from night comes the dawn

and some good cards.

greg at night owl cards sent me cards recently. here are a few of the goodies:

2005 upper deck milton bradley.featuring the wrigley field ivy. nice card. i so wanted milton to succeed in la, although i can't complain about getting ethier in the trade. good luck in chicago, milton.

another 2005 upper deck, this time adrian beltre.with shawn green lurking in the background. plus a very rotund coach on the other side of the batting cage. mark cresse perhaps?

1992 classic best anthony collier.he never made the show, but at least he has a baseball card.

1996 topps david yocum.another guy who never made it up. looks like a v-neck t-shirt jersey like i used to wear. if you look really closely, you can see the florida state logo just above the 'e' in 'dodgers'.

2004 topps jim tracy.with glenn hoffman lurking in the background. no doubt plotting his re-asencion to the throne of dodger management. instead, hoffman went to san diego.

2002 topps chan ho park.pretty standard rhp in dodger stadium photo. this will be the subject of a future post. chan ho completed his second stint with the dodgers last year, and will spend 2009 with the phillies. i am always curious about guys who sign with the reigning champ. how awkward is it on opening day when everyone else gets their rings? also, is it really likely that they will repeat?

finally, some 2008 topps allen & ginter for my set.

matt tolbert with his arms crossed. vernon wells in the same pose.

hideki kuroda with hands behind his back.what gives? why not show their hands?

oh, i get it.

they're afraid of the moises alou urinary hi-5. understood, gentlemen.

hall of fame panel

doing some housecleaning, and came across this currently relevant item.

1987 topps box bottom panel rickey henderson and jim rice.commemorating rickey's 600th steal and rice's 2000th hit.

i am such a packrat.

the dodger's journey

as many of you know, jason at the writer's journey recently traded a bunch of cards for cards of his team, the reds. i, of course, asked for dodgers, and jason provided quite a selection. around 600 cards of the boys in blue came my way, including:

1988 score mike ramsey.

jon weisman of dodger thoughts selected mike ramsey as the most obscure but memorable dodger. he's also one of the few 'same name, different guy' players the dodgers have had - mike marshall and ramon martinez are the other ones i know of.

1981 drake's steve garvey.

1992 megacards babe ruth.reminiscent of the 1962 topps cards documenting the babe's career. this one is fairly informative regarding ruth's hopes of becoming a manager while the dodgers viewed his hiring as a coach to be more of a gimmick to draw fans.

1991 donruss eddie murray.

this is the year after eddie led the majors in batting average but failed to win a batting title. thanks, willie mcgee.

2001 topps archives preacher roe.this isn't a certified auto, so it's either an in-person/ttm or someone practicing their preacher roe signature.

one of the best things about this whole adventure is that jason created a digital card to mark the occasion - a 2008 topps steve garvey.

i figured i should return the favor, so i took a shot at a 2007 topps todd hollandsworth.this would be the 'no signature' variation. hollandsworth wrapped up his career in 2006 by playing a partial season with the reds. alas, there was no final tribute. until now.

jason - thank you for the cards! i hope you enjoy the 800 or so reds i sent back your way!

o brother, where art thou?

the dodgers have a bit of a history of being on the wrong end of the brother spectrum. ken brett instead of george. jolbert instead of orlando? ramon was good, but keeping pedro could have been great. cesar or maicer izturis - it's a push, as are the aybars (we had erick - or was it willie?). but perhaps no greater disparity existed between brothers as far as the dodgers were concerned as the guerreros.

they could have had vladimir (twice)

but instead they signed wiltonthen, when they try to sign vladdy as a free agent, bud selig shoots it down over concerns of mccourt's finances.

look how happy vlad is to be in dodger stadium, signing autographs under the shadow of the logo. what a missed opportunity!

at any rate, i am glad matt kemp doesn't have a baseball playing brother. it makes ned's choice of which kemp to keep a lot easier.


in other news, i am officially adding vladimir guerrero cards to my 'wants'. bring 'em on!

sayonara saito

takashi saito heads to the red sox to join fellow countrymen daisuke and okajima. fair enough. but whither the dodgers bullpen? will broxton close? that seems to be most likely, as i have to believe trevor hoffman would have taken the dodgers' offer if he would in fact have been the closer over broxton.

but what about the setup relievers? the loogys? joe beimel is gone. is eric stults the guy? shawn estes? can kuo stay healthy? jason schmidt? claudio vargas? yikes.

the bullpen and pitching staff as a whole are becoming quite the question marks for the dodgers in 09. while the red sox are stockpiling pitchers, it seems like ned is filling out holes in the spring training b-team staff.

rickey's final tribute

well, it's official. as if there were ever a doubt, rickey henderson is a hall of fame baseball player. rickey ended his major league career in 2003 with the dodgers, playing in 30 games for them after starting the season in the atlantic league. the guy loved baseball, played hard, and was as fun to watch as anyone i can think of.

upper deck issued this card of rickey in their 2004 set (topps didn't make a rickey card that year), but they didn't slap the 'final tribute' tag on it. maybe they knew that rickey would want to play again, and maybe they, like me, hoped that he would.

congratulations rickey.

ramon martinez and the last don drysdale card?

back on june 4, 1990, ramon martinez struck out 18 braves en route to a 3-hit shutout, as commemorated on this 1991 score card. what is really interesting to me is that he had 18 strikeouts after 23 outs, meaning he had a few more chances to tie or even set the major league record (roger clemens had 20, later tied by kerry wood), or at least tie the national league record (19 - held at the time by steve carlton and tom seaver, later joined by david cone) . in those games, carlton struck out the last 4 batters of the game, and seaver struck out the last 10 padres he faced. david cone would get his 18th strikeout as the first out of the ninth inning.

unfortunately for ramon, he was not able to strike anyone else out. still, not a bad day at the office considering that sandy koufax is the only other dodger to ever achieve the feat.

now, take a look at the back of the card. ramon is being interviewed by none other than big d himself - don drysdale - whose career high for single game strikeouts was 14. don was an announcer for the dodgers, working with vin scully and ross porter, from 1988 until his death in july 1993, which occurred while he was covering the dodgers in montreal. unless he had a 1993 ted williams card, i am guessing that this was the last card to feature drysdale while he was still alive.