royce clayton vs. joey cora - a double play extravaganza

i have wound up with quite a few additions to the double play collection over the last few months.  i don't know if i will ever catch the posting up to the acquiring of these cards.  anyway, a fair number of the newer cards to my collection have featured two players in particular - royce clayton and joey cora.  let's see them face off in a double play tete-a-tete, shall we?

1992 pinnacle royce clayton team 2000

clayton turning two in dodger stadium, despite lenny harris' best efforts.

1997 upper deck joey cora

turning two (the card even says so!) vs cubs in spring training

back to clayton, this time it's a 1992 upper deck scouting report insert

now here's joey turning two against the orioles (and robby alomar) on a 1998 topps opening day card

back to clayton, and back to dodger stadium on a 1998 pacific online card

good to see clayton out of that giant uniform, and good to see todd hollandsworth doing his best to break up the turn.

here's cora on a 1995 topps stadium club with will clark trying to break things up.

one more of clayton in dodger stadium (and as a giant) courtesy of 1994 pinnacle

while cora knees an anonymous yankee in the head on his 1993 score card

it looks like clayton got upended but still made the relay on his 1998 ud collector's choice card

and cora is barely clearing what may well be jose canseco on this 1996 score card

except canseco hadn't been in oakland since 1992.

here's clayton clearing an astro on a 1993 ud sp card

and cora avoiding a brewer on a 1997 pinnacle card

finally, here is clayton leaping over a pirate on his 1994 topps stadium club card

while cora appears to make the turn despite the slide of what i believe to be an oakland athletic on his 1998 pacific paramount card

and these aren't even close to all of the double play cards featuring these two guys.  there are for sure a bunch more of clayton, whose cards i prefer over cora's simply because some of them feature dodgers.  i'm partial that way.

a patch for ted

ted rogers was the founder of rogers communications and the owner of the toronto blue jays from 2000 until the time of his death from heart failure in december of 2008.  in his memory, the jays wore 'ted' patches on their left sleeves during the 2009 season.

 

aaron hill is wearing it on this 2010 bowman card while doubling up bobby abreu in the bronx

and he's still wearing it on this 2010 topps chrome card as he slides into third base in oakland.

that card is kind of neat because the a's player is also wearing a memorial patch. not that you can tell from the scan, though.

 

for this memorial, though, i wanted to find a card featuring a shot of a blue jay at home, in rogers centre which was re-named after ted and his company bought the stadium and the naming rights.  here's a 2010 upper deck roy halladay card that seems to fit the bill

although the patch is much more visible on the team checklist card from that set, thanks to aaron hill again.

in the end, it's another card of halladay from 2010 upper deck that will represent this memorial in the binder.

rogers communications continues to own the blue jays to this day, with paul beeston serving as president and ceo.  i am not sure who 'replaced' rogers as the figurehead of the corporate ownership, but it would appear that rogers' legacy in the world of management and entrepreneurship continues through donations made to a couple of canadian universities which is pretty cool. it would also be nice to see the jays win the al east sometime soon.

a refrac black back kershaw attack

thanks to the cardboard junkie, i came into a trio of kershaw cards.  2013 topps heritage chrome,

2013 topps heritage chrome refractor,

and 2013 topps heritage black back

also known as the venezuelan parallel.  maybe when kershaw is done saving africa, he will help out in south america.

another back worth showing is the back of steve garvey's 2011 topps 60 insert.  aside from tommy davis, steve garvey ranks 2nd on the los angeles dodger all-time single season hits leader board (tied with steve sax).  that's good enough for 8th on the franchise leaderboard, as shown on the card.

dayf threw in a couple of offermans (offermen?) - 1993 leaf

and 1994 fleer

you might think that if i am showing you two jose offerman cards, then the package must have been pretty bad once you got past the kershaws and the garvey.  that was not the case.  here is a very nice 2002 upper deck kaz ishii card

if you look closely enough, you can see half of tommy lasorda's head on the outfield wall.  i think this was the retired numbers mural.  this copy of the card fits nicely in my dodger stadium binder.


here's another card with the outfield wall murals in view (sort of) - 2001 upper deck gold glove gary sheffield

sheff did not win a gold glove, but it was 2001 and he was included in pretty much every set that year.  it's too bad that i can't tell definitively what the mural behind him represents.

here's the last card i will show from the trade package.  dayf took the time to check out my 2009 upper deck o-pee-chee want list, and sent me one of the last few cards that i needed - albert pujols

the head of the bat is just asking for some 'rick face' hijinks.

thanks for the trade dayf!

what's a wallach worth?

let's consult the expert on the subject, corey at the tim wallach blog.  i sent him a few timmy cards, and he sent some dodgers in return.

 

the hands down best card of the bunch was this 1989 starting lineup baseball greats don drysdale card

i say best because it was one i had not seen before.  i did some quick digging and found that the card was featured in this starting lineup two-pack

big d and reggie are indeed two baseball greats, but other than that, they have nothing in common.  they never faced each other, anyway.

as you might well know, you can't have drysdale without koufax.  corey included a 1982 kmart sandy in the package

there was another pitcher with ties to drysdale - orel hershiser - on an oddball of his own - a 1989 kaybee superstars of baseball card

hershiser, of course, broke drysdale's scoreless innings streak in 1988 en route to all kinds of hardware. 

here's a 1988 topps big mike scioscia card

big head mike likes the way little mike looks in the gear.

i'll end with a card from more recent times - a 2011 topps heritage dodgers dandies card

featuring matt kemp and andre ethier.  i would tie this all together with a reference back to drysdale as dandy don, but he was a football player.  let it suffice to say that a few tim wallach cards are worth a dandy package of dodger cards in return.  now you know.

i saw the saenz - a few more from the flea market

here are a few more cards i picked up at that flea market last weekend.  just dodgers this time.

