more double play knowledge from bo

the double play turns were many in the package i received recently from bo, he of baseball cards come to life.  here are some more that were new to my collection:

1991 topps stadium club tony phillips

bonus appearance by the cobra

1991 leaf scott leius gold bonus

also featuring a brewer, but not dave parker. more like mike felder.

1993 pinnacle craig grebeck

i am assuming here that there is only one reason why grebeck would be airborne, and that is to turn two.

1993 topps stadium club william suero

with paul sorrento doing his best to break things up, but to no avail - suero made the turn and threw sandy alomar out at first on april 26, 1992.

here's the back of suero's card

which is his first topps issued card, because the front shows up on the back.

1993 upper deck jeff frye

not sure how i did not already have this one in the binder.

1994 score gary disarcina

with a hrbek sighting

and 1994 score rey sanchez

featuring a high kick from tom pagnozzi

1994 upper deck doug strange

featuring the double play turn on the front of the card, and 1994 upper deck ozzie guillen

with the turn on the back

1996 donruss pat listach

featuring a brewer turning two rather than trying to break it up

and, finally, two cards featuring the double play turning mainstay, brent gates.  first up is his 1996 topps stadium club card

followed by a 1995 fleer flair card

two has been turned.  thanks again, bo!

the rest of the cards that should have been from the garvey binders

i am almost done with showing pages from my steve garvey oddball binder.  then it will be time to show the pages from the 'regular' collection binders.  get excited.  here are the rest of the cards that should have been that i've created or received or otherwise had to print myself over the last few years.

punkrockpaint is responsible for the 1988 topps card, while the writer's journey sent me the digital version of the gypsy queen card.  the last three are topps bunt 'cards' that i printed out.

i don't think there are too many birds on tatooine. womp rats, yes. byrds, well maybe.

i received a pwe from jeff at 2x3 heroes recently.  jeff is a fellow double play collector, so sometimes he'll send some of those with an array of dodgers.  this time, however, he aimed for another of my mini collections and sent cards from the planet farthest from the bright center of the universe. or something like that.  here's one of the 'tatooine' cards he sent - a 2010 upper deck marlon byrd

nothin' but dirt.

as for dodgers, there was a 2014 topps allen & ginter zack greinke

 a 2006 fleer ultra nomar garciaparra

 a 1996 topps finest ramon (nomar spelled backwards) martinez

here's a 2005 fleer adrian beltre diamond tribute insert

which compares him on the back to mike schmidt.

also included was a 1993 pinnacle darryl strawberry, among others.

i wonder if those moisture farmers at anchorhead grew strawberries?

and that's how you bring the post full circle.  thanks jeff!

bert, be home blyleven for some final tributes.

bert blyleven - excuse me, hall of famer bert blyleven - attempted to extend his career with the minnesota twins in 1993, but did not make the team out of spring training.  that means that his 1993 cards are true final tributes, and there are a fair number of them.  these are the ones in my collection.

1993 fleer

you can see the deron johnson memorial (post coming soon) on blyleven's right sleeve.  here's the back of the card

which has 10 years of stats, including a portion of his 1992 minor league stats - the first time he had been in the minors since 1970.

1993 pinnacle

the tongue is out!  before michael jordan, there was bert blyleven.

the backs of the pinnacle cards just give the single season stats

so we'll move on to 1993 score

a photo almost certainly from the same game as the pinnacle card's image which makes sense because these cards were both made by score.  here's the back

those are bert's complete big league career stats.  score kind of missed with the text, however, by suggesting that the 42-year old had a 'good shot' at 13 more wins.

here's his 1993 score select card with another very similar photo

and again with the single year stat line, but some interesting text

he 'held' opponents to a .285 batting average?  'amazing durability' yet missed all of 1991 due to injury?  granted, he hadn't missed a full season prior to that rotator cuff injury, although he had missed some time with a broken foot during his cleveland days.  i just found it odd that score used that phrase right before noting that he came back from injury.

no surprise, here's my favorite of bert's final tributes - 1993 topps

good photo for a tribute.  and, of course, topps has the entire career stats on the back

although it gets tough to read with the inset photo.  

one other blyleven card i have in my collection is a 1990 topps card that he signed for a friend of mine back during his time with the angels.

