven't checked out teamsets4u yet, you are missing out! what a great resource that site has been in helping(?) me flesh out my dodger needs and wants, especially from the era of overproduction.

that's not to say that i just blindly add all dodger cards listed to the lists. no, there are some that i figure i will never find, so they don't get added to the list. one such set was the 1976 greyhound heroes on the basepaths. according to the site, there are two davey lopes cards in this set (there are also 1974 and 1975 greyhound heroes of the basepaths sets), and the fluckinger book says that one is a portrait and one an action shot.

well, i was at the monthly card show a couple of weeks ago, perusing the vintage bargain bins (!) when i spotted something sitting atop an oddball/oversized card bin. it was the 1976 davey lopes portrait card!
a card i had written off, never to own. not a bad deal for $1!

thanks vintage/oddball bin dude!