an abbreviated run through the 1997 mother's cookies dodger set

1997 was all about the 50th anniversary of jackie robinson's major league debut, and the mother's cookies dodger set that year included a special card with the anniversary logo.

that's the logo that the dodgers wore - remember, while all teams wore a similar patch, the dodgers, marlins, and expos put their own twist on it.

here are a few more cards from the 1997 mother's cookies dodger set

bill russell

the manager!

and his coaches!

plus, the five straight rookies of the year - eric karros

mike piazza

raul mondesi

hideo nomo

and todd hollandsworth

here's the current diamondbacks manager, chip hale

in what may well be his only dodger card

darren hall

has a couple of dodger cards, but not many.

does anyone recall nelson liriano as a dodger?

he played in 76 games for the 1997 dodgers, and his lone home run in dodger blue was a 9th inning game winner against the cubs.

here's one more - scott radinsky

if it weren't for these mother's sets, i don't think i would have more than one card of the pulley lead singer and current dodger minor league pitching coach.

thanks again to mr. haverkamp for brokering the deal that netted me these sets.

the mother's lode

many moons ago, mr. haverkamp commented on a blog post somewhere that he had access to a purveyor of mother's cookies cards.  issued in team sets as stadium giveaways in the 1980's and 1990's, these card sets are good (and sometimes the only) ways to get cards of lesser known players in your favorite team's uniform, provided that your favorite team was one of the subjects of these sets.  for the dodgers, they weren't included until 1987, but had sets produced from then through 1998.  keebler picked up the production in 1999, and issued sets through 2003 as far as i can tell.  

anyway, i inquired with mr. haverkamp, and knowing that i already had the 1989 set, commissioned him to pick up as many of the other sets as he could.  he delivered. 

those are ten of the twelve sets issued from 1987 through 1998 - the aforementioned 1989 set and the 1996 set were the only ones missing.

the 1987 set came with a nice surprise - a card featuring dodger stadium.

that makes sense - it was the stadium's 25th anniversary in 1987.

the sets were consistent in their inclusion of a manager card, even as topps seemingly vacillated about their inclusion in the '90's.  here's tommy lasorda's card from the 1987 set.

the cards also feature photos almost exclusively taken inside chavez ravine, which is nice.

the sets also gave some love to the coaches, which is fantastic.  here we have tommy's 1987 staff

mark cresse, ron perranoski, don macmahon (who died during the season), the recently retired bill russell, joey amalfitano, and manny mota.

here's tommy in 1988

on the way to winning his fourth pennant and second championship, 

in 1990

with an effective slim-fast diet,

in 1991

with the three sisters in the background,

in 1992

with what is for these sets a rare non-dodger stadium photo,

in 1993

wearing the tim crews memorial patch,

in 1994

before the strike kept the first place dodgers from reaching the postseason for the first time since 1988,

and in 1995

in his final full season as the dodger skipper which resulted in a postseason bid as the nl west champs.

as i mentioned above, mr. haverkamp couldn't get his hands on a '96 set which features tommy for the last time.  in 1997, bill russell took over the manager's card.

and the sets lost their full bleed photo design.  that's ok, i'm just happy that the shortstop of the team of my youth actually had a manager card made by someone.

i'll show a bunch more of these mother's cards throughout the day.  they're great.

thanks for the help with these sets, mr. haverkamp - you (along with arpsmith and matt r) are giving giant fans a good name in these parts!

the evolution of the manager

one of the things that i liked about the dodgers as i was growing up was how well they stayed connected with their past, and how close their past was to their present. the stability of the core players and manager allowed the fans to get from garvey to hodges in just a few steps. call it 'six degrees of walter o'malley'.

this hasn't been the case so much in recent years, and really since the advent of free agency, which makes sense. still, it's worth celebrating, so let's trace the dodgers' managerial roots, shall we?

i'll begin with burt shotton, primarily because i just scanned his 1990 target dodgers card.shotton was the manager in 1947, and then from the latter part of 1948 to 1950. branch rickey picked shotton to replace the suspended leo durocher for the 1947 season, and then tapped him again to replace durocher on a permanent basis after durocher failed to maintain the success in 1948 that shotton had generated the season before. choosing to manage in street clothes (although he would wear the team jacket and hat), shotton won two pennants (1947 and 1949) and came close to a third in 1950. despite this success, he was a victim of the power struggle between branch rickey and walter o'malley, and was replaced by charlie dressen.

