The best Dodger card for every year I've collected, 2024 update

 

It's tradition around here at this time to select the best Dodgers card from the year's Topps flagship.

I've done this post every year on the blog since 2017, although I skipped it in 2018 for an unknown reason. (Probably the prep work was too long). And it's rooted in me selecting my favorite Dodger card way back in the late 1970s and then continuing it each year.

It's now time for the 2024 selection, and like last year -- and probably the last few years -- the candidates aren't too exciting, because Topps has to crop out everything exciting. I don't know the exact reasons, but I'm betting they're modern-and-stupid.

So once again we have a lot of batters batting and pitchers pitching mixed in with a few yellers yelling but virtually nothing on the periphery or in the background.

Here is my selection of finalists:

Can you feel the excitement?! This year's design is so good that the lack of interesting photos doesn't bother me too much. 

Unlike last year, there are quite a few horizontal cards in the Dodgers team set. Anytime Clayton Kershaw is on a horizontal card, it's a likely candidate. Same with Walker Buehler. But I didn't consider either one seriously.

 

This likely would be a lot of people's favorite and I really want to pick it as my favorite, too. But I cannot get past that Hernandez is completely photoshopped into a Dodgers get-up. It's just not real enough for me.

The natural default is to go to the other Hernandez. Enrique Hernandez winning this year's Best Dodger card was even predicted by a couple people in the comments of last year's post. He always produces an interesting card.

This card follows the tradition but I went in a different direction this year.

Yeah, Miguel Vargas is this year's winner. He's not even on the team anymore -- but, heck, he's not the only one in this year's team set. What I like about this photo is Vargas clearly running home with the winning run, his helmet flying off and -- what's this? -- a BACKGROUND of teammates cheering him on!

For a background alone, this card gets the win.

Here is the full team set, not including those combo cards with players from other teams on them. That's 28 cards, which is seven more than last year.

And here are all the previous winners. I've carried out on my threat to photograph them all at once instead of scanning-and-uploading each one, which made me want to claw my eyes out.

Not the most straight assemblage there. Not a lot of time again. Also I shot this before selecting the 2024 winner.

I've mentioned in past versions of this post that I have not changed any of the winners from selecting them at the time. This is the reason for somewhat off-the-wall picks like Bob Welch and Rudy Law (I was like 14 then, but if you were a fan at the time, you'd know why I picked them). Next year I may update my picks, just to keep this post somewhat fresh.

As for the current Dodgers, they're still hanging on with a couple weeks to go. Will they hold off those evil Padres and Diamondbacks? Who knows?!? The team is held together with a few pieces of Scotch tape.

Everyone knows that the mission in 2024 is just get to the playoffs and hope the Chaos God deems you the lucky winner. Not my idea of how the playoffs should be run, but if I want to follow the sport, I guess I have to get in the current spirit.

Just please, no Diamondbacks vs. Yankees.