Tuesday, September 16, 2008

My Yankee Stadium Legacy Quest



When Upper Deck announced their Yankee Stadium Legacy set, I thought it was a pretty intriguing concept. Although obviously not a Yankees fan, I was excited about the opportunity to collect all of the Rickey Henderson cards that had to be included in the mid-1980's. Imagine my shock when the checklist was released, and Rickey was not included it all!

Rickey played for the Yankees from 1985-1989, and apart from the A's, it is the team that he is most closely associated with. He's currently the Yankees all-time stolen base leader, with 326 steals in only 596 games. Derek Jeter is in second place with 275 steals (51 behind Rickey), but it has taken him 1,977 games, more than three times as many as Rickey. You'd think that they could have included at least a few of his cards in the set. He doesn't even have a relic parallel, and I know there's plenty of Rickey jerseys and bats floating around out there.



After my initial disappointment, I didn't really give the set another thought, that is until I received a few YSL cards (featuring games against the A's) in a recent trade. While looking over the cards I noticed that the box score on the back also listed any players that had homered in the game. So, I thought it would be fun to collect cards from all of the games where Rickey homered at Yankee Stadium, either as a member of the Yankees or as an opponent.



After my initial idea, however, I realized that pulling those stats together may not be the easiest task. But, the folks over at Baseball Reference have a Home Run Log feature that made collecting the correct games a piece of cake. It turns out that Rickey had hit 44 home runs at Yankee Stadium (second only to the Oakland Coliseum with 82) over his career. Two of those were multi-homer games, resulting in a total of 42 YSL cards that I now need to track down.

The list below was compiled using the YSL checklist on Upper Deck's website. For some reason, card information for the games at the beginning of both the 1988 and 1989 season was not available, so all I have is the date of the card that I need, and not the actual YSL number. I was able to fill in the holes using both the checklist of White Sox games that Steve from White Sox Cards put together, as well as the breakdown by player that dayf from Cardboard Junkie compiled. Thanks guys!

Note: Cards in GREEN are those that I have

4712 -- Lou Piniella
4786 -- Ron Guidry
4794 -- Don Mattingly
4796 -- Don Mattingly
4811 -- Don Mattingly
4824 -- Don Mattingly
4830 -- Don Mattingly
4844 -- Ron Guidry
4855 -- Ron Guidry
4866 -- Ron Guidry4877 -- Dave Righetti
4882 -- Dave Righetti
4888 -- Dave Righetti
4890 -- Dave Righetti
4893 -- Willie Randolph
4901 -- Willie Randolph
4902 -- Willie Randolph
4905 -- Willie Randolph
4914 -- Willie Randolph
4915 -- Willie Randolph
4926 -- Ron Guidry
4934 -- Ron Guidry
4937 -- Ron Guidry
4944 -- Dave Winfield
4945 -- Dave Winfield

4951 -- Dave Winfield
4953 -- Dave Winfield
4978 -- Willie Randolph
5000 -- Dave Winfield
5004 -- Dave Winfield
5008 -- Dave Winfield
5010 -- Dave Winfield
5017 -- Tommy John
5020 -- Tommy John
5105 -- Tommy John

5188 -- Don Mattingly
5244 -- Jim Leyritz
5396 -- Jim Leyritz
5461 -- Don Mattingly

5462 -- Don Mattingly
5618 -- John Wetteland
6179 -- Roger Clemens

OK, here's where I need the help of any readers and fellow bloggers out there. As can be imagined, due to the immensity of this set, finding any particular card is not the easiest thing to do. If anyone has any of the cards on the above list, please send me an e-mail (or post in the comments), and I'd love to work out a trade. I'll keep everyone updated as to the status of my search, with a full post including all of the cards at the end. It should be a lot of fun, and I can't wait to get started!

6 comments:

dayf said...

I just checked mine and I don't have any of those. I'll keep a look out for them though.

Steve Gierman said...

You can use this as a guide.

http://whitesoxcards.blogspot.com/2008/07/ysl-white-sox-checklist.html

I researched and tracked down the card numbers for each game against the White Sox. Just count back the games on the schedule in which Rickey homered from the White Sox games listed for these missing years.

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/teamstats/schedule.php?y=1988&t=NYA

ManOfSteal said...

Thanks for looking dayf, and for keeping an eye out for me! Steve, based on a combination of your checklist, and the player checklist compiled by dayf, I was able to fill in the missing holes. The post has now been updated, and the search is on!

Anonymous said...

I was really suprised also there were no Rickey cards in the set. He was an almost MVP with them in 85.
By the way I love your blog. your collecting habits mirror my own.I love finding the oddball/regional/broder card I don't have. I have about 1000 different Rickey's and tons of oddball items like figures, balls, smashed pennies, coins etc... Probabaly all stuff you have seen before. Thanks again for the blog

ManOfSteal said...

J Dooley,

Always great to hear from other Rickey collectors, especially those that enjoy the oddball items! Do you trade Rickey cards as well? I have a trade list at the top of the blog with a lot of oddballs listed. If you're interested, send me an e-mail!

Anonymous said...

Hello. I have 15 of these: 4786, 4796, 4866, 4877, 4914, 4926, 4937, 4944, 4945, 4978, 5020, 5105, 5396, 5461, 6179. Email me twcbjr@yahoo.com