2004 Los Angeles Dodgers - Mgr: Keith MacDonald - 21 Cards

After winning the KOD13 Championship with the 1981 Dodgers as a late season hire, Keith MacDonald earned the right to have his "interim" status changed to "full time manager".  Keith had an incredible run with LA, which barely earned the final wild card spot as entry into the post season.  Blame the squarely on previous management, as Keith righted the ship and restored the proper chemistry that it takes to win a pennant and then hang a banner up.  Keith's first full time shot at managing one of the NL's most prestigious franchises will be with the Cinderella 2004 edition, which went 93-69 to win the NL West by 2 games over their bitter rivals in San Fran.

On paper this team looks to have played way over their heads, which is evidenced by the 50+ come from behind wins that they posted.  Offensively this team has about as much power as you can hope for considering that they played 81 games in the pitcher friendly Dodger Stadium.  MVP runner-up Adrian Beltre led the league with 48 round trippers and .334 average with over 120 RBI's in what turned out to be a career year.  Beltre parlayed his good fortune into a lucrative free agent deal the following season with the Mariners.  Of the 8 regulars only shortstop Cesar Izturis failed to reach double digits in homers.  He did however hit .288 while stealing 25 bases.  Next to Beltre Shawn Green had the second most homers on the team (28).  The key to the team was the trading deadline acquisition of center fielder Steve Finley, who at the age of 39 hit .263 with 13 homers in just 250 AB's.  Interestingly by joining the Dodgers Finley rounded out his resume to include playing time with every NL West team.

The pitching was descent finishing 4th in the league in ERA with a bloated 4.01 steroid era ERA.  The staff did not really possess an ace.  They did however have a leader in Jose Lima (13-5, 4.07).  "Lima Time" as it came to be know in Southern California was an event for all to see.  When the animated Lima took the mound wild and wacky things happened, including some improbably Dodger wins.  When a player hit a big moment homer Lima was the first guy out of the dugout to celebrate.  He was clutch too.  He notched LA's only win in the NLCS vs St. Louis.  Kaz Ishii, Jeff Weaver and Odalis Perez were solid contributors.  5th starter Hideo Nomo in his second tour of duty in Chavez Ravine was horrible.  In 18 starts he was 4-11 with an 8.25 ERA.  When healthy, Wilson Alvarez (7-6, 4.03) is LA's best option for the #5 slot.

The starters need to go 6 or 7 innings then hand the ball off to the best pen in the NL.  Duaner Sanchez, Yhency Brazoban, Giovanni Carrara, and Guillermo Mota all have one goal:  Hold the lead and get the ball in the hands of closer Eric Gagne (7-3, 2.19, 45 saves).  Gagne was in the final year of a glorious stretch where he won the Fireman of the Year Award as well as the 2003 NL Cy Young Award.  Most heralded him as the best reliever in baseball.  Years later we would come to know that Gagne was a fraud.  He was outed in the Mitchell Report as a known PED user.  Gagne's career fell off the table after 2004.  Injuries and lack of juice turned this once dominating fireballer into an 87mph batting practice pitcher.  Still he is the most important cog in the 2004 Dodgers arsenal and as close to a sure thing as any manager can find in the 9th inning.

Since the Dodgers uses a lot of pitchers in 2004 (Twenty One to be exact), there were a lot of cards needed to update the team set.  21 total cards were added (12 pitchers).  I didn't have to colorize any cards and it was pretty easy tracking down usable photos thanks to the fact that the Dodgers kept a 2004 pictorial journal on their website.  The 2004 Topps template was a bit challenging to create because Topps used a stick figure outline of each players photo on the bottom left hand side right next to the player's uniform number.  It would have taken countless hours to create these outlines for each individual player, so I elected to replace that feature across the board with a stick figure outline of the "LA" logo.

