1971 O-Pee-Chee Von Joshua #57 Rookie Los Angeles Dodgers

Description

1971 O-Pee-Chee Von Joshua #57 Rookie Los Angeles Dodgers Radiating classic West Coast ballpark nostalgia and more than five decades of professional baseball craftsmanship, the 1971 O-Pee-Chee Von Joshua #57 Rookie Los Angeles Dodgers card marks the official rookie card debut of Oakland's smooth-swinging left-handed outfielder. Surrounded by the dramatic jet-black borders and crisp white inner frame of the iconic 1971 design, this desirable low-number Series One single depicts Joshua gripping the barrel of his ash bat in home Dodger blue-and-white flannel accented by the 1969 MLB Centennial sleeve patch and a flowing Von Joshua facsimile autograph across the bottom of the frame. Produced in London, Ontario during the historic first summer O-Pee-Chee printed all 752 cards to parallel the complete Major League checklist, surviving Canadian singles exist in far smaller populations than American Topps copies and remain prized staples for vintage set builders across North America. Drafted in the first round of the January 1967 secondary phase out of Oakland's famed baseball hotbed and California State University, Hayward, Joshua tore through minor league pitching at Tri-City with a .363 batting average and Santa Barbara at .382 before swiping 34 bases at Spokane in 1969 to earn his Major League call-up, batting .266 across 72 games for Los Angeles in 1970. Over ten productive Major League seasons from 1969 through 1980, including six seasons across two separate stints in Dodger blue highlighted by helping Los Angeles capture the 1974 National League pennant, Joshua compiled a sharp .273 career batting average and 502 hits, peaking in 1975 when he hit a sizzling .318 with 160 hits to finish runner-up in the National League batting race behind Bill Madlock. Long after his final Major League at-bat, Joshua became one of baseball's most respected hitting instructors for over thirty years, serving as big-league hitting coach for the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs while mentoring generations of prospects in the Toronto Blue Jays and Dodgers farm systems. Flipping the card over confirms a genuine Canadian O-Pee-Chee bilingual back printed on yellow cardstock rather than a puzzle back, showcasing parallel French and English career summaries, Major League batting stats labeled Fiche Comme Frappeur Dans Les Majeures, and the Printed in Canada stamp. High-resolution scans show appealing centering near 56/44 left-to-right and 50/50 top-to-bottom on the front with balanced 50/50 framing on the clean yellow reverse. No through-card creases, surface wrinkles, stains, or writing appear on either side, though a tiny factory white print ring shows beneath the front header bullet dot, moderate white rounding affects both bottom corners alongside light tipping at both upper corners, and noticeable white scuffing and chipping span the bottom black border, supporting a conservative raw VG-EX 4 grade. Grade Estimate: VG-EX 4