speaking of high school, here's a 2012 panini triple play matt kemp when i was a kid card
2004 topps clubhouse collection chin-feng chen relic
2004 topps traded edwin jackson relic
2007 bowman heritage jeff kent relic
and 2008 topps brad penny relic
night owl was purging his relics, and i was one of the beneficiaries.

like i said, a lot of good cards there.  speaking of good cards, i've been meaning to have another contest of sorts.  i have a lot of good cards to trade.  you may have some dodgers you want to get rid of.  and, there are a lot of good cards up in my header.  just in case you aren't looking at the web version of the blog, here's my header, or at least the cards:
and here's the contest.

i count 31 cards in my header.  all you have to do is identify them.  get it right, and i'll send you up to 9 pre-1980 cards from the team of your choice in a pwe.  you can send one or two dodger cards back, if you like, but it's not required. heck, i'll probably send cards just for trying since there are a couple of obscured cards, plus a tricky one in there.  to make things easier, i've set up a key for the header:
you should be able to click that to get a larger version, but let me know if you need me to email it to you.  speaking of email, you can send your list (and mailing address) to me at gcrlatcomcastdotnet, and please do so by noon pacific on saturday the 25th.  good luck.  and thanks for the cards, night owl!

random fact: the dodger logo on the card is from the team's los angeles days.  although oisk did pitch for the dodgers following their move to la, both the card's photo and team affiliation refer to him as a brooklyn dodger.  it's better when all of the features of the card match, but i still really like that 2001 greats of the game set.

random card: 2006 upper deck jeff kent
random fact: the player behind kent is jason repko. repko had a card in the 2006 as well, but it was the same number (283) as another player's and seems to be a bit harder to find.

random card: 2011 bowman chris withrow topps 100 insert
random fact: withrow needs to work on his 'suttoning' pose.

random card: 2013 bowman chrome jeremy rathjen mini parallel
random fact: rathjen seems to be looking at the same thing withrow is staring at.

random card: 2014 topps adrian gonzalez spring fever
random fact: gonzalez has mastered his jeremy rathjen pose.

random card: 2014 topps yasiel puig spring fever
random fact: dodger stadium is the only big league stadium with an in-house arborist.  if you've never been, it's worth giving yourself time to enjoy the landscaping, including the abundance of palm trees. that last sentence was a random opinion.

random card: 1982 topps joe ferguson
random fact: this card uses the same photo that topps featured on ferguson's 1981 topps card.

random card: 1985 7-up cubs coaching staff, featuring a member of the 1978 topps dodgers (johnny oates)
random fact: the only start of bill connors' pitching career came against the chicago cubs in 1967.  bet you thought i was going to give you a random oates or zimmer fact, didn't you?

random card: 1990 fleer baseball all-stars canadian steve sax
random fact: the only thing that makes this a canadian card is that it was printed in canada, and i am not sure that there is an american printed version, so it's not even a variation.

it's the wood version, numbered to 75, and the stadium in the background is none other than dodger stadium.  awesome.  i'm still looking for a reggie smith/steve garvey dual auto from this set, by the way.

there are the fading issues with some of the later releases, including 2007, as either the ball material or the pens used by some of the players were not the right types, but the wood versions that i have seen do not suffer that fate.  i recall a signing i went to where harmon killebrew and i simultaneously chastised a guy who offered the killer a sharpie to sign a ball with.  you would think that upper deck would have made sure that the cards were signed properly, you know, if in fact they had a representative witness the signings.  oh wait.

anyway, 2007 is my favorite sweet spot year, even though steve garvey is included in the classic set as a padre.  there are plenty of dodgers on the checklist, though, including the aforementioned sutton
i guess the only bad thing here is that each base card is serial numbered, as they were in some of the previous sets.

here are some of the other dodgers from the 2007 ud sweet spot classic set

roy campanella
campy suttons.

pee wee reese
both the campy and reese use photos that are now quite familiar to us.

here's don drysdale
in the type of photo that we would not have seen on a card back in his playing days.  i'm glad upper deck didn't try to lighten the shadow under his bill.

maury wills
still looks like he's ticked at topps.

the set also included more 'modern' dodgers, such as their former manager tom lasorda
and a welcome appearance by a pitcher from the team of my youth, burt hooton
it's not too often we see hooton in card sets.

