frankendodger sheet 71 (cards 631-639) - i guess it's personal...

here's sheet number 71 of my dodger frankenset - cards numbered 631-639:

and the back:

these cards are:

631. 1975 topps lee lacy
632. 2001 topps devon white
633. 1983 topps vicente romo
634. 1991 upper deck kirk gibson
635. 1989 score ramon martinez
636. 2001 topps chrome dodgers team
637. 1994 upper deck collector's choice mike piazza
638. 2015 topps jimmy rollins
639. 1973 o-pee-chee willie crawford

the "no brainer" of the day:

i really don't think there is a card on this sheet that i could make a case for being a no brainer.  sorry.

about the cards:

to me, the best thing about about 1975 topps is that there are many dodger cards that feature dodger stadium as a backdrop. the lee lacy card is one of those cards.  as you can see, lacy wore number 34, and his is one of the few numbers with which i do not associate a member of the 1978 topps dodgers. to me, 34 is fernando.  if you care, number 5 is jim lefebvre, not johnny oates, and number 3 is steve sax, not glenn burke.

devon white's 2001 topps card is here because i already had kirk gibson's 1991 upper deck card on the sheet, and the best alternative at 632 was a different '91 upper deck card. i'm trying to avoid the same set on a page as much as possible, but it happens a few times in the last few sheets.

vicente romo's 1983 topps card marked romo's return to baseball card sets after being absent since the 1975 topps set.  romo had been pitching in the mexican league since then - at least until the dodgers brought him back to the big leagues in 1982.  romo had been a dodger earlier in his career, a story i told as part of my 'double dipper' series.  a while back, night owl had a post (can't find it right now) about players whose names we mispronounced as kids. my offering was ben oglivie (i always pronounced it oh-gli-vee instead of oh-gull-vee), but romo would have been another - i was always reading his name as vincente instead of vicente.

kirk gibson's 1991 upper deck card shows off the receding hairline gibson was hiding under his hat and helmet during the latter part of his playing days.  it also features a nice cloud of dust and an umpire ready to make a call.  aside from gibby's home runs (one in particular), i think my favorite play of his as a dodger was the time he scored from second on a wild pitch to win a game. dude hustled.

the next card is one of ramon martinez's less heralded rookie cards - his 1989 score card.  his topps and upper deck cards were a bigger deal, but only the score card has him doing an "i'm a little teapot" routine.

the higher the card numbers get, the more team cards and the like we will see.  this one comes courtesy of 2001 topps chrome, which was a full-sized set 15 years ago.  i bought some chrome at target the other day, and came away with three dodgers. two were of kenta maeda

who is the cover boy for chrome this year, and the other is of persona non-grata yasiel puig.

based on some of the stories that have been alluded to about puig and his teammates, i don't think he'll be back with the big club anytime soon.

next, we get up close and personal with hall of famer mike piazza, thanks to 1994 upper deck collector's choice. there's no real insight here, just some information taken from an issue of "baseball weekly", but at least there's no mention of tommy lasorda. what a tired story that became.

back over at the garveyceyrusselllopes blog, i had a series about out of place players - players that didn't really belong on the dodgers.  think frank robinson, boog powell, and jim thome.  jimmy rollins is one of those guys.  rollins' 2015 topps card is his second card in the frankendodger set, however, which is more than some more 'legit' dodgers.

last card on the sheet is a 1973 o-pee-chee card of willie crawford.  the back of the card has english text saying, in part, that crawford "was murder against lefthanders", hitting for a .377 average against them in 1971.  the french translation is a bit nicer, saying that "il obtint une moyene" - he obtained an average of .377.

the card also translates a second line of english text regarding the pirates, but that english text only appears on the topps card,

and it refers to the pirates as the bucs.

cards that didn't make the cut:

1990 topps john wetteland

at number 631, 1991 upper deck jim neidlinger

at number 632, 1984 fleer steve sax at number 633, 1984 topps mike marshall at number 634, 1982 fleer fernando valenzuela (west meets east) at number 635, 1982 fleer fernando valenzuela at number 636, 1988 score mike devereaux at number 637, 2008 topps juan pierre at number 638, and 1971 topps tom haller

at number 639.

