baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and reggie smith

in the words of john doe, 'hey baby, it's the 4th of july!'  and, in the chants of fans who are either patriotic or nationalistic, 'usa! usa!'  i'll be at target field booing the yankees like any respectable citizen today.  i'll probably have a hot dog, but no apple pie for me.  that covers baseball and the food items, now what about the reggie that i rooted for as a kid?

i picked up a pack of 2013 usa baseball champions at target a couple of weeks ago out of curiosity.  i could not have picked a better pack for myself.  the only thing i could compare this to was back in 1978 when i bought a single pack of 1977-78 topps basketball cards.  in that pack were kareem abdul-jabbar, darryl dawkins, rick barry, and pete maravich.  seriously.  why ever buy another pack of basketball cards after that?  i didn't, until 1992 or so.  anyway, here are some of the cards that came in my lone pack of this year's usa baseball release.

reggie smith

reggie joined team usa in 1999 as a hitting coach for the panamerican games, and later served in that same role on the 2008 bronze medal winning olympic team.  this card, however, seems to highlight his 2006 stint as part team usa's coaching staff during the world baseball classic.  it is simply awesome to pull a card featuring a member of the team of my youth from a modern day pack.

shawn green

green was on the 1990 18u national team, along with scott spiezio and brooks kieshnick.  i felt a certain kinship to green, as i was attending college in orange county during the last year or two of his high school career, and even bumped into his dad at an lcs in 1992.  i also later learned that he had been in attendance, as i had, at game 1 of the 1988 world series.  except i didn't leave early like he did.  i was also in milwaukee in 2002 to see him hit 4 home runs in a game.  it's no wonder that his team usa card would be in the pack that i picked up.

ok, non-dodger time.  here's a gerrit cole card

cole also has oc ties - he's from newport beach - but he wasn't born until 1990.  it looks like the pirates are getting it right - to date, cole has made four starts, and he is 4-0.

there was also a hit in my pack - a game used bat card of kyle farmer, member of the collegiate national team that won bronze in the netherlands during a 2012 tournament

better than that, however, is that farmer was an 8th round draft pick by the dodgers in last month's draft.  he signed and has been playing in the rookie level pioneer league for the past couple of weeks.  after 8 games, he was hitting .355 as a catcher.

there were some other cards in the pack, but they were inconsequential.  i guess the only way this pack could have been better would have been if tommy lasorda and zach lee were in it.  still, usa! usa!

a sleeve patch for two chisox coaches

the white sox wore a patch on their left sleeves during the 1984 season for two of their coaches - charley lau and loren babe - who passed away on february 14, 1984 and march 18, 1984, respectively.  the '6/46' patch is visible on joel skinner's 1985 donruss card

even without the patch, that's a pretty nice card, thanks to all the color.

charley lau wore number 6 (no white sox player or coach has worn it since), and loren babe was number 46.  as a kid, i only knew of lau thanks to george brett (the most well known disciple of lau's work as a hitting coach) and the book 'the art of hitting .300'.  i had never heard of babe.

lau coached for the yankees and then the white sox after leaving kansas city, while babe was a white sox coach in 1980 before going on to scouting for them.  he had previously coached and scouted for the yankees as well.

as i understand it, babe was a few months short of qualifying for medical coverage when he was diagnosed with cancer in 1983.  the white sox added him to their coaching staff to allow him to qualify for the benefits, and lau was the coach who gave up his spot so that babe could be covered.  in a terrible twist, lau himself was diagnosed with cancer just a few weeks later.  no wonder the white sox have all but retired lau's number.

here's a link to a nice article about lau written shortly after he died.  all in all, this patch was a nice tribute by the white sox to honor their coaches.

standing on guard for thee

so, in addition to those 1973 o-pee-chee cards that i showed off earlier today, i also picked up some canadian cards from 1975.  the lot included the entire infield - garvey

cey

russell

and lopes

plus some other dodgers like bill buckner

ken mcmullen

and doug rau

rau is posing in front of the holman stadium bleachers that most recently showed up on 2007 topps dodger cards and 2009 topps heritage cards.

like his 1973 issue, 1975 was pretty much the same as its topps counterpart.  more so, in fact.

here, bill hands suffers some serious airbrushing on his 1975 o-pee-chee card just as he had back in 1973

and carmen fanzone still has his number inscribed within the cubs' logo on his helmet

unlike 1973, there is no french on the front of subset cards, like this nolan ryan card

but there is french on the back

pretty sneaky putting a trivia question on the back of lou brock's card for which the answer is lou brock.   and why specify the nl mark?  brock's 118 steals were the major league record at the time.

anyway, i am happy to have these o-pee-chee cards in the collection, even though i will probably only keep the dodgers.  i just can't see see myself being able to complete any o-pee-chee sets prior to 1977.

