ride the ted lilly rainbow

ted lilly is no longer with the dodgers, and despite the news reports, he's not chucking for that team up north either.  however, his 2013 topps card, with the backdrop of dodger stadium and the visitor's bullpen is a slice of perfection.  i decided early on to try for all the parallels, and now i present the results of my efforts here.  it's not all sparkles and unicorns, however, as you will soon find out.

let's start with all the colors rolled up into one and go from there.  here's the black parallel

now camoflauge

this is not the base card (although it looks the same in this view). it's actually the card from the 2013 topps dodger set, with the borders featuring the absence of color

pink

target red

orange

emerald

silver sparkle blue

walmart blue

toys r us purple

gold

usually there is gold at the end of the rainbow, but not here.  instead there is silver.  as in silver slate

that's the scarcest of the cards, being numbered to 10

now, here's the bad news.  obviously, i have no printing plate to complete the rainbow.  but even worse than that is the fact that my orange copy is somewhere in usps neverland.  it was last seen leaving pennsylvania on august 4th and scheduled to arrive on august 7th.  the tracking info hasn't been updated since.  the orange version is numbered to 230, but it's part of the factory sets so who knows when the next version will come up for sale.  what stinks is that there were two on ebay at the same time, and i purchased the one that winds up getting lost in the mail.

it seems that wrigley wax can complete his rainbow without any issues, why oh why can't i?

it's time for the annual comparison between the topps flagship dodgers and the topps dodger factory set cards

when i did this last year, there were 8 cards that were different - either different photos or different cropping. at the time, i hoped that 2013 would bring more. thus, i am disappointed. here we go...as usual, the flagship card is on the left, and the factory set card is on the right. not that it matters much.

adrian gonzalez

matt kemp

clayton kershaw

andre ethier

carl crawford

hanley ramirez

mark ellis

aj ellis

zack greinke

kenley jansen

josh beckett

chad billingsley

dee gordon

ted lilly

brandon league

luis cruz

and the bonus, exclusive card - dodger stadium - for which there is no comp in the flagship set

since it's the only thing different in the set, let's look at the back.

yes, the weather can be fantastic, and sometimes the days are clear and the mountains are visible, but it's really the 'fine' teams that bring the fans to the games.

i'm glad that the ted lilly card is the same, and the dee gordon double play is nice, too, but seriously. what's the point.