frankendodger sheet 67 (cards 595-603) - finally, a good morning from topps...

here's sheet number 67 of my dodger frankenset - cards numbered 595-603:

and the back:

these cards are:

595. 1970 topps maury wills
596. 1987 topps steve sax
597. 1990 score mike huff
598. 1991 upper deck mike sharperson
599. 2004 topps jose hernandez
600. 1988 score fernando valenzuela
601. 1985 topps tom lasorda
602. 2011 topps ivan dejesus jr
603. 1989 donruss mike devereaux

the "no brainer" of the day:

the first card issued by topps to officially feature maurice morning wills as a dodger was a sure thing for the set.

about the cards:

it is fairly widely accepted that maury wills was featured on a 1960 topps card

but he was not named. sy berger didn't regard wills as a prospect one spring and so will refused to sign with topps even as he won the 1962 mvp award. he was a big proponent of fleer and convinced a couple of his teammates to sign on for the 1963 set.  topps eventually was able to sign wills, and featured him by name for the first time in the 1967 set. he was a pirate by then, and had the dodgers not reacquired wills in 1969, we would not have had a dodger card issued by topps during his playing days.  topps did go back and create a 1962 card to feature in the 1975 mvp subset and 1982 kmart mvp set, but i did one better and created cards that should have been all the way back to 1959.

steve sax took over second base from davey lopes in 1982, and he made his first all-star team (as a reserve) that same year.  he was an all-star again in 1983, but this time was voted in by the fans to start at second base for the national league. topps didn't care, and featured johnny ray as the nl all-star at second base in 1984.  that's why i liked this 1987 topps card so much when it was released even though sax was a reserve in 1986 behind starter ryne sandberg. i didn't care that cubs fans were upset with topps  as long as i got my extra saxy card.

mike huff's 1990 score card was also appreciated by those of us team collectors who are completists. huff was shunned by donruss and topps (aside from an appearance in the 1990 topps debut '89 set) during his dodger tenure, receiving cards only from fleer, classic, and score.  huff (like homonym-ically named charlie hough) is also one of the relatively many hawaiian native players that played for the dodgers. others i can name off the top of my head are sid fernandez, carlos diaz, shane victorino, and onan masaoka.

hoo boy, do i like mike sharperson's 1991 upper deck card.  i wrote a post about how much i like it six years ago.  a day game in dodger stadium makes for great photos.

the most interesting thing about the 2004 topps jose hernandez card is that it shows some cards in the background. the most famous card with cars in the background is the 1973 topps luis alvarado card

that is at once a spectacle and a conundrum.  hernandez's card doesn't compare, but one does see the progression from muscle cars on the alvarado card to a yellow bug on dave goltz's 1981 topps card

to an suv on the hernandez card.

here we are at another hero number, and this time it's fernando valenzuela filling the spot with his 1988 score card.  that's good numbering by score, even though el toro was on the downside of his dodger career.  fernando somehow had an era under 4 (3.98) in 1987 despite leading the league in walks and hits allowed - he had a whip of 1.51!

next up is tom lasorda's 1985 topps card.  i think i would have liked 1985 topps better if all the cards had that position bar under the team name rather than having the position crammed in between the name text and logo.  i don't understand why topps did this because they could have shoehorned "mgr" in there like they fit some dual positions on other cards.

ivan dejesus jr got some love from topps in 2011 which was the year that he made his big league debut. the following season, the dodgers traded dejesus (just like they did with his dad).  these days, he's in cincinnati which was news to me.  i couldn't name more than two reds players, and one of those guys is now a met.

last card on the sheet belongs to dodger double dipper mike devereaux courtesy of 1989 donruss.  devereaux is probably best remembered as the 1995 nlcs mvp for the braves who beat the reds who had beat the dodgers in the nlds.

cards that didn't make the cut:

1993 upper deck eric davis

(another favorite) at number 595, 1992 pinnacle jim gott at number 596. 2009 topps randy wolf at number 597, 1991 donruss chris gwynn at number 598, 1989 score franklin stubbs at number 599, 2012 topps clayton kershaw (base)

(and photo variation)

at number 600, 2010 topps blake dewitt at number 601, 1986 topps mariano duncan at number 602, and 1990 upper deck kal daniels

at number 603.

my favorite card on the page:

i really like what the maury wills card represents, but mike sharperson's 1991 upper deck card is one of my favorite cards, period.

final thoughts:

there was a focus put on throwback uniforms by mlb this year - just a few weekends ago - and the dodgers participated by wearing brooklyn hats on the field.  i think there was a huge missed opportunity here given that 2016 is the 100th anniversary of the franchise's first world series appearance and that the club wore these uniforms that season

that would have been at least as interesting as those baby blues on the variant kershaw shown above.

frankendodger sheet 54 (cards 478-486) - check(list) out these cards...

