#37 Duke Snider

#37 Duke Snider
Progress: 1st of this card
281 of 407 69% complete
How Acquired: $26.25 on eBay
Condition: Good

Duke Snider is a big one.  He's far from the priciest card in this set, but he's not a cheap one either.  Especially realative to my own collecting budget.  This Snider wasn't actually my cheapest option.  There were a couple others for $5-6 less.  But compared to those, this one more than warranted the extra couple of bucks.

That's not to say this is a flawless copy.  Obviously it's not.  There's potential that it's been trimmed along an edge (I'd wager no, but it's only about a 55% confidence level in that "no" wager), I'm almost certain it was either soaked or swabbed with some sort of aclhol cleaner to remove glue stains on the back, it has numerous creases, and pinhole (I actually kind of like well placed pinholes).  All of which is to say, I love it.

Duke Snider needs no introduction.  The Hall of Famer is one the all-time great Dodgers, whose career carried the move from Brooklyn to California, with Snider winning a World Series in each city (I need a Dodger fan to tell me how many other guys can claim that).  Duke owns a legendary stature in the annuals of baseball history that is matched by precious few.  The most shocking thing to be found on his baseball-reference page is the fact that it took him eleven years on the ballot to be voted into Cooperstown.  I guess there was a still a backlog of guys from the early days.  I suspect we'll see something similar in a few years when we all age and our knees and backs start to go out and suddenly the stigma of HGH and steroids seems really confusing.

Stats: 18 seasons, 8x All-Star, 407 Home Runs, 2,116 hits, 1,113 RBI's, .295 avg., Led NL in Runs 3-straight seasons ('53-55), Led NL in HR in '56 (43), 5-straight seasons of 40+ HR ('53-57), Led NL in RBI's in '55 (136).
6x NL Pennants with Dodgers, 2x World Series Champion ('55 & '59). 38 hits and 11 HR in 36 World Series Games.

Inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1980 with 86.5% of the vote.