Stealing Home: Review

The dramatic story of Chavez Ravine starts long before the Dodgers hit their first home run at Dodger Stadium. Eric Nusbaum paints a very lively picture of the neighborhood. He has the abillity to make the locals come alive in a way you get sucked into their history from page one.

It's a history about communism, mexican immigrants, social housing, a city council in doubt.

It might be the single most important book about the history of LA Dodgers baseball, that's 95% not about baseball. It explains why the Dodgers had so much difficulty to gain a Mexican American fanbase in the early years, before Valenzuela.

I can recommend you read it before or after 'City of Dreams: Dodger Stadium and the Birth of Modern Los Angeles' (my review available HERE). Both books give you an excellent understanding of Los Angeles and how it's basics for the city today were laid down in the 50's and 60's.

Topps commemorative card set

The moment Urias threw out that last Ray, I started a shopping frenzy. Our boys in blue had just won their first World Series in 32 years and you bet I wanted some mementos! Caps, shirts, Christmas ornaments, you name it!

Then I came across a baseball card set by Topps. Looked interesting and every box would include an autographed card. Sounded good for $99. The cards were made by Ben Baller. I never heard of the guy so I did a search.

Ben Baller?
Turns out Baller is a quite well known actor, musician and jeweler, totally missed that apparently. He also designed cards for Topps. He did it before so I was curious and went ahead, spent $99 and waited for a few weeks.

Cards
The box arrived and it looked great. The cards were in a hard plastic protective case, which is nice! It was sealed by a Topps adhesive tape. Topps really doubled down on the Baller collaboration. His name is everywhere on the box and the cards. On every front side of the card it says ‘Ben Baller did this card’. Seriously, I couldn’t care less. His initials are in the upper left hand corner.

The back gets even weirder. Instead of mentioning the World Series stats for every player it has the same two sentences on every card. It mentions the Dodgers twice and the name of Baller FOUR times and his initials are there as well. It’s like a sponsored card, only… not cheap. He’s like the Tyler Perry of baseball card design. ‘My name first, then the rest!’.

The design is okay, not spectacular. The box holds 32 cards. 27 of our 2020 boys in blue and 5 Dodgers legends. Great to see Robinson, Lasorda, Koufax, Sutton and Snider on a modern card. The picture used for Koufax’ card is a bit blurry, though. There must be a better picture of him somewhere.

Autographed cards
Next to the base set there is an autographed card. These cards can be:

blue, unnumbered

purple, 1 thru 99

red, 1 thru 25

orange (weird choice for a Dodgers card), 1 thru 10

gold, only 1 per player

So, any of these could be in your set. I was very, very happy to find a purple card with NLCS and WS MVP Corey Seager in my set 85/99. There are 18 different autographs and they are fresh, so I might try to get my hands on some of them. Maybe frame them as a memento. One down side… no Kershaw and Betts autographs and personally I would have loved a Dave Roberts auto.

Verdict
It’s a bit of a mixed bag. Too many Baller mentions, average design, some must have autographs are missing. But I still love this set because for what it stands for: The Dodgers winning the World Series!