o-pee-chee has no new tale to tell, even if it is canada day

happy canada day to those of you who acknowledge such holidays.  i figured instead of showing off some justin morneau bowman international parallel cards (especially since i don't own any), i would go one better and show some o-pee-chee goodness that i have recently acquired.  unfortunately, the cards that i picked up are from a year where there were no variations.

on a side note, it's been a while since oh my o-pee-chee wrapped up its run, but i notice that it still gets a few views now and then. i had a good time going through (and acquiring) all of the variations that o-pee-chee had to offer.  in 1973, however, terry crowley is about to meet up with thurman munson

just as it is on his topps card.

and, duke sims is wearing dodger blue on glenn beckert's card

just as he does in the topps set.

bill hands is still a twin pitching in wrigley field

and dave johnson is still a brave turning two in yankee stadium

just like in the topps set.

likewise, dodgers willie crawford

 al downing

 and pete richert

look the same as they do in their topps versions.

there are some things that set the o-pee-chee set apart from its topps counterpart, however.  there is french on the front of some cards, like the rookie cards that included charlie hough

 and doug rau

 and on the postseason recap cards that included one of the best double play cards ever issued

 as well as on the boyhood photos of the stars, and this chris speier card shows.

of course, there is also french on the back.  and so we can learn that canadian native mike kilkenny carries his cartes de baseball in his sac

that is a far better cartoon than one that might have pointed out kilkenny having played for four different teams in 1972.

here's to you canada, and thanks for giving us o-pee-chee!

garvey, you're a star

it gets less and less weird to see steve garvey in a padres uniform as the days go by.  he is often included in modern sets wearing the brown and yellow, so it's not like i can forget.  back in 1984, however, i was still having trouble adjusting.  that's when star put out a 36 card set of nothing but garvey.  it celebrated his status as 'baseball's ironman' and included cards covering his entire career (to date) at that point.  it also included photos from both his first season as a padre, and his previous 14 with the dodgers.  over the next few weeks, i'll show the entire set.

it came in 12 panels with 3 cards each.  star made these sorts of sets for a number of players over the course of a few different years.  anyway, here we go with garvey's set.

the first three cards, unfortunately, show the garv in padres gear

we get the yellow bp jersey on the checklist card, the white home jerseys on his regular season career stats card, and the brown away top on the all-star stat card.  here are the backs.

garvey would play for three more seasons, and appear in one more all-star game.

the next three cards focus on his status on the all-time dodger leaderboard, and he is appropriately shown wearing dodger blue.

these are los angeles dodger club records, as we can see by the absence of duke snider (among others) from the backs

these days, mike piazza sits atop that batting average list, and eric karros leads in home runs, but garvey still has the most rbi of any la dodger. he's still second in hits, first in doubles, and i'm not sure about triples.  i would guess that folks like steve sax and brett butler have passed him (sax tied him, butler passed him).  no change to his status on the games or at bats list, and i believe he is still just behind wills in runs, too.

the third panel is all dodger goodness again, with a fourth card of dodger leader stats, along with garvey's world series stats and post season stats cards

and here are those stats

garvey is still second among la dodgers in total bases, but eric karros has edged past him on the extra base hit list.  the last two cards there are also out of date, thanks to the fact that garvey helped to lead the padres to their first postseason berth in 1984.  his career world series record now shows a .319 batting average (thanks to his .200 clip in the 1984 fall classic), but his .400 average and game winning/series saving home run against the cubs in the 1984 nlcs would bolster the text and stats on the last card of the panel.

there aren't too many more cards in the set that feature garvey as a dodger, but i will show them all anyway.  stay tuned.

hey! you! get off of my card!

it looks like chris speier is a little perturbed that leroy stanton gets his name on speier's card.

my, what a glorious miscut diamond cut that card is! it was in a lot of 1975 o-pee-chee cards that i recently acquired.  there weren't any others like this, but there were some that are worth showing off (meaning there were some dodgers).  i'll get to them in a couple of days, i think.

sold!

or should i say purchased!  i recently saw an auction for a signed 1988 score steve garvey card.  what really caught my eye was that the auction title referred to it as a 'final tribute'.  as i have mentioned a number of times, score was the only card manufacturer to give the garv a card in 1988, and they did so complete with his full career stats on the back.  i was intrigued enough to check out the auction, and saw that it was being offered by rod of padrographs.  i bid on it and won it and rod sent it.

it's a nicer auto than the one that garvey signed for me through the mail over three years ago.  unfortunately, i missed out on some other items rod was offering, but he was sure to send along some extra dodger goodies, such as this sspc card of davey lopes

unfortunately, i don't believe that ron cey or bill russell were represented in the package.  rod did include a double play card that i didn't previously own - a 1993 score tim teufel card

with barry bonds making an appearance.

rod was also sure to send some twinkies, although not of the hostess or soon-to-be revived hostess-ish variety. no, he included a number of twins cards including the m&m boys - justin morneau

and joe mauer

these guys might not be together for too much longer as morneau could be moved at the deadline. 

big thanks to rod for the garvey and the bonus cards!