USC v. UCLA

This Saturday, the 5th-ranked USC Trojans will take on their crosstown rivals, the UCLA Bruins, at what will hopefully be the first of two straight games at the Rose Bowl. I didn't attend USC, but I grew up watching them. My brother and uncle both have graduate degrees from the school, so that adds to their appeal. I graduated from UCSD, but since my school has no D-1 sports, my fandom of USC continued.

I am very happy about the decision made by Pete Carroll, to wear cardinal jerseys on the road, meaning the rivalry will feature the reds versus the blues for the first time since 1982.

Since this is a rivalry game between the two schools, I figured this would be a good time to pit Trojans against the Bruins from the 1987 Donruss set.

USC



Tom Seaver - #375: Tom Terrific, the 3-time Cy Young Award winner (he probably could have won a handful more too) and slam dunk Hall of Famer, is the jewel of this group. I don't know how close the Dodgers came to dealing Don Sutton straight up for Seaver in 1977, but I can't think of Seaver without thinking of what might have been in blue. Also, thanks to the back of his 1987 Donruss card, he was once traded straight up for current Dodger announcer and one-time pants-dropper Steve "Psycho" Lyons!



Mark McGwire - #46: Who knows if Big Mac will ever see the Hall of Fame (I personally would vote for him), but in this card he has the look of a man about to shatter the rookie record for HR.



Dave Kingman - #425: For a one-dimensional basher, Kingman sure hit a lot of bombs. He hit 35 HR in what would be his final MLB season in 1986. Ask Tommy Lasorda what he thought of Kingman (skip to about the 1:23 mark).



Fred Lynn - #108: Growing up, when I thought of Fred Lynn I always thought of his HR off of Atlee Hammaker in the 1983 All-Star game. Upon further review, he was a very good to great player. I go back and forth on this, but you could make a case he was the best of the 3 young outfielders that guided the 1975 Red Sox to the World Series. That had to be the best young OF of all time.

UCLA



Tim Leary - #232: Leary will always have a special place in my heart for winning 17 games for the 1988 Dodgers, my favorite baseball team of all-time. He will be remembered for two memorable performances: 1) his 9th-inning, pinch single to beat the Giants in August 1988; and 2) his 3 innings of shutout relief in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, keeping the Dodgers in the game before...well, you know.



Ron Roenicke - #412: He got a ring with the 1981 Dodgers, and he had his best career game in 1986 against LA, getting 4 hits and a HR in a June game.



Pat Dodson - #44: Unlike his fellow "Rated Rookie" 1B McGwire, Dodson didn't do much in the majors.

	Dodson
1986	.417/.533/.833, 265 OPS+
Post-1986	.172/.282/.368, 73 OPS+, 3 HR
	McGwire
1986	.189/.259/.377, 77 OPS+
Post-1986	.263/.395/.590, 163 OPS+, 580 HR

Don Slaught - #136: Thanks to the thoroughness of the folks at Donruss (or Leaf, Inc.), we find out that Slaught was involved in a 4-team trade in January 1985 with Tim Leary. While Leary went from the Mets to the Brewers, Slaught was sent from the Royals to the Rangers.



Pat Clements - #390: Yet another sweet Pirates hat! Clements, a career reliever (only 2 of his 288 appearances were starts), ended up with a 17-11 career record (a nice .607 winning %), but was 0-6 as a Pirate. Maybe the hat didn't suit him.



Dave Schmidt - #182: Schmidt wasn't a bad pitcher. In fact, only seven pitchers in the 1980s had more 100 ERA+ seasons than the eight produced by Schmidt (in the first 8 seasons of his career).

If we look at this as a competition, USC easily takes the cake, quality over quantity. The four USC players above combined for 33 all-star appearances, 3 Cy Youngs, 1 MVP (and McGwire should have won over Sosa in 1998), and 1 HOF (perhaps one day a 2nd in McGwire). The six Bruins, however, combined for a big goose egg.

Back to football, my prediction for Saturday is that USC will win 41-3.

On to the count...

The Set: 12 of 660 (1.8%)

HOF: 2 (+1 with Seaver)

Former Dodgers: 2 (+1 with Roenicke)

Future Dodgers: 2 (+1 with Leary)

My Favorite

I recently re-entered the baseball card collecting game, after an absence of over 15 years. I have discovered some outstanding websites dedicated to the hobby, most notably the wonderful Cardboard Gods (featuring the mind-blowing prose of Josh Wilker). However, the purpose of this blog is to relive the joy of my youth.

Inspired by the card-by-card review of both the 1988 Topps and 1978 Topps blogs, I decided that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. However, I could not decide which set to review. That is, until I was going through some old photos and discovered a photo of Christmas 1986.


There I am, all of 11 years old, wearing some classic 1980s-style short shorts, opening what was without a doubt my most prized holiday gift, a box of 1987 Donruss cards. That, folks, is what we call a sign.

I do plan to review every single card of this set, all 660 of them. However, I don't want to fall into the formulaic trap of going in numerical order. Sometimes I will pick cards at random, sometimes I will pick cards based on newsworthy items or whatever happens to be spinning inside my head at the time.

For the initial card review, I had to choose my all-time favorite player: Eddie Clarence Murray, card #48. Back in 1987, Eddie wasn't yet my favorite player. It was probably Fernando Valenzuela or Pedro Guerrero, maybe even Orel Hershiser. Because, you see, I am a Dodger fan. I always appreciated Murray from afar, but didn't fully embrace his greatness until 1989 when he donned an LA cap.

The design of the 1987 Donruss card is a classic design, kind of a grown-up version of their previous six sets. There is simple design with an understated trim/background of baseballs. The front of this card is great, too, as it captures Murray in a smile. Murray wasn't exactly known, at least by reporters, as a joyous fellow, so it's always nice to see a smile, or at least a grin.

One thing I love about the back of the 1987 Donruss cards is that each player's contract status was displayed. Salary wasn't disclosed of course, but this was a wonderful piece of information anyway. Thanks to Sports Illustrated in April 1987, I learned that Murray was the highest paid player in MLB in 1987, at $2.46m. That April 20, 1987 issue was amazing, as the salary of every major leaguer was displayed. In the pre-internet era (we didn't have access to the outstanding Cot's Baseball Contracts for almost two decades).

Another staple of Donruss cards of the 1980s was only displaying the previous 5 years of stats, instead of the entire careers shown on Topps and Fleer. I'll talk about this in future posts, but I kind of liked this because the stats were more readable. I have never had vision problems, but some Topps cards required a magnifying glass. Anyway, in the 1982-1986 period covered on the back of this card, Murray had the 4th best OPS+ (151) in baseball, and was also 4th in HR (142) and 3rd in RBI (539).

Let's get a count going, that will appear on each post going forward:

The Set: 1 of 660 (0.2%)

HOF Count: 1

Former Dodgers: 0

Future Dodgers: 1