1990 New York Mets - Mgr: Eric Stouber - 11 Cards

1990 would turn out to be the end of a magical 7 year run for the Mets.  From 1984-1990 the Amazin's owned New York.  1990 was supposed to be the year that they returned to the pinnacle of baseball.  Unfortunately for them they got out of the gate slow with a 20-22 start under manager Davey Johnson, who was subsequently fired.  Fan favorite Buddy Harrelson replaced Davey and the team responded by going 71-49 the rest of the way, but they still finished 4 games behind the NL East Champion Pittsburgh Pirates.  Miraculously the team rallied to catch the Pirates and even held a 1/2 game lead on September 3rd.  After a bit of a swoon they again rallied back to 1/2 game out on September 18th, but played .500 ball the rest of the way and lost out.  Met fans figured that the team would pick up its winning ways in 1991, but star slugger Darryl Strawberry left for free agency and their famed pitching staff began to crumble.

1990 had some real highlights for the Amazin's.  Straw hit 37 homers and knocked in 108 runs.  HoJo missed out on one of his 30/30 years, but he did hit 23 homers and he stoe 34 bases.  Quiet and consistent Kevin McReynolds defensively played the best left field in the league and hit 24 homers with 82 RBI's.  The bench was a bit thin, but Mark Carreon and Tim Teufel both chipped in with 10 homers and hit around .250.  Keith Miller was a utility man who filled in at almost every position.  The catching spot was a carousel.  Mackey Sasser had the best bat (.307), but he had the yipps when it came to throwing the ball back to the pitcher.  Fans at Shea tortured him unmercifully.  Orlando Mercado, Charlie O'Brien, Barry Lyons and Todd Hundley were all better defensively behind the plate, but not one of the 4 could hit over .230.  It got so bad the had to pick up retread Alex Tevino.

Frank "Sweet Music" Viola had his best year in Flushing going 20-12 (2.67).  Doc Gooden missed out on the 20 win plateau by 1 game (19-7, 3.83).  Met fans and management were concerned with his bloated ERA.  David Cone (14-10, 3.23) couldn't get anyone to score for him.  El Sid and Ron Darling both had sub. 500 seasons and were not their usual to notch selves.  Johnny Franco, who arrived in the off season in a trade with the Reds for Randy Myers, saved 33 games and was the Rolaids reliever of the year.  This would be the first of 14 seasons in Flushing for the Brooklyn born star.  Alejandro Pena, Wally Whitehurst and Bobby Ojeda saw a lot of action out of the pen in relief for those tired arms in the rotation.  Manager Eric Stouber returns for his second season managing in Flushing after 4 campaigns in Beantown.  Stouber, a life long Met fans, will have to keep the burning embers of a dying would be dynasty alive if he hopes to capture the NL East Flag.

To complete this set I had to add 11 new cards.  1990 saw Topps once again resurrect their Bowman label of cards, which is what I used for the template.  Some cards of note:  The Kevin Baez card was created by superimposing Kevin's studio portrait picture on a background of Shea.  Keith Hughes' card started out originally as a B&W wire photo of him taken in a Phillies uniform.  I had to colorized the photo as well as add the orange piping on his shoulders, plus the "NY" Mets logo on his cap.

1959 Chicago Cubs - Mgr: Gene Couture - 12 Cards

In 1959 Ernie Banks became the 1st player ever to win back to back NL MVP awards.  Basically Mr. Cub carried this team on his shoulders hitting 45 homers and knocking in 143 run with a .304 batting average.  No 3 players combined on the team equaled his output, but that's ok because behind him was a very balanced attack that had 7 players with double digit homers.  Of course no one from that list topped 14, but there was a lot of balance as manager Bob Scheffing did a lot of platooning.  This was a typical Cub team that was long on power and short on pitching, which is why they finished in the middle of the pack with a 74-80 record.  Their rotation was led by a trio of 23 year olds:  Bob Anderson (12-13, 4.13), Glen Hobbie (16-13, 3.69) & Moe Drabowsky (5-10, 4.13).  Newcomer Gene Couture will have his work cut out for himself trying to get his starters far enough into the game before they hand the ball off to relievers Don Elston (10-8, 3.32, 13 sv) and Bill Henry (9-8, 2.68, 12 sv).  With Elston being a righty and Henry being a lefty, Gene will have plenty of opportunity to mix and match for the right situation.  Since Chicago was dead last in the league in complete games in 1959 Gene's pen will get plenty of work.