i have come to be quite a fan of bert's since moving to minnesota.  he's reduced his workload on twins broadcasts since being voted to the hall of fame, but that's ok - he's earned the break.  i always thought blyleven should have been voted into the hall sooner than he was.  sure, he fell short of 300 wins, but he pitched for some bad teams and had ridiculously low run support at times.  his 3701 strikeouts were the third highest total of all-time when he retired (now 5th best in big league history) and even though they were a result of his durability (right, score?), they still amounted to a hall of fame worthy total.

here's to you, bert - circle yourself for a change!

from one junkie to another

tj the junior junkie recently sent me some new-to-me double play cards.  just when i thought i was close to having my list up to date…

here's a 1991 score ozzie guillen all-star subset card

it looks like tom foley needs an adult on his 1992 score card

i really like the double play ballet on display on mike bordick's 1993 pinnacle card

it was nice of pinnacle to keep all the body parts inside the image window.

speaking of body parts, is that base coach elbow we see on lance blankenship's 1993 topps stadium club card?

also from 1993, here's benji gil's upper deck card

it's hard to believe that i didn't already have this card pulled for the dp binder.

here's a 1997 score robby thompson

and a 2000 skybox dominion kevin stocker

i don't know who shaun boyd is, but i am glad bowman used this photo for his 2002 card

and now we are in the present with this 2013 topps update luis valbuena card

thanks for the cards tj!  i'll be sending you some stuff again soon...

double plays from the hot corner?

i don't know that i have seen a card featuring a double play turn at third base.  it's possible, of course, to force a runner at third and then complete the double play with a throw to second or first.  or, one could just receive some cards in the mail from pat at hot corner cards.  like this 1992 pinnacle carlos garcia card

not quite jose lind-ish, but garcia does a nice job.  another 1993 pinnacle card that was included was this jeff blauser card.

my first inclination was that this was not a dp turn, and my second thought was why did chico walker have both the american and canadian flags on his helmet?  i know gary carter used to do this, but he spent most of his career in montreal so it made sense to me that he would display both flags.  walker, who was born in mississippi, did spend the 1989 season in the blue jays' system, but he played for their aaa team in syracuse.  curious.  in researching the flags, i was further confounded as walker spent only a short amount of time with the cubs in 1992, and was not involved in the type of play shown on the card during that season.  in fact, the last two games in which he appeared as a cub came against the braves in chicago, but blauser did not have a play on him in either of those games.  so, i figured it was a play from 1991, and determined that it is actually the same play as shown on his 1992 pinnacle card (his meaning blauser's).  it looks like it occurred on july 26, 1991 when walker was picked off of first base and retired on the old 1-3-6 play in the bottom of the first.  whew.

similarly, i received this 2008 upper deck first edition card of richie sexson

who appears to have tried to break up two and is looking to the umpire for some guidance.  however, the body language of the white sox's shortstop/second baseman looks to be off to me, so i'm going to do some digging on this.  ok, i'm back.  looking at baseball reference (as i do for all of my sleuthing), i think this play may have taken place on august 18, 2007 when sexson doubled to left field in the sixth inning.  he also doubled to center the night before, and in the game on the 19th of august, he reached second on a fielder's choice/e-6.  the 19th was a day game, and this appears to be a night card, so i'll stick with the 18th.  that means that the white sox player featured is either juan uribe or danny richar.  uribe sometimes wore his socks high, so i'll go with him, although the shortstop would usually go out to be the cutoff on a hit to left.  maybe it's from the 17th.  still probably not a dp card.

these next two are, however.  a 2008 upper deck first edition omar vizquel

and a miguel tejada from the same set

i had both of these cards from the flagship set, but not from first edition, so thanks pat!

of course, there were also a bunch of dodgers in the package, including a couple of double play cards for my dp binder.  here's a 2006 fleer rafael furcal card

with eddie mathews looking on.

and then there were just some plain ol' dodgers, like nomar garciaparra and this 2007 upper deck future stars card

and this 1993 pinnacle jody reed card

and this 2009 upper deck spectrum russell martin card

and this 2006 fleer jeff kent top 40 insert card

and many others.  that kent card, by the way, is a double play card too.  the player sliding in is mostly obscured by the '0' in '40', but he's there.  which means that i now have one card of kent turning two as a dodger - and to think a few days ago i thought that there were none.

thanks for the trade pat! i enjoyed going through all the cards.