the regular 2007 sweet spot set had some dodgers, too, but the card i want to show is this adam laroche auto card
eric gagne
i think that's a parallel as opposed to a shorter printed rookie subset

jeff kent
derek lowe
and one of the very few cards made of one of the biggest busts in dodger history - norihiro nakamura
i think the 66 looks better on puig - he certainly has done more while wearing it.  and, i think the 2007 sweet spot looks better than any of the other versions before or after it, thanks in large part to the pavilion roof and palm tree on the dodger auto cards.

i was able to have castillo sign a couple of cards previously, but this one is much more boldly signed.  rest in peace, bobby.

arpsmith included another signed card from 1982 - a 1982 fleer burt hooton card to be exact
i appreciate having a socal connection with what seems to be a decent lcs nearby.  in addition to the in person autos he found there, arpsmith also sent a 2007 upper deck spx autographed card of delwyn young
and a 2007 ud artifacts jersey card of jeff kent
unlike collector's choice, i think the silver signature was standard on this card.  also, piazza's wearing the tim crews memorial patch on this card.  there will be, of course, a separate post regarding that memorial someday.

speaking of collector's choice, here's a 1997 udcc hideo nomo all-star connection insert
nomo didn't make the all-star team in 1997, in fact, the only time he appeared in the midsummer classic was in his rookie year of 1995 when he was the game's starter.

pee wee reese, on the other hand, appeared in 10 all-star games, including 9 straight from 1945-1954.  here's a 2012 panini cooperstown crystal parallel of the dodger shortstop that arpsmith included
clearly he did not call jack clark's shot in the 1985 nlcs.

thanks for the cards adam!

here are the first and second installments, in case you want to catch up on the sometimes annual turnover the dodgers have experienced at second base.

the dodgers were coming off their worst record ever as they headed into the 1993 season.  they lost one of their young second basemen, eric young, in the expansion draft, but they replaced him that same day with another player drafted by the rockies.

the rockies selected reed two rounds after they picked up young.  i would imagine that they had a deal in place with the dodgers to draft and trade reed, which they did in exchange for rudy seanez.  reed (shown on a 1993 fleer final edition card) played in 132 games for the 1993 dodgers, including 129 starts at second.  he hit .276 for the dodgers, helping them climb back to .500.  following the season, he famously declined a contract extension and left as a free agent, ultimately taking less money to sign with the brewers.

the dodgers responded to reed's rejection by trading pedro martinez to the expos for a 24-year old second baseman who was coming off two straight .290+ seasons.  i admit, i was optimistic.

that's deshields' 1995 pinnacle card, by the way.  as i mentioned, i was hopeful that deshields would be the dodgers' second baseman for a long time based on his play in montreal.  unfortunately, he hit just .250 in the strike shortened 1994 season, and then only .256 the next year.  in 1996, he bottomed out at .224 with a career low .288 on base percentage.  he left as a free agent after that season, and immediately hit .295 for the cardinals in 1997.  meanwhile that same season, pedro won the national league cy young award for the expos, and the dodgers were fielding yet another different second baseman.

guerrero (shown on a 1997 donruss dodgers team set card) started 83 games at second base for the 1997 dodgers.  he hit .291 overall, but had an on base percentage of only .305 - one reason why the dodgers reacquired eric young from the rockies late in the season.

young (shown on a 2000 topps card) finally got his shot to be the dodgers' every day second baseman in 1998.  he played in 117 games (112 starts at second) and hit .285 with an obp of .355.  in 1998, he upped that to .371 in 119 games (115 starts at second).  unfortunately, young was traded to the cubs after the 1998 season for terry adams and a couple of minor leaguers.  young was expendable, because the dodgers had plans to move recently acquired mark grudzielanek from short to second in 2000.

that's grudzielanek's 2001 topps finest card, one of very few cards i have from that release.  the g-man moved from short to second in 2000 and hit .279 while scoring a career high 101 runs. he hit .271 in both 2001 and 2002 as the dodgers' second baseman, but was traded to the cubs prior to the 2003 season.

cora had replaced grudzielanek as the dodgers' shortstop when he moved to second, and now he replaced him at second following the trade with the cubs.  cora (shown on his 2003 upper deck 40 man card) played in a career high 148 games in 2003 (141 appearances and 122 starts at second) and followed that up with 138 games (and appearances at second, with 122 starts there) in 2004.  he hit a career high 10 homers in 2004, including one that was the culmination of an 18-pitch at bat against matt clement and the cubs.  cora left the dodgers as a free agent prior to the 2005 season.