here's sheet number 54 of my dodger frankenset - cards numbered 478-486:

and the back:

these cards are:

478. 1996 upper deck tom lasorda
479. 1998 donruss collections elite wilton guerrero
480. 1961 topps roy campanella
481. 1993 topps ryan luzinski
482. 2012 topps chris capuano
483. 1989 topps mickey hatcher
484. 2009 upper deck manny ramirez
485. 2005 upper deck eric gagne
486. 1989 donruss tim crews

the "no brainer" of the day:

well, i suppose when you rescue a 1961 topps roy campanella card from the vintage bargain bin even though you have one for your team set, it is going to go into the frankenset.

about the cards:

i was pretty happy to see tom lasorda get a card from upper deck in 1996.  it was the first card that they made of the dodger manager, although he had appeared on a few cards such as the 1992 bob ojeda,

1993 sp eric karros,

and 1994 tim wallach.

this card is actually a checklist, and lasorda is featured because he was entering his 20th season as the dodger manager.  what upper deck didn't know was that it would also be his last.

the wilton guerrero card is another one of those from donruss in 1998 where they took their regular cards from their flagship, elite, preferred, and other releases and made them into a new set called 'collections'.  they didn't change the number on the back of the card (guerrero's regular elite card is number 79 in the set), but they did add a new card number further down the back.

it was pretty cool of topps to make cards for mvp winners as part of their 1961 set.  campy only got one card even though he won three mvp awards. it's also too bad that topps only went back to 1950, denying us a jackie robinson card (and ted williams, too) as the 1949 mvp.  topps did the mvp's again (from 1952 through 1974) in 1975, and then again (from 1962 through 1981) in their 1982 k-mart set, but we haven't seen anything like this since.

ryan luzinski, son of greg, was the dodgers' first round pick in 1992, and topps gave us this card in 1993 as a result. a catcher by trade, he progressed to triple-a with the dodgers and later the reds, but never received the call to the big leagues.  the dodger farm system actually did well with catchers in the '90's - piazza, carlos hernandez, henry blanco, ken huckaby, and angel pena were all home grown talents, with pena being signed the same year the dodgers drafted luzinski.

there's not much going on with the 2012 topps chris capuano card, so let's move on to the 1989 topps mickey hatcher card. actually, there's not much going on there either, so let's move on to the 2009 upper deck manny ramirez card.  it, too is a checklist - a team checklist at that, as is the card after it - a 2005 upper deck card featuring eric gagne.  i like team checklists.  of course, because i began collecting in 1978, i prefer my team checklists to have a team photo on the front, with perhaps a nod to the manager.  still, having another card of manny ramirez in a dodger uniform in 2009 was not a bad thing, nor was seeing eric gagne get some recognition in 2005, as he was the longest tenured dodger at that time.

last card is the 1989 donruss tim crews card.  i think this is my favorite card from the vastly overproduced '89 donruss set.  it features crews pitching in dodger stadium, but the angle is slightly different from most photos of pitchers used on cards.  we still see a bit of the visitor's bullpen behind crews, but we also get a healthy dose of the right field pavilion providing a nice pop of color. this is the card i referred to in a previous post when writing about the 1993 score jim gott card that features a similar angle, but with a lesser result.  i think this is just a fantastic looking card.

cards that didn't make the cut:

among the "almost made its" are 1989 score dave anderson

at number 478, 1998 topps chrome mike piazza (with ken griffey jr) at number 479, 2002 topps shawn green at number 480, 1988 topps mariano duncan at number 481, 1992 upper deck john candelaria at number 482, 1961 topps don newcombe (sans ttm autograph)

at number 483, 1977 topps burt hooton at number 484, 2004 fleer tradition dodgers trio prospects (koyie hill, alfredo gonzalez, andrew brown) at number 485, and 2012 topps jerry sands

at number 486.

my favorite card on the page:

the campy is great, and seeing lasorda in upper deck sets was nice, but i actually like the tim crews card best. 1989 donruss - imagine that.

final thoughts:

is there anyone in baseball you would rather sit down and listen to them tell stories than tom lasorda?  i guess i would rather sit down with vin scully now that i think about it, and i am sure every fan of a specific team has someone relative to that team that they would choose, but i bet lasorda would be in many people's top 5 or 10.  he was out in minny a few weeks ago with michael milken (yes, that michael milken) to talk about baseball's support for prostate cancer prevention, and he joined bert blyleven and dick bremer in the twins broadcast booth.  milken did most of the talking, but tommy made a reference to blyleven and managing him on a trip to japan and i was hoping for a good story to follow. no dice as the inning ended and their time was up.  i had asked doug mientkiewicz a few years ago for some tommy stories, and he said that at one point, tommy's antics got the 2000 usa baseball team into a fight at a casino, but there wasn't time for much detail.  i'd like to hear more.