CA: 2004 Top Deck Plaything Home Run Heroics Carlos Delgado

I picked up this card yesterday at the monthly show (more on that tomorrow). This is the first time I’ve come across this attachment, although it’s possible someone showed it in a blog post twelve years ago or something.

It’s a pretty cool, medium-thick card. The box score is sunk into the card and it is a beautiful moment-in-time item, one of the best types of cards. This commemorates Carlos Delgado’s four-home run game.

Surprisingly, this card is from the 2004 Upper Deck Play Ball set, which I have long disdained for the “melted face” paintings of the base cards. That’s all I’ve seen of the set before – the only cards in my collection are basic Dodgers. It shows you how sets always put the good cards in the inserts and then collectors hoard those cards.

This card was a dollar purchase and I quickly went online to grab the two Dodgers in the insert set (Shawn Green and Rickey Henderson). Neither was expensive either. On that count alone, the monthly show was a success. I enjoy learning new things at shows.

It’s interesting that I came across this card yesterday, because the exact same day my order for this card arrived:

This is from the 2008 Upper Deck Yankee Stadium Legacy set. Upper Deck has dropped significantly in four years.

I’ve shown this card before. Eight years ago it was even a topic of Cardboard Appreciation. It’s the only card I showed at CA that I didn’t own at the time. I mentioned in that post that I was actively looking for it. But then I forgot about the search altogether, until a few weeks ago the gigantic YSL set came up as a topic on Bluesky. That is why I purchased this card.

The card shows the first MLB game I ever attended: July 15, 1978 at Yankee Stadium. An 8-2 victory for the Royals. I have written about this particular game many times on the blog.

It’s the only YSL card I want to own and I’m glad I finally have it, but the execution is terrible. Ron Guidry didn’t pitch in that 7-15-78 game, but the photo shows him and the back mentions his ’78 Cy Young season plus a brief description of his 18-strikeout game in June of that year — hey, weren’t we talking about July 15, 1978?

But at least I get a line score from the actual game that I remember well. And at least there’s a card representing my first game – this was long before Topps Now.

But the 2004 Play Ball card looks and explains better.

And it made me aware of the Dodger cards in the set. … There are no Dodger cards in Yankee Stadium Legacy.