the dodgers signed socal native kent (that's his 2006 topps heritage card) shortly after the end of the 2004 season.  he started 140 games at second his first season with the club, scoring 100 runs and driving in 105 more.  he represented the blue at the all-star game that season as the national league's starting second baseman, and also won a silver slugger award.  it was the best offensive season the dodgers had seen from a second baseman in quite a while, perhaps since jackie robinson's mvp season of 1949.  in 2006, he helped the team reach the postseason and then went 8 for 13 with a home run in the dodgers' nlds loss to the mets.  kent retired following the 2008 season in which he helped the dodgers reach the nlcs for the first time since 1988, but he was unfortunately held hitless in the series.

one more group to go before we are caught up with this position...

ankenman played in a total of 14 games for the dodgers over the course of the 1943 and 1944 seasons.  he also played in 1 game for the cardinals in 1936, meaning his big league career consisted of just 15 appearances.

tom catterson
catterson's career consisted of just a few more games than ankenman's - he appeared in 28 games for the superbas over the 1908 and 1909 seasons.  he was only 35 when he died in 1920.

paul chervinko
chervinko's big league career was longer, in terms of games played, than either of ankenman's or catterson's - we're making some progress.  yes, chervinko was a dodger for a little over a year - from may of 1937 when he was acquired from the cardinals until july of 1938 when he was sent to montreal of the international league.  during that time, he appeared in 42 games and hit .147.  after retiring as a player, chervinko managed in the dodger farm system for 8 seasons.

phil douglas
douglas spent just a portion of one season with the brooklyn franchise.  they were known as the robins in 1915 when douglas sandwiched his dodger tenure between time with the reds and the cubs.  he was 5-5 in 20 appearances for the robins and 7-11 on the season as a whole.  he later went on to pitch for the new york giants and led the league in era in 1922, a year after helping the giants beat the yankees in the world series.

al humphrey
humphrey was a dodger in 1911, and his career consisted of just 8 appearances that year.  it's a wonder there's a photo of him playing ball, although did spend a couple of seasons in the minors in addition to his brief big league stay.

maury kent
kent played for the dodgers in 1912 and the superbas in 1913.  his entire career consisted of the 23 games in which he appeared over the course of those two seasons, finishing his career with a 5-5 lifetime record.  he later went on to coach baseball for a few different big 10 schools.

billy mullen
mullen was a brooklyn robin in 1923.  he had 12 plate appearances in four games, going 3 for 11 with a sacrifice.  he also played for the browns and tigers, as you could tell by the uniform he is wearing on his card.

dennis powell
finally a modern player!  and, a shot of someone in dodger stadium!  powell appeared in a whopping 43 games as a dodger during the 1985 and 1986 seasons.  he was traded to seattle for matt young following the '86 campaign, and continued to pitch in the majors through 1993.

tot pressnell
tot's first name was forest, in case you were wondering.  he pitched for the dodgers for three seasons - 1938, 1939, and 1940.  during that time, he appeared in 98 games and amassed a record of 26-26.  he later pitched for the cubs.

doc reisling
doc's first name was frank, and he may or may not have been a dentist.  he pitched for the superbas in 1904 and 1905, and was 3-5 in his 9 appearances.  he later pitched for the washington senators as a teammate of walter johnson.

gilberto reyes
reyes made his debut for the dodgers in 1983, and had cups of coffee with the team in 1984, 1985, 1987, and 1988.  he was, of course, blocked by mike scioscia at the catcher position, so his career dodger totals included 35 games and only 9 starts behind the plate.  he was traded to the expos prior to the 1989 season.

max rosenfeld
rosenfeld's entire big league career was spent with brooklyn, and it spanned three seasons - from 1931 through 1933.  he played in 42 games and hit .298.

butts wagner
some of these cards are pretty harsh.  ol' butts here (first name albert) was a brooklyn bridegroom in 1898.  he had come over from the washington senators on loan towards the end of the season, and hit .237 in 11 games for brooklyn.

rube ward
rube (john) ward had one season of big league service in his career.  it came in 1902 as a superba.  in 13 games, he hit .290, and that's about all we know about him.