There was a card show near me this weekend for the first time in months. I didn't go. This happens to be the busiest work weekend of the year (nice timing, card show). I've barely had time enough to blog, and you know how I must blog.
Pre-scanned, non-cards are about all I have space for today. Fortunately, there was just such a thing in the draft folder.
Julie, from A Cracked Bat, sent me this pocket schedule back in January and I showed it then. But I wanted to do a little contrasting and comparing.
This schedule is from the 1974 season, the year in which the Dodgers played in the World Series, falling to the A's in five games. It was the breakout season for Steve Garvey, the All-Star MVP that year, and other players like Ron Cey, Jimmy Wynn, Mike Marshall, Andy Messersmith and Bill Buckner vaulted the youthful Hollywood squad into an era that would produce four World Series in eight years.
But times were different then and all you have to do is look at the schedule.
For starters, this pocket schedule is not the only team pocket schedule issued that year. There were several others with several other different sponsors. I'm not an authority on pocket schedules, but I don't think that happens anymore.
There is now an "official" pocket schedule issued by the team. (Last year's Dodger schedule is very reminiscent of the team's 1978 yearbook).
Let's compare some more:
Everyone in 1974 had Hank Aaron fever, and even though the Dodgers gave up his record-setting home run in April of '74, they still held an Aaron Poster Night on May 17.
The 2016 schedule folds open to eight panels and its packed with various packages and seating/ticket plans. The seating diagram is colorful and very useful even just for the fact that there are about five dozen seating options.
I don't know how many seating options there were in 1974 (the schedule doesn't tell me), but I'm guessing around four.
The left column lists what is now called "a promotional schedule" and includes "days' that 1974 would have never dreamed of, such as "Pups in the Park" "Kenta Maeda Fathead" night and a litany of bobblehead days.
Here is the 1974 Dodgers schedule. Road games are listed in gold, which was the 1970s default color. There are two scheduled doubleheaders (against the Astros on May 15 and against the Reds on July 3).
The 2016 schedule is not as colorful and contains modern inventions like interleague games and Diamondbacks. It does not contain any scheduled doubleheaders. But at least there's fireworks after every Friday Night home game! That's something they didn't have in 1974. Everyone thought Bill Veeck and his exploding scoreboard was bonkers.
We live in the information age, which is why the 2016 schedule devotes an entire panel to all the radio stations that carry Dodgers games, in three languages.
And for those of you who think radios are old-fashioned and dumb, you can get your info on the Dodgers in a variety of ways -- some ways that I will probably never try -- but they are out there.
In 1974, you had a transistor radio or a television without cable. No point in devoting two whole panels to the options.
The back panel says it all. "Follow the Dodgers ... on KABC & KTTV." Take your pick.
Make sure there's beer involved, though.
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