my favorite card on the page:

it's down to the lacy vs. the gibson, and i'll go with lacy in dodger stadium.

final thoughts:

there are only 10 more pages in the frankenset to show, and the card selection is getting thinner.  we've seen the final cards from the 50's and 60's, but the 70's through the 10's are still represented in the final ten sheets.  just know that there's not going to be quite as much set diversity the higher we go.

frankendodger sheet 9 (cards 73-81) - i know that fernando is already in the set, but that's not a fernando card...

here's sheet number 9 of my dodger frankenset - cards numbered 73-81:

and the back:

these cards are:

73. 2008 topps stadium club greg maddux
74. 2005 fleer ultra steve finley
75. 2015 topps opening day jimmy rollins
76. 1994 upper deck sp delino deshields
77. 2001 topps finest mark grudzielanek
78. 2014 topps allen & ginter's zack greinke
79. 1975 hostess andy messersmith
80. 1992 donruss triple play roger mcdowell
81. 1999 topps gallery todd hundley

the "no brainer" of the day:

you know i love the murals on the outfield wall at dodger stadium, so it's got to be the finley card.

about the cards:

there are three dodger double dippers on the page (maddux, messersmith, and hundley), plus a couple of shiny cards (deshields and grudzielanek).  the maddux card is probably my favorite of him as a dodger, and i am glad that finley has such a great card from his short time as a dodger - i just wish he had at least one card that documented his division clinching grand slam for the team.

the jimmy rollins card joins the 1985 leaf/donruss orel hershiser card(s) to be an almost double in the set.  jimmy's regular 2015 topps card checks in a bit later, and it's pretty much the same card as this one. deshields and grudzielanek share the distinction of being former expo infielders to join the dodgers in the 1990's. both were all-stars in montreal, and the dodgers gave up wilton guerrero, ted lilly, and a minor leaguer to get gru (plus carlos perez). we all know what the dodgers gave up to get deshields.  the greinke card is here because it fits. it's pretty much filler.

the best thing about the messersmith card (other than it's general hostess greatness) is that he's wearing a batting glove while simulating a throw.  would have been nice to have a card with him holding a bat, if in fact that is why he was wearing the glove.  there are other roger mcdowell cards that i like better than this triple play card, but it fit the set and if he's going to be in the set, it might as well be one of his less-silly cards.  if wearing a toolbelt on the mound counts as less-silly.

finally, it's interesting to see a card showing hundley batting from the right side.  he was a switch-hitting catcher, but for his career, hundley hit just over .200 (.204) as a righty, and he may have given up switch hitting at the end of his career if i recall correctly.  even though his first stint with the dodgers wasn't too bad from a power perspective (he hit 24 homers in both 1999 and 2000), dodger fans were used to much higher batting averages from their catcher at that time.

cards that didn't make the cut:

notable near misses include 1974 topps traded mike marshall (#73), 1988 topps tommy lasorda (#74), 1979 topps steve yeager (#75), 1980 topps bill russell (#75), 1982 donruss bob welch (#75), 1983 donruss mike scioscia (#75), 1991 topps archives the ultimate 1953 set pee wee reese (#76), 1999 fleer sports illustrated devon white (#77),

2001 topps archives reserve don sutton (#78), 1992 upper deck pedro/ramon martinez bloodlines (#79), 1957 topps gil hodges (#80),

1998 donruss signature series eric young (#80),

and 2003 upper deck sp legendary cuts leo durocher (#81).

my favorite card on the page:

once again, the no-brainer card is also my favorite. kudos, fleer.

final thoughts:

one reason i noted those near misses at #75 was to note that they are cards that appear in consecutive years of players from the same team.  for card companies that seemed to randomly assign card numbers, it seems like this happens fairly often (or maybe i have just noticed it a few times).  it makes sense, as i think i might have defaulted back then to the previous year's checklist to create a new one to make sure things are pretty equal as far as team distribution goes, and then maybe swap the numbers to mix things up. i wonder if that's what happened, with some number/team assignments not being switched, or if i'm imaging things. probably the latter.