2005 topps total olmedo saenz

i think this is a silver parallel.  i couldn't leave olmedo the tomato in the dime box.  in fact, i would guess that this is one of about three olmedo saenz as a dodger cards i have in my collection.

here's a 2010 topps card your mom threw out 1956 jackie robinson.

original back, to boot!

even though i already have at least two copies of this card, i couldn't leave o-pee-chee behind.   i only wish there were more than just this 1985 o-pee-chee rick honeycutt.

here's a nice orel hershiser card from 1993 score.

and a 1996 ud collector's choice chad fonville arizona fall league card

i probably have about a dozen of the chan ho park afl card, but i don't think i had a chad until now.

here are a couple of 1999 ud collector's choice (or is it just ud choice?) - charles johnson

and ellis burks

the reason i bought a giant card is that i am pretty sure that cj is making an appearance there in the upper left hand corner.  giant cards are better when dodgers are present.

i like this 2004 upper deck sp authentic shawn green card

because of the dodger stadium image in the background.

that works for me better than upper deck's use of a '3' in place of a 'g' on this 2005 ud trilogy card

still, i always enjoy adding a jeff kent card to the collection.  especially for a dime.  from a flea market that i didn't know existed. that i only noticed because i was driving by at the right time.  or is that the ri3ht time.

uh, wait - what? hey! good god those are baseball card boxes!

pay attention to your peripherals, kids.  even when driving on a saturday morning running errands.  you never know when you might be passing by folks setting up a here-to-fore unknown flea market and catch a glance of some familiar white cardboard boxes being added to a table.

that's what happened to me last saturday.  i doubled back after completing my errand (hastily, i might add), and sure enough, my well trained eyes had not deceived me.  there were three or four large white boxes set up - dime boxes at that.  two of the boxes were even sorted by team.  by team!  what a timesaver.

i wound up buying 140 cards for 13 bucks.  it was awesome.

the very first card i saw was this 2008 topps chrome matt kemp xfractor

nice.

there were a bunch of non-team sorted inserts, too.  like this 2013 topps lance berkman cut to the chase die cut card

a 2013 topps opening day aroldis chapman blue sparkly parallel

and a 2010 topps angels/vladimir guerrero gold parallel

i wound up buying about 25 different gold parallels from 2006 topps update, as well as a few gold, emerald, and walmart blue parallels of 2013 topps.

there were some rarely seen sets represented in the boxes like 1999 upper deck victory.  i grabbed some dodgers and a double play card that was new to me.  hello orlando cabrera

let's get back to the dodgers.  here is a nice and shiny 1998 donruss mike piazza fantasy team insert

fellow rookie of the year raul mondesi was represented by this 1999 pacific private stock card

i also picked up a black bordered mini of rafael furcal from 2010 topps allen & ginter

in total, i had found 110 singles featuring dodgers, double plays, memorial patches and a few others that will turn into cards for some of you out there in baseball card blogging land.

the other 30 cards i bought were part of a twins' stadium giveaway set from 2005.  it features 29 of the most memorable twins moments throughout their history.  the 29 tied in with the local station that carried twins Saturday games that year.  can you tell that the station was the twin cities' fox affiliate? yes, the 30th card in the set features homer simpson.  

note that the geniuses who produced the set also misspelled 'collectable' as 'colletable'.  d'oh!

 

here's a look at nine of the cards from the set.  many of the images look like they were tv screen grabs, which makes sense, i suppose.

in addition to the homer card, we have cards commemorating the all-star game at the met in 1965 (the twins also hosted the all-star game in 1985 (at the metrodome) and will host it again in 2014 at target field).  there is also an homage to harmon killebrew's monster home run (which is still honored inside the mall of america), dave winfield's 3000th hit, eric milton's no-hitter (i was supposed to be at that game), bob allison's catch in the 1965 world series that robbed jim lefebvre of a base hit in game 2 (the twinkies beat sandy koufax to even the series at one game apiece), paul molitor's 3000th hit, kirby puckett's home run to win game 6 of the 1991 world series, and the first postseason game in twins history - game 1 of the 1965 world series.

the twins faced, of course, the dodgers in that series.  the photo which was used on this card features dodger reliever howie reed as he pitches to either mudcat grant or zoilo versalles.

back to the allison card for a moment - at target field, the twins have done a great job recognizing the history of the franchise, as well as baseball as a whole in the twin cities and the state of minnesota, too.  there is a wall where they have posted famous quotes and calls regarding the twins, and the dodgers' own vin scully is represented by his call on that catch by allison.  here's a picture i took during a tour of the stadium.

here are the rest of the cards from the set

that's not a bad set - killer, carew, tony o, and herbie pulling ron gant off the base.  not a bad flea market find.