charlie dressen (1951-1953) also won two pennants (1952 and 1953) and came darn close in 1951. that, of course, was the year of the 'shot heard round the world'. as detailed in roger kahn's 'the boys of summer', dressen believed that his success should be rewarded with a multi-year contract instead of the one-year deals o'malley liked to hand out. o'malley disagreed, and dressen was replaced with walter alston. dressen, who had previously managed the reds, would go on to manage the senators, braves and tigers, but would not win another pennant.

walter alston (1954-1976) won seven pennants in his 23-year tenure as manager; two in brooklyn and five in los angeles. in 1955 he led brooklyn to its only world series championship, and then won three more (1959, 1963, 1965) after the Dodgers moved to los angeles. he retired with 4 games remaining in the 1976 season, and was replaced by tommy lasorda. the dodgers retired his number (24) in 1977, and he was elected to the hall of fame in 1983.

tommy lasorda (1976-1996)

lasorda won the pennant in his first two full seasons as manager (1977 and 1978) but did not win the world series until 1981. a two-time nl manager of the year, he led the 1988 team to another world series crown. he also won four other division titles during his tenure, and his 61 post-season games managed ranks fourth all-time behind bobby cox, casey stengel and joe torre. lasorda's final game as manager was a 4-3 victory over the astros at dodger stadium on june 23, 1996. the following day he suffered a heart attack and formally retired a month later. he was replaced by the heir apparent, bill russell.

bill russell (1996-1998) finished the 1996 season as manager, compiling a record of 49-37 and earning the nl wild card. unfortunately, the dodgers were swept in the playoffs for the second straight year. in 1997, russell led the team to another second place finish in the nl west, but out of the wild card and playoffs. he was a victim of the fox takeover in 1998, and was fired in june shortly after the bungled mike piazza trade which was made without the knowledge of russell or the gm, fred claire. the dodgers promoted aaa manager glenn hoffman to take over. although it was a smaller sample size, russell's .537 winning percentage is higher than any other dodger manager that served between walter alston and joe torre.

glenn hoffman (1998)

finished the season as the manager with a 47-41 record. he remained with the club as a coach after fox and the sheriff (kevin malone) decided they needed a bigger name at the manager position and hired davey johnson.

davey johnson (1999-2000) finished just over .500 in his two seasons at the helm, including the first losing season of his managerial career in 1999. he was fired after a second place finish in 2000 and replaced with the mild mannered jim tracy. it is worth noting that johnson was the last player to get a hit off of sandy koufax.

jim tracy (2001-2005)

had 4 winning seasons in his five years as manager, including 2 90-win seasons. he was what i figured alston was - kind of quiet and not much of a motivator, but the team won. i don't know if that is really a proper comparison, though. anyway, to me it seemed that tracy began to make some strange decisions late in his reign which corresponded with an apparent dislike for gm paul depodesta. during the 2004 season, a season in which the dodgers won 93 games and advanced to the nlds, tracy was seemingly distraught by the trade of paul loduca, and even switched his number from 12 to 16 in tribute to the steroid-aided catcher. after the dodgers lost to the cardinals in the nlds 3 games to 1 (lima time!), tracy led the team on the field for a post-game handshake a la little league. then, in 2005, he continued his strange allegiance to players like jason grabowski, jason phillips, oscar robles, and mike edwards while eschewing hee seop choi. not surprisingly, 2005 was a disaster, and tracy stepped down after the season ended. shortly thereafter, new gm ned colletti brought grady little in to replace tracy.

little (2006-2007)

led the dodgers to the nlds in 2006 where they were swept by the mets. in 2007, the dodgers had two significant slumps late in the season which doomed them to 4th place in the division. this was the year where the generational conflict occurred between veterans such as luis gonzalez (boo!) and matt kemp (yay!) over playing time. frank mccourt and colletti seemed to leave little twisting in the wind following the season as they publicly courted joe girardi and joe torre. in the end, little resigned clearing the way for joe torre to be the new manager.

it's so far, so good for joe torre (2008-present). in his first season as dodgers manager, he led them back to the nlcs for the first time in 20 years, and here in his second year he has them sitting atop the nl west with the best record in the national league. while i am not complaining at all about torre's performance, there is a part of me that wishes russell could have continued the tradition of longevity as the dodger manager, but it wasn't meant to be. it would at least have been nice to hire a dodger like mike scioscia. it looks like he knows what he's doing.

thanks fox.