filling the gap in my mother's cookies dodger collection

aside from the 1989 mother's cookies dodger set (and the special mike piazza/tim salmon set) that i already owned, the recent package from mr. haverkamp included the rest of the run of sets produced by the purveyor of bagged baked goodness.  i was a sucker for their iced animal cookies for sure.  anyway, the set that was missing was the 1996 set, which i subsequently picked up on ebay.

here's the manager, tom lasorda

in what would be his final set.

his coaching staff

included holdovers joe amalfitano, mark cresse, manny mota, bill russell, dave wallace, and reggie smith.  russell would assume the managerial position during the season after suffering a heart attack.

this set also includes the five straight rookies of the year for the first time - eric karros

mike piazza

raul mondesi

hideo nomo

and todd hollandsworth

who would win the award in '96.

here are a few other random dodgers from the set - delino deshields,

pinch-hitter extraordinaire dave hansen,

one of the many hot corner stopgaps between ron cey and adrian beltre, mike blowers,

milt thompson,

who spent the first half of the '96 season with the dodgers, and…

…chad fonville

fonville was one of the most exciting players to watch in 1995 after he joined the dodgers in may.  he wound up stealing 20 bases in 88 games during the regular season, and then went 6 for 12 in the three-game loss to the reds in the nlds.  i'll take as many fonville cards as i can get.

this was the last year that the mother's sets used the full bleed photos. i'll show some cards from the '97 and '98 sets in a future post.

this is the only mother's cookies card i have scanned as mother's day rolls in

shame on me for not being prepared for mother's day with an overload of mother's cookies card in what is perhaps the most obvious type of post for a baseball card blog to feature on the second sunday in may. i am nothing if not obvious, so let's go with it anyway.

it's a 1996 mother's cookies dodgers card, signed by former dodger shortstop greg gagne

i've had good success with gagne and ttm, and i hit him up one more time because he has a bunch of nice double play turns on his cards.  and he was a dodger.  here's his 1998 topps card  

featuring a photo from sandy eggo.  upper deck's 1998 card for gagne also featured a shot from jack murphy stadium, but it was much better

here's his 1992 topps card

featuring a sweet double play turn from the reigning world champion

his 1994 upper deck card

also has a nice double play shot, but he was nowhere near a reigning world champion when this picture was taken of him playing short for the lowly royals.

thanks for signing (again) greg, your mother raised you right. happy mother's day to all the mothers out there.