To round out this Topps set I had to add 12 additional cards.  I had fun airbrushing and colorizing a few of these cards.  I took Bob Porterfield's 1952 Bowman card photo from Washington and changed the cap color and added the "C" logo.  I couldn't find a color shot of Ed Donnelly, so I used a nice size B&W shot that had him with a Cardinals cap on.  I colorized the cap and his face and added the "C" logo.  Bob "Riverboat" Smith who pitched 2/3 of an inning that year and had a robust 81.00 ERA finally got himself a Cubs card.  I took his 1958 Red Sox card and removed the pink background and superimposed Wrigley behind him.  I also changed his cap color and added the "C".  I probably spent more time working on that 1 card then Smith spent toiling on the mound for Chicago that season :) !

1999 Atlanta Braves - Mgr: Ron Burnette - 8 Cards

Manger Ron Burnette returns for his 3rd season as the Braves skipper.  There are high expectations for the 1993 Atlanta Braves, who won a mere 104 games that season. In the final year of the two division alignment the Braves, if you can believe it, narrowly won the NL West over San Fran by 1 game.  Never again will we see a 100+ win team not make the playoffs, but it happened that way 19 years ago.  That nip and tuck pennant race just might have taken all of the bit out of the Braves, who got bounced by the Phillies in 6 games in the NLCS.  What a disappointment.  After making the World Series the last 2 seasons there were high expectations for this team that added free agent Cy Young Award winner Greg Maddux via free agency.  Some free agents take the big money and come up small.  Maddux was better than advertised going 20-10 with a 2.36 ERA.  To lose 10 games Maddux must have gotten minimal run support from an offense that finished #1 in homers and #2 in batting average.  A guy who did get the run support would be Tommy Glavine (22-6, 3.20), who's ERA was almost 1 run per game higher than Maddux's, but his win total was 2 more and his loss total 4 less.  John Smoltz won 15 as the number 3 starter and Steve Avery won 18 as the #4 guy.  Pete Smith and Kent Mercker split the number 5 spot.  The bullpen was solid, but the closer was not.  Mike Stanton did have 27 saves, but his 4.67 ERA tells the story of just how shaky he ws.  Greg McMichael notched 19 saves himself by going 2 innings in the games where he appeared.

The offense was spectacular especially after they acquired the "Crime Dog" (Fred McGriff) at the trade deadline from San Diego.  McGriff, in 68 games hit 19 homers and knocked in 55 RBI's to go along with his .310 average and smooth glove at first.  Once he arrived the Braves were firing on all 8 cylinders with the Giants firmly in their sites.  Ron Gant and David Justice were fleet footed corner outfielders who could go deep.  Gant hit 36 homers and stole 26 bases.  Justice hit 40 homers and had 120 RBI's.  Otis Nixon covered centerfield like a blanket and stole 47 sacks.  Shortstop Jeff Blauser hit .305 and had 15 long balls.  Off the bench you have the best cover corner back in the game in the form of Deion Sanders, who will helicopter in for any playoff game this team plays.  If they clinch early they can give playing time to a trio of rookie future stars who came up late for a cup of coffee.  Ryan Klesko (.353), Javy Lopez (.375) and Chipper Jones (.667) saw limited action, but gave notice to the rest of the league that this Brave franchise was a dynasty in the making.

Due to the consistency of the Braves franchise and the fact that Topps created a Traded set in 1993, I only had to add 8 new cards to round off the set.  This was also my first team set done in PhotoShop.