2018 Topps Heritage Minor League - The Dodgers Cards

Released this week is Topps 2018 Heritage Minor League brand, as as you might've guessed it's filled with nothing but prospects. Go here to check out a complete checklist. Below are most of the Dodger cards found in packs.

Base

#5 Will Smith               #8 Jeren Kendall

Blog Kiosk: 9/28/2018 - Dodgers Links - Some Odds and Ends

Check out this AP wirephoto featuring Jackie (auction link here). Dated to April 24, 1960, it features Robinson joining a protest in Cleveland. Per a newspaper clipping attached to the reverse:

Jackie Robinson, former major league baseball star, grabbed a sign and joined pickets at Cleveland, Ohio, who protested discrimination against Negroes at lunch counters in the south. Pickets staked out a Cleveland store whose stubborn branches have been reported as refusing service to Negroes.

I somehow wanted to relate this photo to today's charged social and political climate, but struggled to find a path. Then, I came across something written by Steven Levingston at the Washington Post regarding the oftentimes contentious relationship between Jackie and John F. Kennedy:

“Without meaning to be impertinent, Mr. President, we have a suggestion,” Robinson said. He advised the president to go off somewhere alone and think about racial prejudice until he got as angry as he was about steel prices. Then the president could channel his fury into “the battle against the bigots in this country who are working harder to destroy it from within than any foreign power is working to destroy it from without.” Robinson wanted the president to inject some passion into his fight for civil rights. “Why Mr. President,” the baseball hero urged, “why don’t you get angry again?”

Is this the solution? Should folks around the country "go off somewhere alone and think about the" violence we've all been, to a certain extent, conditioned to accept as normal?  Three years later we finally heard JFK get angry, as Robinson suggested:

“We face,” (JFK) said “a moral crisis as a country and as a people. It cannot be met by repressive police action. It cannot be left to increased demonstrations in the streets. It cannot be quieted by token moves or talk.” He addressed civil rights in moral terms as no president ever had.

I still don't know if I accomplished my goal of relating the above photo to today's issues, but I do know that there is a moral crisis today and I think we'd be remiss not to touch upon it -- even on a sports-centered blog. Below are more links to check out:

• This Day in Dodgers History: In 1988 Orel Hershiser broke Don Drysdale's Major League record for consecutive scoreless innings pitched at 59.  He went ten scoreless innings against the Padres in San Diego, but unfortunately did not walk away with the victory. The Dodgers eventually won in the 16th inning, 2-1.  In 1997 Mike Piazza set the Los Angeles Dodgers record for home runs at 40. He hit two homers against Rockies starter John Thomson in Colorado.
• Happy Birthday, Jack Fournier, Whitey Witt, Glen Moulder, Todd Worrell, Héctor Giménez & Jerry Sands!