#31 - Terry Whitfield

What a card: At last! A Dodger card! This is the first Dodger card in the set. And it's a card of someone that I associate mostly with playing with the Giants. Bleah.

My observation on the front: Good gosh, that has to be one of the strangest swings on a baseball card. What was the trajectory of the ball that Whitfield hit? Or maybe he missed it entirely.

More opinion from me: I am a fan of the colors that Topps gave the Dodgers in the 1985 set. The mid-1980s was a return to sanity as far as Topps' team color choices went. Blue slowly became the predominate color used on Dodger cards.

Something you might know: Whitfield disappeared off of Topps cards after the 1981 set because he left to play in Japan at age 27. He stayed there through the 1983 season. This is Whitfield's first Topps card since '81.

Something you might not know: Whitfield is the inventor of "Terry Toss," a self-propelled machine for batters.

My observation on the back: Two things would have intrigued me about the card back as a youngster. First, the 1976 Yankees season in which Whitfield had no batting average. I loved that. Second, the gap between 1980 and 1984 when Whitfield was in Japan.

The blog wants to speak now: The Music, Movie and Pop Culture categories have been updated. Unfortunately, I had to add a scan of one of my least favorite songs ever. But that was balanced out by mention of The Breakfast Club and a well-remembered magazine cover of Paulina Porizkova.