canadian food and other items of subjective merit

i guess poutine is the food most often cited as canadian fare, at least in my experience. i've been to canada many, many times, and i've never tried it, so i can't say whether it is any good or not.  what i do know to be good is receiving cards in the mail, as i did a short while back from brian at 'highly subjective and completely arbitrary'.

one of the cards that was on display in one of the team bags was this pedro guerrero oddball

it turns out that it is from a 1987 general mills fold-out food issue, which was obviously distributed in canada, because it's got the requisite french translations on it.  at first i didn't know it was a fold-out, and i thought that it just had the astros' kevin bass on the back.  but no, it's a fold-out

in fact, this is one of six fold-outs - one for each division - and it folds out to larger proportions.  inside there are more players, including the dodgers' steve sax

and fernando valenzuela

here you see fernando next to the padres' tony gwynn and the braves' dale murphy

with some of the other players being the astros' mike scott, giants' chili davis, and reds' dave parker.

the other player featured is the astros' bill doran, and i had to unfold the thing one more time to get him to show up.

that seems like a lot of astros, but keep in mind they won the division in 1986.  i like to think that if this had been issued a year earlier, steve garvey might have been included.

most of what brian sent was part of the trade break that he recently conducted, but there were a few other random dodgers included in the package, like this 1990 score john wetteland card

i haven't shown cards of the 1996 world series mvp very often on this blog, but that's because he was traded to the reds in the eric davis deal after the 1991 season so there aren't a ton of dodger wetteland cards to show.

there are even fewer (i think) of victor diaz, but a 2003 topps heritage card

is one of the ones available to team collectors like me.  diaz never actually played in a big league game for the dodgers, but he did see some action later with the mets and rockies.

i wish there were fewer cards of andruw jones as a dodger, but here's a 2008 topps heritage card, anyway.

if that card were the lowlight of the package, then this one was one of the highlights - a 2012 panini cooperstown tommy lasorda blue crystal parallel

there are no two ways about it - that is objectively a nice looking card. in my subjective opinion.

thanks for the cards brian - i'll show more of the trade break stuff another time.

another happy trade

it's been a while since i have picked up an autograph of burt 'happy' hooton's.  hooton was, of course, a member of the 1978 topps dodgers and the team of my youth, but he was also the 1981 nlcs mvp and a very solid pitcher who was often overshadowed by don sutton, bob welch, fernando and others.  i was happy myself to see this card, a 2005 upper deck mlb artifacts burt hooton autograph, in a trade package from robert at $30 a week habit

upper deck has issued a few autographed cards for hooton, and while i think i own most of them, i did not have this one in my collection.  very nice to have some variety in players featured - now if only there were some rick rhoden or bob welch cards coming out these days...

there were a number of other cool cards in the package from robert, like this 2000 fleer ultra card of mark grudzielanek

sliding home at dodger stadium.  this 2011 topps chrome orange refractor of matt kemp features an image taken from a similar angle

and you can see how much closer the seats are these days to home plate.  i really do miss the field level scoreboards and the union 76 signs.  i'll be getting back to the ravine in late august, and will take a moment to point out to my son how much less foul territory there is now compared to how it was just a few years ago.

i also got some numbered cards, like a matt kemp card from 2008 topps triple threads

a 2006 upper deck purple parallel looking card of hee seop choi

and a 2004 upper deck sweet spot classics roy campanella card

back in the early 2000's, we dodger fans were assured of two things when it came to card sets, no matter how large or how small.  those two things were cards of kevin brown (like this 2001 donruss)

and shawn green (like this 2001 fleer futures)

these days, it's kind of the same except it's kershaw and kemp who pop up in every set.  not that that's a problem, mind you.

i'll finish off this post with another dodger who is well represented in today's sets, duke snider.  this is a 2003 topps heritage flashbacks insert

and it features a pose that i don't think i have seen a dozen times.  nice work topps.  and nice work to you, richard.  thanks for the trade!

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.