Sunday Night Baseball: Steve Garvey 1986 Fleer League Leaders #15

Yes the Dodgers may have already played a pair of games, but to me MLB Opening Day is still in progress. Tonight the Dodgers visit the division rival San Diego Padres to begin the domestic portion of the season.

1986 Fleer League Leaders #15 Steve Garvey 

I will always think of Steve Garvey as a Dodger, but he did have a significant stint with the Padres. Five years of Garvey's career were spent in San Diego. His tenure there was so successful that the Padres retired #6 in honor of Garvey.

1986 Fleer League Leaders
This is a special edition set that Fleer put together in 1986. The 44 card complete set boxes were distributed at Walgreen's. I think "Leaders" in the set name refers to being a team leader, the cards certainly do not point to any specific statistical category for which the player led the league.

Checker

The 44 card checklist for the set runs in alphabetical order by surname. #38 Juan Samuel is the sole Phillies player on the list, although the set does also include Mariano Duncan, Julio Franco, Keith Moreland, Dale Murphy, Pete Rose and Ryne Sandberg with other clubs. There are several Hall of Famers in there including Tom Seaver, Ozzie, Robin Yount, Carlton Fisk, Ripken, Carew, Gary Carter, Kirby Puckett, and Phil Niekro.

Since this is Fleer each Box contains six random team stickers. Keeping with today's theme, this pack happened to be a Padres Hot Box:

1984 Padres
This season the Padres who are struggling for current success are once again celebrating the 1984 squad, who they just honored in 2009. 2014 marks the 30th anniversary of the 1984 Padre, which took the NLCS from the Cubs despite losing the first 2 games of the 5 game series.  Steve Garvey was the MVP of the series, He batted .400 with a team leading 7 RBIs including 5 in game 4 which he also ended with a Game Winning Home Run.


Welcome back baseball - I hope to continue with the Sunday Night Baseball postings throughout the season. Perhaps the Phillies will find some success in 2014 and find themselves on the big show at some point.
 

Sources
Baseball-ref 
Padres
Bob Lemke's Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards
Gaslamp Ball
2009 Padres